Death Lies Beneath (19 page)

Horton hadn’t known about Willard’s suicide though Trueman had probably discovered that by now. He resorted to his stock answer. ‘It’s too early to say. Anything you can tell us could be helpful. If you feel up to it.’ Loman nodded. Horton continued. ‘Did Ellie take anything with her when she left?’

‘I was in bed. I didn’t see. She just called out to me but Marie checked her things for the police and said that Ellie must have been wearing her dark blue trousers, a white crop top and a denim jacket, and she took two bikinis. One was white, the other striped blue and red and new. Ellie bought it on the Wednesday before she disappeared.’

And that suggested she was going somewhere she could sunbathe or swim.

‘Did she take a towel?’ Horton asked.

Loman looked bewildered by the question. ‘I don’t know.’

Horton wondered if that had been asked first time around. Judging by Loman’s reaction it hadn’t, but then perhaps Loman had forgotten that. He would check the file.

He said, ‘Do you still have any of Ellie’s belongings?’

‘Her room is exactly as it was the day she disappeared. It would have confused and upset Marie if I’d changed it. Besides I always hoped Ellie would come home, but as the years went by I knew it was unlikely. I thought she might have run off with someone that she thought we’d disapprove of although she never hinted at being involved with anyone.’ Loman ran a hand through his thin grey hair. His eyes looked harrowed.

‘Would you mind if we took a look around it?’

‘I’ll show you where it is.’ He hauled himself up, his movements like that of a very old man. Horton’s heart went out to him as they followed him up the stairs to a large room at the front of the house overlooking the street and similar houses opposite.

Loman surveyed the room as though, Horton thought, he was memorizing it for the last time. ‘Ellie was very tidy. She was no trouble, not as a baby or a teenager, a lovely girl. I’m sorry.’

They let him go. Some moments later they heard him being sick in the bathroom. Somerfield made to go to him but Horton prevented her. ‘Leave him.’

‘Poor man.’

Horton agreed and he’d very much like to catch the bastard who had put him through such heartache. Briskly he said, ‘I’ll take the books; you look through her clothes and jewellery.’

The bedroom was tidy and spotlessly clean. It was decorated in pale lemon with several photographs scattered about the surfaces: on the old-fashioned mantelpiece above an empty grate, on the dressing table and chest of drawers and some on the bookshelves. They were of Ellie as a child with her parents, as a young woman and with girl friends. Perhaps the two friends she had worked with in the Historic Dockyard. And there were some of her with her father fishing, on his boat. Horton picked up the coloured frame on the bookshelf and stared at a small fishing boat with a cuddy. He couldn’t see the name of the boat but he’d get that from Loman before they left and the details of whom he’d sold it to and when. Horton didn’t think it would be relevant to the inquiry, or that Loman had killed his daughter, but it was best to check.

He replaced the photograph and scanned the spines of the books. Ellie’s taste had been for romance novels and clearly she’d been a great fan of Mills & Boon. There were stacks of the thin paperbacks, which were well thumbed. He picked a few at random and fanned them, hoping but not expecting to find a note. A thorough search would have been made first time round. He wondered if someone had led her on romantically with the purpose of killing her. He thought of their other victim, Salacia, and what the two women might have had in common. He didn’t see Salacia as a reader of this kind of material, though there was no reason why she shouldn’t have been. He checked for inscriptions on the inside pages but there was nothing.

After a moment, Somerfield said, ‘Her clothes are fashionable for 2001; chain-store stuff: skirts and dresses, a couple of pairs of trousers and jeans. Her jewellery is cheap. No sign of birth pills or condoms.’

Was that mentioned in the case file? It was a good point and Somerfield had done well to think of it. He said as much. She looked pleased at the praise. He’d check with Trueman.

As Horton had expected their search yielded nothing, but it gave him more of a feel of who Ellie Loman had been. They found her father waiting for them in the kitchen with a blank expression on his haggard face. He tried to pull himself up when they entered but it was too much of an effort so he stayed seated.

Horton again sat opposite him. He’d leave him be in a moment. He said, ‘Can you remember exactly what your daughter said when she called up that morning?’

‘I’ve been over it again and again trying to see if there was anything in her words that could help find her but there wasn’t she just said, “I’m off now, Dad. Not sure when I’ll be home but don’t wait up for me.”’

‘So she expected to be out all day and into the night.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve thought since that she might have said it jokingly. But it was why I didn’t call the police until it was just after midnight. She wouldn’t stay out that late without telling us. Oh, I know she was a woman and not a teenager, she didn’t have to clock in, but she never liked us to worry. Ellie was very considerate. She wasn’t one for night clubs. She went to a couple of parties when she was a teenager, friends from school and then college, but she wasn’t interested once she started work.’

‘Did she go to work in the Historic Dockyard straight from college?’

‘Yes. She loved the job. Marie and I were surprised, because Ellie was quite shy and there she was dealing with the public. She did a course in tourism at college and she loved helping people. She liked history so the dockyard appealed to her. She started working there when she was nineteen.’

‘Did she have a weekend job while at college?’ He wondered if she could have met somewhere she’d known from there.

‘No.’

‘How did she sound that last day?’

‘Bright, cheerful. She had a laugh in her voice.’ Loman faltered. He swallowed hard before continuing. ‘She was always like that, though, she was rarely down.’

‘What used to get her down?’

‘Someone being cruel.’

‘To her?’

‘No, to anyone, people, animals. If she read about it or heard it on the news she’d get upset. She couldn’t believe that people could be like that. She always saw the good in people. I guess that must have been her downfall.’ A spark of anger lit his tormented eyes. ‘Some bastard spun her a yarn and she fell for it. Perhaps this Willard pestered her so much and when she finally said no he killed her and then hanged himself because he couldn’t live with what he’d done. May he rot in hell if there is one, which I doubt.’

There was a moment’s silence before Horton said, ‘Do you know if Ellie was on the Pill, or took any other contraceptive measures?’

‘I’ve no idea and I’d rather you didn’t ask Marie. It might upset her. She won’t understand why you want to know.’

‘That’s fine but if you could give us permission to access her medical records that would help.’

‘You have it. Do whatever you need to if it will help to catch the bastard who killed her. Do you know how she was killed?’

‘We’re still waiting test results, but from the initial examination it looks as though it was a blow to the head. There is a possibility that it was an accident and she fell into the sea but we’re treating her death as suspicious until we have evidence to say otherwise.’

Loman nodded.

‘We’ll also need to take a DNA sample from you.’ Horton guessed there might be one on file taken at the time of Ellie’s disappearance from something belonging to her but he’d get Somerfield to take one from Loman before she left. It might save time. ‘We’ll be able to confirm if the remains are Ellie’s by matching the DNA against yours. Just a few more questions, Mr Loman. What was her mood like before that Sunday?’

‘Same as usual,’ Loman answered wearily.

‘Exactly the same,’ pressed Horton. He didn’t want Loman to fabricate something but to really consider if there had been any change in his daughter.

Loman’s face creased with thought as he tried to remember. ‘She just seemed very happy. She was out quite a lot I remember the couple of weeks before she . . . before then.’

‘In the evenings?’

‘Yes, but not very late. She came home from work later than normal, about nine o’clock or thereabouts. She said she’d been for a drink and a meal with friends, but she didn’t say who.’

And had anyone confirmed that, wondered Horton. ‘What about the weekends?’

‘When she wasn’t working she went shopping, spent time in her room, nothing different.’

Loman looked in danger of collapse.

Horton wasn’t sure how Loman was going to take the next question but he had to ask it. ‘Can you give us the date when you sold your boat and the buyer’s contact details?’

But Loman was prevented from answering by the appearance of his wife in the doorway. ‘Oh, we’ve got company. Why are the police here, dear?’

‘We’re just going,’ Horton said hastily, forcing a smile. He felt like a heel running away.

Loman pulled himself together with a quick glance at his wife he said, ‘I’ll just show Inspector Horton out.’ He left his wife to PC Somerfield.

At the door Horton said, ‘Would you like Somerfield to stay with you for a while? She can call someone to help you. Your doctor perhaps?’

‘No. I’d rather you use all the resources you have to make sure that it is Ellie you’ve found and to discover why she died and who killed her.’

‘We’ll allocate a police liaison officer to keep you fully informed, Mr Loman, and to help protect you from the press. Sooner or later they’ll get on to it, I’m afraid. Meanwhile if you could give Somerfield the details about your boat that would be helpful.’

Loman didn’t ask why he wanted it. Horton quickly pressed on, ‘If there is anything you recall, anything that was different about Ellie or her movements before that Sunday, call me, any time.’

Loman took Horton’s card. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been doing that every minute of every day for all these years?’

Yes, he knew. For years he’d pushed all thoughts of his mother’s disappearance to the back of his mind, but in the last eleven months he’d been trying to recall her mood, movements and visitors before that November day when she disappeared. It never went away. Suddenly a distant and vague memory, like an out of focus image, played at the ragged edges of his mind. He tried to identify it but couldn’t.

Irritated he pushed it away, called Trueman and relayed the gist of the interview with Loman. ‘Find out if anyone asked her doctor at the time if she was taking any form of contraceptive. Loman’s given his consent for us to access his daughter’s medical records. I’d also like to know if anyone asked the Lomans if Ellie took a towel with her that Sunday. Two bikinis and no towel suggests she was going somewhere where they were supplied and not to the beach or a swimming pool, at least not a public one. She might have been going to a private house with a pool or out on a boat for the day, which could have returned to Foxbury’s yard. There could have been a violent quarrel and the boat owner killed her and threw her body in the sea. Or perhaps someone was waiting for her return on the quayside or he saw her unexpectedly, they quarrelled and he killed her, or she slipped and struck her head and he pushed her body into the sea. Whoever she was going out with though she kept secret from her parents, which means they wouldn’t have approved of him.’

‘Probably married.’

‘We’ll need to check the members at the sailing club in 2001. Get the list from Richard Bolton. Ask Eames to get the names of any of Foxbury’s employees for 2001, though I suspect they weren’t on the official payroll. Foxbury told us he used to own a sailing yacht so see if she can find out if he had a boat in 2001 and what kind, also if he had a house with a swimming pool. Get Eames to re-interview him and to tell him about Ellie Loman. I’d like to know his reaction. Somerfield is getting details of the boat owned by Kenneth Loman at the time of his daughter’s disappearance. I don’t think he killed his daughter but find out just how thoroughly he was questioned. He could have discovered she’d gone out with one of his fishing chums, a work colleague or friend, a married man he disapproved of. Where did he work?’

‘Ran his own business, a small engineering company.’

‘Find out what happened to it. What have you got on Rawly Willard?’

‘He claimed he was out walking on the day Ellie disappeared, on the coastal path around Chichester Harbour. He didn’t own a car so he caught the train to Chichester and walked along the canal path to the marina and on to Itchenor, but he didn’t have a train ticket to verify that and nobody at Portsmouth Station where he caught the train remembered seeing him. His clothes, including those he was wearing that day, were sent to forensic but there was nothing found on them to connect him to Ellie Loman. His room was also searched. He lived with his parents, Amelia and Edgar Willard, in Southsea. He was questioned twice but stuck to his story. He committed suicide on 6 January 2002. His body was found hanging from a tree in Stansted Forest.’

‘That probably explains Patricia Harlow’s hostility towards us.’ Horton recalled her frosty manner.

‘But not why she and her husband didn’t tell you about Ellie Loman.’

‘Why should they? We weren’t investigating that and neither of them could have known where Ellie’s body was.’

‘Unless they were involved in her death.’

‘And we’ve nothing to say they were, or have we?’

‘No.’

‘And the only connection between them is the appearance of Salacia at the crematorium the same time as their aunt’s funeral.’ And that tiny reaction from Gregory Harlow, he thought. He consulted his watch. With a bit of luck he might make the twelve thirty sailing. ‘I’m going over to the Island to question Harlow. Apply for a search warrant for the late Amelia Willard’s house; I don’t think Patricia Harlow will let us in without one. It’s probably too late to find anything that links back to Rawly Willard and Ellie Loman but you never know. And see if you can trace any of Ellie’s former work colleagues.’