Loman nodded.
‘We’ll also need to take a DNA sample from you.’ Horton guessed there might be one on file taken at the time of Ellie’s disappearance from something belonging to her but he’d get Somerfield to take one from Loman before she left. It might save time. ‘We’ll be able to confirm if the remains are Ellie’s by matching the DNA against yours. Just a few more questions, Mr Loman. What was her mood like before that Sunday?’
‘Same as usual,’ Loman answered wearily.
‘Exactly the same,’ pressed Horton. He didn’t want Loman to fabricate something but to really consider if there had been any change in his daughter.
Loman’s face creased with thought as he tried to remember. ‘She just seemed very happy. She was out quite a lot I remember the couple of weeks before she. . before then.’
‘In the evenings?’
‘Yes, but not very late. She came home from work later than normal, about nine o’clock or thereabouts. She said she’d been for a drink and a meal with friends, but she didn’t say who.’
And had anyone confirmed that, wondered Horton. ‘What about the weekends?’
‘When she wasn’t working she went shopping, spent time in her room, nothing different.’
Loman looked in danger of collapse.
Horton wasn’t sure how Loman was going to take the next question but he had to ask it. ‘Can you give us the date when you sold your boat and the buyer’s contact details?’
But Loman was prevented from answering by the appearance of his wife in the doorway. ‘Oh, we’ve got company. Why are the police here, dear?’
‘We’re just going,’ Horton said hastily, forcing a smile. He felt like a heel running away.
Loman pulled himself together with a quick glance at his wife he said, ‘I’ll just show Inspector Horton out.’ He left his wife to PC Somerfield.
At the door Horton said, ‘Would you like Somerfield to stay with you for a while? She can call someone to help you. Your doctor perhaps?’
‘No. I’d rather you use all the resources you have to make sure that it is Ellie you’ve found and to discover why she died and who killed her.’
‘We’ll allocate a police liaison officer to keep you fully informed, Mr Loman, and to help protect you from the press. Sooner or later they’ll get on to it, I’m afraid. Meanwhile if you could give Somerfield the details about your boat that would be helpful.’
Loman didn’t ask why he wanted it. Horton quickly pressed on, ‘If there is anything you recall, anything that was different about Ellie or her movements before that Sunday, call me, any time.’
Loman took Horton’s card. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been doing that every minute of every day for all these years?’
Yes, he knew. For years he’d pushed all thoughts of his mother’s disappearance to the back of his mind, but in the last eleven months he’d been trying to recall her mood, movements and visitors before that November day when she disappeared. It never went away. Suddenly a distant and vague memory, like an out of focus image, played at the ragged edges of his mind. He tried to identify it but couldn’t.
Irritated he pushed it away, called Trueman and relayed the gist of the interview with Loman. ‘Find out if anyone asked her doctor at the time if she was taking any form of contraceptive. Loman’s given his consent for us to access his daughter’s medical records. I’d also like to know if anyone asked the Lomans if Ellie took a towel with her that Sunday. Two bikinis and no towel suggests she was going somewhere where they were supplied and not to the beach or a swimming pool, at least not a public one. She might have been going to a private house with a pool or out on a boat for the day, which could have returned to Foxbury’s yard. There could have been a violent quarrel and the boat owner killed her and threw her body in the sea. Or perhaps someone was waiting for her return on the quayside or he saw her unexpectedly, they quarrelled and he killed her, or she slipped and struck her head and he pushed her body into the sea. Whoever she was going out with though she kept secret from her parents, which means they wouldn’t have approved of him.’
‘Probably married.’
‘We’ll need to check the members at the sailing club in 2001. Get the list from Richard Bolton. Ask Eames to get the names of any of Foxbury’s employees for 2001, though I suspect they weren’t on the official payroll. Foxbury told us he used to own a sailing yacht so see if she can find out if he had a boat in 2001 and what kind, also if he had a house with a swimming pool. Get Eames to re-interview him and to tell him about Ellie Loman. I’d like to know his reaction. Somerfield is getting details of the boat owned by Kenneth Loman at the time of his daughter’s disappearance. I don’t think he killed his daughter but find out just how thoroughly he was questioned. He could have discovered she’d gone out with one of his fishing chums, a work colleague or friend, a married man he disapproved of. Where did he work?’
‘Ran his own business, a small engineering company.’
‘Find out what happened to it. What have you got on Rawly Willard?’
‘He claimed he was out walking on the day Ellie disappeared, on the coastal path around Chichester Harbour. He didn’t own a car so he caught the train to Chichester and walked along the canal path to the marina and on to Itchenor, but he didn’t have a train ticket to verify that and nobody at Portsmouth Station where he caught the train remembered seeing him. His clothes, including those he was wearing that day, were sent to forensic but there was nothing found on them to connect him to Ellie Loman. His room was also searched. He lived with his parents, Amelia and Edgar Willard, in Southsea. He was questioned twice but stuck to his story. He committed suicide on 6 January 2002. His body was found hanging from a tree in Stansted Forest.’
‘That probably explains Patricia Harlow’s hostility towards us.’ Horton recalled her frosty manner.
‘But not why she and her husband didn’t tell you about Ellie Loman.’
‘Why should they? We weren’t investigating that and neither of them could have known where Ellie’s body was.’
‘Unless they were involved in her death.’
‘And we’ve nothing to say they were, or have we?’
‘No.’
‘And the only connection between them is the appearance of Salacia at the crematorium the same time as their aunt’s funeral.’ And that tiny reaction from Gregory Harlow, he thought. He consulted his watch. With a bit of luck he might make the twelve thirty sailing. ‘I’m going over to the Island to question Harlow. Apply for a search warrant for the late Amelia Willard’s house; I don’t think Patricia Harlow will let us in without one. It’s probably too late to find anything that links back to Rawly Willard and Ellie Loman but you never know. And see if you can trace any of Ellie’s former work colleagues.’
He rang off and made his way to the Isle of Wight ferry, keen to see what Gregory Harlow’s reaction would be to the news they’d found Ellie Loman.
FOURTEEN
‘He’s not here. I haven’t seen him since last night,’ Ross Skelton, Harlow’s boss, bellowed above the music. The festival was in full swing. The noise was giving Horton a headache, which made him feel old. Maybe he was getting old, or perhaps it was lack of sleep and too much thinking and he’d done a considerable amount of the latter on the ferry crossing without getting any further forward with the case. Now he was annoyed to discover that Harlow was missing, something he hadn’t expected, and Skelton was clearly livid. ‘He’s left me short-handed which is why I’m here, sorting out his mess, and not where I should be, which is running my business. It’s a bloody nightmare. I’ve got contracts to fulfil. If he shows up now he’s fired.’
They were in the small tented area at the back of the main Coastline Cool tent, which was packed. In addition to the music coming from a stage in one of the fields soul music was booming in Horton’s ears from the tent.