Stanley’s eyes opened. Horton thought he saw fear in them. ‘You found my mother’s diaries.’
Stanley closed his eyes.
‘Photographs? A photograph?’ Still the eyes remained closed. Frustration gnawed at Horton. He took a deep breath and willed patience. ‘What did you discover, Adrian? Something dangerous? Dangerous to me and my mother?’
Stanley opened his eyes and his lips moved. Horton’s heart quickened. This time some sound emerged from Stanley’s frozen body and Horton desperately tried to tune himself in to it. It sounded like ‘ouch’. But that didn’t make sense. Puzzled, he said, ‘I’d be hurt if you told what you knew?’
Again Stanley made a noise that sounded like ‘ouch’ and another word that sounded like ‘dead’. Horton stiffened. ‘Someone would be killed if you told what you knew or thought you knew?’
Stanley’s body seemed to slump, although he never moved and his eyes closed. He looked greyer than when Horton had entered and his breathing was more laboured. Horton felt alarmed and anxious. He should call the nurse, but he didn’t. He could see that the strain of trying to communicate through a petrified body had taken its toll on the elderly man.
Frustrated, Horton resigned himself to getting nothing more for now. He laid a hand on Stanley’s arm. ‘It’s OK. I’ll come back later when you’re rested. Don’t worry.’
Stanley opened eyes that were full of pain. Again he tried to move his head but only succeeded in moving his eyes to his left. Horton frowned as that same sound came feebly from Stanley’s mouth: ‘ooch’. Then he slumped, clearly exhausted.
Disappointed, Horton relayed to the nurse what had happened and left instructions for anything that Mr Stanley said to be written down, but he wasn’t completely confident the message would be passed on to the other nurses who came on duty later. He telephoned Robin Stanley and after telling him what had happened he asked him to do the same thing if his father tried to speak again.
‘Do you know why he is so anxious to communicate with you, Inspector?’
Horton wasn’t going to tell him the truth, but he gave a version of it. ‘I think he’s trying to tell me something about an old case he was on. Did he ever talk about his cases?’
‘Sometimes.’
Horton’s pulse picked up a beat. ‘Did he mention anything about a missing woman some time back in the late 1970s?’
‘No. I don’t recall that. He might have made some notes though. In fact, I teased him recently about writing his memoirs.’
‘And are there notes?’ Horton daren’t hope.
‘I’m not sure. I could look for you.’
‘Thanks. I’d appreciate that. It might help.’
With his head spinning, Horton left the hospital and headed for home. Stanley definitely knew something about Jennifer’s disappearance, which he had kept to himself for years. Had he been threatened? Had this master criminal Zeus got to him? But if that were so, surely Zeus wouldn’t have let Stanley live. The Zeuses of this world covered their tracks. So what could Stanley know? And why keep silent? Had he known Jennifer Horton? That was a possibility. Had he been involved with her and kept silent because he’d been afraid for his job? Had he heard some snippet of news or rumour about her disappearance that implicated someone he knew, and kept silent to protect them?
Horton needed more than ‘ooch’, whatever that meant, and frustratingly for him and poor Adrian Stanley he didn’t think he was going to get it.
THIRTEEN
Thursday
Horton reached his office early after a restless night. He’d drunk countless cups of coffee throughout a troubled night, which had only served to keep him awake, maybe deliberately so, because while awake he could control his thoughts; once asleep the nightmares would return. At one time he’d taken his drink on deck and felt the crisp night air chill his bones, hoping it would cleanse his mind of those terrible years. He’d turned to recollections of when his mother had been there and tried to recall the men he’d seen her with. Russell Glenn unwittingly came to mind. Now in his sixties, he would have been twenty-seven then. But Horton couldn’t recall him. Perhaps one of the photographs Walters had printed off the Internet might jog his memory.
The sound of a car driving past in the early hours of the morning had caught his attention, causing him to wonder where the driver was heading at that hour. The road went nowhere except to Langstone Harbour and the Hayling ferry, which didn’t run through the night. He’d waited for the car to return but it didn’t. It was high water and he had strained his ears for the sound of a boat going out, but had heard nothing. Growing cold he’d gone below and had lain on his bunk, letting the slapping of the water soothe his troubled mind. Eventually he’d slept but only for a couple of hours.
Sipping his coffee and pushing his weariness aside he logged on to his computer and searched the police files for events in 1978. What had so preoccupied the police in November 1978 that they had only sent PC Adrian Stanley to investigate the disappearance of his mother, and he hadn’t done that very thoroughly. But the reports from that period hadn’t been scanned, which meant he would need to check them manually. He cursed softly. That would have to wait. He tried the local newspaper archives but they didn’t go that far back either. All he could find was that Portsmouth football team had been relegated to the fourth division; so a visit to the newspaper office or the library to check the archives was needed.
Horton then called up the national news events of that year just for background. The Home Secretary announced a pay increase for police officers of an average of forty per cent. Those were the days. They were lucky now if they got four per cent and only then if they promised to make cuts. Yearly inflation was at just over eight per cent and interest rates at twelve and a half per cent. Naomi James broke the solo round-the-world sailing record by two days, the first test-tube baby was born, and Labour faced a vote of confidence.
He sat back feeling restless and agitated. There was something nagging at the back of his mind, something he’d seen or heard, but it refused to come to light. He rummaged around on his desk and found three photographs of Glenn that Walters had printed off. Two of them had been taken in the last seven years and were clearly publicity shots taken on the sale of two of Glenn’s businesses. He wore the same gold-rimmed spectacles and was casually dressed; his hair wasn’t as grey or as untidy as when Horton had seen him on Monday evening, but there was the same slightly shambolic, uneasy air about the man who was clearly uncomfortable in front of a camera. The other picture was of a younger Russell Glenn at a black-tie function, unaware that the camera was on him. Horton studied it. Glenn must then have been in his early to mid forties. He was still wearing glasses but Horton thought he caught sight of a different Glenn, one more relaxed, more confident, sharper.
He folded all three photographs and thrust them in his pocket before swinging round to stare out of his window at the clear bright morning. Had Glenn changed over the years? Had he lost his confidence, or rather his edge? Hardly, if he could afford to buy a superyacht. So who was the real Russell Glenn, the dishevelled man who looked ill at ease or the other sharper one?
The door to the CID room opened. That must be Cantelli or Walters. He pushed thoughts of Stanley and his mother from his mind and turned round, starting in surprise as he stared up at the lean silver-haired figure in the immaculate grey suit on the other side of his desk. Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate closed Horton’s door behind him.
‘Sir.’ Horton made to stand, but Sawyer waved him back into his seat and took the one the other side of Horton’s desk, where he crossed his legs and eyed Horton with a serious and assessing air.
‘DCI Bliss tells me that Victor Hazleton’s death is not connected with Project Neptune.’