The Headhunters (13 page)

Looks were exchanged around the table. Gemma’s ‘simple as that’ hadn’t convinced everyone.

‘Even if it happened like you say, she’d fight for her life, struggle like hell,’ Rick said. ‘You don’t drown straight away.’

‘And we know she must have fought because it said in the paper there were marks on her neck and shoulders where he held her down. All the time he’s thinking how am I going to deal with this if I let go? He’s attacked her, tried to murder her. If he stops now he’s going to get done for attempted murder and God knows what. Better to let her drown. Then at least he has a fighting chance of getting away scot free. And he has. He pulled it off.’

‘So far,’ Jake said.

‘You think they’ll find him? They don’t have any clues. It happened in the water, so the traces are minimal.’

‘Now you’re talking sense,’ Rick said to Gemma. ‘The fuzz have two ways of catching criminals. One is through informers. The other is DNA, and there ain’t none.’

Jake wasn’t so sure. ‘Someone will have seen them together.’

‘What, earlier, you mean?’ Rick was still on his best behaviour. He had the grace to give it a moment’s consideration. ‘Maybe. And you think they’ll come forward?’

‘When her picture gets in the papers.’

‘And on TV,’ Jo said, to support Jake. ‘I’m confident they’ll catch up with him.’

‘Personally,’ Rick said, ‘I hope not.’

‘Why?’ Jo said in disbelief. ‘He’s a killer.’

‘One of us, in other words.’

‘Rick, that’s bullshit.’ He’d just lost all the credit he’d been earning. ‘Just because we had a light-hearted fantasy trip the other day about Gem’s appalling boss you can’t lump us in with a real-life murderer.’

‘Can’t I?’ Rick said with a triumphant smile, as if she’d sprung the trap. ‘Face it, we all had ancestors who killed to survive. It’s in the genes, yours and mine and everyone else’s, kiddo.’

‘You’re talking about cavemen?’

‘Survivors. The ones who came out winners. Quit talking about killers as if they’re another species. You may not care to admit it, but you’d take another person’s life if you were driven to it.’ He was in earnest now. This wasn’t idle chat.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Jo said, matching him for seriousness. ‘Those ancestors you’re talking about are prehistoric. Haven’t you heard of civilization? Mankind has moved on. The great majority of us want a peaceful existence. Yes, there are horrible exceptions, but those who commit them are outcasts and should be treated as such. What do you say, Gem?’

‘I say he’s winding you up, sweetie.’

‘I meant every word,’ Rick said. ‘Look in any playground and you’ll see it in action, the little psychopaths bullying, stealing, lying, fighting. We call it antisocial behaviour as if it doesn’t apply to the rest of us, but when he hits me my instinct is to hit him back, not walk away.’

‘Rick, you made your point,’ Gemma said. ‘We’re not going to steal your toys, okay? If you and me are going to Portsmouth, isn’t it time we thought about leaving?’

AT HEN’S request, the crime scene investigator who had supervised the search on behalf of Hampshire CID was at Fiona’s house. He was in a bandsman’s uniform, blue with gold epaulettes and a gold stripe down his trousers. ‘I’m a trombonist in the town band and we’ve got a concert tonight,’ he explained.

‘Good of you to come. I won’t keep you long. I gather this job was dusted and done some days ago?’ Hen said after introducing herself.

‘The day after the body was found in the Mill Pond.’

‘Did anything useful come out of it?’

‘Nothing obvious,’ he said. ‘If there was a struggle it didn’t take place in here.’

‘What have you taken away for analysis? Plenty of prints, hairs, and fibres?’

‘As many as we need. Some of her used clothing. I’ll give you the list. We’ve left enough to keep you interested. The computer, address book, phonepad, camera, handbag.’

‘Was she an organised person?’

‘She was an accountant, wasn’t she? The interior was cleaned regularly. Everything had its place. Even the boy’s room is tidy.’

‘Did you find out how long she’s lived here?’

‘Two years, I gather. The place is rented from a firm in Havant. Beautiful location. Probably cost her.’

‘Her life,’ Hen said.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Is there any sign she had a visitor before she was murdered? Cups, glasses, tinnies?’

He shook his head.

‘No break-in?’

‘Only where the plod forced the front door. They left plenty of traces, by the way. No help at all to my team.’

‘Not my plod,’ she said. ‘Emsworth’s. I’m from Chichester, where we flit through a scene like butterflies.’

‘I’d pay good money to see that.’

In fifteen minutes, she and Gary had the place to themselves. The CSI’s zinc dust was everywhere.

‘Talk about leaving traces,’ she said as they entered the living room. ‘Are you any good with computers?’

‘Reasonably,’ Gary said.

‘See what you can bring up. And I don’t mean football results. I’ll be poking around upstairs.’

The main bedroom said plenty about Fiona. A queen-size divan with pink chiffon draped in an inverted V above the bed head. Lace-edged pillows. Quilt in matching pink, with rosebud motif. Television, phone, radio, bowl of now-wrinkled white grapes. In the bedside drawer, a box of New Berry Fruits, two Danielle Steels, and a Rampant Rabbit vibrator. White laminate kidney-shaped dressing table with triple mirrors on which the SOCOs had excelled themselves. Enough La Prairie products for a month of makeovers, plus some perfumes Hen had never heard of. She was sure of one thing: not-from-your-local-supermarket was written all over them.

The clothes in the wardrobe had been chosen shrewdly for work and play. Several accountant-style suits, formal, sober and expensively lined. A dozen or so dresses that looked frolicsome even on hangers. There wasn’t much Hen would have called neutral. The shoes and boots, too, stored in hanging fabric compartments, could be rated as hot and cold, with nothing lukewarm.

She understood what the crime scene chief had meant about tidiness. Everything folded and stacked like a new boutique before the first customers walked in. Easy to use, and easy to examine. Yet Hen had a premonition, soon confirmed, that nothing like a letter or a diary would be tucked under the contents. The knicker drawer was precisely that, twenty or more pairs, sorted by colour. If Fiona had any secrets they wouldn’t be here.

She called downstairs to Gary, ‘How goes it?’

‘It doesn’t, guv. You have to know the password to get in. Most people don’t bother with one.’

‘This lady would,’ she said. ‘Leave it, then. We’ll get a computer geek to do the trick.’

‘Want me upstairs?’

She smiled to herself. ‘No. I’ll be down in a mo.’

Time to take a look at the boy’s room. To her credit, Fiona had decorated it with imagination, a ceiling of stars and a wall with spaceships zooming upwards. Another wall had Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper, and the bed itself was shaped as an engine. There were toys in boxes and some books on a shelf. None of the disorder you expected from a small boy. Hen’s guess was that, on the day the child went to stay with his father, Fiona had immediately tidied everything.

Downstairs again, she picked up the large brown leather handbag and emptied the contents onto the kitchen table. ‘These look like filing cabinet keys. See if any fit the one in the corner,’ she told Gary.

The purse had more than two hundred pounds in notes. She started checking the plastic.

‘First one I tried,’ Gary announced.

‘Good—and are the files nicely labelled, as I would expect?’

‘Alphabetical.’

‘See what there is under C for car.’ Meanwhile Hen was studying the driving licence—a first sight of the dead woman’s picture. The red hair looked spectacular even under the laminate. A pale, solemn face, with neat features.

‘There’s a brochure for a Xsara Picasso,’ Gary said.

‘A brochure? Nothing else?’

‘That’s all there is, guv.’

‘She had a licence. There must be some documentation. Look under R for registration.’

He wasn’t long in announcing, ‘Not here.’

At Hen’s suggestion he tried C for Citröen, P for Picasso, and X for Xsara, all without success.

‘Maybe she keeps all the docs in the car. Did you happen to notice if there was a Picasso in the road outside?’ she asked. ‘The house doesn’t have a garage, so she’d be bound to park it on the street.’

‘I didn’t see one, guv.’

‘Odd. Surely a woman like this would use a car for work. Check the vehicle index on the PNC, would you, Gary?’

Tucked among the credit cards was a photo of a small boy beside a sandcastle. He had red hair and gaps in his teeth. The smile rated high on the aaah-factor.

Gary soon had the information. ‘Just as we thought, she owns a Picasso. Silver, two-thousand-six reg.’

‘Owned,’ Hen said. ‘Why don’t you take a short walk along the street and see if we missed it somehow?’

While he was outside, she listened to the answerphone. Someone called Gemma from work had called twice asking Fiona to get in touch and enquiring if she was all right. There were various cold calls. Nothing from the ex. Presumably he hadn’t needed to call. He would have assumed all was well until he returned the son to the house.

Gary returned, and he had a he-man with him, a middle-aged skinhead with muscles and a confident manner. ‘This is Mr Bell, from next door.’

‘Francisco,’ Mr Bell said with a defiant stare suggesting he wasn’t wholly comfortable with the name. ‘My old lady is Italian. She always said I could call myself Francis if I didn’t like it, but I said that’s a girl’s name.’

‘Frank?’ Hen suggested.

‘Then the kids at school call you Frankenstein. No thanks. I’ll stick with what I was given.’

Gary said, ‘I was asking Mr Bell about the victim’s car.’

‘Nice motor,’ Francisco said. ‘Two-thousand-six reg. She used to park it out front.’

‘It isn’t there now,’ Hen said. ‘We were wondering where it might be.’

‘Can’t help you.’

‘She didn’t rent a garage, I suppose?’

‘No idea.’

‘The keys aren’t in the house and neither are the documents.’

‘You think someone nicked it? Was that what she was killed for?’

‘Too early to say,’ Hen said. ‘You’re from next door, are you, Francisco? Were you here on the day she died?’

‘Might have been. If you’re asking if I saw anything, I didn’t. I work as a security officer in Portsmouth most nights. Catch up on my sleep next day, so I miss a lot of what goes on.’

‘You met Fiona, I expect?’

‘A few times, yeah.’

‘A good neighbour, was she?’

‘I s’pose. There wasn’t no trouble, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Quiet, then?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you notice any visitors?’

‘Her ex called once a week with the sprog.’

‘Their child, you mean? Did you meet him, the ex-husband?’

He shook his head. ‘No reason to.’

‘What about other callers? Anyone you noticed?’

‘What do you think I am, some old git with nothing to do but stare out the window?’

‘Perhaps you’d answer my question, Francisco.’

‘I didn’t see squat, okay?’

‘No, it isn’t okay,’ Hen said. ‘I’ve seen a report stating that you and a work colleague of Fiona’s called in to report her missing and you were both outside the house when the patrol car turned up.’

He didn’t even blink at that. ‘So?’

‘So you not only saw one of her callers, but you spoke to the woman and agreed to call nine-nine-nine. Don’t tell me you didn’t see squat when it’s on record that you did.’

He shrugged. ‘That babe woke me up, didn’t she? I’ve never seen her, before or since. What’s the big deal?’

‘Fiona was murdered a few yards from your front door, that’s the deal,’ Hen said, increasingly impatient with him. His size and looks didn’t intimidate her. ‘Waste any more of my time and you’ll get nicked.’

He held up both hands. ‘All right, lady. Stay cool.’

‘Do you have a key?’

‘Come again.’

‘Key—to this house?’

‘No. Why should I?’

‘Neighbours often do—neighbours who can be trusted.’

‘That’s below the belt.’

‘You say you’re a security man. Position of trust. You look like a bouncer to me. Is that what you do?’

‘What’s wrong with that? Look, I come here voluntary when your boy asked me. I don’t have to listen to this.’

‘Francisco, it looks as if someone stole Fiona’s car. Not only that, but they came inside the house and took the registration certificate and all the documentation relating to the car. They didn’t break in. They let themselves in with a key.’

‘Got to be the killer, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘He dumps her in the Mill Pond and grabs her handbag and uses the key to let himself in here. Then he gets into the files, takes the paperwork for the car, and makes his getaway. He can flog the car later.’

‘Sounds good,’ Hen said, ‘but there’s a problem with it. If he leaves in her car, what did he do with his own?’

‘Didn’t have one.’

‘How did he get here, then?’

‘Dunno. Bus?’

‘In all the time I’ve been investigating crime I’ve never heard of a killer arriving at the scene by bus.’