reasoned, even if the Georgian had managed to follow him here and was listening, he’d hear this had nothing to do with Venetia’s death, so there was no reason for him to intervene.
‘What did you do with Luke’s body, Gavin?’
‘It’s in the Solent, along with Rookley’s,’ Chawley said matter-of-factly.
‘You took both of them out on a boat on separate occasions?’
‘Yes. No one will miss them. One was a useless junkie, the other a violent thief. I couldn’t allow them to ruin my father’s reputation, and mine. My work is important here. Lots of people depend on me.’
And they’re going to have to manage without you soon, thought Horton, and for a very long time. Angrily, he thought of Luke and his parents, destroyed by the Chawleys. He wanted one of them in court and convicted for it at least. He guessed that Gavin Chawley would deny what he’d said later when Horton got him to the station, and he hadn’t charged and cautioned him, but Horton was confident they’d be able to assemble enough evidence to make him think again. The gravedigger might even be able to identify Chawley talking to Rookley. There would be DNA in Lena Lockhart’s office and they might be able to prove Gavin had travelled across to the island by one of the ferries — unless he’d travelled by boat, but he didn’t own a boat, according to his wife. Was that a lie?
Horton rapidly considered this, recalling that she said he’d been sailing with friends. Had he taken time away from them to slip up to Lena’s office and steal the tapes? They would check. But if he didn’t own a boat then how could he have disposed of Luke’s body, and Rookley’s, in the Solent, at night? The dinghies and the small safety rib kept here weren’t up to such a task, but one boat was, and it certainly wasn’t this wreck of an old paddle steamer.
Gavin’s fingers caressed the wood. ‘Luke would have been no use to society, and Rookley certainly wasn’t. I couldn’t allow a man like that to blackmail me or my father. He served the community all his life. He made one small mistake.’
‘I don’t call what your father did small, and I don’t mean covering up for Sean Lovell.’
Gavin Chawley’s eyes narrowed.
Steadily, Horton continued. ‘Sean Lovell didn’t have an affair with Natalie and neither did your father. It was you, Gavin. You killed Natalie. Your father knew it. He covered up for you then and he’s kept silent about it ever since. What did Natalie do to make you kill her, Gavin? Did she reject you? Laugh at you? Belittle you?’
Chawley’s fingers tightened on the wood. Horton waited with bated breath, listening to the creaking and groaning of the old paddle steamer and praying Cantelli wouldn’t burst in on him now and spoil this confession.
After a moment Chawley said, ‘She told me the affair was over. She said she was bored, that I wasn’t important enough. I was only a sales clerk then, working for Julia’s father. He had a boat building company here. Well, I showed her. I knew Luke from the Castle Sailing Club. He should have been thrown out after that attack on a pensioner but the club secretary was too weak to do it.’
‘So you tricked Luke on to your father’s boat in 1997, where you drugged him. How did you get the heroin?’
Chawley smiled reminiscently. ‘I’ve always done charity work. I think it’s important to give something back.’
No, Horton thought, you need it to feed your overinflated ego and satisfy your craving for attention. Did Duncan Chawley know that his son had a serious personality disorder? He guessed so.
‘I worked for a time helping drug addicts,’ Gavin said. ‘It was easy to get the stuff and know how much to use. Once I had Luke on my father’s boat, I stripped him and put on his clothes and shoes. I was the same build then, and while I wasn’t exactly the same shoe size I could manage wearing his trainers for a while. It was perfect. I pressed his fingers on a water bottle, carefully preserving his prints, cut some of his hair and then drove to Hayling where I’d already arranged to meet Natalie. I strangled her and then hit her to make sure I got her blood on Luke’s clothes, and I planted the evidence. Then I drove back to the boat. It was dark then. No one saw me.’ He spoke as though it was a routine affair, something anyone might have done.
Horton said, ‘When did your father know it was you?’ He watched Chawley play with the wood in his hands, and tensed in preparation for an attack that he knew must come. Chawley wouldn’t let him live to tell this tale. He’d killed three times; another death wouldn’t matter to him. Now, Horton thought, would be a good time for Cantelli to arrive.
‘Dad found Luke on the boat just as I returned from Hayling. I had to tell him. He said he’d take care of things on condition that I marry Julia, though I didn’t want to. He said she’d be a steadying influence on me. She was in love with me of course but, well, she’s not exactly my equal. You’ve seen her, she’s a timid little thing and dull as ditchwater. But it turned out OK in the end because her father died soon afterwards and left her the house and the boat building business, which I sold to start this charity. So you see, some good came of it.’
As if that justified killing someone, Horton thought with anger. And not just three people, five if he counted Sonia and Neville Felton. Horton imagined what kind of life poor Julia had suffered, and those very quiet children. He recognized a bully when he saw one, the kind that gradually and relentlessly chips away at a person’s self-esteem and confidence. He’d also like to know exactly how Julia’s father had died. But that was for another time.
‘Dad was pleased I’d made something of my life. He could see it would have been a waste to sacrifice that for the sake of Natalie Raymonds.’
Barely containing his contempt for the man in front of him, Horton said, ‘Venetia Trotman wasn’t a tart. How do you justify killing her?’
Chawley started with surprise. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said briskly.
‘Oh, I think you do, Gavin. You needed her yacht to dispose of the bodies.’
Chawley’s lips tightened but he made no comment.
Relentlessly, Horton continued. ‘I suppose you must have seen it on her slipway when you were walking along the shore, or perhaps when you were out sailing with friends. When did you decide it would be useful for getting rid of Luke Felton and Ronnie Rookley?’
Still Chawley remained silent.
‘Why didn’t you just steal it in the early hours of Friday morning like you did on Tuesday night, when you took it out with Luke’s body on board? Or did Venetia Trotman see you with Rookley’s body on Friday night? Is that why you had to kill her?’ Horton could see by Chawley’s annoyed expression it was.
Chawley’s hands gripped the wood and his face screwed up with anger. ‘If she had been in bed like she had been on Tuesday night she would still be alive, but she was in the garden. She must have heard the engine of the safety rib where I’d put Rookley because she called out. Then she saw me and ran away. I had to kill her.’
And Horton’s mind was now doing cartwheels putting together what he knew about Venetia, the Georgian and Jay Turner.
He said, ‘Then you tied the safety rib to the yacht and took it out into the Solent, where you scuttled the yacht.’
But Chawley was shaking his head and looking shocked. ‘No. I couldn’t do that to such a lovely boat. It’s a classic, made of wood, like this.’ He indicated the wood his fingers were caressing. ‘I dropped anchor in Southsea Bay, climbed into the rib and threw Rookley overboard. Then I took the yacht round to Chichester Harbour and picked up a buoy.’
But they hadn’t found it. ‘You changed the yacht’s name,’ Horton said.
‘Yes, just as I did the first time, when I took Luke Felton’s body out on it. Then I returned the yacht and removed the sticker.’
Horton had been right about that.
‘With Rookley though I couldn’t return the yacht, because the woman was dead,’ Chawley was saying. ‘I thought the police would assume boat thieves had killed her. So after ditching Rookley I motored to the Hayling shore in the safety rib, and walked home from there. It was a long walk but I didn’t mind. I returned to the boatyard by car the next morning, Saturday, just before high tide and moved the yacht into the Hayling boatyard. It’s there now.’
Horton should have known; in among other classic boats in various states of renovation.
‘I hitched the safety rib on to a trailer on my car and brought it back here.’
Horton said, ‘How did you know the yacht wouldn’t be used on Tuesday night when you lured Luke Felton to it?’
‘I’d seen the woman return on it, alone, some weeks ago, at the end of February. It was a couple of hours before the high tide. It was dark and windy and she was struggling to moor it up, so I gave her a hand. She didn’t
