The Headhunters (17 page)

‘You said it all last night. Go away.’ She started up the stairs and put her key in the lock.

‘We’ll leave it like that, then, ‘ Gemma said, as calm as she’d ever sounded. ‘If you don’t want to hear it from me, I’ll have that nice cup of tea with Doreen and put her in the picture. Then she can tell you later.’

Doreen said at once, ‘What a splendid idea. Come in, dear, and I’ll get the kettle on.’

Shit and derision. God only knew what Gemma would say to Doreen if she didn’t get her way. ‘All right,’ Jo said, outwitted. ‘I’ll give you five minutes maximum.’

Gemma beamed at Doreen and followed Jo up the stairs.

‘That was underhand,’ Jo said as soon as the door was closed, ‘taking advantage of an old lady—and of me.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I notice you moved your car to put me off my guard.’

‘That isn’t fair, Jo. I’m trying to mend fences here. We have to talk. We’re friends, for God’s sake. Can’t leave it as we did last night.’

‘So that’s why you’re here. You’re so bloody obvious.’

‘I know you wouldn’t grass up your friends.’

‘Don’t count on it.’

But the tone of Jo’s voice had given Gemma the reassurance she had come to hear. The relief was written all over her face. ‘You obviously got back all right. Was it a rough crossing?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Yes, I could see you were shocked out of your skull, but when a death is involved there’s no way of putting it gently. We thought you had a right to know, considering you were in on this from the beginning.’

‘Hang about. Don’t make me into an accessory,’ Jo said. ‘Murder was never seriously discussed that night in Chicago Rock, and you know it. What we talked about was just a joke in very bad taste.’

‘Too right,’ Gemma said. ‘Pity Rick didn’t cotton on that we were joking.’

‘What are you saying now—that you weren’t part of it?’

‘I bear some responsibility; of course I do. I shouldn’t have floated the idea of killing Mr Cartwright, even for a laugh. But we both under-estimated Rick. Jo, he’s nuts.’

‘You’re changing your tune, aren’t you?’ Jo said. ‘Last night you were calling him some sort of genius.’

‘That’s true. I had to act up. To be honest, he scares me. I don’t know what he’d do if I told him I disapproved. Is that weak of me? I suppose it is. I’m worried sick.’

This was a turnaround, and Jo might have been impressed if Gemma had not been so two-faced. ‘Report him yourself, then.’

Gemma gaped at the suggestion. ‘Turn him in? I daren’t. He’d report me. And you, too, I reckon.’

She was hell-bent on spreading the guilt.

‘Haven’t I made clear that this has nothing to do with me?’ Jo said.

‘To me, but not to Rick. You and I know we were joking. He doesn’t. With his tunnel vision he’s convinced he was acting on our suggestions.’

This, at least, had a spark of truth. Rick had never understood the humour in plotting Mr Cartwright’s death. He took things literally. All he’d been able to contribute was the grisly story of the woman eaten by pigs. Jo recalled having to shut him up when he’d wanted to repeat it.

‘You say he scares you, but you told me last night you’d slept with him.’

‘I know.’ Gemma shook her head. ‘How dumb was that?’

‘It’s true, then?’

‘It was only a shag, Jo.’

‘But he’d just told you he was a murderer. How could you do it?’

‘You had to be there.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Really. I was, like, scared shitless when I realised what he was saying was true, that he’d topped Mr Cartwright. For real. I mean, it was the worst moment of my life. Terrifying. But then he goes, “I took the body to the paper mill and it’s gone without trace.” I was so relieved that I hugged him. Misery to joy in two seconds flat. Next thing we were ripping each other’s clothes off.’

This Jo could believe. The best sex she’d ever had was to make up after a bitter argument. ‘So you’re hoping no one will ever find out. Haven’t you thought that you’re an obvious suspect, working for Mr Cartwright, and being treated unfairly?’

‘There’s no corpse,’ Gemma said, folding her arms. ‘Nobody can say for sure what happened to him.’

‘That’s no guarantee. There have been cases of people being convicted without a body turning up.’

A pause. ‘You’re trying to scare me now.’

‘Gemma, I have no interest in scaring you. Why don’t you get a grip on reality?’

‘What, and run to the police? You haven’t, so why should I?’

‘That’s your decision.’

‘I won’t shop Rick.’

‘You still like him, don’t you?’

She plucked at the lobe of her ear. ‘He did all this for me, Jo.’

‘All this? A cold-blooded killing?’

‘He’s not cold-blooded with me.’

Amazing, Jo thought, what some women are willing to overlook in men who play around with them. ‘You don’t know how dangerous this is. I’m telling you now, I don’t want to be near him ever again.’

‘Your choice.’

‘Right—my choice, Gemma. And don’t come running to me when your choice gets ugly with you.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Gemma sighed, shrugged, and turned away as if she was hard done by.

But she’d got what she came for, Jo reckoned: the reassurance that nothing had been said to the police.

The birdbrain left without saying any more. To report to Rick, no doubt.

fifteen

‘ARE WE ALL HERE now?’ Hen asked. Every space was taken in the incident room for Tuesday’s early-morning briefing, but she had a feeling someone was missing.

‘Ready to go, guv,’ Stella said without quite answering the question. She would always cover up for a colleague.

‘Let’s crack away, then. Most of you will know that the bouncer has been bounced out of here by his crafty solicitor. Am I bothered? No. We got enough out of Francisco to convince me he was a minor player. We’ll do him for car theft later.’ She paused, as if to draw a line under Francisco, then spoke in a slow, grave tone she rarely used. ‘But the killer remains at liberty and I’m increasingly concerned that someone else is going to die. At our last meeting, somebody—I think it was you, Paddy’—she made brief eye contact with Sergeant Murphy—‘suggested we might be dealing with a serial killer and I shot you down in flames because two similar murders doesn’t amount to a series.’

Murphy—not normally reticent—had the sense to nod and say nothing. The boss was leading up to something.

Her voice sounded taut. ‘Confession time. Paddy’s words are starting to haunt me. I can’t deny the risk that another drowning may happen, and it’s our duty to prevent it. There’s an intelligent brain behind these crimes, a cunning, cruel determination to dispose of the victims by a method almost unknown in serial killing. It’s cunning because a drowning leaves few traces of the perpetrator. And cruel because it’s a slow, agonizing death.’ She paused, and there was an extraordinary stillness in the room as each of the team imagined being held under water, fighting for breath, swallowing, struggling, becoming weaker and knowing this was certain death.

‘What’s so unusual,’ Hen continued, ‘is that the murderer has to find ingenious ways of getting his victims into water. Meredith Sentinel appears to have gone into the sea by choice, or by invitation. Fiona Halliday was fully dressed, so she must have been forced into the Mill Pond, but the bruising was all related to the drowning.’ She paused, then added almost as an afterthought, ‘Or maybe he doesn’t work like that at all. Pursuing this serial killing idea, the choice of victim may be unimportant. The killer may choose the place of execution and wait, spiderlike, for some hapless woman to come along.’

She took a moment for them to absorb the image. ‘I hope and pray it isn’t so random, because that will be hell to crack. I’m going to put even more pressure on you all to bring an end to this. I feel in my bones that we’re on a countdown and someone else is due to suffer if we can’t stop it.’ She put her hands to her face and patted her cheeks as if to restore the upbeat persona she usually presented to the world. ‘And so, Paddy . . . ’

‘Ma’am?’ DS Murphy had a told-you-so expression.

‘I asked you to check all the recent drownings in Sussex and Hampshire. What’s the picture?’

His face changed. He hadn’t expected to find himself centre stage. He cleared his throat, a sure indicator of loss of nerve. ‘I went over five years of records as you asked.’

‘And?’

‘Thirty-seven drownings, almost all of them accidental and more than half young children.’

‘Nothing homicidal?’

‘There was that Portsmouth millionaire who drowned his lover in their private pool, but he’s doing a life sentence for it. I looked at a couple of cases where open verdicts were returned, but no. In all honesty I couldn’t find anything similar to our drownings.’

‘A negative report, then?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘After this, how do you feel about your theory?’

Paddy blinked twice. This was like a slapped face after the earlier praise. ‘I would have to say it looks less likely.’

‘Unless the killer moved here recently.’

‘From another county?’ The sergeant’s features registered relief, but that changed rapidly to panic as he viewed the prospect of checking the figures for the remaining fifty-three counties in England and Wales.

‘Or from overseas. If you need civilian help, let me know.’ Hen said. ‘It’s top priority. Meanwhile, we do the business on the suspects we have.’ She looked to her left. ‘Stella, you were checking the movements of Dr Sentinel—the husband, not the victim— and you got through to someone else at the St Petersburg hotel where he was staying. Update us on that.’

Stella had already told Hen what she’d discovered. This was for the benefit of everyone else. ‘Yes, they eventually let me speak to someone from housekeeping, who admitted that after the first night of the conference Sentinel’s bed wasn’t slept in until the night before he came home.’

‘Got him!’ someone said from the back of the room.

‘Let’s not get carried away,’ Hen said in a mild, but effective rebuke. ‘In theory, he could have got back here and carried out the murder—a scenario we considered before. But Stella also checked every airline passenger list and nobody of his name appears.’

‘False passport?’ Murphy suggested.

‘Possible, but unlikely unless he was into some other racket. Professional criminals know how to acquire false passports. I doubt if an academic wanting to murder his wife would have the contacts.’

‘So what was he up to, if he wasn’t flying home?’ Murphy said.

‘Sightseeing,’ said Larry Soames, a laid-back DC known for rubbishing everything he deemed farfetched.

‘We’ll ask him,’ Hen said, echoing Larry’s throwaway tone. ‘He’ll be coming to Chichester for the inquest and I’ve got to be there, too. When’s that, Stell?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘Is it?’ Her manner changed. ‘God, is it Tuesday already?’

‘It’s sure to be adjourned.’

‘Of course, but it’s an opportunity.’ She glanced down to see if she was wearing something suitable for the courtroom. Her grey trouser suit would have been better. Maybe she’d slip home at lunchtime. Needing to get her thoughts back on track, she turned towards the display board. ‘We have a picture here of the missing man who is also firmly in the frame. Cartwright, the employer of the second victim, Fiona Halliday. He was seen leaving the print works with her on the Friday afternoon and that was the last sighting of either of them alive. Is he another victim, or could he be the killer? Stella, you searched his house in Apuldram.’

‘Me, and a CSI team,’ Stella said, addressing the team rather than Hen. This process of keeping everyone in the loop was vital. ‘It was all in good order. No signs of violence. He’s a tidy guy. Even washes up his breakfast things before leaving the house.’

‘How do you know it was breakfast?’

‘I just assumed he didn’t go back to the house after the Friday because of all the mail on the mat.’

‘Okay. We’re getting nowhere fast. Anything else on Cartwright?’

‘They looked especially for traces of Fiona’s DNA.’

‘Where—in the bed?’

‘There, yes, and the sitting room downstairs. The results aren’t back yet, of course. For what it’s worth, I didn’t see anything to suggest he’d had a woman there recently.’

‘It’s in Apuldram. Do I know the place? I don’t think I do.’

‘South of Chichester, between the Witterings Road and the harbour. You must have been to the pub at Dell Quay.’

‘I have,’ Hen said, ‘but you don’t have to put it as if I’m familiar with every watering hole in the county.’

‘Well, Dell Quay is Apuldram,’ Stella said.

‘Is he a boating type?’

Stella’s eyes widened. ‘He could be. His bedside reading was some kind of sea story. And some of his clothes are from the chandler’s shop at the marina. But they’re the kinds of things anyone would wear in cold weather.’

‘Better look into it, hadn’t we? He could have murdered Fiona and sailed off into the sunset.’

‘We didn’t find anything really obvious like maritime maps.’

‘He’ll have taken them with him,’ Larry Soames said. He’d never been comfortable serving under this all-woman management, and he saw it as his mission to provide the practicalities only a man would think of.

Hen nodded and glanced Stella’s way. ‘See if he has a mooring at Apuldram or the marina.’

‘Or Emsworth,’ Larry Soames chipped in.

‘Good thinking, Larry. Your job.’

‘Ah.’ He’d overdone it this time.

At this point the door handle squeaked. All eyes watched it turn slowly, as if to cause minimal disruption.

‘Don’t be shy,’ Hen called out.

DC Gary Pearce put his youthful face around the door, crimson with embarrassment.

‘I had a feeling someone was missing,’ Hen said. ‘Come in, laddie. What was it—your grandmother’s funeral?’

‘No, guv. I’ve been at Fishbourne. You asked me to visit Kleentext, the printers, to ask if they did any work for the nature reserve.’

‘So I did. What’s the story?’

‘I got there too late last night. The office staff had all gone, so I called on my way to work this morning. I thought I’d still make the meeting, but it took longer than I expected. I’m sorry.’

‘And did you discover anything to mollify me?’

‘To what, guv?’

‘To calm the old bat down.’

‘Possibly I did. I saw the woman in charge, Miss Gemma Casey. She said all the official Pagham Harbour literature, the maps and guides and things, is done through the County Council and another printer has the contract.’

‘Oh, bugger.’

‘But she thought Kleentext had done something recently for the nature reserve as a small job, so she printed off a list of clients. I have it here.’ Gary was learning quickly how to humour the boss.

‘And?’

‘Pagham Harbour reserve is on the list. Five hundred Christmas cards.’

‘The best news I’ve had in days. Hand it across.’ Hen was given the list and spoke as she was scanning it. ‘And did this order involve a visit from one of the wardens?’

‘Four altogether.’

‘Wardens?’

‘No, visits, around the end of August,’ Gary said. ‘One to make the first enquiry, another to place the order, then returning the proofs and collecting the cards after they were finished.’

‘Four visits seems excessive. Things like that are usually put on a van, aren’t they?’

‘That’s what I thought, guv.’

‘Did you ask if Fiona dealt with it? I wonder if she was the attraction.’

‘I didn’t have time. I left with the list and checked it in the car. Then I came straight here for the meeting.’

‘So you didn’t ask which warden placed the order and kept coming back? No names are listed here.’

‘No, guv.’

‘I wouldn’t mind betting who it was. Nice work, Gary.’

‘Have I missed much?’

‘Forget it,’ Hen said. ‘You’re my hero. A superstar.’ She turned to Stella. ‘This gets priority. You and I are shortly off to Kleentext. Meeting over, boys and girls.’

ANOTHER NIGHT without much sleep had left Jo in a frazzled state. She’d already called Adrian at the garden centre to tell him she wasn’t coming in. She’d make up time at the weekend. Now that the storm damage was cleared up there wasn’t a lot to be done. Sales of horticulture products tail off as winter approaches.

She was still troubled about not reporting Rick to the police. One line of thought argued that he’d committed the worst of all crimes and should be handed over to the law; another, that he was not an obvious danger to the public. If she’d thought other people were at risk she would certainly have done her public duty. But the killing of Mr Cartwright was a one-off crime. She couldn’t imagine Rick murdering anyone else. He’d done this to find favour with Gemma—and Gem was too alarmed by it to encourage a repeat.

In an ideal world the police would investigate and solve the crime without any tip-off. Before long Cartwright’s disappearance was going to be taken seriously. But in the absence of a body would they ever find out he was murdered?

All of this churned repeatedly in her head. She’d come round to thinking after all she would confide in Jake. He sure wouldn’t blurt it about. What was more, he knew the people involved. And he was mentally strong. He’d come through his own hell and was wiser for it. He was the only person she would trust.

And it would be so good to see him.

She got in the car and drove out to the nature reserve. The sharp morning, the clear October sky, and the task of steering the car through the turns of the narrow road gave her a sense that she was doing something positive instead of keeping it all inside. Just being with Jake would lift her.

She hadn’t phoned ahead. Far better to turn up and find him. Phoning would call for an explanation and she didn’t know how to start telling him all that had happened in the past forty-eight hours.

Pagham Harbour is a southeast facing inlet about a mile across, between Selsey to the south and Bognor to the north. The reserve measures over 1,400 acres, about half of which is water. The shoreline is probably six miles around, with tidal creeks fringed by mudflats and salt marshes, so spotting someone isn’t straightforward, even though most of the protected area doesn’t extend far beyond the footpath. She thought when she parked by the visitors’ centre off the Selsey Road that she should have brought binoculars. She had some at home.

At this time of day no one was around. The centre is staffed only at the weekends. Hers was the only car, not a promising sign. Then she remembered Jake cycled to work from Selsey. But where did he leave the bike? Not here, apparently. She started wavering over her decision not to phone. I didn’t even get that right, she thought.

Now that she was here, she had to track him down. Having circled the buildings and found nothing, she got back in the car, consulted the map, and drove south to approach the reserve by Church Norton, which would be the nearest she’d get by car to the harbour entrance. From there she’d get a view of the shoreline.

She soon located a small car park that also catered to visitors to St Wilfrid’s Chapel, a Norman chancel, and a mound where a castle had once stood. You’d think with all those attractions there would be somebody to ask.

Disappointment again. The whole area was deserted. Stepping out along the footpath she passed some pools where wading birds foraged. Plenty of avian life and not a single human being. She could understand why the job appealed to Jake, with his need for open spaces.