'I don't think so. There were eleven years between them. Tom wasn't a drinker, though Rowley liked a few.'
Horton could see that he'd get nothing further from Sebastian Gilmore. He needed the results of the post- mortem on Rowland Gilmore and he needed more background information on the two men. He rose and made to leave.
Gilmore sprang up. 'You'll let me know about Rowley? I'm sure you're wrong. I can't think why anyone would want to kill him, or Tom come to that.'
Cantelli assured him they would be in touch. As Horton reached the door he turned. 'We've had to seal off the vicarage, but you'll be able to have access to your brother's belongings as soon as we've finished, which should be within the next couple of days.'
Sebastian waved away his concerns with the sweep of an arm. 'There's nothing I want or need from there.'
Outside, Cantelli said, 'Do you think Sebastian Gilmore's in danger?'
Horton stretched the seat belt round him and considered Cantelli's question. He mulled over the interview, pushing away the thoughts of his mother, his mind connecting the strands of questioning and the undertones in Gilmore's replies.
'Brundall wanted to confess something that he and Rowland had done, and that something must have taken place when both men were here in Portsmouth and probably working together, otherwise they wouldn't have come into contact with one another. So that puts the incident between 1969 when Rowland joined the fishing boat and 1978 when Tom Brundall left.'
Cantelli pulled out of Gilmore's yard. He said, 'Even if we were to trawl through all the incidents between 1969 and 1978, it doesn't mean that whatever they did was reported, or even a criminal offence.'
Who would have connected a woman's disappearance with two fishermen? Was it connected? Who had reported Jennifer Horton missing? Horton didn't even know that. For the first time in his life his fingers itched to check.
'Would Rowland have confessed his sins before entering the church?' he asked, hopefully.
'Not sure how it works in the Anglican faith, but I guess so. You'll not get much joy there, though. The confessional is sacrosanct.'
'Pity. But we can find out about Rowland Gilmore's finances, both when he entered the church and when he died.'
'How will that help?'
'It might give us some indication of how much wealth he gave away and whether or not that compares with what his brother paid him for his share of the business. It's just a detail and probably useless, but I'd like to know. Oh, and get a photograph of Rowland Gilmore from the Dean. You can drop me off at the vicarage, and meet me back there when you've finished with him.'
And by that time, Horton thought, feeling guilty and anxious, he'd have hidden, or eliminated, anything that might mention Jennifer Horton.
Eleven
The vicarage was exactly how Horton had remembered it except that the gentle, welcoming and slightly puzzled Anne Schofield was missing. Damn her murderer. He stepped through the dismal hall and pushed back the door of Rowland Gilmore's study. Hurrying across to the desk he saw that the newspapers had gone. Had Anne destroyed them after his visit or had the killer taken them after setting fire to the vestry? He hoped the former.
His eyes scanned the desk for the blotter and with relief he saw that it was still there with the words 'Horsea Marina' scrawled on it. The leather chair creaked as he sat down and he pushed the other books and papers off the blotter and studied the handwriting; it was definitely the same as the other notes and jottings on the blotter, which meant that it had to be the Reverend Rowland Gilmore's. So why write those words?
Horton surveyed the desk. There was an old-fashioned telephone to his right; most people when on the telephone made notes or doodled, so had Rowland Gilmore been left handed and written 'Horsea Marina' whilst he'd been speaking on the telephone to someone? Had it been Brundall who had called Rowland and arranged to meet him in the church? Perhaps Rowland had asked where he was staying and Brundall had replied, 'On my boat in Horsea Marina.' If so, then that didn't tally with Mr Gutner's evidence; he'd said that Gilmore had looked surprised and anxious when Brundall had shown up in the church. Could Gutner have been mistaken or exaggerating? It was possible. Or perhaps he had just misinterpreted Gilmore's reaction. Then again the Reverend Gilmore's surprise could have been from seeing Brundall so changed. Time plays tricks with us all and Gilmore could have been expecting the Brundall of 1978 to emerge.
There was another explanation, Horton thought, sitting back and frowning: perhaps Gilmore had returned from his encounter with Brundall and written Horsea Marina on the blotter whilst he was contemplating Brundall's desire to confess. Brundall had told him where he was staying and Gilmore had idly penned it.
He'd get the forensic team to remove the blotting paper when they came into the house later. Horton knew they wouldn't be able to reveal the meaning behind the words, but they might just pick up some fingerprints in the house other than his, Anne Schofield's and the Reverend Gilmore's. If so, that might give them some lead on Anne Schofield's killer and possibly even Rowland Gilmore's. Horton just hoped that troops of parish ioners hadn't been in here.
He stared around the chaotic room and shivered. It felt damp and claustrophobic and though he wasn't usually given to flights of fancy, this case was proving different. He felt a spirit of evil in this room, just as he had smelt danger at Horsea Marina on the night of Brundall's death. He considered again the thought that had struck him in Sebastian Gilmore's office: if Brundall and Rowland Gilmore had killed his mother then it meant she hadn't deserted him.
The thought paralysed him. For years he had hated her and now he was considering the possibility that she might not have deserved that hatred. It hadn't once crossed his mind that she could have been killed — after all, why should it? No one had ever said there was anything suspicious about her disappearance. All the adults who had pushed him from pillar to post had told him his mother had run off with a man, so what else was he supposed to believe? Yet, the small voice inside him whispered, you could have made some attempt at an investigation when you became a policeman.
He sprang up, angry with himself and her. He was being ridiculous; the 'wrong' Brundall and Rowland Gilmore had done probably had nothing whatsoever to do with Jennifer Horton. Then why speak of her? Shit. Action was what he needed and he began to search through the papers on Rowland's desk, one part of his mind working like a copper but the other part, despite his best intentions, wandering back to his mother and lingering in the past.
There were stacks of sermons in the drawers, some odd scraps of notes, old shopping lists, and electric and telephone bills going back years. He picked up the books on the desk, mainly theology titles, and flicked through them. Nothing fell out. There was no mention of him or Jennifer Horton.
He crossed to the bookshelves either side of a tiled fireplace. There were a number of spaces. Had these gaps been there when he'd come in here with Anne Schofield? He couldn't remember, but the fact that he was registering it made him think they hadn't been. He'd been more concerned then about finding out what Gilmore had written about his mother than worrying about what books the man had on his shelves. Was there something in one of them that might give him a clue to his mother's past? He didn't have time to go through each and every one of them and he shuddered to think that DC Walters or another junior officer would unearth something. Perhaps he could return tomorrow, Sunday, and spend more time in this dank and miserable house trying to search for some clues to the past. But he knew he couldn't stand that. He shut the door, thinking that maybe he simply didn't want to know.
He explored the rest of the house. The living room with its brown-and-orange patterned carpet and dull green curtains held an ancient television set, no DVD or video, and a press-button cream telephone on a chipped wooden table beside a faded light-green Dralon settee. There were two armchairs and a heavy oak sideboard, circa 1920, opposite the lurching Christmas tree that made Horton feel even more depressed.
Upstairs there were two double bedrooms, a box room and a bathroom. All looked as though they hadn't
