him and Cantelli here. He quickly scanned the area and picked out the slumped body of Cantelli about nine feet from him. His heart plummeted to the depths of his being.
'Is he dead?' he asked in a flat resigned voice.
'He might be now.'
Horton clenched his fists and tried to leap up, but once again he was defeated by his bonds. He fell back deflated, but anger stirred within him, fuelling his determination to get out of here alive and feed Kingsway to the seagulls. He told himself there was still a chance that Cantelli was alive. Kingsway had said 'now' which meant he hadn't killed Cantelli outright. Horton clung to that hope. It was all he had. And it meant he had to find a way to overpower Kingsway or persuade him to give himself up.
'Why make things worse for yourself, Kingsway? Let us both go and I'll see that you get a fair trial. With a good solicitor you might not get long.'
But Kingsway didn't hear him. Almost regretfully he said, 'If she hadn't let that grinning idiot of a diver fool her, then none of this would have happened.'
Horton quickly saw the way Kingsway's mind was working. Here was a man seeking to apportion blame for his own crimes and shortcomings. Something Horton guessed Kingsway had done for most of his life. Nothing would ever be his fault. Perhaps if he appeared to understand and empathize with him, he could eventually talk his way out of this. But what had Farnsworth done to an old lady like Marjorie Kingsway? Sex wasn't the motive for his actions and neither was it love or success, but it could have been power and the type of power that came from exerting influence over a vulnerable person to give Farnsworth the money and possessions he craved.
Now, putting everything he had seen and learnt over the last few days together, Horton saw clearly what must have happened and he was beginning to understand where Nathan Lester fitted into this. He recalled Cheryl's words: she used to have a lovely big house in the country, in Surrey, with a swimming pool… And Haslemere, where Farnsworth had worked as an estate agent, was in Surrey.
'Did Farnsworth undervalue your mother's house?' he asked, making an effort to keep his tone mater-of- fact.
'Yes. He got Lester to pose as the buyer and then they sold it on for a big profit, which they split between them.'
That explained the thirty thousand pounds in Lester's bank account. Marjorie Kingsway probably wasn't their first victim or their last. How many others had they swindled? wondered Horton.
Kingsway said, 'And before that Farnsworth got Lester into my mother's house to value the antiques. He said they were worthless and then sold them for their proper value.'
That fitted too. Although Horton hadn't seen the items in Lester's shop close up, he'd seen enough in the man's house to know that some of it was valuable. He said, 'How do you know this?'
'Lester told me before he died.'
Horton took a breath. He was facing a man who had killed twice — Farnsworth and Lester — three times if Cantelli was dead. Horton took a deep breath and tried to still his pounding heart. It would be four if he couldn't find a way out of this.
Kingsway was clearly unbalanced and probably psychotic. Horton reckoned the only way to deal with him was to feign sympathy and understanding. Hostility would only make Kingsway clam up, or worse strike him unconscious and then leave him here to die. The thought didn't bear thinking about, so he shoved it aside and said, 'Where's Lester?'
'In here somewhere, along with his bicycle.'
Horton suppressed a shudder. He recalled the small, squirrel-faced man. He had been a criminal, yes, but Horton knew that it was because of Farnsworth's manipulative charm that Lester had committed the crimes against Marjorie Kingsway.
Kingsway continued. 'I phoned him on Thursday night and told him that I'd discovered an important wreck off the Isle of Wight. I knew he wouldn't be able to resist it just like Farnsworth couldn't. I met Lester here and gave him a swift karate blow to the throat, like I did with Farnsworth, and Lester was dead. I'd learnt how to dive and practised the martial arts when I was in the army.'
Horton guessed that Farnsworth's diving gloves and fins had also ended up in here. It would have been easy for Kingsway to have carried them over from Farnsworth's car which Kingsway had left parked in Southsea Marina opposite.
'But Daniel was different. I was sorry I had to kill him.'
Horton stared at Kingsway and suddenly saw that for once Marion Keynes had been telling the truth when she said that neither she nor her husband had killed Daniel Collins. The distraught features of Mr and Mrs Collins flashed through Horton's mind. Oh, he'd like to bring Kingsway to justice for their sake, though he knew it wouldn't alleviate the pain of their loss.
'He saw you hit your mother,' Horton said, realizing what must have happened.
'I just pushed her and she fell over. It was an accident.'
Horton didn't believe that for one moment. Or that it had been the only attack.
'I was upset because she kept whining on and on about how I wasn't her son,' Kingsway said. 'Daniel was there when it happened and he threatened to report me. I had to find a way to silence him. I knew he was crazy about diving, because he'd told me on one of my visits to the home. An idea suddenly came to me. I decided to play on the fact that my stupid mother thought Nick was her son. I spun Daniel a story that she was right. I told him that Nick was my half-brother and that we'd been estranged for years, but I was in the process of making it up with Nick. I promised I could get Daniel a place on the programme if he kept quiet. The stupid man nearly wet his pants.'
Horton's fists clenched behind him, angry at Kingsway's cruelty, but also at Daniel Collins's stupidity.
'On Christmas Eve I told Daniel I'd arranged a meeting with Farnsworth at the sailing centre,' Kingsway continued. 'I clocked in here, but no one knows whether I'm working or not, so I slipped out and drove there and met Daniel in the car park. I poured drink down his throat, he wasn't very strong, and I knew how to handle him. Then I put him in his car and drove it off Salterns Wharf…'
'Where you then slipped on the aqua lung and manoeuvred Daniel into the driving seat.'
Kingsway nodded. 'I couldn't take the chance that he might spoil everything.'
Kingsway rose. The torchlight swept away from Horton plunging him into darkness. He willed himself not to think of being underground. Then Kingsway put the light back on himself. Horton saw him run a tongue over his lips. Perhaps this tunnel was getting to him. Kingsway was a diver, he could tolerate the dark but being in the depths of the sea was very different from being under tons of earth.
'When did you decide to kill Farnsworth?' Horton asked, straining for any sound from Cantelli and hearing none.
'When I found my mother left in that dump to rot.'
But Horton knew Kingsway's anger and desire for revenge wasn't fuelled by his feelings for his mother. He hadn't been near her for years. No, he reckoned that Kingsway's sense of outrage had been driven by the fact that he'd come home broke, expecting to feed off his mother's money, and had discovered that not only had that gone, but so too had his inheritance.
'She never thought I was good enough,' Kingsway said, almost eager for Horton to understand. 'My father died when I was ten. He'd worked in London. He was a financial genius. I don't think she minded him dying. In fact it probably suited her. She was a frigid, hard cow. And she couldn't stand the sight of me. She packed me off to boarding school when I was four and didn't even want me home for the holidays. I spent them pushed between relatives, who didn't much like me either. She didn't care that I loathed that school.'
Oh, yes. Horton could see how Kingsway laid the blame for all his misfortunes on his childhood and predominantly his mother. Time was short. He had to do something. But what? Anything was preferable to being entombed. God, that word! It made him almost sick with fear. He shifted position and forced himself to concentrate on Kingsway.
'When I went into the army as an ordinary rank and diver she refused to have anything to do with me. Now do you blame me for not keeping in touch?'
Horton nodded as if he understood. His mouth was dry, his palms damp, his brain a whirl of thoughts. If only he could move, but he was tied up like a parcel.
'I owed her nothing. But she owed me. It was my money and I deserved it for all I'd suffered. It was a shock
