He stared at Horton, confused. ‘Nowhere. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t seen him.’ Suddenly the tears began to roll down his creased face. ‘My mother was the gentlest, most trusting woman you could find. She didn’t deserve what he did to her. He killed her as good as if he’d stuck a knife in her heart.’
‘And is that why you killed him, Peter?’ Cantelli asked softly.
Bailey stared at him with anguished eyes. He sniffed noisily and ran a hand under his nose. ‘No, but it’s why I lied. You’re right, I didn’t see Luke that day. I made it up. I wasn’t anywhere near the coastal path. I was at home with my mother.’
And if Bailey was now telling the truth, where did that leave them? thought Horton. And where did it leave the original investigation? With a ruddy great hole in it.
Bailey began to gabble. ‘I didn’t think my evidence would help to convict him. I thought the police would find out before it got that far, but then Felton admitted the crime. I thought he must have been there. Everyone said he did it. I didn’t feel guilty. I remembered what he had done to my mother and thought that at last I’d got some kind of justice. I put him out of my mind until you showed up asking questions and I thought he might have remembered something about her murder and discovered I’d lied. I thought he might come after me.’
‘Maybe Felton did come after you, and you killed him,’ pressed Horton, quietly this time.
Bailey forced his head up with an effort. ‘No.’
‘He knew you’d lied and he wanted revenge for the years he’d spent inside. You had to kill him. Maybe it was self-defence. A jury would have sympathy with that.’
Bailey was shaking his head. ‘I haven’t seen him.’
Horton gave Cantelli a sign to continue. ‘Where were you last Tuesday from six o’clock onwards?’
‘At home.’
‘Can anyone vouch for you?’
Bailey looked thoroughly dejected. ‘No.’
After a moment Cantelli said brightly, ‘Been gardening, Peter?’ He jerked his head at the dirty fingernails.
Bailey blinked at the change of subject and stammered a reply. ‘I stumbled into a bramble.’
‘In your own garden!’
‘I didn’t have my spectacles on.’
Bailey looked at them both with pleading in his fearful eyes. Horton said, ‘We’ll search your house and garden.’
‘You’ll find nothing.’
The truth or a lie? Horton told Bailey he’d be held on suspicion of the murder of Luke Felton while they conducted a search of his premises. Bailey made no protest, he didn’t even ask for a solicitor or a warrant, but granted them permission to go ahead with a dumb inevitability that Horton found depressing.
Outside Cantelli said, ‘Could he have killed Natalie Raymonds?’
It was a question that Horton had been asking himself during the interview. Was Bailey capable of such a crime, and one that had required careful planning? The answer was yes. Bailey had been a design draughtsman, which meant he had an eye for detail, and he had a powerful motive.
‘If he did, then unless he admits it we’ll not be able to prove it. We might get lucky with the search, though, and find evidence to connect him with Felton’s disappearance. And we might even find Felton’s body. I’d like you on the search, Barney.’
Their conversation had taken them back to the CID office where Walters had returned footsore, wet and in bad humour. ‘The old lady they were burying on Friday was a Margery Blanchester, she was ninety-one,’ he said, throwing himself down in his chair with a heavy sigh. ‘None of the funeral directors match the description the gravedigger gave me, and I can rule out five of the eight mourners because three are women and the other two are men in their seventies. I’ll do the rest tomorrow.’
Horton consulted his watch and was surprised to see it was just after six, but there was someone he wanted to see before calling it a day and he wanted Cantelli with him.
‘Why do you want to interview Julian Raymonds?’ Cantelli asked, as they headed out of the city towards Hayling Island.
‘If Chawley didn’t check that Bailey was related to the pensioner Felton attacked, then what else didn’t he check?’
‘Raymonds’ alibi?’
‘Possibly, and even if Chawley knew Bailey was lying and kept silent to get a conviction it’s shoddy work, and it means we can’t trust a single thing in that case file, except the pathologist’s report. Chawley told me he’d checked Natalie’s background and looked for links between her and Luke, but how can we be sure? There’s nothing in the file I’ve read to indicate any of Natalie’s friends were interviewed, and there’s no record of where she went to school, where she worked, nothing. And if we put that with Lena Lockhart’s testimony and the missing tapes then we’ve got a very different case on our hands. One that needs reopening.’
‘I don’t think Olivia Danbury will be too pleased about that.’
Or her arrogant and overprotective husband, thought Horton, and neither, he suspected, would Julian Raymonds be.
The door of Raymonds’ house was opened by a well-groomed blonde woman in her early forties. Cantelli swiftly made the introductions in the pouring rain.
‘This is about letting that killer out of gaol, isn’t it?’ Mrs Raymonds snapped. ‘I don’t want Julian upset. He’s been under a lot of pressure and his health’s not good.’
Horton tried a sympathetic look. He said nothing and neither did Cantelli. With an irritable sigh she was forced to admit them and they followed her neat little figure down the hall into a gleaming white living and dining room that made Horton wish he’d brought sunglasses. It reminded him of what Catherine had done to what had once been his home.
Sitting hunched over a laptop computer was a thin, balding man in his fifties with several papers spread out around him. Beyond him, Horton could see the lights of Portsmouth across the dark expanse of Langstone Harbour.
‘It’s the police,’ Mrs Raymonds announced briskly.
Raymonds looked up, more alarmed than upset. Mrs Raymonds had been right though; her husband didn’t seem in the best of health. Horton wondered what was wrong with him. His troubled eyes flitted warily to Horton and quickly away again. For a moment there was a brief flash of colour on his hollow cheeks before it faded once more into greyness.
Politely, Horton said, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr Raymonds, but I need to ask you a few questions about Natalie.’
Raymonds lowered the lid of his laptop. ‘It’s all in your files. I’ve nothing to add.’
‘We have new evidence showing that Luke Felton might not have been alone when your wife was killed.’ And the person with him, thought Horton, could still have been Peter Bailey.
Raymonds’ eyes flicked up to his wife, who was standing ramrod straight, arms folded, lips pursed, glaring at Horton. She caught her husband’s glance and gave a slight shake of her head.
Catching it too, Cantelli said, ‘Any chance of a cup of tea, Mrs Raymonds?’
She looked as though she was about to tell Cantelli what he could do with his tea, but whether Cantelli’s charming smile or the slight nod from her husband changed her mind, Horton didn’t know. She huffed out of the room with Cantelli following. If anyone could charm her then Cantelli could. And at the same time pump her for information.
Horton took the seat opposite Raymonds. ‘Did you ever hear Natalie talk about a man on the coastal path? A birdwatcher, about late forties, looked older, medium height, slender build, wearing spectacles?’
Raymonds shook his head but Horton saw anxiety in his tired eyes. Horton prompted, ‘She might have made fun of him, joked about him trying to chat her up.’
‘She never said.’
Horton hadn’t really expected any other answer, but he sensed a hint of unease — and something more — underlying Julian Raymonds’ manner. What was it: concern, anger, resentment, fear? He said, ‘How often did she run along the path?’
‘When she felt like it.’
