Death Surge by Pauline Rowson Read Free Book Online Page A

men. James Royston, I think his name was.
But Amos had said none of them had been Jennifer’s lovers. Amos had believed there was someone else. Who did Horton believe? Perhaps neither of them.
    He fetched a coffee from the machine in the deserted staff room and returned to his desk. He was thankful that the station was quiet and that no one was the slightest bit interested in him, probably because they were all too busy with the crowds outside. That suited him fine.
    Drinking his coffee he called up the Internet and soon was reading about the devastating fire that had swept through the second storey wing of the Victorian built Goldsworth Psychiatric Hospital in Surrey in 1968 which had killed Zachary Benham and twenty-three other men. Had Benham been a patient, or had he been working there after he had left or had been expelled from the London School of Economics?
    Horton read on. The fire had started in a locked secure ward, housing mainly elderly bedridden men. Zachary Benham must only have been about twenty-three. There was no indication that this was an institution for the criminally insane, and neither had Horton any intelligence that Benham had committed a crime for which he’d been judged insane and locked up – but then, he silently admitted, he had very little intelligence about him or the others. His question was only partly answered when he went on to read that it was normal practice in the 1960s to lock patients in their wards. The poor buggers didn’t stand a chance, he thought, swallowing his coffee.
    Had someone had Zachary Benham committed, or had he committed himself? Had he been taking drugs, and had the drugs scrambled his brain? Perhaps the same drugs that Royston had taken and died from a year later? He’d have to do more research, and that would have to wait. It was late. He was exhausted. He shut down the computer and headed through the teeming streets towards his yacht, the happy crowds irritating him and clashing with his sombre mood. He was about to descend into the cabin when a voice on the pontoon hailed him.
    ‘I wondered if I could have a word, sir.’
    He turned to find himself facing Agent Harriet Eames. What else could he say except, ‘OK.’
    ‘Scott Masefield told me you’re looking for one of his crew who’s gone missing,’ she said, climbing on-board. Her blue eyes looked troubled, and her fair face was creased with concern. He thought it genuine, but that didn’t erase his suspicions that her father might have sent her here to find out what he knew about Jennifer’s disappearance, or rather about her father’s involvement in it.
    She was wearing tailored navy blue trousers, deck shoes and a tight fitting blue and white T-shirt, all of which showed off her figure to perfection … and it was a nice figure. He caught the soft smell of her perfume as she descended into the cabin, and he thought of Sarah Conway. Not because she had worn perfume or smelt as soft as Harriet Eames, but both women heightened the ache of his loneliness. He’d been too long on his own. His marriage was over. Catherine was never going to be his again, and he didn’t want her, but he wanted something, someone. He’d thought that he had found that person not long after the breakdown of his marriage, in January. But Thea Carlsson, a woman he’d got close to during an investigation into her brother’s death, had returned to Sweden, her home country. She hadn’t been ready for a commitment, and neither had he, but he missed her and she’d made it difficult to find her. He hadn’t tried.
    Harriet Eames was standing so close to him that he had only to reach out and touch her. He had the feeling she wouldn’t resist. But it was a boundary he couldn’t cross, not with her. Her father had made any relationship with his daughter impossible.
    ‘Is it true that the missing man is Sergeant Cantelli’s nephew?’
    ‘How do you know that?’ They hadn’t given Masefield that information, and Harriet Eames