Footsteps on the Shore (4 page)

‘Pull over, Barney, I’ll tail Rookley on foot. Hang around here in case he doubles back.’

Rookley veered off the central path to his right and Horton followed him at a discreet distance, weaving his way through the lurching weather-beaten headstones. Ahead he saw the funeral cortège draw to a halt and beyond it two gravediggers sheltering from the rain under a tree. He hadn’t gone much further when his phone rang. Horton glanced at Rookley, who was some distance ahead and hadn’t heard it. Seeing the caller was Cantelli, Horton answered it.

‘Sorry, Andy, but we’ve got a body in Portsmouth Harbour. No ID, and difficult to tell who it is, but Seaton thinks it’s a man.’

Horton looked after the retreating figure of Rookley.

‘It could be Luke Felton,’ Cantelli pressed. ‘And Seaton says the tide’s coming in fast.’

Horton cursed. Was it Felton? Or was he here, in hiding? Was Rookley meeting him? If it hadn’t been for the question of the tide, Horton wouldn’t have hesitated; he’d have checked Rookley out first. He dashed an irritated glance at his watch. It was less than two hours to high tide, but depending on exactly where the body was, the water could reach it much sooner.

Watching Rookley disappear around the bend of a path, reluctantly Horton said, ‘Tell Seaton we’re on our way.’

THREE

H
orton stared down at what was left of the corpse lying in the thick slimy mud of the harbour and wasn’t surprised that PC Johns, standing guard over it, looked green, or that PC Seaton hadn’t been able to say who it was. There wasn’t much left of this poor soul to tell anything and Horton wasn’t about to go through what remained of the clothes searching for an ID. Dr Clayton, or rather her whistling mortuary attendant, Brian, could have that pleasure.

Hunching his shoulders against the cold penetrating rain sweeping off the sea, and desperately trying to control his heaving stomach, Horton forced himself to study what remained of the blackened flesh that hadn’t been eaten by the sea life. There was no hair on the corpse and the rotted clothes were so covered in mud, seaweed, barnacles and sea creatures that Horton couldn’t see if they fitted the description Harmsworth had given them. There were also no shoes on the body.

Cantelli cleared his throat. ‘Think my breakfast’s about to come up.’

Horton was rather glad he hadn’t had any. He’d been too preoccupied with the symbol on his Harley to worry about food. ‘Better not let the gallery see you.’ He nodded up at the elevated road to their left, which led to the railway station and the ferries to Gosport across the harbour, and to the Isle of Wight beyond the Solent.

‘Ghouls,’ muttered Cantelli, pulling a handkerchief from his jacket and making a great pretence of blowing his nose. Horton knew it was to disguise the disgusting smell of the bloated body, which rose sickeningly above the smell of the mud. Even Dr Price, drunk or sober, wouldn’t have difficulty certifying death this time.

‘Would Felton’s body look like that if he’s only been missing since Tuesday night?’ Cantelli voiced the question which had been running through Horton’s mind.

Horton shrugged an answer. That was down to Dr Clayton to tell them, though he hoped Price might have some idea. ‘How tall is Felton?’ he asked.

Cantelli reached into his pocket and pulled out his notepad. ‘Five feet ten inches and of slim build.’

Horton again studied the corpse. ‘The height’s about the same.’ But the body looked large, which, of course, could be the bloating from being in the water. Horton stared out at a grey, turbulent, rainswept harbour; the seagulls cawed and screeched overhead, a black and orange tug boat bucked in the roll of the waves as it headed out against the tide which was rushing in. The water was already in the channel to their right, slapping against one of the historic dockyard’s attractions, the ironclad warship HMS
Warrior
; soon it would be over the causeway and the corpse. They had about thirty-five minutes. It wasn’t long.

His eyes flicked back to the shore where officers, including PC Seaton, were helping to keep the growing numbers of tourists and sightseers at bay. Horton thought the rain would have dampened their curiosity, but clearly not. He watched with relief as Dr Price’s battered Volvo pulled up and behind it the van containing Phil Taylor and his scene of crime officers. Horton wished the corpse was covered by a tent, but there wasn’t time for that, and the best they could do was screen it with their bodies. Price would only be minutes. Taylor and his SOCO team of two, longer.

Seaton had told them on their arrival that a Mr Hackett had made the gruesome discovery just before 11 a.m. He’d been preparing his small fishing boat ready to take out into the Solent when the weather cleared, and, as he had put it, he ‘Almost trod on the poor sod.’

Horton turned back to the body, his eyes scanning the area around it, and said, ‘He must have been washed up in the early hours of the morning on or around high tide, which was just before one o’clock.’ And he could guess why no one had spotted it before Mr Hackett; the colour of the corpse blended almost perfectly with the mud, and anyone seeing the clothes would think it was rags brought up with the tide. But where had the body come from? There were hundreds of places, around the Solent and beyond.

Cantelli pulled out a packet of gum and offered it to PC Johns, who took a piece gratefully while Horton refused.

‘Maybe he fell overboard.’

Which meant it was unlikely to be Luke Felton, unless he’d been meeting a drug dealer on a boat. Horton said, ‘Call Sergeant Elkins and ask if he’s come across any drifting or abandoned boats in the last few days.’

Cantelli stepped back along the causeway, nodding a greeting to Dr Price who drew level with Horton. Price’s bloodshot eyes looked warily out to sea before switching their scrutiny to the corpse.

‘Well, he’s definitely dead,’ he declared. ‘I can tell that by his colour. It’s amazing what you learn at medical school.’

Horton sometimes wondered if Dr Price had ever attended one. Maybe the patients in his practice did too. Even though Horton had never heard of any complaints against Price, he was heartily glad he wasn’t registered at his surgery. The rain was dripping off Price’s wide-brimmed waterproof hat, the sort of article Horton wished he was wearing. His hair was plastered to his scalp and running off his face. His trousers sodden.

‘As to cause of death . . .’ Price crouched over the body. He seemed oblivious to the stench, but then perhaps the alcohol Horton could smell on him anaesthetized the doctor to that. ‘There are no visible signs and I’m not touching him. I’ll leave that to our delightful pathologist.’

‘Time of death?’ asked Horton hopefully.

‘No idea, but judging by the generalized bloating and the fact the body is greenish-black, I’d say it’s been in the water for sixty to seventy-five hours, possibly more.’

Horton did some rapid calculations. Seventy-five hours took them back to Tuesday morning when Luke Felton had been seen going to work by Harmsworth, and had, as far as they were aware, been at work all day. They would check. But sixty hours took them to 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, and that meant it could be Felton.

Horton said, ‘It is a man then?’

Price shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Difficult to tell. Even if what is left of his clothes wasn’t covering his private parts, the fish will probably have taken a fancy to them. Dr Clayton will tell you.’ And with a grunt he shambled off slightly unsteadily, waving a hand as he passed Taylor and his two colleagues, Beth Tremaine and the photographer, Jim Clarke.

The sea was getting perilously close. For once Horton was glad of Dr Price’s brevity. To Taylor, he said, ‘You’ve got about twenty minutes before the tide hits here.’

‘There’s not much we can do anyway, except photograph and video the position of the body and take samples from where it lies,’ Taylor replied mournfully, frowning at the sea, obviously annoyed with it for having the gall to interfere with his usual thorough procedure.

Cantelli came off the phone. ‘Elkins says there are no reports of abandoned or drifting boats anywhere in the Solent. And none of a man overboard or reports of a missing seaman.’

‘So if it is foul play he could have been thrown overboard from a boat and left to drown, or been killed or knocked unconscious and then tossed overboard.’

‘Or he could have walked into the sea to commit suicide, or fallen from a cliff on the Isle of Wight.’

‘Call Walters and ask him to check if anyone’s been reported missing in the last seventy-five hours.’

Cantelli threw a worried glance at the advancing tide.

‘You can do it ashore,’ Horton said, swivelling his gaze to Mr Hackett, who was holding court among his buddies outside the timber hut belonging to the Portsmouth Net Fishermen’s Association. ‘And talk to Mr Hackett. See if there’s anything else we should know about.’

With a look of relief, Cantelli hurried down the causeway while PC Johns looked enviously after him, before turning back to glare at the sea as though by sheer force of will he could hold it back. Others more noble had tried and failed, so Horton didn’t hold out much hope of a humble and burly PC succeeding.

As Taylor’s team did their stuff under the curious eyes of travellers and onlookers on the elevated road, Horton tossed up whether to tell DCI Bliss about this development and decided not to. It would only send her flapping around like a distressed seagull. He also saw no reason to call in Superintendent Uckfield of the major crime team, not unless it proved to be murder.

He quickly scanned the crowd for journalists, saw none he recognized, but knew they’d be here soon enough; along with photographers and camera crew who would be able to pick out a flea on an elephant’s arse if there had been elephants in Portsmouth Harbour. They’d have no problem with something as large as a corpse.

Was it Luke Felton, he wondered, watching a grey naval ship making its stately way out of the harbour. The vessel seemed so close he could almost touch it. It was travelling slowly, but nevertheless Horton eyed its wash with concern. But if the corpse was Luke, then why had Rookley gone to the cemetery? Had he simply been taking a short cut through the graveyard on his way to meeting one of his criminal friends? Or had he seen them following and decided to throw them off the scent by diving into the cemetery? But Horton didn’t credit Rookley with that much intelligence. Rookley was a nasty piece of work, with a record of theft and violence that stretched back to childhood, but he’d never been done for drug dealing. Still, there was a first time for everything.

He rammed his hands in his pockets and stamped his wet feet to get them warm, wondering if the unit he’d asked Sergeant Warren to despatch to the cemetery to search for Rookley had found him. Perhaps they’d not even gone; Warren’s diatribe on the shortage of manpower didn’t exactly inspire Horton with hope. If Rookley wasn’t located, and if he didn’t show tonight, then Horton would have him picked up tomorrow.

‘There’s nothing of any significance here, Inspector.’ Taylor’s nasal tones broke through Horton’s thoughts. The photographer nodded to indicate he’d got the images he needed, which was just as well as the sea, swollen by the naval ship’s progress, washed up against the body. Horton addressed PC Johns, ‘Tell the undertakers they can remove the body.’

Johns didn’t need telling twice. The bedraggled PC hurried back to the shore while Horton stayed to watch the rotting corpse being scraped off the mud and lifted into a body bag before being placed on the trolley and wheeled away. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. He examined the area where the corpse had lain. There was nothing but mud. Leaving Taylor and his team to collect further samples, he was relieved and thankful to return to the car where he squelched into the passenger seat and called Dr Gaye Clayton. He got her voice mail, so left a brief message telling her the body was on its way and he’d appreciate an ID as soon as possible.

Horton then called Sergeant Warren. The one unit he had been able to spare to search the cemetery reported no sign of Rookley. ‘It’s a big place, Inspector. How long do you expect me to keep them there?’ Horton could hear the complaint in Warren’s dour Scottish tones.

‘You can call it off,’ Horton said briefly and rang off before having to suffer Warren’s phoney gratitude. Seeing that Cantelli was still deep in conversation with Mr Hackett, huddled under the protection of the hut doorway, Horton punched in a number on his mobile phone and a few minutes later had arranged for a survey on the boat he had viewed late yesterday afternoon and was hoping to buy. He then called the owner, Mrs Trotman, to tell her, but there was no reply and no answer machine. He’d try later.

Reaching into his pocket, he unfurled the paper containing the symbol scratched on his Harley and studied it closely, but it still looked like a series of random squiggles. It had been carved almost certainly by a penknife, which would have taken some time to execute. Was it the act of a mindless moron who got his kicks from vandalizing other people’s property – a drunken yob, maybe, staggering home? But there were no pubs or clubs en route to or from the marina, except the restaurant at the marina itself, and Horton could hardly see its upmarket clientele doing something so destructive and malicious. Still, it might be worth asking the owner about his customers last night. Though when he’d be able to do so was another matter entirely. And the marina CCTV hadn’t picked up anything. He doubted the CCTV cameras on the seafront would either, even if he did have the time to view them, which seemed increasingly unlikely as the day was unfolding. And that brought him back to the body.

If it wasn’t Luke Felton, then who was it and how had he died? Were they looking at a suspicious death, suicide or an accident? Was there a family somewhere who would need to be given the bad news?

Cantelli climbed in the car. ‘Hackett didn’t have anything to add to what we already know from Seaton, and Walters says no one’s reported a missing person in the last seventy-five hours, or in fact over the last four days. He also says that neither Luke Felton nor anyone fitting his description has been taken to the local hospitals. I’ve got the addresses of Luke’s brother, Ashley Felton, and his sister, Olivia Danbury. Do you want to call on them now? Ashley Felton lives not far away in Old Portsmouth, the sister on the slopes of Portsdown Hill.’