Free A Killing Coast by Pauline Rowson Page B

into the marina on his Harley at nine twenty-one. A few minutes later came the muddy blue van. Horton frowned. He didn’t care for the closeness of the timing, or for the fact he could swear it was the same van that had been parked outside Stanley’s apartment at Lee-on-the-Solent.
    He reached for his phone. He wanted to know if Stanley had seen the van that morning or at any other time. But there was no answer. Horton watched the blue van pull away ten minutes later. He sat back concerned. Had it been following him? He hadn’t seen it on his way to Stanley’s flat or anywhere else since yesterday morning, and certainly not at his marina. And why should someone follow him? Unless they didn’t want him talking to Stanley, and there was only one reason for that, but before he could reason any further the trilling of his phone sliced through his thoughts.
    It was Dr Clayton. At last!
    ‘It’s a suspicious death, Inspector,’ she announced grimly and peremptorily.
    Horton’s heart skipped a beat and he cursed silently. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. ‘Tell me,’ he urged.
    ‘The presence of bleeding in the cranium suggests he was struck violently before entering the water. I found foam in the trachea and main bronchi and evidence of bruising in the neck and chest, which indicates he was alive when submersion occurred. Of course, further tests might confirm the presence of a drug or drink but I don’t think it likely, because I found something else that shouldn’t be there. There was evidence of marks on the wrists and ankles, and I found fragments of a fibre embedded in both, and in his mouth. At some point your body was bound and gagged.’
    Horton swore to himself. His heart sank. ‘But he wasn’t bound when he was found,’ he said, thinking aloud.
    ‘He wasn’t, and neither was he in the water long enough for any restrictions to have rotted. The ties could have become loose while he was in the sea but I’d be very surprised if they had, and even more surprised if the gag had worked its way off. He was only in the sea for about twelve hours, no more than eighteen hours certainly.’
    ‘But you said—’
    ‘That he’d been dead for four or five days. And he has. Decomposition was advanced, which is surprising at this time of the year when the sea temperature is still quite cold, barely reaching forty-seven Fahrenheit, and the colder the water the slower the decomposition. There was also no evidence of adipocere; that’s the yellowish-white substance composed of fatty acids and soaps that forms after death on the fatty parts of the body like the abdomen wall and buttocks. It protects against decomposition.’
    With dread, Horton said, ‘You’re saying that he was killed, his body left somewhere for a few days, then it was untied before being dumped at sea sometime between Sunday night and early Monday morning?’
    ‘Worse.’
    Shit. What could be worse, he groaned silently.
    ‘The evidence points to the fact that the gag was removed but not the wrist and ankle restrictions. While he was bound he was submerged, hence the bruising in the neck and chest and the foam in the trachea as the poor man struggled to free himself. Then came exhaustion, followed by coughing and vomiting, loss of consciousness and death by drowning some minutes later.’
    Horton drew in a deep breath. His gut tightened as Gaye continued.
    ‘I think his captor knocked him out, tied him up and gagged him. When the victim regained consciousness his captor dropped him into the sea, removing the gag but not the wrist and ankle restraints. When the poor man eventually drowned, your killer hauled him out, untied him and left him somewhere on land, which is supported by the patterns of animal and bird life eating into the corpse. The body was then either washed out to sea or taken out to sea. The dress acted as a buoyancy aid allowing the body to float rather than sink as it would normally have done.’
    Did the killer realize