Free Suffocating Sea by Pauline Rowson

Dean speak very highly of him. Coffee, Inspector?’
    ‘No. Thanks.’ He wanted this over with as quickly as possible. But he also wanted to find out more about Gilmore and how he came to know his mother. ‘How old was Reverend Gilmore when he died?’
    ‘Fifty-five.’
    Horton started with surprise. He had expected her to say at least seventy. His mind was racing. How old would his mother be now? God, it was hard to remember. He had her birth certificate, along with a photograph, in that Bluebird toffee tin under his bunk. He hadn’t looked at it in years.
    He guessed that she must be about fifty-eight, if she was still alive. Could Gilmore and his mother have been lovers?
    Could he be Gilmore’s son? But, no, that was ridiculous.
    Why? Horton had never known his father and his mother had never spoken of him. He wasn’t named on his birth certificate. He’d learnt to despise the absent father for abandoning him. And he’d hardened his heart against his mother for deserting him. He didn’t want to revise those opinions. It involved too much emotion. Think of practical matters, he urged himself.
    ‘How did Reverend Gilmore die?’
    ‘A massive stroke. He was taking the Candlelight Christmas Service last night when he collapsed.’
    The church had moved quickly then to put in a replacement vicar and get her into the vicarage.
    She pushed open a door on her left to reveal a forlorn-looking room with a musty smell.
    ‘It’s a bit of mess, see.’
    That was a gross understatement, he thought, staring around at the chaos. He’d seen tidier rooms after they’d been ransacked by burglars.
    Horton followed her as she picked her way through the books and papers that littered the floor. He couldn’t help treading on most of them. Ahead, buried under an avalanche of papers, was a battered old desk and behind it a swivel leather chair.
    Anne Schofield picked up a pile of yellowing newspapers which had been stacked on the floor behind the chair, and as she did so Horton glanced out of the window at the rear garden. It was tiny but seemed even smaller because of the high brick wall that gave on to the naval base. Then he caught sight of a concrete structure in the right-hand corner of the garden.
    ‘It’s an air-raid shelter left over from the war,’ she explained, obviously following the direction of his glance. ‘I don’t know if there’s anything inside it apart from rats. I haven’t had the courage to look yet.’
    He could see four concrete steps leading down to an entrance across which was a sheet of rusting corrugated iron.
    ‘This is what I found.’ Anne pointed at the newspaper on the Reverend Gilmore’s desk.
    There was a large part of him that didn’t want to look, but his police training and conditioning overrode that. There, staring at him, was an article that had been written in the summer of 1995 and along with it a photograph of him holding a medal to mark the Queen’s commendation for bravery. Little good it did him these days, he thought wryly. He had over-powered a thug waving a loaded gun at a postmaster on Hayling Island. He couldn’t remember much about it. Instinct had taken over. He hadn’t even been on duty. In the margin of the newspaper in neat rounded script were the words:
    “Jennifer Horton’s boy?” just as Anne Schofield had told him.
    It was a shock seeing his mother’s name, and with it flooded back the painful memories of hurt and shame as acute as the first time he’d experienced them. It stole the breath from his body and the terrible ache of loneliness that had haunted him most of his life, which had been rekindled by his wrecked marriage, swamped him. He wanted to get out of here. He needed space and air. He wanted to seek refuge on the sea; to pit himself against the elements and let them decide if he should survive.
    ‘There’s more.’ Anne Schofield’s voice pierced his thoughts and with an effort he hauled himself back to the present.
    His heart sank as he