Death Surge by Pauline Rowson Read Free Book Online

Portsmouth in the morning. ‘I’ll call in at the marina office at Oyster Quays to check if Johnnie showed up early or late and missed Masefield. There’ll be no one there now,’ he added, pre-empting Cantelli volunteering to do so after he’d been to the railway station. ‘I’ll see if the control room has a copy of the CCTV coverage for the boardwalk for Wednesday afternoon.’
    ‘I can do that tonight.’
    Horton relented. ‘OK.’ He knew that if they had it then Cantelli would spend the night scouring the video for signs of Johnnie. But then he’d have done the same if it had been his nephew.
    Cantelli added, ‘I’ll also check with the city office to see if they still have the recordings for along the Hard.’
    Horton didn’t think they would unless there had been a fight or theft there that day or night. He told Cantelli to check the log, but he knew that nothing had been reported to CID because he’d have remembered, even though he and Cantelli had been embroiled in a murder investigation last Wednesday.
    Cantelli said, ‘PC Allen can’t find any record of Johnnie having been admitted to any of the hospitals in and around London.’
    Horton knew that wasn’t necessarily a comfort. Quite the reverse. He said, ‘Call me after you’ve been to the railway station or if anything occurs to you; it doesn’t matter what time it is.’
    Cantelli said he would and rang off. Horton sat back with a worried frown. Perhaps Johnnie had never got on that train in London. And if that was the case then God help them because people could vanish without trace in the vast overcrowded city. Just as his mother had vanished in a much smaller city, Portsmouth. But Portsmouth bordered on the Solent and that could hide the dead for years, sometimes forever.
    He rose and stretched his back, turning to stare out of the window at the bustling street that led down to the sea. It had grown dark. His mind travelled back to the council tower block he’d lived in with his mother. According to a neighbour Jennifer had left the flat at midday dressed up, wearing make-up and had been happy. It had been too early for her to go to work at the casino. After coming home from school and grabbing something to eat he’d sat in front of the telly and played with some toys until he was tired and it was time to go to bed. He did it often because his mother worked until the early hours of the morning, but when he awoke the next day she wasn’t there.
    His stomach lurched and his fists involuntarily clenched as he recalled that night and the many others following it which he’d tried so very hard to obliterate from his memory, with some success. He didn’t want to remember because he didn’t want to feel the hurt and the emptiness of despair. Perhaps that’s what Scott Masefield meant when he said they never discussed the past. It only brought pain.
    No one had thought to question why she hadn’t shown up for work that night or the nights after that. The casino owner was dead now and the business closed. Those who had worked there had scattered far and wide and would be highly unlikely to remember her. It would involve too much time tracing them, and for what? Nothing.
    He sat down and retrieved the black and white photograph from the pocket of his trousers, recalling Quentin Amos’s words:
The second from the right with a beard is Antony Dormand; next to him again with a beard is Rory Mortimer …
I don’t know what happened to them or where they are now but you’ll probably be able to find out
.
    Horton had checked the Police National Computer but neither man had a criminal record. He hadn’t had time to run them through the other databases to establish where they worked or even if they were still alive, but he needed to make time. He sat back frowning in thought. Something was niggling at him. What, though? Was it connected to what Amos had said about the two men or a comment that Lord Eames had made?
She was friendly with one of the