Free A Killing Coast by Pauline Rowson Page A

headed straight for his boat, deciding that the items he’d collected from Yately’s flat could be sent to the Fingerprint Bureau tomorrow. It was late, it had been a hectic day, and he hoped that sleep would come easily. But it didn’t. His head was too full of Adrian Stanley, of Avril and Russell Glenn, and of Jennifer Horton.
    Tuesday
    The seagulls were squealing in the harbour when he woke the next morning with a muggy head and with a determination to concentrate on getting to the bottom of Colin Yately’s death. Dr Clayton would have the autopsy results today which might help to make things a little clearer.
    By the time Cantelli returned from the ferry and hovercraft ticket offices Horton had telephoned Hannah Yately and told her what he’d found in her father’s flat, which was nothing, and what he’d taken away. He said he’d let her know the moment they had positive confirmation and prayed she wouldn’t ask him why he wanted the photograph albums. She didn’t.
    Cantelli plonked himself in the seat across Horton’s desk. ‘There’s no record of Colin Yately travelling on either the Fastcat ferry, the car ferry or the Hovercraft but he could have paid by cash. However, no one I spoke to in the ticket office and none of the marshalling staff recognized him, so it’s likely he never reached here.’
    ‘Alive that is. He almost made it dead,’ Horton said sombrely. ‘I didn’t find any evidence in his flat to suggest he was into cross-dressing.’
    ‘Perhaps he dressed up elsewhere because he was scared his daughter might find the clothes at his flat. He could have used a beach hut or been at a house near the sea or on a boat.’
    ‘Alone or with someone?’
    Cantelli shrugged. ‘If he was with someone who shared his passion, he might be afraid or too ashamed to come forward. He could be married. Yately ended up accidentally in the sea leaving his keys and other identification in his trousers.’
    ‘But why remove the keys from that fob?’
    ‘Perhaps he’d put them on a new fob some time ago, only Hannah never noticed. He didn’t want to discard the fob with the picture of his daughter in it because it was too precious to him, and that he always kept on him no matter what.’
    Horton glanced at the photograph of Emma on his desk. Yes, he could understand that. Yately’s daughter might be all that the poor man had had left and he’d needed the picture to remind himself he wasn’t alone. Or was that how he felt, he thought gloomily? Only he didn’t carry a picture of Emma. He’d learnt in the job a long time ago to have few personal effects on him in case they could be used against him, or destroyed or stolen.
    He wondered how soon they’d get a preliminary report from Dr Clayton. He said, ‘Ask Walters if he’s managed to speak to Yately’s dentist and his GP.’ Horton had also detailed Walters to get Yately’s comb and the fountain pen over to the Fingerprint Bureau. Thankfully, Walters had reported that there had been no further house burglaries overnight. Perhaps the extra patrols had deterred the robbers, but they couldn’t keep them up. Horton called up all they had on the case on screen and began to trawl through it, looking for anything that Walters and Cantelli had missed and which could give them a hint of who it might be. He found nothing but sooner or later their burglar would slip up; unfortunately that meant another householder having to suffer the misery of being robbed.
    He picked up the disc containing the CCTV footage of the blue van seen at the marina in Gosport and popped it into his computer. He saw that it covered the period from eight in the morning until when Horton had collected it just before one yesterday afternoon. A handful of cars arrived between eight o’clock and nine, and some of them belonged to the staff judging by the direction in which they headed after alighting. Two other cars entered: a top of the range BMW and a Range Rover, then Horton swung