Dead Man's Wharf

Horton had fought his way through them throwing 'no comments' in the air like confetti at a wedding. 'We've got an officer on the gate.'

'Oh, yeah, I forgot that,' Oldham replied facetiously. 'The bastards want to know why Farnsworth was killed on my premises. Did it have anything to do with our former row? Were the police investigating me? Jesus, as if it isn't bad enough losing business because the prick decided to get himself killed on my land, without being accused of bumping him off. Now you show up with your great big fat feet pointing the finger at me.'

Horton excused the mixed metaphor. 'No one's pointing the finger at you, Mr Oldham,' he said equably, and felt like adding that he didn't have big flat feet. 'You're just helping us-'

Oldham's roar and the slamming of his hand upon his desk made the whole building shake. 'Don't say with your inquiries. That makes it sound like you've already made up your mind I killed the slippery sod.'

'I was going to say by giving us useful background information,' Horton replied quietly. He felt there was something more here to justify Oldham's fury.

Oldham lunged forward. Horton held his position and kept his gaze firmly fixed on Oldham's face.

'I didn't want him dead. I just wanted him to bugger off and pick on someone else.'

Horton said nothing.

After a moment Oldham sat back with a sigh that was like a strong south-westerly but not so damp. He added, with all the force of an announcement on cup final day at Pompey football ground, 'Obviously he did pick on someone else only this time he got more than he bargained for.'

'Any idea who?'

'No.'

Horton held Oldham's gaze and noted the intelligence in the piercing blue-grey eyes. He wouldn't like to cross Ryan Oldham either in business or personal life. He let the silence hang for a moment, hearing the telephone ringing in the adjoining Portakabin and someone saying, 'The police are with him now. He's not in a very good mood, best tell him later.' Tell him what? Horton wondered. Whatever it was he hoped he'd be several miles away by then.

'Did Farnsworth ever come here, before his death, that is?'

'No.'

'Did you ever threaten him?'

'No.'

'Meet him?'

'Once and that was more than I could stomach. I was at a Chamber of Commerce lunch at the Queen's Hotel. I don't usually go to them, but this one I did, more's the pity. It was part of a marketing drive by some whiz-kid I engaged for six months. Waste of fucking time.'

'When was this?' Horton asked.

'Last August.'

He thought back to what Daisy had told him about Farnsworth's row with Oldham — that had been in August.

'Do you practise the martial arts, Mr Oldham? Karate, that kind of thing?'

Oldham stared at Horton as if he'd just announced he was going to take his clothes off and dance naked round the yard.

'Do I what?'

No, thought Horton, stupid question, but then it was his job to ask stupid questions as well as intelligent ones because sometimes the stupid ones got you the answers.

Oldham said, 'Look at the size of me. Do I need some namby-pamby oriental crap to fight my way out of trouble?'

Horton would hardly call it namby-pamby, but he took Oldham's point. This man would simply crush someone. And if he was going to kill, then he certainly wouldn't have done so in his own backyard and arranged the body so meticulously.

Horton held Oldham's hostile glare and said evenly, 'I need to eliminate you and then concentrate on finding who did kill him.'

'When you find him give him my regards.'

Horton kept his expression impassive. After a short pause, he added, 'What was the row with Farnsworth about? And don't tell me there was no row or that it was over raping the seabed because I won't believe you.' It was like playing a game of poker, Horton thought. Oldham was eyeing him as though he was trying to judge whether he could bluff his way out of this.

After a moment Oldham sniffed and then thrust his sixteen-stone bulk across the desk. His face was so close to Horton that he could see every blemish and every line on it.

'If this goes any further than this room or reaches those pricks out there, you're dead meat, Horton, understand?'

'I'll overlook the fact that you've threatened a senior police officer. Go on.'

'The row was over that tosser's approaches towards my wife, Mavis. Yeah, the bastard made a play for her.'

'When? How?' Horton asked surprised. He had no idea what Mavis looked like, but he imagined someone so completely different to Daisy and Corinna that it was difficult for him to think that Farnsworth would have wasted so much as a winning smile on her. Then he silently scolded himself. He'd once admonished PC Johns for stereotyping people and jumping to conclusions based on his own prejudices and here he was doing the same.

'It was at that stupid Chamber of Commerce lunch that I told you about in August. Farnsworth showed up. Fuck knows why but he made a beeline for Mavis and started chatting her up.'

Horton didn't think Mavis would be very flattered to hear her husband say that. His eyes quickly searched Oldham's desk and cabinet tops, but there was no photograph of her, or anyone, only pictures of trucks.

'I thought, OK, it's only a lunch, let the bastard have his fun. Mavis could handle him. If it boosted her ego then no harm done, except I discovered he called her the next day and asked her to meet him. She told him to sod off, politely of course, but that didn't suit the scumbag. He kept on pestering her, Mavis told me. I phoned him and told him to piss off or I'd crush his balls. He got the message.'

And that must have been the telephone conversation that Daisy had overheard. He said, 'As a result of which Farnsworth said he would get even.'

'He started telling the press I was a profiteering capitalist bastard.'

'And did you threaten him again because of that? Did you arrange to meet him here on Tuesday night? Did you kill him?'

Oldham looked as if he was about to explode. His eyes were hot with rage. Horton remained still and silent. Then after a moment the fire went out of him. Steadily he said, 'I didn't kill him and I didn't meet him here. Someone's used those press stories to dump his body in my yard to implicate me.'

'So who hates you enough to do that?'

'Hates me?' Oldham looked surprised, then scowled. 'I guess I've got a few enemies, but I doubt they'd go to the trouble of killing that jumped-up idiot just to get even with me.'

'Why not? It's losing you money, maybe that's what they wanted.'

Oldham hauled himself up, shaking his head. He reminded Horton of a cross between a bull mastiff and a St Bernard dog. 'The type of men I know who'd like to see me ruined wouldn't have the brains to work that out. They'd come armed with baseball bats and smash the place up. I reckon your killer read that stuff in the paper and thought they'd sidetrack you lot into thinking I did it, just to waste your time, and I've already wasted enough of mine.' Oldham crossed to the door and flung it open.

Horton didn't always oblige but on this occasion he thought Oldham was correct. He was wasting his time here.

After fighting his way through the reporters, he climbed on the Harley, but instead of heading for the crematorium he turned left and followed the short road south towards the sailing centre.

Kicking down the stand, he gazed up at the modern glass building with its tower like a truncated lighthouse giving high visibility across all aspects of Langstone Harbour. Pity it had been dark when Farnsworth had been killed and no one here to witness it. But then that was why the killer had chosen such an isolated location late at night.