‘Thanks.’
‘Be careful.’
‘When aren’t I?’
‘Never,’ Cantelli said with a sigh of exasperation.
Horton rang off.
TWENTY-FOUR
The gates were closed. Horton pressed the intercom. Brett Veerman answered.
‘Could I have a word, sir? I’m alone. It’s urgent.’ Horton hoped that Veerman wouldn’t refuse.
There was a fraction’s pause before the gates swung open and Horton took the Harley up the gravel drive, drawing to a stop in front of the house. As he climbed off Veerman stepped out, closing the front door behind him. Clearly Horton wasn’t going to be invited inside. He didn’t think it was because Veerman had anything to hide. Perhaps his lawyer had advised him that the police couldn’t enter again without another search warrant. Or perhaps his son was inside and he didn’t want him to be troubled or to overhear their conversation. Horton didn’t care where they talked just as long as they did.
The heavy rain had given way to a light drizzle. Veerman was wearing a rain jacket but no hat. Horton removed his helmet.
‘What is it now, Inspector?’ Veerman said wearily and tetchily.
‘This isn’t a formal interview, sir. If you don’t wish to speak with me then that’s fine. I’ll leave.’
Veerman eyed him steadily. He’d been curious enough to allow him to enter the premises so Horton was guessing he wouldn’t turf him out now. Veerman gave a curt nod and turned away in the direction of the rear of the house. Horton followed. He could taste the salt in the air coming off the sea. He let the silence stretch on until they reached the shore where there was no evidence that Veerman’s wife had died only a few yards from where they were standing. Horton felt a pang of guilt and turned to study the man beside him. His face was drawn, his mouth tight and there were dark circles under his eyes. On the ferry Horton had been thinking a great deal about this confident, cool man with the superior manner and his immaculate flat that showed no evidence of any woman having ever set foot in it. And of the fact that there were no rumours or gossip of him playing the field but his staff and patients worshipped him, and he was considered something of a dish. If Horton dismissed everything that Thelma Veerman had told him as a lie, where did that leave him? With the fact that she had known about her husband’s flat, known he had no lover and that there had been no mysterious texts or phone calls.
‘You’re not having an affair, are you?’ Horton bluntly announced. ‘But you didn’t mind your wife or us believing it.’
Veerman eyed Horton sharply.
‘There’s no evidence of a lover ever having been in your apartment,’ continued Horton, recalling that bland, pristine interior. ‘But you knew that your wife had engaged a private investigation agency to check up on you because you’d seen Jasper Kenton following you.’
He’d been meant to. Kenton had engineered that. He’d intended killing Thelma, who would know too much, and framing her husband for her death. Veerman’s eyes looked troubled before he swung his gaze away from Horton and out to sea. Horton pressed on.
‘You never expected the flat to be searched by the police though,’ Horton continued. ‘Otherwise you might have planted some female items, clothing, perfume … And you didn’t expect Jasper Kenton to be found dead, or his car to be in your car park. And because you didn’t know if your wife had been home when you arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning, when you first heard the news that he was dead, you wondered if she could have been involved. But why would she kill a private investigator she’d hired, and a man she was having an affair with?’ Horton registered Veerman’s surprise but thought it phoney; behind it was contempt.
He continued, ‘You couldn’t have killed him either but you didn’t mind us thinking you might be involved, along with a lover who you were supposedly protecting. But as I said, you have no lover. You just thought you’d go along with it.’
Veerman was eyeing him steadily. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Oh, several reasons,’ Horton said airily. ‘To make yourself appear more dashing and glamorous, to make you seem mysterious and exciting, to hurt your wife or to get even with her for having a lover. Yes, that stung your huge male ego because you couldn’t believe that anyone would be interested in your plain, nondescript and unimportant wife.’
‘I didn’t come out here to be insulted.’ Veerman made to turn back.
‘Or did you think it would hide your real problem?’
Veerman’s body stiffened. He turned. ‘What problem?’ he asked sharply, his eyes narrowing.
‘You tell me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because the time for pretend is over, Mr Veerman. If we’re to find who killed your wife then we need the truth. No more lies and games. No more secrets.’ He held Veerman’s gaze, silently willing him to tell the truth as the wind whipped around them, whistling through the rigging on the dinghy. Suddenly Dr Quentin Amos’s words shot through his head: ‘Secrets and lies. Someone’s kept silent for a long time. They might want it to stay that way … there is always evil below.’
‘You’re right. There is no lover,’ Veerman said stiffly.
Horton dragged himself back to the man beside him and the present but with the residue of a thought lurking in the back of his brain from the past.
‘I’m impotent. Or if you want the medical term for it, I suffer from erectile dysfunction.’
Horton had suspected it must be something like that because he’d been recalling what Thelma had said when they’d walked towards the abbey together, about how cold her husband was, how withdrawn he’d become. He’d worked out that if Veerman didn’t have a lover, either male or female – and there had been no evidence to show he had one, or had ever had an affair – there had to be another reason.
‘Have you sought medical help?’
Veerman gave a hollow laugh. ‘Doctors are the last people to want to see a doctor. However I did undergo a health check to rule out the obvious possible causes, without explaining the problem, of course. I won’t bore you with my medical history but my heart is healthy, I don’t have diabetes, I’m not suffering from multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. I’m not obese as you can see and I don’t smoke or drink to excess. And neither do I take any drugs that could produce the side effects of erectile dysfunction. I concluded that the likely cause must be stress related and that it would pass. Foolish I know, and it hasn’t passed. I’ve not gone down the road of trying any of the PDE-5 inhibitors – Viagra, Cialis and the like – because I’d either have to steal them from the hospital dispensary, get a prescription from a doctor who would then know about my problem or buy them on the Internet and risk being made seriously ill by contaminated and fraudulent drugs.’ He ran a hand through his dark hair. His eyes were troubled. ‘I just let it go on, hoping it would sort itself out, something I chastise my patients about when they leave it too late to consult a doctor. I also blamed Thelma for it. She hated living here and she hated me but she wouldn’t divorce me.’
‘Because she was a Catholic.’
‘No, because she wanted money and a great deal of it. I wasn’t prepared to give her that. I never loved Thelma and she never really loved me.’
So they had stayed locked in this cold, hateful marriage. Then Kenton had come along, got talking to her, befriended her, had discovered which buttons to press, had made love to her and she’d poured out her sorrows to him. Kenton had promised he’d get evidence that would make Veerman only too happy to divorce her and with enough money to make her comfortable for the rest of her life. A life he said they would spend together. Horton could hear him now: ‘Tell me everything you can about your husband, the more information I have the better …’ And gently he’d steer her towards what he wanted to know.
‘What did she tell you after my visit here on Saturday?’
‘She accused me of killing him but said she’d say nothing to the police if I agreed to settle a huge sum of money on he
r. I was to give her this house, which she’d sell, because she hated it, and more. I told her not to be ridiculous; I didn’t even know the man. But she said I’d killed him because I was jealous. I laughed. I said I’d be only too pleased if she’d found herself someone other than those bloody monks and those filthy dogs.’
Horton thought Veerman’s ‘problem’ went deeper than stress. But his words struck a chord and one that was chiming loudly. He brought his attention back to Veerman who was saying, ‘I told Thelma she could have a divorce tomorrow on the grounds of her adultery but that didn’t suit her. She wanted me to divorce her and she wanted a settlement that I was not prepared to give in exchange for her silence.’
‘So you killed her, hoping we would believe it was the same person who had killed Jasper Kenton.’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Was that the truth? Was anything Veerman was saying the truth? ‘Did you ask her how and when she met Kenton?’
‘No.’
Pity. But it had to be on one of those trips to the island that Cantelli had told him Kenton had undertaken.
Veerman added, ‘I wasn’t interested and she didn’t say, but the only place it could have been was at that abbey she was so fond of. Since she started being their unofficial nurse she spent more time there than here.’
Horton recalled what Brother Norman had told him about tending one of the monks who had been taken ill in the garden. ‘That was two years ago.’
‘If you say so. I only know that she went there every day, often three or four times a day, not only to walk the dogs but to see to anyone who was sick. With my work and her obsession with the monks our paths hardly ever crossed, which suited me. I bought the flat as I told you for ease of use, when I needed somewhere to stay over when working late, and to be alone.’
And maybe because he wanted to hide that asset from his wife in case of a divorce. Perhaps Veerman had other property or assets that he had no intention of telling his wife about and hoped the courts wouldn’t find. He might even have put property in another name – his son’s, for example. But that could be checked later, if it needed to be checked. And he didn’t think it did.
Now Horton saw what Kenton had been after. It wasn’t anything that Brett Veerman knew. He had just been the lever Kenton had used to get what he wanted. He’d formed a relationship with Thelma Veerman because of her intimate knowledge of the monks.
Veerman turned back towards the house. Horton fell into step beside him. ‘I didn’t kill my wife,’ he said. ‘But if you and your colleagues believe I did then I suggest you get your evidence and formerly charge me. Meanwhile I have a lot to do.’
And Horton didn’t think grieving was one of them, although Veerman would put up a convincing show of it. He took his leave and headed for the abbey on the Harley feeling disturbed by his thoughts. There was still the chance that Veerman had deliberately steered him towards the abbey because in this case nothing seemed as it appeared. How could a monk, a religious man, kill two people in cold blood? But then nothing should surprise him having been in the job for so long. He knew people were capable of anything if driven hard enough or if the motive was powerful and overwhelming. And was the motive here the need not to be discovered, not to be exposed to the public again and Kenton had threatened that? Because Horton thought that Kenton had been on the trail of Sam Tandy. Or was the killer protecting Tandy?
His thoughts occupied him as he travelled the short distance to the abbey where he drew up in the car park and checked his mobile phone. Cantelli had tried to call him. He rang him back.
‘We’ve identified one vehicle which travelled to the Isle of Wight by ferry last Thursday evening on the seven p.m. sailing and the same vehicle returned on the four a.m. sailing on Saturday morning.’
‘That has to be Kenton’s,’ Horton said with excitement. The ferry would have arrived in Portsmouth at about four-thirty. The killer then drove into the Admiralty Towers car park and entered it at four forty-two.
‘It’s registered in the name of David Lane, Five Jasmine Grove, Luton. The local police have just confirmed that no one of that name lives at that address. The property is empty. I’ve checked with the ferry company and the ticket was a day return so whoever drove Kenton’s car back from the Isle of Wight would have had to buy another ticket to return to Portsmouth Saturday morning. He did. This time using the name Adam Rooney. He didn’t have to give an address because he bought it at the ticket office and paid cash. And there was one foot passenger on the five a.m. sailing from Portsmouth to Fishbourne. We’re searching for an Adam Rooney but my guess is he’s phoney.’
Horton thought so too. In fact he knew it. He quickly relayed what he had discovered from Brett Veerman and his idea that Kenton had used Thelma Veerman to identify Sam Tandy, living and worshipping in the abbey.
‘But in order for Thelma to be able to identify Tandy there must be something distinctive about him. Some distinguishing mark. Something that Thelma would have seen when she nursed him or treated him for some illness or accident. Something that wasn’t immediately visible, that was covered up so that Kenton, no matter how many times he came here, couldn’t see.’
He thought of the long habits the monks wore with the cowl draped around their heads, the gown reaching the ground, their hands tucked in the wide sleeves. There was a great deal covered up. Whatever scar or physical defect Tandy had couldn’t be on his face because that was visible and so too were some of the monks’ feet, often clad in sandals. Horton’s mind darted to the beachcomber’s suntanned feet in tatty sandals. But he hadn’t seen anything remarkable about them. And the beachcomber was too old to be Tandy but, as he’d considered before, there was the possibility he had killed to protect Tandy.
Something stirred at the back of Horton’s mind. Mentally he recalled the beachcomber stretching across a tattered business card with strong bronzed hands that hadn’t looked like any artist Horton had come across, although admittedly he hadn’t met many. But he had seen Mason Petterson’s hands with his long, slender fingers and there had been paint under the nails. His mind leapt to Louise Durridge’s manicured nails and the ring on her finger that Petterson had given her years ago and suddenly he was transported back to 1967. His body went rigid. His heart beat fast as his mind raced, trying to make sense of what he was thinking. Images flashed before him of Brother Norman’s slender hand coming out of the sleeve of his habit when Horton had come here to tell him about the sentencing of the men who had robbed the abbey. A glimmer of sunlight, a smile, before the hand had gone back into the sleeve. Brother Norman had been wearing a ring. Horton had never seen him wearing it before, he was certain of that. The breath caught in his throat as he tried to recall exactly what the ring had been like. His thoughts had been occupied by paint on an artists’ hand. Brother Norman had apologized for the dirt under his fingernails from his gardening. Then it came to him. It had been gold, a signet ring, and there had been a stone in it, deep red. And he’d seen that ring before.
‘Andy, are you there?’ Cantelli’s concerned voice broke through Horton’s thoughts.
With an effort he pulled himself together. ‘Yes.’ He hurried towards the café. ‘Check Sam Tandy’s medical records, photographs and bios on the website for any physical disabilities or scars. Let me know the moment you find anything.’
He rang off. The café was closed but there was a light on inside. Horton banged on the door and soon a figure hurried to answer his summons.
‘Can I help you, Inspector?’ Cliff Yately said, clearly worried. His hand was still bandaged and his arm in the sling. Behind him Jay Ottley emerged from the kitchen, a tatty leather hat low over the brow of his grizzled greying long hair and his gloved hands carrying a large bucket of slops.
‘I need to see Brother Norman urgently,’ Horton said.
‘I can ask in the abbey for you.’
But Ottley interjected, ‘I saw him walk down to the old abbey about five minutes ago.’
‘Thank
s.’ Horton dashed out and ran towards the ruins. His head was spinning, his body fuelled with adrenalin, his heart hammering fit to bust. He drew up at the small field that led down to the moss and bracken-covered ancient wall. Leaping over the gate he raced across the grass towards it. Dusk was falling and the wind was blowing chill off the sea. He could hear the waves rushing on to the shore. Frantically he searched for an entrance and finally found a small gap where the brickwork was crumbling. As he squeezed through it he registered it hadn’t been used much, which confirmed to him that there must be a way on to the shore from behind the abbey.
He paused. The tide was on the rise but it wouldn’t be high water yet for about four hours. To his right the shore led towards the Veermans’ house but that was hidden from view and not accessible by the beach. He turned left and with a growing sense of urgency ran along the shingled shore to where it curved inwards. There he drew up sharply. Rapidly he took in the lean figure bending over a small dinghy with an outboard engine on the rear. Behind it was a timber boathouse, the door ajar. Horton couldn’t see inside but he knew that it must once have contained an old sail cloth that had ended up wrapped around Kenton’s body.
The man straightened up. He turned and nodded knowingly with a smile curving the thin lips. The serious, solemn and rather sad monk with the hood hiding the sides of his face had vanished and in its place was a confident, younger-looking man. Horton thought his heart must have stopped beating. The air became still. The wind dropped and his brain swiftly rearranged all his theories and speculations.
He’d been wrong. Kenton hadn’t found Sam Tandy. He’d found someone else. Someone connected with Lord Eames, and that was why his body had been placed on Lord Eames’ beach. Because in front of Horton was one of the two remaining men he’d been seeking who featured in a photograph taken on 13 March 1967.
Shroud of Evil Page 24
