‘She didn’t cry, if that’s what you mean. She never does.’ There was a touch of bitterness in his voice and Horton thought he saw a brief flicker of anger behind the eyes. ‘I tried to talk to her but she blanked me out. That’s not unusual. She’s not the type of person you can. . she doesn’t show her emotions. She went into her surgery. She told me she needed to think and she couldn’t do that with me around.’ Now Horton heard the pain in the young man’s voice.
‘Did she telephone anyone?’
‘I don’t know. She might have done. She went out about ten minutes ago.’
Horton thanked him and hurried away. He felt a slight qualm for being so abrupt and for leaving the man bewildered and upset but time was critical. He told himself that Patricia Harlow could have gone to a friend who was consoling her in her grief, only he didn’t think Patricia had any friends. And from what he’d seen of her, and from his brief meeting with Connor Harlow, he doubted she needed consoling over her husband’s death. She might even be glad he was dead. From her reaction to the news Horton guessed she’d been working out who might have killed her husband and why. She wasn’t stupid, far from it. And there was only one place she could be.
The blue-and-white police tape on the cordon flapped in the wind as Horton drew the Harley to a stop just outside it. The sailing club was still closed, the road was deserted except for the two cars parked inside the boatyard, one belonged to Patricia Harlow and the other was as Iris had described it ‘like a tank’, a big four-wheel-drive cruiser: Ross Skelton’s.
Behind and above Horton the traffic swished and roared along the rain-soaked motorway. The day had drawn in early, the sky was a darkened hue making the sea of the harbour look a muddy grey, flecked with smudgy white foam. Horton tensed and hurried quietly forward through the empty boatyard. He hoped to God he wasn’t too late. He could see the two wrecks on the quayside but there was no sign of anyone and certainly not Patricia Harlow or Ross Skelton. Could they be inside the old boatshed?
Swiftly and silently he headed for the quayside, the rain running down his face, his ears straining for any sound. He eased his way around the wreck where Sharon Piper’s body had been found and drew up as the crane barge came into view. On it stood the bedraggled figure of Patricia Harlow, looking out across the rain-swept harbour. He reached it before she spun round, sensing his presence rather than hearing his approach, Horton thought.
In an instance he registered her ashen face, her blood-stained jacket and the bloody knife in her right hand before his eyes fell on the body that lay face down at her feet. It was Skelton. The back of his head was a mess of blood, flesh and bone but there was no knife wound. He rapidly theorized that she must have stood in front of him and stuck the knife into his guts taking him totally by surprise and then hit him over the head with a piece of metal piping he could see lying close by. And he didn’t think she’d acted in anger.
‘It’s over, Patricia. Put down the knife,’ he commanded with authority, while his heart was hammering fit to bust. Keeping his eyes on her he made to climb on the barge but she quickly stepped away from the body towards the edge and closer to the sea. The rain was drumming against it like a hundred stones being flung at the flat steel surface. Edged with a flimsy piece of wire strung out by poles not even knee high it wouldn’t take much for her to topple over.
‘I need to check if he’s still alive,’ Horton insisted, climbing onto the barge alert to the fact that at any moment she might step further back. But this time she remained still. She showed no signs of relinquishing the knife though. He didn’t like the fact that she was still holding a weapon which she could plunge into him while he was crouching over the body, but he assessed that he could dodge out of her way by the time she reached him and then he’d be able to easily disarm her.
He pressed his fingers against Skelton’s neck. There was no pulse. He tried again, his eyes flicking downwards for an instant. There was a movement to his right but she had edged further away from him rather than closer. Skelton was dead. Straightening up, Horton said, ‘Patricia, you need help. Let me get it for you.’
‘No!’ she shouted and seemed surprised that she could speak. It seemed to invigorate her. ‘No,’ she repeated now more self-assured. He saw something of the former Patricia Harlow reasserting itself. She pulled herself up and tossed back her head. ‘He killed Gregory. He was going to kill me. I had to do it. I had to get him before he killed me.’
There was no pleading in her voice. She had spoken as if it was a matter of fact and that anyone would understand why she had done what she had. Maybe Skelton had tried to kill her. Perhaps the knife had been his. But if so how had she got it from him? Horton couldn’t see him giving it up willingly and she could never have taken it from him by force. Skelton had looked to be a fit and agile man. Had he put it down for a moment while waiting for her to show and she seized the opportunity to grab it? Skelton had then spun round but too late she’d plunged it into his stomach.
‘Give me the knife, Patricia,’ he repeated firmly, stepping towards her and holding out his hand.
‘No. You’ll arrest me for murder.’ She snatched the knife behind her back as though afraid he would steal it from her and took another step towards the edge of the barge. If he moved again he might force her over the side and if he rushed at her she’d turn and either jump or fall in accidentally. And he didn’t want to go in after her with that knife she was wielding. He had to get her to give herself up and more importantly give up the knife.
Almost conversationally he said, ‘Why was he going to kill you?’
‘Because I knew about him employing illegal immigrants, of course,’ she scoffed as though he was stupid for not realizing it. ‘Gregory told me. When the police said Gregory’s death wasn’t suicide then I knew Ross Skelton must have killed him.’
But why would she have agreed to meet her husband’s killer? Rapidly he replayed what Connor had told him. It was probable she had made a call from her surgery, they could check that, and if she had made the call then it had to be to arrange this meeting with Skelton and not the other way around. She had come here with the intention of killing him. Why? Revenge for her husband’s death? Somehow that didn’t ring true. So it must be because she suspected him of knowing something that could damage her, and there were only two things it could be.
He said, ‘If Skelton had planned to kill you then he’d need to make your death look like suicide, which means he didn’t come here with a knife. Perhaps he intended knocking you out, making it look like an accident and then pushing your body into the sea.’ He saw her eyes narrow and her mouth tighten. ‘But you came here with a knife. Is it the same knife you used to kill your sister, Sharon?’ He wanted to provoke a reaction.
‘I didn’t kill her. He did.’ She jerked her head at Skelton’s recumbent body.
Evenly Horton said, ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because Sharon was with him the day that Ellie Loman disappeared. He saw her kill Ellie. And he was with Sharon the day Aunt Amelia was buried. Gregory recognized his car parked just outside the crematorium as we were turning into it. She must have arranged to meet him there.’
No, that was Garvard’s doing. He’d had a long time to plan this.
‘If he saw Sharon kill Ellie Loman then she was more likely to kill him to silence him.’
‘Maybe she tried and it went wrong,’ Patricia Harlow leapt too readily at this.
There was one very big flaw in her story and at last he was beginning to see exactly what must have happened. He thought he caught a movement to his left behind the crane but dismissed it as the wind swinging the rigging. ‘Why didn’t you come to us when you suspected Ross Skelton of killing not only your sister but also your husband?’