‘If you remember the name of the yachts or the people who owned them would you let me know?’ Horton stretched out a business card. Foxbury took it.
‘We’ll find our own way off.’
Foxbury shrugged but at the bottom of the steps up to the deck Horton paused. ‘Can you tell us where you were on Tuesday night, Mr Foxbury, just a formality,’ he added smoothly at Foxbury’s frown.
‘Here.’
‘All night?’
‘No. I came back from the Isle of Wight late Tuesday evening.’
‘With your wife?’
There was a moment’s hesitation and an avoidance of eye contact before he answered. ‘No. Alone.’
‘So no one can confirm this,’ Horton asked lightly.
‘Do they have to?’ Foxbury’s expression hardened.
‘What time did you get into the marina?’
‘What’s this got to do with that woman’s death?’ he replied brusquely.
‘You might have seen something at the boatyard.’
‘Well I didn’t. It was dark. I got in about nine thirty and got home around eleven thirty.’
Horton thanked him. As he stepped off the boat he caught sight of a sleek yacht heading towards the pontoon. On it was the lean figure of his father-in-law. That had been a close thing.
Eames said, ‘There was a woman with him on that boat on Tuesday. It could have been Salacia.’
‘Not if it was the same woman who’s been on the boat with him today.’
‘You mean the perfume. He could have broken a bottle of Salacia’s perfume while trying to get rid of her things, which he could have thrown overboard while out on the boat today. Perhaps he took it out hoping to get rid of the smell before his wife goes on board.’
That was possible.
‘And he’s drinking white wine,’ Eames added. ‘A Grand Cru Chablis, I noticed.’
‘Hardly conclusive evidence.’
But Eames was not to be put off. ‘He met Salacia at the airport, took her to the crematorium where she arranged a meeting with Reggie Thomas, or another of Woodley’s mourners, for later. Then he took her back to his boat, where they were for the remainder of the afternoon and evening and where she left her things. He could easily have deposited Salacia at the quayside for her meeting, or alighted with her, stabbed her and tossed her into the sea, before returning here, and without anyone from the sailing club seeing or hearing him. He might be lying about the time he returned here.’
‘He probably is.’ And Horton had another variation on Eames’s theory, which tied in with what he’d said to Uckfield yesterday, that Salacia could have flown into a private airfield on the Isle of Wight, where Foxbury had met her and brought her across on his boat in time for the funeral, or rather in time to meet her contact after it. But theories weren’t hard facts. And he still wasn’t happy with the idea of Foxbury using his former boatyard to dispose of Salacia.
He said, ‘There’s a lot of money sloshing around him and that bothers me. Find out how much he was paid for that land and see what else you can dig up on him. Tax and employment records, associates, property, cars. .’ His words tailed off as a car he recognized pulled up two rows behind theirs.
‘Anything wrong, sir?’
Only my estranged wife’s arrival. Horton said, ‘Find out if the lockmaster knows what time Foxbury left the marina on Tuesday morning and when he returned. Take the car. I’ll wait here.’
With a slight rise of those perfectly shaped eyebrows Eames did as she was told. Horton saw Catherine’s enquiring and slightly hostile gaze follow her before she headed for him.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said waspishly.
‘How is Emma?’ He didn’t see why he should explain anything to her.
‘She’s fine. I-’
‘When is the parents’ evening?’
‘What?’
‘At the school.’
She flicked back a strand of blonde hair. ‘I don’t know.’
Horton laughed lightly and without mirth. ‘You used to be better at lying than that, Catherine. I’ll call the school.’
‘It doesn’t concern you,’ Catherine snarled.
She was referring to the fact that he didn’t pay Emma’s school fees, because her father had insisted on doing so, most probably to cut him out of the family. That would have to be sorted. If anyone was paying for Emma’s education it was going to be him. But he knew what Catherine was doing. It had taken him a while but he’d finally got the measure of her. She was deliberately goading him so that he would lose his temper, and then she’d use that against him, to try and prevent him from seeing his daughter. He’d fallen for it before, he wasn’t going to again. And an idea had occurred to him about how he could get to see more of Emma, without putting her in too much danger from Zeus, or one of his henchmen. It wouldn’t be foolproof and he would need to be vigilant but if he attended the parents’ evenings and other activities his daughter was involved in where parents and guardians were admitted, then he’d at least get to see her.
He said, ‘I’ll see you at the parents’ evening.’ He marched towards the road before Catherine could reply. Only when there did he look back. Catherine was halfway down the pontoon. As though aware of his gaze she halted and turned round. Their eyes connected for a moment before he turned away and began walking towards the marina office to wait for Eames.
ELEVEN
The daytime lockmaster remembered Foxbury’s boat leaving the marina about mid-morning on Tuesday but he couldn’t be specific about the time or when it had returned. He also claimed he hadn’t seen a woman on board but Horton knew she could have been in the cabin below and well out of sight until they were through the lock.
In the incident suite, Eames called the night lockmaster at his home, while Horton updated a weary, hot and cross Uckfield, who was pacing the floor.
‘Anything from Joliffe?’ Horton asked hopefully, glancing at the photographs of the bracelet on the crime board, though judging by Uckfield’s grim expression he already knew the answer would be negative.
Trueman shook his head.
Uckfield said, ‘And the bugger’s gone home.’
Trueman rubbed a hand over his chin as if to say, Think we should too, but he said, ‘We’ve got some information on Victor Riley. He was convicted of armed robbery on a bank in London in 1994. A clerk was shot and paralysed. Riley got twenty years. The Met and the Serious Organised Crime Agency had been after him for years for extortion, robbery, violent assault but he’d been too well protected, until the bank job. He wasn’t on it but he was the organizer. One man grassed on him and gave the Met everything they needed to put him away.’
‘Bet he was popular,’ Horton replied.
‘He went under the witness protection scheme, and there’s no record of who he was and where he is now, or if there is they’re not telling us.’
Eames came off the phone. ‘The night lockmaster didn’t see Foxbury’s boat leave the marina or return. He says the lock was on free flow from between three forty-four a.m. and four thirty-four a.m. so any boat could have gone out or come in during that time without being noticed, but the timing’s wrong for Salacia’s death.’
‘Everything’s wrong in this investigation,’ grumbled Uckfield. He addressed Horton. ‘The divers have recovered all the remains, so see what Dr Clayton can give us tomorrow while I swan off to Swansea, and I won’t be singing in the valleys unless Stapleton decides to join the choir, which is about as likely as Wales winning the World Cup.’
Dismissed, Eames went home and Horton did the same after dropping by his office to find an email from Bliss saying that Walters would be working with her on the possible vehicle fraud operation and the Mason’s Electricals robbery, which she believed Sholby and Hobbs were responsible for. As if he hadn’t told her! There was no mention of the metal thefts, which clearly Bliss had shelved at the scent of a new and more high-profile investigation. If she could get some vital information out of Sholby and Hobbs that could assist in an arrest in the Woodley investigation she’d be ACC Dean’s pet and the Chief’s blue-eyed girl, despite her eyes being green. And that would really hack Uckfield off.