'Find out what food they served Tuesday evening and check it with Dr Clayton's findings on stomach contents.'
'Already done,' said Cantelli waving his notepad.
'Did Culven tell the barman where he was going?'
Cantelli raised his bushy eyebrows. 'Do you want jam on it?'
Horton smiled. Would be nice, he thought.
CHAPTER 9
He wasn't smiling an hour later when he was told there was a delay in getting the warrant to obtain Culven's client files and Frances Greywell was refusing to hand them over. She had to protect her firm's reputation and her client's interests, so Cantelli told him after speaking to her on the telephone. Damn, that meant they might not have access to them until Monday morning. Two whole days wasted. They may not have a warrant to extract the files but Horton had sent Walters and another DC into Framptons to question the staff.
The team questioning Culven's neighbours hadn't unearthed any regular visitors to Culven's house, man or woman, except for his cleaner. Culven's sister was in New Zealand, and apart from her Culven, it appeared, had no family and no friends.
The fingerprinting unit confirmed the prints on the pornographic magazines matched Roger Thurlow's. After briefing Uckfield Horton handed the magazines over to Dennings and the Vice Squad to trace their origin. Horton said nothing to Uckfield about his visit to Maddox or his ideas that Thurlow and Culven were involved with Jarrett. He doubted Uckfield would appreciate it.
He felt restless. He tried to settle down to clear some of the paperwork that had been building up but couldn't, and even checking in with Trueman in the incident room didn't ease his agitation. He wanted action, or at least activity, and one that didn't involve reading and shuffling paper. Everything that could be done on the Culven case was being done so he decided to pursue the Thurlow line.
It was late afternoon when he climbed the steps to the marina office at Horsea Marina. Someone might have seen Thurlow on his boat last Friday, and the lockmaster might have seen him go out. It was worth checking. He showed his warrant card to a young woman with fair hair and a worried expression, and asked to have a word with the lockmaster to check on procedures.
'Of course,' she agreed with alacrity. 'I hope there's nothing wrong?'
'No. Just routine,' but he could see she wasn't convinced. 'Do you know the Free Spirit owned by Roger Thurlow?'
She shook her head. 'No, I haven't been here long. One of the others might know him.' 'Perhaps you could tell me where he keeps his boat?'
'Yes.' She reached for a file and quickly thumbing through it found the pontoon and berth number.
He asked for the security number to get on to the pontoon, then she showed him into the lock control room. A bulky balding man with a bird tattoo on the side of his neck was sitting in front of a large cream-coloured console with red and green buttons biting into a sandwich the size of a small loaf.
To Horton's enquiry he said, 'Are you kidding mate? You couldn't see the end of your nose on Friday evening, and if he went out in that fog then he's a bloody fool. Though a lot of them are when it comes to the water. What happened to you then, get into a fight?'
'Something like that.' Horton thought he should wear a placard saying, 'I got knocked off my bike.' He gazed across the lock at the houses directly opposite that faced Portchester Lake. It might be worth talking to the occupants.
'Of course we were on free flow Friday night,' the lockmaster mumbled through a mouthful of bread and ham. 'You know what that is?'
Horton did. It meant the tide was at the right height to allow a boat to free flow through the lock without having to use the gates. 'What time was this?'
The lockmaster consulted a chart on his wall. 'Between 06.44 and 09.14 and again between 19.19 and 22.04.'
If Thurlow had taken his boat out that evening after 19.30 he wouldn't have needed to radio up. That factor, combined with the fog, would have meant he could have slipped out without anyone seeing him. But perhaps he had stayed in the marina overnight and gone out over the weekend?
'Did you see the Free Spirit at all over the weekend?'
'Can't say I did. She might have slipped through though. We only log boats out if they're vacating a berth for one or more nights.' 'Can you check,' Horton asked, squeezing the impatience from his voice.
He consulted a clipboard. 'No, mate, nothing there.'
Horton could ask Thurlow's fellow berth holders. The radio crackled into life. Below, Horton could see a sleek motorboat edging its way into the lock.
The lockmaster continued, 'Of course in this hot weather, during the day, the world and his wife are coming in and out of here like it was a motorway service station.'
Horton knew that. He recalled the days when he, Catherine and Emma had come through here on his father- in-law's yacht. 'Could you give me the free flow times for the weekend until Tuesday evening, please.' He didn't know what relevance it had, probably none, but he might as well have them whilst he was here. He guessed that Thurlow had moored up elsewhere in the Solent.
The lockmaster stretched out and handed across a long thin leaflet. Then he screwed the paper sandwich bag into a tight ball and tossed it into a bin in the far corner by the open door. Horton said, 'Do you know a Michael Culven, owns a Sealine 25?'
'What's the name of the boat?'
'Otter.'
'Doesn't ring a bell.' Had Culven sold it? Horton left him pushing his buttons and headed back towards the Boardwalk and the bridge head that led on to Thurlow's pontoon. He walked steadily past the gleaming yachts and motorboats looking for occupants, but they were all deserted. He guessed that many of the boat owners would be down from London, and other parts of the country, later that evening in readiness for the weekend sailing. He wondered if he'd ever be able to afford a boat that had more than just one cabin and even possibly a separate head! Uckfield had managed it but then Steve Uckfield had managed most things.
He came to a halt at the empty berth where the Free Spirit should have been, and couldn't believe his luck! He had wanted a reason to question Jarrett and he'd been given one. Opposite where the Free Spirit should have been was Jarrett's sleek motorboat. Now he was convinced that Thurlow was working with Jarrett and that both were involved in smuggling pornography. He didn't recall seeing Thurlow enter Alpha One, when he and Dennings had been watching it, or Culven come to that, but then Thurlow and Culven didn't need to be members, they both had boats here. It would have been easy to transfer the pornography between them.
Even better, Jarrett was on board. The hunch that had brought him out here when he should have been reading reports had paid off.
As he was about to hail Jarrett he emerged from the cabin. As Jarrett took in who he was, Horton saw his eyes flick beyond him, to the car park, as if he was expecting someone.
'I could call this harassment,' Jarrett said, climbing down on to the pontoon. Obviously Horton wasn't going to be invited on board.
'You could. I call it questioning a possible witness to a murder.' That shook him.
'What murder?'
'The body found on the beach, Wednesday morning.'
'What's that got to do with me?'
'He was your solicitor.' Jarrett's head came up and Horton could have sworn he saw alarm in his eyes.
'Michael's been killed?' Horton was about to say as if you didn't know but something stopped him. Despite what he wanted to think Jarrett looked genuinely shocked and unnerved.
'Where were you between nine and midnight Tuesday night?'
'You know where. In the bloody hospital. You saw me leaving Wednesday morning, remember?'
