Centred around Oldham’s Wharf and Kendall’s Wharf” off Eastern Road, the following extract from Pauline Rowson**’s The Royal Hotel Murders is quoted with the kind permission of the author. DI Horton and Cantelli are called to a nursing home where an elderly resident, suffering from dementia, claims to have been attacked by an intruder. Horton is ready to dismiss the story as senile ramblings until he discovers that her room-mate has died, the dead woman's belongings are missing and her son, convicted for armed robbery, has been found dead in his cell. Coupled with a series of threatening telephone calls to a television personality, and a mother's conviction that her son's death on Christmas Eve was no accident, Horton finds himself enmeshed in a complex investigation with far-reaching international implications, a web of intrigue, deception and corruption that stretches back into the past:

Horton peered through the torrential rain at the lorries trundling into the yard of Oldham’s Wharf. Beyond them he could see a high bank of shingle and a couple of crane like machines towering over it. The rain was almost horizontal and there would be scant protection from it in Oldham’s yard except in the three Portakabins to the right of the large iron gates. He must have been mad to come here. He should have sent DC Lee with Cantelli; how would Ryan Oldham have reacted to her? he wondered with a slight smile. But he had never been one for ducking out of an unpleasant task and leaving it to his subordinates. He wished, though, that he was wearing his motorbike boots and leather trousers – a wish that was reinforced as he stepped out and straight into a puddle. He pulled up the collar of his sailing jacket, but before he’d even gone five paces he was drenched. Cantelli, with hat, raincoat and wellington boots, looked more suitably attired.

He noted that there were no CCTV cameras over the car park, but as they headed towards the yard he saw one over the electronic gate. He’d never been here before, but he’d run some dinghy sailing courses for kids in the sailing centre just to the right of Oldham’s.

A shape loomed at them from one of the Portakabins and Horton found himself facing a solidly built square man in his late forties, with granite features, wearing a voluminous heavy-duty waterproof coat, green Hunters – which were almost completely covered in muck – and a yellow hard hat.

“About bloody time,” he boomed. “Follow me.”

Oldham, Horton assumed, falling into step behind him, as he stomped across the busy yard oblivious to the rain. With a longing glance at the shelter he was leaving behind, Horton thought with envy of DC Lee in a nice, warm, dry office drinking coffee with a social worker. His feet were soaked and he had long since lost all feeling in his toes. His trousers looked as though they’d been dipped in a bath full of sludge and the water was cascading off his head and over his nose like it was Niagara Falls. Oldham was heading for the shore, where Horton could see a dredger waiting to unload its cargo of gravel. It had obviously come up the harbour on the high tide.

About twenty feet from the quayside Oldham abruptly drew up. “There.” He flung out a podgy finger. Horton followed its direction and found himself staring into a pit about five feet deep and twelve feet square.

Focusing his eyes in the streaming rain, he blinked and ran a hand over his sodden face. To his horror, he was staring at what looked remarkably like a human hand protruding from the gravel.

Pauline Rowson was born in Fareham, but raised and educated in Portsmouth, where she developed an abiding love of the sea which ultimately led her to set her popular crime novels against its ever-changing backdrop. She is the author of twenty-two crime novels – some featuring the rugged and flawed Portsmouth based detective; four in the mystery thriller series featuring Art Marvik a former Royal Marine Commando who is now an undercover investigator for the UK’s National Intelligence Marine Squad (NIMS); and two standalone thrillers, In For The Kill and the award winning In Cold Daylight (both 2006), voted third in an online poll as the most popular novel for World Book Day 2008. She is also the author of the 1950s mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alun Ryga, who is sent out to solve baffling coastal crimes. Her latest novels are Death in the Dunes and Death in the Harbour (both 2020). Perhaps of most interest to Portsmouth readers are Pauline’s Solent Mystery Murders series, featuring D.I. Andy Horton and a host of locations in and around the city. The series of 17 novels includes The Portsmouth Murders The Langstone Harbour Murders and The Farlington Marsh Murders. Pauline is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.

Her crime novels are highly acclaimed in the UK, USA and Commonwealth and have been translated into several languages. Described as multi-layered, fast-paced, and compelling, hailed as ‘The Best of British Crime Fiction’, and commended by The Book Depository for ‘choosing locations and plot lines that are unique to her “marine mysteries” she has set herself apart from the tried and tested formulae within the genre’.

In America, her Portsmouth-based crime novels have been compared in a Booklist review to those ‘in the upper echelons of American procedurals, by Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh and their British counterparts, including the work of Peter Robinson and John Harvey’, and commended for introducing ‘many subtle variations on the procedural formula, including very interesting relationships between Andy and a couple of his superiors’.

Many of Pauline’s characters are drawn from her experiences of life in Portsmouth. From a working-class background, with limited access to books, Pauline is a passionate supporter of public libraries and attributes much of her success to having been introduced to a new small library as a child – The Alderman Lacey Library, Tangier Road, Portsmouth (opened 1964) which gave her a lifelong love of reading, fuelled her ambition to study and inspired her to become a writer. Rowson moved to 2, Teignmouth Road, Copnor at the age of 3, and attended Westover Infants School and Langstone Junior Girls School. Rowson failed the 11 plus but passed the 12 plus in the top tier and was offered a place at Southern Grammar School for Girls (now the Priory School), but, to her parents’ amazement turned down opting to attend Milton Secondary Modern Girls School (now a primary school), a small, excellent girls school that had a GCE O-Level stream. Top of the class throughout her time there, Rowson achieved seven O Levels, and three Grade 1 CSEs. She went on to Highbury College for A-levels but dropped out after a year to marry her husband Bob at the tender age of seventeen. Rowson and her husband, moved out of the city when Bob joined the RAF Police and then Hampshire Fire and Rescue as a firefighter. During this time, Rowson studied English and other subjects at night school, returning to Highbury College to achieve a HNC in Business Studies with Marketing, and gained a postgraduate Marketing Diploma at Southampton Solent University.

The Rowsons lived in Stanley Avenue, Copnor for a short time after returning to Portsmouth, and Rowson worked in Portsmouth Jobcentre, Lake Road, and the Professional and Executive Recruitment, Arundel Street, which was part of the Manpower Services Commission (Civil Service) until it was privatised in the 1980s. From 1992 until 2006, Rowson ran her own successful Marketing and PR business with many Portsmouth clients.

When Rowson isn't writing (which isn’t often) she can be found walking the coastal paths on the Isle of Wight and around Langstone and Chichester Harbours looking for a good place to put a (fictional) body.

If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about any of the map entries, please contact the Map Director, Mark Frost: mark.frost@port.ac.uk