The House Sitter (15 page)

He said Summers had been planning this film for at least ten years and finally got the backing he needed about a year ago. He’d gone to infinite lengths to get the screenplay right, and the cast he wanted. It was over budget, but his films had a good record at the box office and no one was too concerned. He was very tired when he came home two days before he was killed. Prior to that he had been away filming in the Mediterranean for five weeks. He returned to Sussex knackered, but pleased that this phase of the project was complete. There was still a lot to be done, in particular the special effects sequences, bits now vivid in my brain like the skeleton ship with Death dicing with Life-in-Death, the souls of the crew whizzing upwards, the storms and calms and the water-snakes. Summers was modifying things he’d mapped out in storyboard form. He’d been too busy to do any entertaining since his return. Hadn’t even walked to the village for a paper, as he sometimes did when he was home.

On the evening of the killing, Wood served a light evening meal about six, loaded the dishwasher and left sharp at seven, on his bike. He noticed nothing unusual. No car parked in the lane and no strangers about. He left Summers in a good frame of mind, some crucial decisions about the film made. He was relaxed and looking forward to some late-night television programme. Wood met his friends at seven-fifteen and was driven to Plumpton for the pub quiz they’d entered as the local team. I’m satisfied he’s incapable of anything so callous as this killing.

After that, I had to get to the 4 p.m. case conference in Horsham and made it with not much to spare. Met in the incident room: the entire murder team and a couple of people from Bramshill. Jimmy Barneston chaired it. Watching him in action, I was more smitten than ever. He has a way of energising everyone, encouraging them to chip in and picking out the salient points. As expected, I was invited to contribute, but I made clear it was too soon to give them anything reliable, and I’d come to listen. They were OK with that.

Jimmy went through the various lines of enquiry. Sightings of cars around the village (inconclusive). Forensic reports on the fingertip search (little of interest). Crossbow manufacturers and retailers (more promising, although they don’t all keep records of customers). The crossbow bolt was picked for the job, apparently, with a three-bladed head normally used for killing game. He spent some time going over Summers’ career, pointing out that jealousies and hurts are common in show business. Even a man so popular and friendly must upset people when he makes decisions on casting and scripts. An embittered actor or writer might fit the profile of the killer. At the use of the ‘p’ word, heads turned to see if I had any comment. I looked steadily ahead and said nothing.

Two of Jimmy’s senior people gave similar rundowns on Porter and Walpurgis. Was there some deeply wounded person who had been damaged by all three? Apart from possible attendance at a TV awards dinner in 2001, nothing to connect them had so far been discovered.

A question was asked about the security arrangements for Porter and Walpurgis. Jimmy answered that steps had been taken to safeguard each of them, but for obvious reasons he was not willing to comment any further. A long discussion about the practicality of keeping Summers’ death out of the papers. Some kind of embargo could be enforced for a time, and the press would cooperate until word leaked out from some source—as it surely will.

It was after seven when the meeting ended. Jimmy asked if I’d like to eat before getting on the road. I took this to mean several of them would be going to some local pub and it seemed a good idea, because by the time I got back to Bath it would be getting late for a meal. Then would you believe it? He used his mobile and booked a table for two at a local Italian restaurant. Wow!

Mild panic. I’m in my denim jacket and designer jeans, still dusty at the knees from lying on the ground simulating the shooting. So I nip into the ladies and brush myself down and do some repair work on the face. Probably makes a bit of difference. Not as much as I would have liked.

Wasn’t entirely sure if Jimmy fancied me or just thought I might give out some more about my thoughts on the case. In ten minutes we’re in the window seat at Mario’s looking at each other by candlelight, with Neapolitan love songs in the background. No, we weren’t there to talk shop. Having established that we were both free of ties (he’s divorced and has lived alone for two years), we spend the next hour getting to know each other the way you do on a first date. He’s a graduate (business administration at Reading) and he shares quite a few of my tastes in music and film. Plays squash and goes to a gym.

We share a bottle of Orvieto—with none of that sexist nonsense over the ordering—and have chicken and pasta, and at the end he suggests coffee at his place. No heavy breathing or smouldering looks. Just a casual take-it-or-leave-it.

I answer just as casually that it might be sensible to get some caffeine into my system before I get on the road. So I find myself next in his gorgeous stone-built house beside the River Arun. Slate floors and expensive rugs. Real coffee, Belgian chocs and Mozart’s flute and harp concerto, and I just know I won’t be driving back to Bath that night. He takes me onto the terrace to see the view of the river and that’s where we kiss.

Jimmy is a natural. Knows without asking what gets me going and goes for it with such a sense of sharing the excitement that I came very quickly still standing outside under the stars and before taking off any clothes. Talk about hitting the spot! It was obvious we both wanted more, so we moved inside to his bedroom and undressed each other and I set about enjoying him with a sense of freedom I never had with Ken or any other bloke. After several Himalayan-class peaks, we drift off to sleep some time after midnight, and that isn’t the last of it. I wake up around four feeling the urge again and climb on him and ride him like a showjumper. A clear round. No faults.

Was it a one-night stand, or can it develop into something more permanent? The morning is when you find out, usually. Each of us played it cautiously over breakfast (toast and very black coffee), not wanting to seem possessive, and no commitment was made. But this man really is special, and I honestly think he finds me more adventurous (exciting?) than the average girl, so I’m hopeful of another invitation. It won’t be easy keeping a relationship fresh when we live a couple of hours from each other, but we do have a good excuse to stop over. This case requires close and frequent consultation!

“Ride him like a showjumper,” he muttered to himself. “He’s a dark horse, for sure.”

13

“Vicious weapon, isn’t it?” he said, deadpan. “I’d better bring you up to speed on the file I’ve just been reading—unless you’ve got your own copies already.”

Ingeborg reddened and Keith grinned sheepishly.

He gave them all the facts he knew about the murder of Summers, ending with a belated warning that Bramshill wanted to keep the lid on it. “Emma Tysoe was involved in this case at the time of her death, so we have more than a passing interest in it, much as they’d like to insist we don’t. But we still have a duty to keep it from the public—and that means anyone outside the team, right?” He made eye contact with each of them.

And each nodded.

“I know,” he said. “You’re about to tell me I should put a gag on Clive, and I thought I had. I’ll speak to him again.” He took a glance at his watch. “I haven’t finished reading the files, and I’ll give you a fuller rundown when I’m through, later in the day, if my head can stand it. Meanwhile there are two things you can do. Ingeborg.”

“Guv?”

“We got a false impression of Dr Emma Tysoe from her colleagues up at the university. She wasn’t the shrinking violet they made her out to be. She had an above-average appetite for sex and a lover she dumped called Ken.”

“That’s all we know about him?”

“It’s pretty obvious he lives locally. Do some ferreting, will you?”

“Outside the university?”

“Outside the Psychology Department for sure. She kept her private life well hidden from that lot.”

“Wise.”

“Yes, if they’d known she was such a goer I’m sure someone would have wired her up and set up a research project. Anyway, Ken—whoever he is—has to be regarded as a suspect.”

“Because she dumped him?”

“Right. He took her for a meal at Popjoy’s the evening after she was given this profiling job. There was some little spat over the way he ordered the wine, but I think the writing was already on the wall.”

“You mean she was dating another bloke?”

Diamond wasn’t ready to go into that, not knowing how much tittle-tattle Clive had passed on. “They fell out before she slept with anyone else. Ken had passed his sell-by date, it’s clear from the file. I’m about to find out what happened next.”

Halliwell asked, “Will anyone else get to read this steamy stuff?”

He couldn’t suppress a touch of sarcasm. “One way or another, I’m sure you will, Keith. Now, the other matter I want you to follow up is the whereabouts of her dark green sports car. She mentions in the file that she didn’t put it in the garage one evening when she got back home.”

“In Great Pulteney Street?” Halliwell said. “It doesn’t have garages.”

“Right.”

“She rented one nearby?”

“That’s my assumption. And I want to know if the car is still in there.”

“How can it be?” Ingeborg said. “She’d have needed it to drive to Wightview Sands. She arrived there alone according to Michael Smith.”

“So where is it? They didn’t find anything belonging to her in the beach car park. They accounted for every car left there at the end of that day. What make is it?”

Halliwell glanced towards Ingeborg, saw the startled look in her eyes, and attempted to cover up. “As you recall, guv, Bognor were doing the index check.”

“And none of you thought to ask?” Diamond said. “I give up! Even I know how to do a vehicle check. Get on that bloody PNC yourselves.”

Ingeborg recovered enough to say, “I daresay one of her neighbours would know if she rented a garage nearby. Are there mews at the back of Great Pulteney Street? They’re very big houses.”

“Both sides,” said Halliwell. “You’ve got Pulteney Mews facing the Rec, and Henrietta Mews to the north.”

“Maybe a garage came with the flat. We can ask the landlord.”

“Do that,” Diamond said. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the basement, catching up on the next instalment.”

(e) He has an exalted opinion of himself and his ability to outwit the police. [The naming of future victims]

(f) He may feel he is underrated, or cheated by some failure in his own career. [Choice of famous victims suggests he envies people in the limelight]

(g) He is well up with media gossip and may even have inside information. [He knew when Summers was back from the Med]

The way forward must be to look more closely at the choices the killer has made. Why pick Axel Summers, by all accounts a charming, well-respected and talented man? What is it about the others that singles them out for slaughter? Is it only that they are so well known?

I definitely need to know more about Porter and Walpurgis. How do they spend their time when they’re not working? Do they own houses in the country, like Summers? What are their backgrounds, their interests, their politics (if any)?

A few minutes ago I phoned Jimmy. Glad to say he sounded pleased to hear from me. You can tell straight away when a man wants to back off (don’t I know it, from past experience), and he doesn’t. But this was strictly business: I was putting my case for a meeting with Matthew Porter. It caught Jimmy unprepared and at first he dug in his heels and said he couldn’t risk it and anyway he didn’t want Porter being troubled. This young man is under enough stress already, and so on. Gently steering him towards the worst possible outcome, I made the point that while Porter is alive we have the chance to question him about people he may have crossed and threats he may have received. If we’d had that opportunity with Axel Summers, we’d have a list of suspects.

He saw the sense in this. The police have put all their resources into investigating the murder and providing elaborate protection for Porter and Walpurgis. Nobody has sat down with either of them and gone through their recent history looking for possible enemies. So Jimmy took the point. He said he’d need to talk to the high-ups. He promised to get back to me.

(Later, in bed) Nothing yet from Jimmy, but I’ve had Ken on the mobile wanting to start over, giving me the hard sell about how he’s missing me and his cat was sick yesterday and he almost pranged the car and he really loves me and can’t face life without me. What a wimp. I know if I give him the slightest encouragement he’ll be ten times as hard to get off my back. So I bit the bullet and told him I was seeing someone else—which gave him a seismic shock and showed him in his true colours. This guy who really loves me and can’t face life without me called me a slag and a whore and lots of other disgusting names. I just said, ‘Grow up,’ and switched off. Closure—I hope. We’ll see. I was very shaky, though, and poured myself a neat whisky—something I never normally do.

Keep thinking of things I
should
have said, like the cat isn’t the only one who’s sick.

I hope I sleep all right.

Jimmy showed up dead on time in a gorgeous light grey suit I hadn’t seen before. Purple shirt and matching tie with flecks of yellow. Cool. He kissed me on the cheek and steered me to the taxi rank. It was like being in a movie. I’ve never been at the sharp end of a crime investigation. In the cab, I sat close to Jimmy and slipped my hand under his arm and squeezed it. He smirked a little, but of course we were on a serious mission, so things didn’t get any more intimate than that.

He told me we were going to a safe house. Special Branch have a number of addresses in London where they protect VIPs under threat of terrorism, or informers changing their identities. Jimmy phoned the house from the taxi to say our ETA. The cab stayed south of the river, through Kennington and Brixton, and ended up at the war memorial in Streatham High Road, where Jimmy tapped the glass and told the driver to put us down. Nobody takes a taxi to the front door of a safe house. We walked for ten minutes or so through the backstreets, me beginning to think I should have worn something less conspicuous, but no complaint from Jimmy.

The house is in as quiet a road as you’re likely to find in London, old Victorian buildings with high chimneys and sash windows and tiny front gardens. I noticed a video camera quietly rotating under the eaves.

We didn’t need to knock. The front door was opened by an unsmiling honcho in a tracksuit and we stepped inside without being frisked (disappointing) and were shown straight into a back room where Matthew Porter, a young man in a green polo shirt and white jeans, was sitting in an armchair watching the racing on TV. On the floor beside him was a heap of unopened letters. He turned his head briefly to give us a glance, but didn’t get up or shift his feet from the coffee table in front of him, just pointed at the screen with the can of lager he had in his left hand. Never mind who we were, he was going to watch the finish of the race. A young man with attitude, I thought. So we stood tamely watching the horses race it out. The minder rolled his eyes as if to say he’d had plenty of this already, and then left the room.

The race result, when it came, didn’t cause much excitement. Only a yawn—and even then Porter ignored us until Jimmy gave my name and explained my reason for wanting to meet him. This achieved some eye contact, no more.

Case-hardened by all those seminars with grouchy students, I wasn’t going to take any of this personally, was I? I launched straight into my questions. Obviously, he’d been told about the murder and the note found at the scene, so I began by asking him if he’d ever met Axel Summers. He shrugged and continued to look bored, and I thought at first he was going to play dumb until I stopped and went away, but then he muttered something about always meeting people and not remembering them unless they were players. Trying another approach, I asked if he watched DVDs or videos and when he said he said there wasn’t much else to do in hotels I told him he might well have watched one of Summers’ films. This didn’t excite him one bit. I wasn’t doing too well.

I probed gently into his background, school, family and so on, and by degrees he loosened up. He was more comfortable talking about his start in golf. He must have done this many times in press interviews. His father, an amateur with a low handicap, had taught him to play when he was eleven. Their house backed onto a golf course in Broadstairs and he would practise shots at the nearest hole, the eleventh, early in the morning before anyone else was about. The club professional gave him lessons. At fourteen he was allowed to play a round with his father and made such an impression that the club rules were changed for him to become a member. A year later, he won the club championship. His progress since was phenomenal. He’d left school and turned professional at eighteen and started winning minor tournaments right away. Agents were keen to acquire him as a client and he soon had his own manager and sponsors and a regular caddie. His win in the British Open at the age of nineteen was what made him famous overnight. He told me all this in a deadpan delivery without conceit.

I asked if his parents still had a say in his career and he shook his head. They’d separated four years ago. His mother was now living in France with another man. His father was an ‘alky’. He said he didn’t want to talk about them. So who were the main people in his present life? His manager, Sid Macaulay, who looked after everything—his travel around the world, his interviews, his endorsements, even paid his tax. Girlfriends? He hadn’t time, he said, adding—with a smirk—apart from one-night stands. He was travelling most of the year—normally.

He told me his main home was a manor house in Surrey and he owned another near St Andrews in Scotland. He would be getting his own Lear jet later in the year. He’d pay a pilot to fly it because he didn’t have time to learn. His ‘hobby’ was watching television, especially scary films.

By now I was getting wiser about Matthew Porter. This looked like a case of arrested development. Golf had taken over his life before he had a chance to mature. All the decisions had been taken away from him. He did as he was told by the manager, lived in cocooned comfort and performed on the golf course when required. Sadly, it was stunting his personality. He couldn’t relate to other people unless they talked to him about golf. He had no opinions, no conversation and no ambition now he’d got to the top in the one sphere he inhabited.