Dead Man's Wharf Part 27

'Probably, and that was what Lee was trying to discover when she visited social services. Whoever was threatening Irene decided it might be best to put her away somewhere where everyone thought she was senile anyway and take no notice of her. They must have known she had the beginnings of dementia, which means that someone was keeping a close eye on her.'

'Who do you reckon it is?'

'No idea, but Buckland, the ex-copper, probably knew, which was why Peter Ebury was told to kill him and make it look like a robbery. Peter was their hit man and their fall guy. That's my theory anyway.' And Horton thought it might also be Lee's.

Cantelli looked worried. 'There is something else. I searched Buckland's flat with DCI Crampton, but I got called away. He claimed he didn't find anything, but I'd jotted down that he seemed excited about something. Two days later his boy got run over and Crampton went on compa.s.sionate leave. As I said, Jempson took over, but we'd already charged Ebury and Mayfield, and the case was sewn up. When Crampton came back to work, he was different. Quieter, edgy. Everyone put it down to his being upset about his boy. But I'm not so sure now. I think he might have found something in Buckland's flat and someone didn't want him to expose what it was.'

Horton felt sorry for Crampton if this was the truth, and angry that a good police officer could have been threatened into silence. Did Lee and her boss know this? If not should he say anything? He looked at Cantelli. If he did it would mean dragging him into it and he didn't want to put Cantelli or his family at risk.

'We'll leave that to Lee and her colleagues.'

Cantelli looked about to protest, then must have read something in Horton's expression because he nodded solemnly and said, 'If you say so, Andy.'

There was a short pause, pregnant with all their unspoken thoughts about extortion, blackmail, and cover-ups, before Horton nodded at the rec.u.mbent figure of Steven Kingsway. 'You'd better formally charge him.'

'He's your collar.'

'No, he's yours. You earned it. Get a patrol car here to collect him. And call Charlotte.'

Stepping aside Horton rang Uckfield.

'Where the f.u.c.k are you?'

'That's no way to greet an old friend. I'm fine and so is Sergeant Cantelli. Thanks for asking.'

Uckfield grunted, as Horton continued. 'We're at Fort c.u.mberland, and Cantelli has arrested Steven Kingsway for the murder of Daniel Collins, Nicholas Farnsworth and Nathan Lester.'

'Who the h.e.l.l is Kingsway?' Uckfield cried in exasperation.

'It's a long story, but DC Lee might be able to tell you.' Horton rang off. To Kingsway he said, 'Hope you like prison food.'

Kingsway made no reply.

Stretching his hands into Kingsway's pockets, Horton retrieved the keys to the security gates, and ran down to let the patrol car inside. Returning, he said to Cantelli, 'How's Charlotte?'

'Angry and relieved. Thanks, Andy.'

'What for?' Horton exchanged a smile with Cantelli. He felt tired now that the adrenalin surge was easing off. He was also heartily thankful. He couldn't imagine a world without Barney Cantelli.

'Aren't you coming?' Cantelli said, climbing into the back of the patrol car. Kingsway was sandwiched between him and a uniformed officer.

'No, there's something I've got to do first.'

TWENTY-THREE.

Horton collected the Harley and rode across to the marina. There was still a great deal unexplained, such as who had stolen Irene Ebury's belongings? Who had Peter Ebury threatened to expose? And how much did the Intelligence Directorate know about his mother? Did she figure in their investigations?

He stared down at the boats. There was a light shining in the cabin on Daisy's boat. He thought of that determined chin, the neat little figure and her quick incisive brain. It would be nice to have some female company and to talk over some aspects of the case. He was certain Daisy would find Steven Kingsway fascinating. Then he reminded himself that while Daisy was a psychologist, she was not the police one. And And he didn't fancy being a.n.a.lysed. He couldn't divulge the details of the case anyway; it could hinder Kingsway's trial. he didn't fancy being a.n.a.lysed. He couldn't divulge the details of the case anyway; it could hinder Kingsway's trial.

A car pulled in behind him. A door slammed, footsteps, then someone was standing beside him. He turned to find a tall, slender man in his early fifties with silver hair and keen grey eyes, wearing an expensive raincoat over an immaculately tailored suit.

'Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Sawyer,' he introduced in a voice as smooth as chocolate but not so appealing. He flourished a warrant card which Horton barely glanced at. He didn't need to read it to know that this was the head of the Intelligence Directorate. His eyes travelled to the car where DC Lee was sitting in the front pa.s.senger seat. In the rear was a man in his early forties with close-cropped brown hair, wearing a green waxed jacket and an inscrutable expression.

'How much do you know?' asked Sawyer. His att.i.tude was polite but restrained.

'Not as much as you, sir,' replied Horton, which won him a smile of sorts.

'We still don't know who Peter Ebury was protecting. Have you any idea?'

'Me? Why should I know?' It was evident to Horton that Sawyer knew about his mother having worked with Irene Ebury. Again he wondered how much more Sawyer knew about Jennifer Horton and her disappearance. He desperately wanted to ask, but knew he couldn't because even if he kept his expression void and his voice bland, a sharp-eyed man like Sawyer would see the pain inside him. And he didn't want anyone to know how much it hurt. Betraying vulnerability led to exploitation. He'd learnt that the hard way in his youth. He said, 'Pity the prisoner who attacked Peter Ebury is dead. He could have told you.'

'Yes, and if Sergeant Cantelli hadn't paid him a visit he might still be alive.'

'You should have spoken to him sooner instead of hanging on our coat-tails.' Horton knew that the Intelligence Directorate had specialist teams focusing on prison intelligence. They'd probably been monitoring Peter Ebury for months, years even.

Horton asked, 'Did Mayfield, Peter's accomplice, know that the armed robbery was a put-up job?'

'I don't think so. He was rather simple and worshipped the ground Peter Ebury walked on.'

Horton knew that; Cantelli had told him. He wondered now if Mayfield had died of natural causes, or whether he too had been eliminated.

He said, 'It would have been simpler to have killed Buckland without setting up the

armed robbery and then disposed of Peter.'

'Not for Zeus.''Who?' Horton asked surprised, racking his brains trying to recall the name before swiftly realizing it was a code name. His theory had been right then. This Zeus was the master criminal who the Intelligence Directorate were after, and he had a connection with Irene Ebury and her son Peter. And what about Jennifer? Had she known this Zeus? Horton scrutinized Sawyer for some sign that perhaps she had, but Sawyer's expression was giving nothing away.

'We call him Zeus because he wields his thunderbolts to control his family of crooks,' Sawyer said.

'Didn't do cla.s.sics at my comprehensive school,' Horton said cynically.

'Zeus wanted Peter out of the way, but he also wanted him alive.'

'Because Peter was one of his troublesome sons, as a result of his affair with Irene Ebury.'

'I thought you didn't do cla.s.sics.'

'I'm a detective. I worked it out. So Zeus offered Peter a big pay-off, a good solicitor and a reprieve on appeal if he proved his worth and shot Buckland. Only Peter didn't get what he was promised. When he didn't, Irene Ebury started threatening to talk about the good old days, so her flat was set on fire a couple of times, but she managed to escape unhurt. It was probably only a warning to them both anyway. If Zeus had wanted her dead there would have been no escaping. Peter was told that Zeus would leave Irene alone if he kept his mouth shut and served his time like a good boy. If he didn't, then they'd kill him and his mother.'

Sawyer said nothing, but Horton knew he was right. 'And then Irene conveniently got dementia and was pushed into a rest home.' Horton watched Lee climb out of the car. 'But what Zeus didn't realize was that as the dementia progresses the patient begins to remember more of the past, not less of it. Not that it really mattered because everyone dismissed what Irene was saying anyway. So who did you have in the Rest Haven listening to her rambles?'

Lee answered. 'Claire Butler. She's a DC. We pulled her out on the third of January, two days after Irene died. There didn't seem much point in her staying on.'

And that was what Angela Northwood had meant when she had said she was a care a.s.sistant down: wretched woman didn't show up for work yesterday or today and there's no word from her. wretched woman didn't show up for work yesterday or today and there's no word from her.

'And you were just calling off your surveillance on the fifth of January when Cantelli and I arrived. What alerted you to staging the surveillance in the first place, Inspector Lee? It is inspector, isn't it?

'Yes.'

She gave him a hesitant smile, which he didn't return. It wasn't her fault, he told himself. She was just doing her job, but he didn't like being deceived.

She said, 'When Peter's mother went into the nursing home, Peter kept quiet for a couple of years working out how he could expose Zeus and still live to tell the tale. Of course we knew nothing about Zeus then...'

'And do you now?'

Sawyer answered. 'We're a couple of steps further forward, thanks to Peter.'

Horton knew that Sawyer wouldn't say anything more, but whatever this Zeus had

done, and still did, it had to be a serious international crime, and a sophisticated large-scale one for the Intelligence Directorate to be involved.

Lee said, 'Early in December Peter was told that his mother was getting worse. That it wouldn't be long before she died.'

'Who told him that?' Horton asked sharply. That certainly wasn't what Angela Northwood had said and though Dr Clayton had said Irene had clogged lungs and arteries, death hadn't been imminent.

As if he'd never spoken, Lee said, 'Peter thought that now might be the time to put his plan into action.'

'I bet he did,' Horton muttered, 'with a little prompting from you.'

'On the twenty-first of December Peter asked to see the governor. He told Geoff Welton that he knew someone the police would dearly love to get their hands on and he was prepared to tell them who it was in return for a new ident.i.ty, money and a fresh start overseas. Geoff Welton had been primed that this might happen one day. He contacted us immediately. We arranged, through Mr Welton, a visitor to talk to Ebury in the governor's office where Ebury was brought after trashing his cell. There we did a deal with Ebury, but he wasn't going to tell us Zeus's ident.i.ty until we had given him a new ident.i.ty and a fresh start overseas.'

Would they have gone so far as letting out a man convicted of murder? wondered Horton. He reckoned so. 'You strung Ebury along.'

Sawyer answered. 'For a while, yes. We told him we were arranging it and we put a surveillance operation on his mother and DC Butler into the home.'

Then the light dawned on Horton. He tensed with anger and swivelled his hard gaze between them. 'Then you let the word out that Peter was ready to talk. Just so you could see who showed up at the nursing home, only when he did, you c.o.c.ked it up. You missed him. Where was your precious DC Butler? On the day shift, I guess. And you had no one on night duty except you, Inspector Lee, and waxed-jacket over there.'

Silence. Horton knew that these two were never going to admit failure. He felt angry for Irene Ebury. She hadn't deserved to be used as bait. He knew the stakes were high and that to catch sc.u.m you had to think and sometimes act like sc.u.m, but Inspector Lee had fallen down on her job. And he could see that she knew it.

Stiffly Horton continued. 'When the staff were drinking to celebrate New Year's Eve, one of Zeus's operatives entered the Rest Haven from the back gardens on to the flat-roof kitchen extension and in through the landing window, the only one in the house that isn't double-glazed. Then all he had to do was climb the remaining stairs, dart into Irene's room and kill her.'

'There's no evidence of that,' Lee snapped. 'Irene Ebury died of natural causes.'

'Like Peter Ebury, supposedly,' scoffed Horton. 'She could have been injected with air, or she awoke and was frightened to death. Maybe Mrs Kingsway really did see someone, and her son used it as a reason to disguise his own bullying of his frail elderly mother.'

It also meant that the intruder had known the layout of the Rest Haven and where Irene Ebury had slept so he must have visited there, perhaps posing as a workman or relative. On New Year's Eve he had taken advantage of the fact that the staff would be drinking to slip in and kill Irene.

'Did you know about the prescription fraud?' he asked and saw that they did. 'You thought Daniel Collins was involved in that, and that his death was just an unfortunate accident until his mother refused to believe it. Then you wondered if he had been Zeus's eyes and ears all the time. The surveillance had been called off, but by working with me, Inspector Lee, you could follow up that lead. Well, Daniel Collins was killed by Steven Kingsway.' And he told them of Kingsway's confession. Neither Lee nor Sawyer showed any emotion or reaction. He finished by asking who had stolen Irene's belongings.

Inspector Lee answered. 'There was nothing in them. DC Butler had already been through them, but we didn't take them.'

So Irene's killer had probably seen how lax Marion Keynes was in keeping her office locked, or he'd managed to take impressions of the keys to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

'And there was no photograph or mention of your mother,' Sawyer said.

Horton tensed. He wondered how long they had known about Irene's link with his mother. He wasn't going to ask though and give them the satisfaction of seeing his curiosity. He also wondered if Sawyer was telling the truth. He wouldn't put it past him to lie.

Coldly he said, 'You told Peter Ebury about his mother's death on New Year's Day. He knew he was next. He was relying on you to get him out, but again you were too late.'

And Sawyer didn't much like him saying that. Well, tough. Horton guessed that Sawyer had taken Peter Ebury's belongings from the prison and had left only those two photographs, which he had deemed to have no significance, and no chance of leading Horton to Zeus.

'Have you found the social worker who helped Irene to move?' he asked. 'Naomi Bennett.'

Lee threw a glance at Sawyer, who nodded. 'She says Irene took what few letters and photographs she had with her. The rest of her furniture went to a second-hand dealer.'

He didn't believe it. 'How did Peter find out who his father was?'

Sawyer said, 'He says his mother finally told him.'

Maybe she did, Horton thought, but he couldn't believe a word these two told him. 'Haven't you traced Irene's whereabouts during those missing years 1963 to 1973?'

Surely that would reveal Zeus's ident.i.ty. Maybe it had, but the Intelligence Directorate, and whatever other agency they were working in co-operation with, didn't have enough evidence to bring him in and certainly not to convict him.

'We're working on it.' Sawyer smiled, but his eyes were as hard as marbles.

'So what happens now?'

'We carry on. And you can help. We know that Irene Ebury worked with your mother in the casino and that your mother disappeared in November 1978. Zeus could be responsible for that.'

'I doubt that. Irene knew this man before then. She returned to Portsmouth when she was pregnant with Peter.'

'She could still have confided in Jennifer.'

She could have done, but Horton fervently hoped not. Now he knew the reason why Inspector Lee had been a.s.signed to his team and DCI Bliss seconded elsewhere. When Lee had seen him arrive at the Rest Haven, and when word had got back to Sawyer that he had been to the prison enquiring about Peter Ebury's death, Sawyer thought that Horton might lead him to Zeus, or at the least uncover some fresh information. Bliss had wanted him to drop the case, but Sawyer didn't and he needed someone on the inside. Horton wondered how much Superintendent Reine and Uckfield had been told.

Sawyer continued, confirming Horton's thoughts. 'The fact that your mother disappeared makes us think she knew something about Zeus. If he knows that you're alive and making inquiries, then you might help flush him out.'

Horton laughed mirthlessly. 'And be killed in the process? No, thanks.'

Sawyer remained silent. Horton stared across the marina. He knew what was being left unspoken, which was if he helped then he might discover what had really happened to his mother on that November day in 1978. If this Zeus was ruthless enough to kill, or have someone kill Irene and her son, Peter, and no doubt many others, then Horton knew he wouldn't think twice about threatening to kill him and even killing Emma. His stomach tightened. The world felt bleak and hostile.

Sawyer said, 'You would be posted to our team as a DCI.'

Horton's eyes swivelled to Lee. He didn't think she'd like that much, but again her expression gave nothing away. He turned back to face Sawyer. First Uckfield had promised him acting DCI on his team and now this. But Uckfield had made promises before and hadn't kept them and Uckfield's promise came with the condition that he give up fighting for regular access to Emma. Now Sawyer was offering him a higher prize and his conditions meant he could lose his life and possibly Emma's into the bargain.