Free Death Surge by Pauline Rowson

horrified and stricken countenance at discovering the news that his nephew was an arsonist, and he could see Johnnie’s terrified expression when he realized what serious trouble he was in. Tyler Godfray and Stuart Jayston had very quickly owned up, but Ryan Spencer, with previous convictions for theft and being drunk and disorderly, and Kyle Proctor, with convictions for vandalism, theft and assault, were harder to crack … although not that hard.
    In the Magistrates’ Court Horton had watched Johnnie trying valiantly to hold back the tears, torn between wanting to look at his mother for comfort and reassurance and avoiding her glance for fear it might cause him to break down completely. Isabella, stiff and upright, had sat immobile, as though lack of movement might anaesthetize her to the pain she was feeling for her only child.
    Although neither Stuart, Tyler nor Johnnie had criminal records, Horton, like Cantelli, suspected that each had committed petty criminal offences before; they’d just not been caught. They were given community sentences and ordered to work on the community payback scheme, while Ryan was given a detention and training order of one year, spending six months in the secure centre for young offenders and six months serving in the community, and Kyle, with his more serious previous convictions, was given a custodial sentence and sent to a secure centre for young offenders for eighteen months.
    Horton looked up to see Cantelli return from the canteen with a sandwich and large paper cup of tea. Johnnie’s community payback had been to clean graffiti off the underpasses in Portsmouth, a soul-destroying task made shameful by the fluorescent vest he and others had to wear, advertising to the world their criminal background. The lad had been ashamed and humiliated, his confidence shattered, his grief at his father’s death deepened. He had let everyone down, his family, his dead father, himself and his mother. He had become withdrawn, he’d stopped eating and Isabella, clearly distraught at her son’s descent into depression, had gone to her brother at her wits’ end. Cantelli had tried talking to Johnnie, but nothing had any effect. Horton had thought back to his own long days of misery before his foster parents, Bernard and Eileen Litchfield, had given him love, stability and trust. But Bernard had also given him the idea of becoming a police officer like him, and it was in the police force that Horton had his first taste of sailing. It had transformed his life. He’d thought it might do the same for Johnnie.
    Go About, a sailing charity run by Don Winscome, had changed Johnnie’s life completely and, despite what Harriet Eames had said about Johnnie possibly being led astray again, Horton just couldn’t see him returning to crime after that bitter and shattering early experience. But the others? He couldn’t recall coming across them recently, so perhaps they’d stayed clean.
    He keyed the names into the Police National Computer and discovered that Kyle Proctor had been killed in a car accident on the M27 on Fareham Hill, along with one other person, a man, who had been standing beside his broken down vehicle on the hard shoulder awaiting assistance. The autopsy on Proctor had shown he had been well over the drink legal limit for driving and witnesses claimed he’d been texting on his mobile phone immediately before the incident. A fact that was borne out from the telephone records. What a bloody fool, and what a waste of two lives.
    Tyler Godfray and Stuart Jayston had no further convictions. Ryan Spencer, however, had two more petty offences to his name. The last one committed a year ago for which he’d escaped with a community sentence. According to their records Spencer was living in Paulsgrove, a large council estate to the north of Portsmouth, while Godfray lived in Gosport, across the harbour from Oyster Quays, and Jayston at Havant, a town to the east of Portsmouth. Maybe they should