On the launch he rang Uckfield. While waiting for him to answer Horton stared out at a muddy and very choppy dark bluey-green sea which the wind was whipping up into angry white spray. Thunder growled out to sea somewhere beyond the Isle of Wight. Cantelli would have hated this crossing. He hoped the sergeant had enjoyed his holiday. He would be glad to have him back on Monday. He wondered if they’d have the answers to this investigation by then. They were close but still it might drag on. And if it did, how long would Eames stay? What would Cantelli make of her?
When Uckfield answered, Horton gave him a concise report drawing a few grunts and ‘bloody hells’ along the way. When he had finished, Uckfield said, ‘We’ll bring Loman in for questioning.’
‘Go easy with him, Steve. He didn’t kill his daughter. I also think that if he did kill Harlow, he would have confessed to it.’
‘He still might when we confront him about it,’ Uckfield grunted.
Horton reluctantly agreed that was possible. He rang off after telling Uckfield that he’d go to the hospital and interview Fiona Wright. And as the Portsmouth coast loomed closer he turned his mind as to how he’d play it.
TWENTY
As it was he didn’t have to say much. ‘Tell me about the advertisement Leo Garvard asked you to place in the Daily Telegraph.’
‘He’s dead?’ she asked, concerned.
‘No. But I don’t think it will be long now.’
She bit her lower lip and pushed a hand through her brown hair. ‘I’d like to be there, but that depends on you, I suppose.’ She waved him into a seat in her consulting room, anxiety etched on her tired face.
‘If all you did was place that announcement then you won’t be detained for long. You might make it in time.’ All you did, he thought. And that small act had brought Sharon Piper to her death, which in turn had led Gregory Harlow to his.
‘I promised Leo I would. It was all he asked me to do. And because of that a woman has died. I’m sorry.’
Leo Garvard must be a hell of a man, he thought. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘He was two weeks into his treatment last June when he said he thought he recognized an elderly woman as he was leaving. He couldn’t approach her even if he’d wanted to because of the prison officer with him and even if he did he wasn’t sure she’d recognize him or want to acknowledge him because of his conviction. Leo’s appointments were usually timed at the beginning of the day so that he could arrive and leave before too many other patients arrived. Over the following sessions we got talking. Not about his criminal conviction and I didn’t ask him. I wasn’t here to judge him, just to treat him, but I became emotionally involved and that was wrong, and unprofessional. I’m not sure how we ended up talking about Amelia Willard but we did.’
Garvard hadn’t lost any of his charm or his powers of persuasion. Horton remembered what Geoff Kirby had told him and he wondered what weakness Garvard had exploited in Fiona to get her to open up and do his bidding. Compassion, kindness, pity? Or perhaps she’d fallen in love with him.
‘Amelia was also one of my patients,’ Fiona was saying. ‘She was a lovely, gentle, happy lady despite her illness. Leo so desperately wanted to speak to her. Even though he was having treatment for his cancer he didn’t believe he’d survive it very long. He told me that he’d been very close to Amelia and her family years ago but they’d become estranged when Amelia’s son had killed himself and he’d been sent to prison. It was a great relief for Leo to talk to someone outside the prison service. He told me that he’d been raised in a children’s home, he’d never known his father or mother and that Amelia and Edgar Willard were the closest he’d got to having family.’
Bullshit, Horton thought but didn’t say. He’d read Garvard’s file and he’d been raised in a secure middle-class home by his banker father and his schoolteacher mother, both of whom had died before his conviction.
‘Leo had worked hard and built up a successful financial business. But in a moment of madness, he threw it all away. I told him I didn’t want to know what he’d done.’
And he wouldn’t have told you the truth even if you had asked.
‘He asked me about Amelia’s cancer and the prognosis. It wasn’t good. When Leo came to the end of his treatment he said he wouldn’t see me again. I told him I’d visit him in prison but he made me swear I wouldn’t. He couldn’t bear me to see him there. It was too painful for him.’
I bet. Garvard didn’t want Fiona blowing open his little scheme before it had time to hatch.
‘He said that if he survived the cancer, when he was released we could be together. In the meantime he asked me to do one thing for him. He didn’t make me promise and he said if I decided not to then he would understand. I was to find out when and where Amelia’s funeral would be held and put an announcement in the Daily Telegraph and I promised to do it even if he died before Amelia. I rang the registrar and asked to be kept informed when the death of Amelia Willard was registered. I knew it wouldn’t be long. I thought it might bring the families together. Instead it brought a woman to her death.’
She fell silent for a moment. Garvard had wormed his way into her affections and manipulated her. Even when she discovered the truth about him he knew that she would still see only the best in him.
‘I know I should have told the prison,’ she added. ‘But Leo said it might bring Amelia’s family back together following the rift caused by her son’s suicide, and I believed that.’
She would, after all Garvard was an expert con man. ‘You should have told us about this earlier.’
‘But I didn’t know that woman’s death had anything to do with Amelia Willard. You showed me her photograph but you never mentioned she had been at Amelia’s funeral.’
No, they’d been too focused on Daryl Woodley.
‘Besides I didn’t even know if the announcement had been read, let alone acted upon.’
But Garvard had taken that chance. Sharon might not have read the newspaper or seen the announcement and even if she had she might not have cared. But Garvard was a risk-taker and one more might pay off. Even if it didn’t he wasn’t going to be around to find out, and he wasn’t going to lose by it. He’d played the odds and it had paid off.
‘Did you have anything to do with Woodley leaving this hospital?’
‘No! I never saw him.’
‘Did someone tell you to give Woodley a message from Leo Garvard to say that he wasn’t safe here and that someone would meet him outside?’
But Fiona was shaking her head vigorously. ‘No. I only placed the announcement.’
He eyed her carefully. Had she taken Woodley to the marshes and left him there, believing someone was going to pick him up, because he couldn’t see her deliberately abandoning him and leaving him to die. No, he didn’t think so. But someone did.
Horton told her they needed a statement and she promised that she’d go to the station right away. He had no reason to doubt that.
Outside he stood under the shelter of the canopy as people dashed to and from the car park in the pelting rain and the thunder crashed around them. He thought briefly of the festival-goers on the Isle of Wight and the fact that DI Dennings might get a soaking, which brought a smile to his lips. It faded long before Trueman answered the phone.