‘I couldn’t. You wouldn’t believe me. You’d try and blame me like you did poor Rawly.’
‘And we’d be correct. Because you did kill your sister, Patricia, and Ross Skelton discovered that while he was killing your husband.’ He saw instantly that he’d got it wrong. There was a flicker of smug triumph in the back of her eyes. He eyed her steadily and closely, rapidly recalling all the interviews with her, the times she’d lied and twisted the truth. Then he knew.
Calmly he said, ‘Sharon didn’t kill Ellie, Patricia, you did.’ He held his breath keeping his steady gaze on her. Would she continue to deny it or would she finally crack? Only the wind howling through the crane rigging and the rain lashing against them punctuated the silence which seemed to stretch on for ever. Finally it broke.
‘It was an accident,’ she said in a rush. ‘I only pushed her. She fell and knocked her head on the cleat.’
He let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. That was consistent with the injuries to the skull that Dr Clayton had pointed out to him but there was more to Ellie’s death than that. With barely disguised disgust he said, ‘But you then dumped her body in the sea and left her there to rot.’
‘What else could I do?’ she said as though she’d had no choice.
‘You could have confessed,’ he said, with bitterness. ‘You could have saved Rawly Willard from taking his own life, and spared his parents, your aunt and uncle, from years of suffering.’ Not to mention the heartbreak and anguish she’d caused Kenneth Loman.
‘The police killed Rawly with their persecution of him,’ she said dismissively and defiantly. ‘That had nothing to do with me.’
‘And that’s what you’ve told yourself all these years.’ Horton held her hard stare. ‘No, Patricia, you killed Rawly as surely as you killed Ross Skelton and Ellie Loman. And Sharon knew what you’d done. She’d always known, hadn’t she?’
He saw instantly that he was correct. And Sharon had kept silent because it suited her to have it over Garvard. ‘Does Connor know who his real mother is and that he’s the result of an affair between your husband and your sister?’
She flinched but the knife stayed firmly grasped in her hand pointing at him. He didn’t doubt that he’d be able to disarm her, but still she was perilously close to the edge of the water.
Stiffly she said, ‘I agreed to bring him up as my own.’
And you never let Gregory forget his affair. Seeing Connor every day was a reminder to Gregory of his infidelity. How Gregory Harlow must have been tempted to tell him over the years. But his silence was the price he had to pay for having had an affair with Sharon while married to her sister. And silence was his guarantee that the boy would have a family upbringing rather than be abandoned to a children’s home or be put up for adoption. If Gregory wanted to see his son growing up he would have to stay with Patricia and keep silent. And he did.
Despite the body in front of him, the woman holding the knife and the relentless rain, which was the least of his worries, Horton needed the answers to a few more questions, and he needed to get her into custody.
He said, ‘Why were you here when Leo Garvard dropped Ellie back on that Sunday after she’d spent a day on his boat?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ she said scathingly.
‘You wanted Sharon to see them together. You wanted to hurt her as she had hurt you by sleeping with your husband.’ Patricia had thought that Sharon was in love with Leo, but she wasn’t. Sharon had probably had a string of affairs aside from Skelton and she had used sex many times to trap her quarry. Garvard knew this and went along with it. But Patricia hadn’t known that.
‘I overheard Leo arranging it with Ellie. I was by chance at the coffee stall on the Hard when I saw them together. Ellie was on her coffee break, she always took it at the Coastline Coffee stall. They didn’t see me. I told Sharon that I had to meet her at the boatyard. I had something to tell her about Leo. I knew that would bring her here. I came here that Sunday after I’d had tea with Aunt Amelia. Gregory was out fishing all day. The boatyard was closed on a Sunday, but we all knew how to get into it. Harry Foxbury was always lax with his security, besides there was nothing to steal except old boats and bits of metal that weren’t worth much.’
Not then maybe but now worth a fortune, thought Horton, remembering those metal thefts. ‘They came back early.’
‘Sharon was late. I waited out of sight until Leo left on his boat with Ellie touchingly waving him goodbye. I had to stop her leaving before Sharon got here and before Leo’s boat was out of sight. I confronted her. She said she loved him and that he was going to leave Sharon for her. I said she was a stupid young fool.’
‘And you told her what Leo and Sharon did for a living. She didn’t believe you.’
‘She got upset, hysterical. I grabbed her. She tried to get away. I pushed her and she fell. Before I knew it she was dead. Sharon saw it all.’
And had Leo Garvard looked back and seen Patricia Harlow and mistaken her for Sharon or had he only seen Sharon? But Horton considered a third option and knew it was the truth. Garvard had known all along that both sisters had been here and had had a hand in Ellie’s death and cover up.
The clang of metal against metal from the crane dimly registered with him as the wind whipped through the rigging. He said, ‘So you and Sharon struck a bargain. It suited Sharon to say nothing about you killing Ellie because she wanted Garvard out of her life and she wanted all the money from their fraudulent scams, or rather as much as she could get her hands on that they’d secreted away. When she shopped Garvard to the law he knew he couldn’t tell the truth about dropping Ellie off and seeing you kill her because you and Sharon would swear blind that each was with the other and that in all likelihood he’d be done for murder as well as fraud. And Sharon would keep quiet about your part in Ellie’s death because she wanted wealth and a chance to get away.’ And had Gregory Harlow known this? If he had then he could have used it to get Patricia out of his life by giving her up to the police. But that would have involved Connor’s real mother and disrupted the family life he had desperately wanted his son to have. So they had all kept silent until Leo Garvard had found a way to break that silence. His cancer and the chance sighting of Amelia Willard at the radiotherapy department had sparked an idea that had eventually led to three more deaths, and to bringing Ellie’s body up from her watery grave. How fortunate then the timing of raising the sunken barges. Garvard must have read about it or heard about it on the news. But Horton knew that even if the barges hadn’t been raised Garvard would have found another way to bring Ellie’s killer here and expose her remains.
‘It’s over, Patricia. The truth has to come out now. Hand me the knife.’
‘No.’ She stepped back.
‘There’s nowhere to go.’
She spun round and within seconds was clambering and stumbling over the deck of the barge towards the seaward side in the dark. Shit! He turned setting off in the opposite direction around the crane to head her off praying that she wasn’t going to throw herself into the sea or trip over something and fall in and that neither would he. He could hear her faltering footsteps, then there was a cry and nothing, not even a splash. He rounded the crane and drew up sharply. Kenneth Loman was standing over the prostrate figure of Patricia Harlow. Horton swiftly glimpsed Loman’s harrowed sodden face, his wet dishevelled clothes and the heavy piece of piping he was holding. The knife was on the deck and the side of Patricia’s face a bloody mess of mangled flesh.
His breath caught in his throat as Loman raised the hand carrying the piping; his eyes were full of hatred directed at the body at his feet. Horton knew what he was thinking, she’d put him through a living hell and he wanted to vent his anger. He wanted to obliterate her and the pain he had suffered all these years. But he would never be able to, not even if he beat Patricia Harlow to a pulp. Sharply Horton shouted, ‘Killing her won’t bring Ellie back.’