Death Surge (26 page)

He turned on to the pontoon and headed in the direction of Portsmouth Harbour with a deeply troubled mind. Glancing about him he saw there were a considerable number of empty spaces on the pontoons, including those where both of Winscom’s yachts were usually moored. He cursed softly. Just his luck. And he didn’t have Winscom’s mobile number; someone in the marina office might have it, though. He was about to turn back when he was hailed, and he looked up to see Roland Stevington on the deck of the large ocean-going sailing yacht moored at the end of the pontoon. He didn’t want to speak to Stevington, or have time for it, but a grey head bobbed up from the cabin and Horton saw with relief it was Don Winscom. Both climbed off as Horton made towards them. Stevington stretched out a hand. ‘Inspector Horton, isn’t it?’

Horton found the grasp firm and dry as he expected. He stifled his unreasonable resentment towards the man and tried to blot out the pictures of Harriet Eames with him.

‘Hattie told me who you were when we saw you running last night. She says you’re a very good sailor.’

How does she know, thought Horton; he’d never been sailing with her. He didn’t care for the fact they’d discussed him and wondered what else
Hattie
had said about him. He eyed the sixty- foot yacht, wondering if she’d spent the night on-board. Had the two of them cosied up together on it? It was none of his business if they had.

‘Don, I wondered if I could have a word.’

‘Of course. Thanks Roland.’

‘Not at all. Anything I can do to help. There but for the grace of God and so on.’ He smiled.

Horton drew Don Winscom down the pontoon. Winscom said, ‘Roland’s offered to donate a large sum of money to the charity and to take some of the lads and girls out on his yacht when he returns from the Velux 5 Oceans race.’

‘That’s generous of him. I hope he and the yacht get back safely.’

‘So do I. Not everyone makes it. Any news of Johnnie?’

‘No, but we have another body, one of Johnnie’s former mates.’

‘My God!’ Winscom ran a hand over his grey hair.

‘And the other member of that gang is also missing.’

‘Surely Johnnie can’t be involved in this?’

Horton winced inwardly. Now even Don Winscom had suggested it. He said, ‘Whether he is or not I need your help. I need a list of everyone who has been referred to your charity by the police and any other organization, including the services’ community health department, for the last six years, and I need it urgently.’

Would he quote confidentiality at him? Would Horton have to return with a warrant, which would take time? He held Winscom’s stare, and after a minute Winscom said, ‘I’m sorry, Andy, I can’t give you that.’ Then he glanced at his watch. ‘My goodness, is that the time! I’ve got a call to make. I need to go back to the office; perhaps you’d like to join me there for a coffee in, say, ten minutes. I should be through by then.’

Horton got the message loud and clear. He breathed an inner sigh of relief. ‘Of course,’ he replied with a flicker of thanks in his eyes. As Winscom hurried away Horton turned back. Stevington was on-board his yacht, and, filled with curiosity, Horton headed towards him. He eyed the boat admiringly.

‘Don got called away. He told me about your generous offer. What did you mean when you said there but for the grace of God?’

Stevington straightened up. ‘Sailing wasn’t something that kids like me got the chance to do, despite living so near the sea. Working-class boy, son of a factory worker and a waitress, Mum died when I was eight, Dad struggled on alone in a dead end job, incarcerated in a steel shed, hating every minute of it but not having the guts to break loose. It drove him mad. Not much money coming in. I was left to my own devices. Didn’t get up to anything illegal, but it was only a matter of time before I would have done. I was restless and high-spirited. I got bored at school, my mates bored me. I needed action and activity, and then a friend at Dad’s works suggested sailing. I never looked back, did all my sailing exams, worked as a crew member, raced, skippered yachts, and then went solo. Ever thought about doing it yourself?’

Would he fancy solo racing around the World? Did he have the balls for it, the skill, the passion and dedication to compete in the race that Stevington had won, sailing thirty thousand miles alone, battling against hurricane-force winds, mountainous seas, coping with extremes, enduring both physical and mental stress? It was gruelling, and yet it
was
the supreme challenge. With surprise he found himself seriously considering it. There was no one to hold him back. No wife, no parents, no lover, only the job. Perhaps he could take a sabbatical. It would mean giving up on the search for his mother. But by the time he’d be ready to compete in the next race four years from now he might have discovered the truth about her disappearance – always assuming he did find out the truth, and he wasn’t certain of that. Amos’s envelope had led nowhere, although he’d not had much time to consider it. Then there was Sawyer’s visit last night. Could he speed up his investigations by joining forces with Sawyer? Did he want to? Or would the quest for Zeus sidetrack him and slow down his investigations? Perhaps as someone intended it should.

‘It must be tough getting sponsorship.’ He wondered who the hell would sponsor him. He couldn’t see his former father-in-law’s marine company putting up money, not unless Toby Kempton thought he’d get rid of him permanently. Horton wasn’t well connected, but Stevington had managed it, judging by the names on the hull, which he noted included Rupert Crawford’s investment bank.

Stevington smiled. ‘That’s usually harder than the sailing.’

Horton doubted that, but he understood what Stevington meant.

‘You make connections on the circuit, and if you’re passionate about what you do it shows through. People begin to believe you and want to associate with success. Sailing around the world single-handed in the most challenging yacht race there is was my dream, and I was determined to make it happen, and because of that I didn’t care who I approached or how many knocks I got, I just kept on trying. And then when you do well—’

‘Or win.’

‘It becomes much easier. People approach
you
. I’ll be off to La Rochelle soon to give her a test before the start of the first ocean sprint to Cape Town.’

And that, Horton knew, was followed by four more sprints, the last an adrenalin-fuelled race across the North Atlantic and back into the Bay of Biscay. He thought of Sarah Conway hanging off that RIB. He was surprised she didn’t go in for this. And him? The sailing he could do, the challenges he’d face at sea didn’t scare him. He was attracted to the idea. So what was stopping him? The fact that he’d be alone, perhaps, cut adrift from the only family he’d ever really known – and he didn’t mean Catherine and Emma, he meant the force. He’d miss Emma, and perhaps by being away he’d play into Catherine’s hands and he didn’t want that. But maybe soon it would be time for a change.

‘We could go for a sail before I leave,’ Stevington added, ‘to see if you fancy handling one of these on your own some day.’

Horton found he’d like that very much. ‘It’s a deal,’ he replied, shaking Stevington’s hand and feeling less hostile towards him than he had. He headed for Winscom’s office. He’d given him enough time.

Winscom looked up from his desk as Horton pushed open the door. ‘Blast I’ve got to go out. Sorry, Andy, won’t be a few minutes. Make yourself comfortable; help yourself to a coffee if you fancy one. Everything’s over there, just to the right of my desk.’

Horton could see the cups and kettle on top of the small fridge. Winscom was performing like a bad actor in an old Ealing comedy, but he got the point and this was no laughing matter. It meant he’d have to walk behind Winscom’s desk to get to the coffee, and on that desk would be the information he wanted.

As soon as the door closed behind Winscom, Horton made his way around the desk. He had no intention of making a coffee, but he flicked on the kettle for good measure and as he did he looked over a large picture of the marina on the wall above it and, to the right of it, a description of the marina’s facilities and location. Suddenly, he froze. His heart stalled. He could hardy believe what he was seeing. Swiftly, he whipped Amos’s envelope from his pocket and stared at the reverse of it, and then at the board. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He looked between the two sets of numbers on the picture. The top ones were identical to those on Amos’s envelope –
01.07.05
– but the bottom set was different. On the picture the second set of numbers read
50.47.27
. And on the envelope Amos had written
5.11.09
. Was that why Amos had omitted the zero, because it wasn’t
05
but
50
? Rapidly, he did some calculations. If he added the figures four and seven together he got eleven and if he added two and seven together he got nine. Was he simply too keen to find the meaning for Amos’s figures that he’d grasp at anything?

He sat at Winscom’s desk. His heart was going like the clappers. If Amos
had
given him the longitude and latitude of the marina, then why, for God’s sake? What the hell was he trying to tell him? He could ask if Edward Ballard had moored up here recently or was here now, but Ballard might not have used that name and he could have changed his boat. So was he here under another name? Or was this place connected with one or more of the six men in that photograph from 1967? Lord Eames perhaps? He owned a boat. Did he keep it here? Or was this where Jennifer had come the day she had disappeared? But Amos wouldn’t know that. Or would he?

Was Amos trying to tell him something else? But what, for Christ’s sake? Had he completely misread this? No, he felt sure he was right. And, if so, he’d found the answer by a mere fluke. Would it have occurred to him eventually that he was looking at a location reference? Perhaps Amos had known he was a sailor so he might eventually make the connection. But it could have taken him months – years, even. So what did he do now?
Nothing
was the answer, he thought, stuffing the envelope back in his pocket, because he had something far more urgent to deal with.

He looked up to see Winscom slowly making his way back. Horton glanced at the desk. On it were several sheets of paper, each with a list of names, and swiftly he stuffed them into the pocket of his jacket before crossing to the door.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Horton said, ‘but thanks.’

‘Let me know how it goes.’

Horton promised he would and, despite his resolve not to follow up the lead that Winscom’s picture had thrown at him, he found himself heading for the marina office. He thought there was little point in asking if Edward Ballard had moored his motor cruiser in the marina recently, but he did nonetheless and got the answer he had expected. No. Neither did Lord Eames keep a boat here.

Returning to his Harley he couldn’t rid his thoughts of those figures. They just had to be the longitude and latitude of this place, but why? He found himself turning right out of the car park instead of left back to Portsmouth. As the traffic lights changed he crossed the single-lane bridge that spanned the harbour on his left and Haslar Lake on his right. Haslar Marina hadn’t existed in 1978, it had been opened in the early 1990s; before then this had just been sea and shore and little else, so what could have drawn Jennifer here? Again, as he headed along a road made narrower by the high, barbed-wired topped red-brick walls either side of him, he considered the fact that she might have arranged to meet someone.

To his right he glimpsed the sign for the marine technology park and remembered that it had once been the Admiralty Experimental Works, and to his left he was soon passing the site of the former Haslar Royal Naval Hospital, now shut and due for development. He’d read that it had been built in 1762 as a dedicated military hospital for the Royal Navy, but that its Georgian Grade II listed buildings, set in sixy acres of parkland, would soon become expensive apartments. But in 1978 the hospital had been fully operational, so was it possible it had been Jennifer’s destination? Could she have come here to see a doctor? Not for a medical reason but because she was having an affair with one. Or had she come to visit a patient who was serving in the armed forces? That was a possibility, except for the fact that the neighbour’s statement in the very brief missing person’s report had said Jennifer had been happy. But then she would have been if the man she’d come to visit had been recovering from a successful operation.

He swung off the road into a gravel unofficial car park that held only a couple of vans and one car. Climbing off the Harley, he removed his helmet and headed for the sea. Huge dark-grey rocks abutted the shore, and he could see no other people, apart from the lone figure of a man walking along the narrow footpath above the shore to his left, which led back to the marina and on to the Gosport ferry. No one could gain access to the shore from here because of the boulders imported as sea defences, and the area to his right, Fort Monkton, belonged to the army. It was sealed off with a high wire-mesh fence, barbed wire and security cameras.

If Jennifer’s lover had survived a complex and possibly life-threatening operation then that would have been cause for celebration and for her to put on her best clothes and make-up. Staring across the Solent at the steeple of the church standing above the houses on the hill slopes of Ryde to his right, he considered the idea more fully. Perhaps she’d only just received the news that this person she cared for was at Haslar hospital, alive and recovering. Perhaps she’d believed him to be dead. A serving member of the armed forces didn’t exactly fit with her involvement in the Radical Student Alliance, but that had been eleven years before.

He returned to the Harley and was soon passing through a residential area with no clear idea of what he was doing here. These modern houses certainly hadn’t been built in 1978, but the golf club might have been here and the Forts, both Monkton and Gilkicker, certainly had been. They’d been around for centuries.

At the sign to the lifeboat station he turned off, parked the Harley in the official car park, paid for a ticket and headed down to the sea; this was too far away from the marina location for Jennifer to have come.