'When?' Horton's heart leapt several notches. If it was recent it meant she was still alive.
'The day before Owen disappeared.'
Disappointment hit Horton in the chest. 'What did she want?'
'To know if her mother had mentioned a girl-'
'A girl? What girl?' Horton asked sharply, puzzled.
'I don't know.'
'And had she?'
'No.'
SIXTEEN
Saturday
Throughout the night Horton had racked his brains trying to think who this girl might be that Thea had asked about. Arina Sutton? Arina would have been in her early twenties in 1990. Was it possible she was connected with the Carlsson deaths? Had Owen cultivated her friendship because she had known something about it?
With sleep scratching his eyeballs, and no answers to his questions, he arrived at the incident suite to find Cantelli, Trueman and Somerfield already there. Trueman explained that Marsden was leading a small team of officers questioning the residents overlooking the Duver for sightings of the person who had broken into Horton's yacht.
He added, 'Birch's officers have finished checking with the owners of the handful of houses that are on the Duver and they all claim they haven't let their apartments over the last two to three weeks so not even a cleaner has been in them, and they haven't been there themselves since August. The cafe's been boarded up since the end of October and there's no link between the assistant in the marina shop and the harbour master with Carlsson. Neither claim to have heard or seen anything suspicious.'
Horton wasn't surprised. He hadn't thought they'd find anything from that line of questioning anyway. 'Where's Superintendent Uckfield?' he asked, eyeing the big man's empty office beyond the incident suite. There was also no sign of Birch, thankfully.
'Said he'd be in later,' yawned Cantelli. 'Didn't say why.'
No, but Horton could guess. The only thing that would keep Uckfield from his desk, apart from lunch with the hierarchy, was sex — and that meant Uckfield had made a conquest of the luscious Laura Rosewood.
'Any news from Luxembourg?' he asked, feeling bad tempered and frustrated. He had woken knowing that this was going to be one of those slow, wasted days in the middle of an investigation.
Trueman shook his head. 'But the file on the Carlssons' break-in should be with me later today.'
The phone rang. Cantelli took the call.
Horton stared at the crime board silently urging it to reveal some tiny scrap of information that could help with the case. Thea's employers had e-mailed a photograph of her taken from her personnel file. The serious pale blue eyes and thin face looked blankly at him. Where are you? Are you alive or dead? God, he wished he knew. He couldn't help thinking about what Bohman had told him about her illness triggered by the tragic events of her childhood. It didn't bode well for her current state of mind.
The thoughts jeered at him. There must be something that could connect and tie up all the loose ends of this case, but whatever it was remained tantalizingly out of his reach.
'That was the front desk,' Cantelli said, replacing the receiver. Horton spun round. 'They took a call early this morning from a woman who says she saw Thea Carlsson, but before you get your hopes up, Andy, this was before her brother was killed. She's a librarian at Cowes and she says Thea was in there on the Thursday before her brother's disappearance.'
Horton wasn't sure how this helped them. 'She could have gone to borrow a book or to look something up on the Internet,' he said grumpily. He didn't think Thea would have used her brother's computer and he'd not seen a laptop or any other mobile device in the house, and neither had she had a mobile phone on her when he'd found her at the Duver.
'I'll ask her,' Cantelli said, reaching for the phone.
Horton headed for the canteen after giving Trueman instructions to fetch him the moment he heard from Luxembourg. He hoped that breakfast might galvanize his sluggish brain and lift his mood. He ate mechanically, not tasting the food, going over all the facts of the case from that first moment on the Duver to the conversation with Bohman. Nothing clicked. All it did was make his headache worse. He had just finished eating when Cantelli breezed in.
'Thea asked to view the microfiche of the local newspaper coverage for 1990. And we know what happened then,' Cantelli said, taking a seat opposite Horton.
They did indeed. Maybe it was curiosity on her part, seeing as she was on the Isle of Wight for the first time. 'Did she copy anything down?' he asked.
'The librarian said she was too busy to notice, but Thea did ask for a local telephone directory.'
'Who was she looking up?'
'Don't know. Could it have been Terry Knowles?'
'No. You said he lives in Southampton, and he hadn't left any of his desperate sounding messages on Owen's answer machine then.' Horton thought back to his first conversation with Thea.
She'd claimed not to know anyone on the island. If that was true then who could she have been trying to locate? Jonathan Anmore perhaps? Or someone from 1990?
'Get a copy of all the press cuttings on the Carlssons' accident, Barney. See who is mentioned in them, check who lives locally and contact them to find out if Thea got in touch.'
'The newspaper office isn't open until Monday, but I'll track down the editor to see if I can get hold of them today.'
Horton envied him his activity. He thought again of the girl that Bohman had mentioned, and the story that Anmore had told him about the ghost of Scanaford House. It reminded him of the book on ghosts in Owen's house with the inscription inside it. Horton didn't believe in ghosts except those of your own making, and he had a few of them haunting him. Nevertheless, was Scanaford House the link? Was it mentioned in that book?
He called Cantelli back. 'Find a copy of a book called The Lost Ghosts of the Isle of Wight. Track down the author, and if you find the book see if it mentions the ghost of Scanaford House.'
'Didn't know there was one.'
'Well there is, and I'm getting rather tired of the bloody thing. According to Anmore a girl was murdered there by her father.. At last!' he cried as Trueman headed towards them.
'Inspector Strasser's called. Thea's apartment has been broken into and ransacked.'
'When?' Horton asked sharply. Had it been immediately after Owen's death, or after Thea's disappearance?
'He doesn't know. The door wasn't forced so whoever did it must have had a key.'
Cantelli threw Horton a concerned glance. 'Did Thea give this person a key or-'
'Was it taken from her after she'd been killed?' Horton finished, his voice tight with emotion. Was the person who ransacked her apartment the same one who had attacked him and Thea, and set light to Owen's house? What was it that was so dangerously incriminating, that they were prepared to go to extreme lengths to destroy?
Trueman said, 'Owen could have had a key to his sister's flat and his killer took it from his body.'
Horton much preferred that version. Trueman continued.
'Strasser's got Forensic in and he's instigated enquires. But there is something he thought we might like to see. He's no idea whether it's significant but there were some photographs in the flat.'
'Of what?'
'He didn't say. He's scanning them in and e-mailing them over.'
Horton thought they could hardly be relevant to the case otherwise the intruder would have taken them or destroyed them, as he'd done with Helen's camera.
Cantelli left to meet the editor of the local newspaper while Horton hung around waiting impatiently for the photographs to ping into Trueman's inbox. There was still no sign of Uckfield, neither had there been any further
