Undercurrent, p.3
Undercurrent, page 3
‘He might have hung around a bit for a final fag,’ Walters suggested, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin.
Cantelli replied. ‘He didn’t smoke. I asked Mrs Spalding.’
‘Maybe he did but lied to her,’ Walters answered. ‘Or perhaps he needed a cigarette to steady his nerves before throwing himself into the dock.’
Horton said, ‘And as SOCO haven’t been down there we won’t know if there are any cigarette butts lying around.’
But Cantelli was looking puzzled. ‘No cigarette packet was found on the body and I can’t see Spalding flicking his fag into the dock. Surely being a naval historian, he’d have had more respect for a museum piece like that M33.’
‘What’s so special about it?’ Walters asked.
‘It’s a monitor that was used for coastal bombardment. Built in 1915 it saw action at Gallipoli and was then used to help the White Russians in the White Sea in 1919.’
‘Who?’ asked Walters.
‘The White Russians were an anti-Communist army and opponents of the Red Army,’ Cantelli explained. ‘They fought the Russian Civil War from 1917 until 1921. Britain was one of their supporters. I looked it up this morning,’ he added at Horton’s surprised glance. ‘Well I said I couldn’t sleep.’
Walters looked none the wiser and Horton wasn’t going to elaborate although he knew nothing about the conflict. They didn’t have time for history lessons.
‘What made Gideon look in Number One Dock for Spalding? It’s not the sort of place you’d expect to find someone at that time of night.’
‘Gideon says he was just checking everywhere around the museum and happened to shine his torch into the dock.’
Horton didn’t much care for Gideon’s answer but it was probably true.
‘He claims he didn’t hear a cry or the sound of a body striking the concrete but then he wouldn’t have done because, as we know, it was very wet and windy.’
‘What time did Spalding arrive?’
‘He signed in at six p.m. Mrs Spalding said he always liked to arrive early to give himself plenty of time to prepare for his lectures.’
Horton visualized Spalding getting ready to present his lecture, standing at the lectern, testing the microphone, shuffling his notes. Or perhaps setting up his presentation on a laptop computer. Of course! That’s what had been bugging him. Swiftly he recalled the body in the dock and the area surrounding it. Where was Spalding’s briefcase? Surely he must have had one. Could it be wedged under the Monitor? Or perhaps it had landed on that old ship as Spalding had fallen clasping it. He asked if Cantelli had seen one, knowing the answer must be negative otherwise he’d have mentioned it.
Cantelli confirmed this, adding, ‘And I didn’t think to ask Mrs Spalding whether her husband carried one. I’m taking her to the mortuary at nine thirty for a formal identification of her husband’s body. I’ll ask her on the way.’
Horton rose, picked up his helmet, draped his leather jacket over the same arm and, gripping his breakfast tray with his free hand, slid it into the trolley close by. Another thought struck him: perhaps Spalding hadn’t had a briefcase anyway – maybe he’d simply put his presentation on a memory stick and the museum had provided a laptop to plug it into. No memory stick had been found in his possession but something so small could easily have fallen from Spalding’s pocket as he’d crashed down into the dock. And that meant it could be anywhere.
Heading out of the canteen towards the CID office Horton addressed Cantelli. ‘Get SOCO down to the dockyard and ask the fingerprint bureau to send someone. We might still get some prints from the fence where Spalding fell.’
Walters, waddling behind them, said, ‘You think he was pushed, Guv?’
Did he? He wasn’t sure but that itch between his shoulder blades continued to irritate him. ‘Get some background on him. Also call the university and find out if there is anyone there we can speak to about him.’ To Cantelli he said, ‘Let me have a copy of those signing-out logs. Did you get anything else on Spalding?’
‘Only that he was forty-one, and had been married fourteen years.’
‘Happily?’
‘Seems so.’
Cantelli’s answer reminded Horton too painfully of his own marriage, which had been officially terminated four days ago. Only when the letter had arrived had it really sunk in that his twelve-year marriage was over and that he was once again single. Some men would have cracked open a bottle of champagne or gone out on the town. He’d gone sailing to Guernsey in search of the last known sighting of Edward Ballard. Apart from meeting up with an old friend, Inspector John Guilbert of the States of Guernsey Police, it had been a fruitless exercise. No one at the marina in St Peter Port had any idea where Ballard had gone or what he’d done while staying there. In fact no one at St Peter Port marina even remembered him.
Leaving Cantelli and Walters to their tasks Horton crossed to his office and pushed open the door. His heart sank at the state of his desk. Piled with paperwork and files, it appeared to have become the dumping ground for every investigation in the county of Hampshire. He reckoned he must have his boss DCI Lorraine Bliss’s share of files too. Thankfully she was on a leadership course at Bramshill, hence his debrief in the canteen, of which she would have heartily disapproved. Tomorrow she’d be back though, no doubt spouting forth some management claptrap she’d learnt on the course and making his life as difficult as possible. His view of policing was as far removed from hers as it could be; he’d never been a desk johnny while Bliss positively cosseted hers. She’d made it clear that as soon as she could rid her team of him and Walters she would do so but government cutbacks and a promotion freeze had thwarted her ambitions to replace them. Cantelli was spared the chop because she needed some continuity, but Walters she deemed stupid and lazy, an opinion with which Horton, reluctantly, couldn’t help but agree.
He threw his leather jacket and helmet on the floor and cleared a space on his desk by pushing all the files, messages and scraps of paper over to one side and, while waiting for his computer to fire up, he opened the window and let in the traffic noise and petrol fumes. There was still no sign of Uckfield’s car. He wondered what he’d make of Dennings’ report when he read it. Very little, he expected, because Dennings would have said very little.
Resuming his seat Horton picked up the phone and called the mortuary. Tom, the mortuary attendant, informed him that the autopsy on Douglas Spalding was scheduled for ten thirty but it wasn’t Dr Clayton who was performing it. She was on holiday until tomorrow. Horton asked to be contacted as soon as they had the preliminary results. Ringing off he wondered where Gaye Clayton’s holiday had taken her. He knew that like him she was a sailor. He wouldn’t mind going sailing with her.
There was a knock on his door and Cantelli entered. ‘SOCO and the fingerprint officers will be at the dockyard within the next thirty minutes. Here’s a copy of the signing-out logs. Walters says that Spalding is clean, no previous, not even a traffic offence. I told him not to be so disappointed. There’s no one at the university offices yet. He’ll try again in half an hour.’
Horton glanced up at the clock above his door; it was just on eight thirty.
Cantelli continued. ‘I’ll be off in a moment to Mrs Spalding’s. I’ve arranged for PC Kate Somerfield to come with me.’
‘Good.’ Horton eyed his laden desk.
‘Sorry about that, Andy. I tried to handle what I could but the stuff seemed to multiply quicker than rabbits.’
‘And most of it is probably rubbish,’ Horton said, dismissing Cantelli’s apology. ‘Let me know how it goes at the mortuary.’
Cantelli said he would. Horton cast a despairing glance over his desk, then at his computer. He dreaded to think how many emails he had – perhaps enough to crash the entire system, he thought hopefully. It would take days to clear this lot. He picked up a file labelled ‘performance targets’ and then another entitled ‘telephone customer survey’ and groaned. What the hell did that have to do with real policing? He should be out there trying to solve crime, not filling in pointless forms and acting as a telephone sales clerk just so they could massage government figures. Bliss would disagree. But then Bliss wasn’t here. And there was nothing to keep him chained to his desk. He found Clarke’s email and the photographs of Spalding’s body, printed them off, rose, stuffed the copies of the security logs in his pocket, picked up his leather jacket and helmet and went to ask Julie Preston what time Spalding had left the museum.
THREE
‘It was about nine forty.’ Julie Preston’s concerned brown eyes studied Horton behind her square-framed modern spectacles. Her tanned, attractive face looked worried rather than upset, which suggested that she hadn’t known Spalding that well. But then there was no reason why she should have known him. She was in her late twenties, dressed in tight-fitting navy blue trousers and a pretty white, blue and pink flowered low-neck blouse that showed the outline of her white bra beneath it and a cleavage above it. They were sitting in her roomy, extremely untidy and cluttered office on the first floor of the naval museum that made Horton’s look poky and positively tidy. In the small window behind her Horton caught a glimpse of the Gosport skyline on the other side of Portsmouth harbour. According to her evidence that left just under an hour before Spalding’s body had been found.
‘Had everyone left by then?’ he asked.
‘Yes. The caterers left at nine thirty.’
That tallied with the signing-out lists Horton had seen.
Julie Preston added, ‘There was only me and Dr Spalding left. I didn’t expect him to stay that long but then he had been collared by Mr Meadows and he didn’t leave until the caterers did at nine thirty.’
Again that tied in with the signing-out log.
‘I didn’t think Mr Meadows was ever going to go, you know how insensitive some people are to time and hints. I tried to steer him away but eventually I had to be quite forceful and tell him we were closing. He must have bored Dr Spalding to death . . . Oh God, I didn’t mean that.’ She pushed a slender hand through her mahogany-highlighted poker-straight long hair.
‘What happened after Mr Meadows left?’
‘We both breathed a sigh of relief.’ She gave a small and sad smile as she obviously recollected the moment, before adding, ‘Dr Spalding did look tired though and he was rubbing his forehead as though he had a headache, which wasn’t surprising after the lecture and being pestered by Mr Meadows.’
Horton was getting a very distinct picture of Ivor Meadows. His suspicious mind wondered if there had been any friction between Meadows and Spalding that could have led to an altercation between them outside. But if it had then either the timing of them leaving the museum was wrong, or Meadows had fabricated his signing-out time on the log and Newton, the security guard, had missed it.
‘You know Mr Meadows well?’ he fished.
She gave a wry smile. ‘He’s often in the museum, telling us how we should organize the exhibits or giving the staff a history lecture, and he regularly visits the naval museum library. It’s in the naval area of the dockyard just before you reach this building,’ she explained.
It didn’t take much for Horton to see that Meadows was a pain in the arse. ‘Did Dr Spalding know him?’
‘I don’t know. He might have met him in the naval museum library, I guess.’
‘So how well did you know Dr Spalding?’
‘I didn’t, not really. I obviously liaised with him over the arrangements for last night but that was all. I can’t believe he could have killed himself.’
So that’s what Gideon had told her. It was the logical assumption, and might still be the right one.
‘Perhaps I could see where the talk took place.’
‘Of course.’ She stood up.
As Horton followed her along the narrow corridor he asked her about the arrangements for the previous night.
‘There was a drinks reception on board HMS Victory from seven o’clock until seven thirty, which the caterers handled. Then Neil Gideon walked the guests over here. I met them at the entrance on the ground floor. We escorted them up to the first floor. Here.’ She pushed open the door and they stepped into the wide landing with a wooden floor so ancient that it looked as though it had been lifted off one of Henry VIII’s ships. ‘A few people used the lift.’ She indicated the glass-encased cubicle totally at odds with the historic brick building. ‘The rest came up the stairs. They hung their coats up on the stand to the right of the lift and I showed them into the Princess Royal Gallery.’
As she’d been speaking they’d crossed to a set of double doors just beyond the lift. Pushing them open Horton entered a spacious, carpeted and well-lit room, broken up by cream-coloured steel pillars. Chairs were laid out in rows, theatre style, with a wide aisle through the centre and at either side of the room. At the far end, opposite them, was a large projector screen, to its right a lectern with a microphone on it and next to that a small empty low table. ‘Is this how it was set up last night?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What equipment did Dr Spalding use?’
‘The lectern and microphone, and one of our laptop computers.’
‘So he didn’t bring his own?’
‘He might have done but he had his presentation on a memory stick, which I put into the computer.’
He asked if Spalding had been carrying a briefcase.
‘Yes, a tan leather old-fashioned one. It looked very battered. Why do you ask?’
‘He left carrying it?’
‘Yes.’
So where was it? ‘And you gave the memory stick back to him?’
‘No. He must have taken it out of the computer himself.’
‘Did you check?’
‘Er no.’ Her face flushed.
He asked her to do so now. She left the room and Horton gazed around it looking for some indication as to why, after giving his lecture here to an audience of forty-six people, Douglas Spalding had ended up dead in Number One Dock. He was none the wiser when she returned a few minutes later.
‘It’s not there.’
So he must have taken it. ‘Tell me about the lecture?’
She shifted and ran a hand through her hair. ‘It finished at eight thirty then there was ten minutes for questions and the buffet was served outside in the adjoining Woolfson Room, just behind the lift.’
That wasn’t what Horton had asked but it was an easy misunderstanding. ‘I meant the lecture itself.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes darted away. She was clearly nervous. He was doing his best not to intimidate her but he knew that questioning could make some people incredibly uneasy. ‘It was about women in the Navy,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear all of it because I was in and out making sure everything was OK with the caterers. Marcus Felspur was there though; he’s the naval museum’s librarian. He can give you more details.’
Horton recalled seeing the name on the list. He asked to see the buffet area and followed Julie outside to where long thin tables covered with green cloths were stretched out behind a glass partition wall.
‘The guests helped themselves to the buffet,’ she indicated the tables, ‘although the catering staff were here to assist and they served the drinks, then people milled about and spilled out onto the landing.’
‘How did Dr Spalding appear to you last night when he was giving his lecture?’
‘He seemed OK,’ she answered uncertainly, clearly not sure what he wanted her to say. He’d noted earlier her remark about Spalding looking tired and rubbing his forehead and he was beginning to wonder if he’d been taken ill. Perhaps once outside Spalding had tried to make his way to the quayside to get some air but instead he’d staggered against the railings of Number One Dock and had toppled over.
He said, ‘What happened after everyone had left?’
‘Lewis and I did a security sweep of the museum.’
‘Lewis?’ Horton swiftly tried to recall seeing the name on the list.
‘Lewis Morden. He works for the front-of-house staff and was on duty in the CCTV control room last night until we closed.’
Horton’s hopes rose. That meant they might actually have some footage of Spalding leaving. Did Cantelli know this? If he did he would have said though. Had Gideon told Dennings about the cameras last night? Horton remembered seeing the name Morden on the signing-out log. His was the last entry for the Victory Gate, which meant he hadn’t left by car.
‘Can you show me the control room please?’
They descended to the ground floor where Julie pushed open a door leading into a narrow corridor before knocking on a door to her left and entering. Horton followed her into a small room with a bank of eight monitors, showing different areas of the naval museum, and two of the rear entrance. At the desk in front of the screens sat a large woman in her fifties who swiftly quashed Horton’s hopes of a firm sighting of Dr Spalding outside the museum by telling him that none of the footage was recorded. He’d need to speak to Morden, who would be in shortly. But, Horton thought with disappointment, if Lewis Morden had been conducting his security sweep of the museum with Julie Preston then he wouldn’t have seen anything of Spalding on the CCTV cameras, and in all likelihood had probably switched them off by then.
As they left the control room, Horton asked her about the caterers. ‘They parked at the rear entrance, two vans, and they brought the food up the back stairs and prepared it in the staff room, just along the corridor from my office.’
Horton had glimpsed it earlier. He asked to be shown the rear entrance and Julie went ahead of him a short distance along the corridor where she pushed open one of two big white wooden doors. Horton stepped outside and surveyed the narrow road. To his left it ran between the museum and a two-storey red-brick building whose arched windows had been bricked up long ago for a reason he didn’t know and didn’t need to know. Opposite him was a bike shed with a plastic corrugated roof and three cycles, then another building to his right, this time single storey without windows. The road led towards Number One Dock, which he couldn’t see from where they were standing because it was situated further to the right of a brick building, which faced onto the end of the short road. To the left of this Horton could see the top of a pale grey crane and part of a naval ship moored up on the dockside.
