‘Maybe it wasn’t so beloved,’ said Uckfield. ‘And it contained evidence of Yately’s murder, which Lisle was hoping the sea would cover up.’
‘How did he get away from here after ditching it?’
‘How the blazes do I know?’ Uckfield snapped. ‘Maybe he swam.’
Or maybe he had an accomplice who picked him up by car or boat, thought Horton, but didn’t bother saying so with Uckfield in the mood he was. Horton suspected that Dean was breathing down his neck, pressing for results and still refusing to budge on providing more manpower.
‘I suppose he could have ditched it and then walked out into the sea to take his own life,’ suggested Horton.
Uckfield brightened at that. ‘Feeling guilt ridden after killing Yately. And feeling he had nothing else left to live for with his wife dead, a wife who had deceived and betrayed him.’
‘We don’t know that for certain,’ said Horton, adding to himself: and a son living the other side of the world and a daughter who barely saw him. It was possible. He held his breath as Clarke nodded that he’d finished and Taylor carefully eased open the driver’s door, making sure to stay well clear of any water cascading out. Beth Tremain did the same with the passenger door.
‘No one inside,’ Taylor announced.
Horton exhaled, thinking Lisle
‘The usual car documents by the look of it, sir,’ she said addressing Uckfield. ‘Though there’s not much left of them except pulp.’
Horton stepped forward and surveyed the interior. ‘No sign of a laptop computer.’ It wouldn’t be any use if there had been one. But Lisle would hardly walk into the sea carrying it. Horton guessed he could have smashed it up and dumped it elsewhere.
They moved around to the rear. Uckfield nodded at Taylor to join them. Extracting a key from the evidence bag, Taylor carefully inserted it into the boot. It opened just a fraction with a small click.
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Uckfield, stepping back, holding a hand over his nose as an evil stench wafted out to them.
Horton shivered as the suspicion of what might be causing the smell came to him. Perhaps Lisle hadn’t walked into the sea and drowned. Perhaps he hadn’t been collected by an accomplice. Perhaps his body was in the boot of the car and if it was then he certainly wasn’t their killer.
He steeled himself for what he might be about to see and, with his heart racing, he watched Taylor prise open the boot. The breath caught in his throat and his stomach heaved as he stared down at the filthy sodden body furled into the small boot. DC Marsden retched and staggered away and Horton heard him being sick. Taylor gulped and blinked hard several times while Clarke stepped forward and began clicking away with his camera as though taking holiday snaps. But then Clarke, like them all, had seen some repulsive and heart-wrenching sights and each dealt with it in his or her own way. The tractor driver hesitated, undecided whether to jump down from his cab and take a look, clearly torn between curiosity and fear, before Horton said, ‘I wouldn’t if I was you, sir.’
‘Who the devil is that?’ Uckfield exclaimed, taking a big white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and making a show of wiping his nose.
Horton forced himself to study the corpse, which was curled up in the foetal position. It certainly wasn’t Lisle. The skin was purple and the sea life had managed to penetrate the ill-fitting boot of the car. They were crawling over the corpse, but from what Horton could see they hadn’t feasted too much on the soft flesh of the face, which bore out what Horton had already surmised, and from what they knew about the last sighting of Lisle’s car on Tuesday morning, this body hadn’t been in the sea for long. He took in the beige trousers, the sodden cardigan and the slight figure. There was something very familiar about it, but the yellow-and-blue spotted cravat tied at the neck confirmed his worse suspicions.
His heart sank while his mind tried to make some sense of what he was seeing. Silently he cursed, before solemnly announcing, ‘It’s Victor Hazleton.’
‘Who?’ cried Uckfield, swivelling to glare at Horton.
‘He’s an elderly man who reported seeing a mysterious light at sea just off the coast of St Lawrence on Wednesday night and again last night.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me that?’ cried Uckfield, glaring at Horton.
Horton took a breath. ‘I didn’t consider it connected with the case.’ But he had, at least twice, and he’d almost mentioned it except for the fact that he, like everyone else, had thought Hazleton had been attention seeking. Well, now the poor little man was centre stage and he wouldn’t be making any more reports of smugglers and illegal immigrants.
Uckfield glowered at him. ‘This is the second cock-up you’ve made, Inspector. A killer is walking around free because you failed to seal off the first victim’s flat and now another man has lost his life.’
Horton’s fists balled. His jaw tightened with anger but it was directed at himself and not Uckfield. He knew that even if he had told Uckfield about Victor Hazleton, Uckfield would have thought it irrelevant but that wasn’t the point. He’d taken his eye off the ball. His mind was too far back in the past; a past that was rapidly becoming an obsession and that could never be changed, whereas his present and the future could be, and that was what he should have been damn well thinking about: the job, not some bloody ancient conspiracy theory.
‘So what else haven’t you told me?’ Uckfield sneered.
Tersely Horton reported, ‘Hazleton telephoned me at twenty-one thirty-five to report seeing a light off the coast and left a message on my voicemail. I came here to interview him and to see if I could establish where this light might have been heading.’
‘So Hazleton must have seen Yately’s killer last Wednesday,’ Uckfield snapped. ‘And last night, when he saw the light again he went to investigate and got himself killed as a result. And that killer is Lisle. He used his boat last Wednesday to either rendezvous with Yately or to get away after leaving his body on the coast.’
‘But he couldn’t have used it last night because. .’ Horton stalled, before quickly adding, ‘Was anyone watching Lisle’s boat?’ He saw immediately by Uckfield’s expression that they hadn’t been. ‘Lisle could have removed the tarpaulin, taken the boat out and brought it back on the high tide.’
‘Marsden,’ Uckfield bellowed. Marsden returned looking shamefaced, but no one was going to admonish him for throwing up. ‘Get someone to check if the tarpaulin on Lisle’s boat’s been tampered with.’
Horton felt like saying touche, but didn’t. It was an oversight on Uckfield’s part but the big man was never going to thank him for pointing it out. And it was a minor victory which didn’t assuage his guilt over Hazleton’s death. Even if Lisle had used his boat there were still several points that didn’t add up. He said, ‘If Lisle used his boat to rendezvous with Yately somewhere along the coast near Hazleton’s house and then drove his car out here, how did he get back to his boat? It’s a considerable distance to walk and there’s no public transport at that time of night.’
‘He got a lift and that means someone will remember seeing him,’ Uckfield said brusquely.
‘And the dress found on Yately?’
‘Yately had an affair with Lisle’s wife and Lisle wanted revenge, and he was sick enough to put one of his wife’s dresses on the body. Hazleton saw Lisle kill Yately so he too had to die.’
‘But why put Hazleton in the boot of the car? Why not take his body out to sea and dump it?’ insisted Horton.
‘To cover up the evidence,’ Uckfield declared with immovable certainty.
Horton wasn’t sure, but Uckfield’s theory seemed far more probable than his of both men indulging in cross- dressing and being discovered by smugglers.
Uckfield was reaching for his mobile phone. Horton heard him tell Dennings to look for photographs of Abigail Lisle in the house. They might be able to match the dress worn by Yately. They’d have to show the photograph of the dress to Rachel Salter, and Horton didn’t envy the person who had that task.
He took another look at Victor Hazleton. He hoped the poor man hadn’t been alive when he’d been locked in the boot and left there to die with the sea seeping in to drown him, terrified and panic stricken. But if Hazleton’s killer was the same person who had tormented and killed Colin Yately then he was very much afraid he might have been. And was that vindictive evil killer Arthur Lisle? Horton would want to know a great deal more about the man before he could answer that question.
