The House Sitter (19 page)

“Because it was a red herring. You could have wasted time questioning me when you should have been after her killer.”

“You just hoped we’d make an early arrest and leave you out of it?”

No answer. Diamond had hit the mark.

He said, “Tell us about the morning of the day she was murdered. Did she talk about her plans?”

Barneston looked down at the ground, shifting a stone a short way with his well-polished right shoe. “She did her best to persuade me to spend the day with her at the beach. Said she knew I was working flat out on the Mariner enquiry, but I’d function better for a few hours away from it. Six days shalt thou labour, and all that. It was Sunday morning, of course.” He paused and sighed. “I was almost persuaded, too.”

“So what happened, exactly?”

He continued to poke at the stone with his toecap. “I gave her breakfast in bed and told her to take her time getting up. When I left around nine, she was about to take a shower.”

“You left her alone in your house?”

“Sure. I trusted her.”

“Did she say anything about going to the beach alone?”

“Oh, yes. It was a beautiful day. She was going, with or without me.”

“She must have driven there,” Diamond said.

“Yes, her sports car was on my drive. And that’s about all I can tell you.” He rubbed his hands together, ready to move on to other matters.

“There is something else,” Diamond said. “Would you mind telling us how you actually spent the rest of the day?”

Barneston frowned, glared and then gave a hollow laugh. “You’re not asking me to account for my time?”

“You’ve got it in one, Jimmy.”

“You know what you can do.”

“Not until this is sorted,” Diamond said with a look as unrelenting as his voice. “Did you go into work?”

Barneston hesitated for a long time, perhaps to show dissent. Diamond’s eyes, unblinking, had never left his. Finally, he submitted. “I went to the nick and worked on the case.”

“Until when?”

“I don’t know. Late morning, early afternoon. I had a canteen lunch. Do you want to know if it was roast beef and two veg?”

“And then?”

“A stroll around the park.”

“Alone?”

Barneston’s face reddened. “I don’t have to take these innuendoes. Who do you think you’re questioning here?”

“Alone, then,” Diamond said. “How about the rest of the afternoon, Jimmy?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’ve had enough of this crap.”

Hen put in gently, “He’s doing his job, Jimmy. He’s got a duty to ask.”

Making every word sound like an infliction, Barneston said, “I returned to my office for about an hour and finished the job I was on. Then I went home and looked at the cricket on TV. I guess it was about two-thirty when I left the nick. No, I didn’t make any phone calls, and nobody knocked on my door, so if you want to fit me up it’s perfectly feasible that I could have driven to Wightview Sands inside an hour, found Emma and strangled her.”

Hen said, “Jimmy, calm down.”

He carried on in the same embittered flow: “Of course, you have the minor problem of the motive—establishing how we fell out after a night together—but I guess that’s not beyond your fertile imagination.”

“Probably not,” Diamond said evenly, “but there is another problem. How would you drive two cars away from the scene? Hers hasn’t been seen since the murder.”

Barneston was silent while he played this over in his mind. After a longish interval he saw the point. “So you’re not about to caution me?” It was an attempt to recoup, a feeble joke.

Diamond indulged him with a grin.

Above them, the helicopter crossed so low that they saw the trees bowing in the down-draught.

Hen said, “Do you think they’ve spotted something?”

After the tension of the past few minutes it was a relief to go back inside the house and check developments. But nothing
had
developed. The Mariner had come and gone as he did in Bramber, leaving no clue except his newsprint taunt.

“How could he have conned his way in?” Diamond asked.

“God only knows,” Barneston said. “The guards have an entry code that even I don’t know. Anyone at the gate is under video surveillance from the control room upstairs.”

“Are you sure of the guards?”

“Special Branch is. One hundred per cent.”

“And the system is fully tested?”

“It’s the best they have. We only moved him here three days ago. And, yes, it was tested, every item of equipment. Infrared sensors in every room, lasers, cameras, the lot.”

“Fine—so long as they’re activated.”

“Well, yes, but you need to know the codes before you can tamper with anything.”

“Who knows the codes?”

“Only the guards—and if you want to know how many are involved in this operation, there are six men, all experienced, all armed with Glock 17s and Heckler and Koch machine guns. They rotate their duties, of course. And in addition there are four dog-handlers. At any one time, there are always two officers and a dog on the premises.”

“Did Matthew Porter approve of all this?” Hen asked.

“Sure. He was given more freedom than he had in the Streatham safe house. It’s considerably bigger, with an outdoor heated pool and a games room. He was OK.”

“I mean, potentially he’s the security risk, isn’t he, even though it’s all set up to protect him?”

“You mean if he wanted out? That could have been a risk in Streatham. Not here, I think.”

A personal radio gave off the sound of static and a voice came through clearly enough for everyone to hear. “Oscar Bravo to Control, reporting a sighting from the chopper. A four by four, possibly Range Rover, stationary in Caseys Lane, reference six-eight-five-eight-zero-three. Repeat six-eight-five-eight-zero-three. Shall we investigate? Over.”

“Await instructions. Over.”

“Caseys Lane. Where?” Barneston demanded, already poring over the map on the kitchen table.

Hen found it. “Less than a mile, I’d say.”

“Give me that,” Barneston said to the officer holding the radio. He touched the press-to-talk switch. “We’re on the way. Over and out.”

There was a stampede to the cars.

16

“One thing’s certain,” Diamond said to Hen, some distance in the rear in a fourth car, his own. “We’re not going to surprise anyone.”

But it was wise to advertise their approach. The width of the lanes left no margin for the drivers. After a series of bends they passed a derelict cottage, its roof stripped of most of its tiles, foliage thrusting through the rafters. A short distance ahead was the gate to a field where sheep were grazing, indifferent to the activity. Beside an oak tree, a dark green Range Rover stood in front of the gate on turf, just off the lane. The helicopter pilot had done well to spot it under the tree’s thick foliage. There was no movement at the windows.

Having pointed the way, the helicopter climbed higher, circled a couple of times and remained overhead in case someone made a dash to escape.

The convoy stopped about thirty metres short and two armed officers were detailed to make an approach. A few people got out and crouched behind the vehicles, but Diamond and Hen chose to wait in the comparative safety of the car. They still had a view of the two men moving cautiously ahead, stooping below the level of the hedge. The Range Rover looked unoccupied, but there was no telling what was below window level.

Hen muttered under her breath, “I don’t like to think what they’ll find.”

Neither did Diamond, though he said nothing. The young man had been under Special Branch protection, and it had let him down. If the very worst had happened, any police officer who took his job seriously was going to feel regret, if not shame.

The two armed men in black coveralls and body armour separated, one taking a wide arc through the field on the far side of the Range Rover, while the other remained in the lane. After a series of short forward movements, one of them—the man in the lane—flattened himself to the ground and began a crocodile-like approach to the rear of the vehicle, using his knees and elbows for leverage, but still gripping his short-barrel machine gun. He was close enough to be below the sight range of the wing mirrors.

The afternoon sun caught every detail of the drama. It was getting hot inside the cars.

Progress was agonizingly slow. The man inched forward, and finally got right up to the rear bumper of the Range Rover. For about half a minute he did nothing, listening, no doubt, for a voice or a movement inside the vehicle. Then he raised himself into a crouching position and slowly stood high enough to look through the rear window. Abruptly he turned towards the others and gestured with both hands for them to approach.

“Go, go, go!”

The response was immediate. Everyone got out and started running towards the Range Rover, with Diamond and Hen well in the rear. Even the helicopter dipped its nose and zoomed lower.

The officer was shouting, “They’re on the floor. We’ve got to get in.” He smashed the side window with the butt of his gun— which activated an alarm loud enough to shatter eardrums. He put his arm through, swung back the door and dipped inside.

In a moment he emerged with a body trussed with plasticuffs and leather belt. Others helped lift the man out and onto the grass, where they unbuckled the belt that pinioned his legs. He was breathing. He opened his eyes.

A second man was removed from the space behind the back seat. He, also, had been tied up and handcuffed, and he, also, was alive. Like his companion, he looked dazed and ill. The heat inside, with all windows closed, must have been appalling.

Neither of the rescued men was Matthew Porter.

Jimmy Barneston wasn’t too concerned by the state of them. Quite rightly, he wanted information. Someone thoughtfully produced a bottle of water. Barneston snatched it, unscrewed the top and splashed most of the contents across the face of the nearest man.

“Somebody kill that fucking alarm!” Barneston yelled.

It took a few minutes to get under the Range Rover’s bonnet and locate the mechanism. A uniformed inspector disabled it.

The men’s groans could now be heard by everyone. The more animated of the two was still handcuffed and lying on his side. But at least he was conscious.

“Where’s Porter?” Barneston asked. “What happened to him?”

One question was a lot to cope with. Two was overdoing it. The man shook his head.

Barneston asked again, “What happened? Come on, man, I need to know.”

The mouth was moving soundlessly, like a beached fish.

“I can’t hear him,” Barneston said. “Someone tell that chopper to get the hell out of here.”

Hen said, “He’s dehydrated. Give him a drink, for pity’s sake.” She snatched up the plastic bottle and held it to the man’s mouth.

He gulped at it.

They fetched another bottle for the second man. “Can’t we get them out of these cuffs?” Hen asked. “The poor guys are in pain.”

One of the police gunmen unhitched cutters from his belt and snipped through the plasticuffs.

The man who seemed in slightly better shape sat up, and immediately vomited, throwing up all of the water he’d swallowed and more.

It definitely wasn’t Jimmy Barneston’s day. He’d taken some of it on his shoes.

The man seemed to be about to retch again. In fact, he was trying to speak a word that he eventually spluttered out.

“Gas?” Barneston said. “Did you say gas? He used gas on you?”

A nod.

“What—CS?”

He shook his head, and the movement seemed to hurt him, because he winced and shut his eyes.

“Did he put it to your face, or what?”

Now he managed a few connected words. “Took me from behind. I was coughing. Couldn’t breathe. Don’t remember any more.”

“So the gas knocked you out. This was inside the house?”

“Living room.”

“Did you see him?”

He shook his head and placed his hand, palm inwards, against his face, covering his mouth and nose.

Barneston was quick on the uptake. “He was wearing a gas mask?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you get any warning? Alarms?”

“Going to throw up again.”

This time, just in time, Barneston stepped aside.

When the man’s head came up, Barneston said, “What about Matt Porter? Was he in the room with you?”

“Another room.”

“So he would have been gassed as well. What happened then?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t have any memory of being driven here? You didn’t see what happened?”

The man looked around him and asked, “Where are we anyway?”

The question remained unanswered because Barneston had turned to the second guard and was trying to question him. But the gas had affected this one more seriously. He was talking gibberish.

This was a medical emergency. Up to now, Peter Diamond had thought of himself as an observer, but someone had to take some initiative here because there was no telling how seriously these men were affected. They’d been unconscious for some time. Heatstroke and even brain damage was a possibility. Barneston was entirely taken up with extracting any information he could, so Diamond told the nearest man with a mobile to call an ambulance.

When Barneston stood up, muttering in frustration at getting so little out of the guards, Diamond drew him aside and told him what he’d arranged. It was a courtesy. You don’t muscle in on someone else’s incident. But the message didn’t seem to register. JB was extremely keyed up. He turned his back on Diamond and returned to the more coherent of the two men.

“This isn’t getting anywhere,” Diamond confided to Hen. “It’s up to Barneston to do something.”

“He’s in shock,” she said. “I’ve never seen him like this. If there’s stuff he should be doing, you’d better tell him. You’ve got experience.”

In fact, this wasn’t really about experience. Every incident brings its own unique problems, and the challenge is to stay cool and deal with them as well as resources allow. Considering Barneston was one of the generation who made ‘cool’ into a cardinal virtue, he wasn’t shaping up at all.

So Diamond tapped him on the shoulder and discreetly suggested he ordered everyone off the grass and onto the lane.

“What’s the problem?” Barneston asked. “What’s up now?”

At least there was communication this time.

“Crime scene procedure. You’ve dealt with the incident. Now it’s a matter of preserving what you can of the scene.” For a man who had never been a slave to the rulebook this was rather rich, but Diamond was putting it in language the new generation of CID should understand. “Particularly the treadmarks.”

“Oh, yeah?” Barneston said vaguely.

“Not the Range Rover’s marks.”

“No?”

“The Mariner’s. The Mariner had his car waiting here.”

“You think so?” Those blue eyes showed little understanding.

“You’ve got the picture, haven’t you, Jimmy?” But it was obvious Barneston’s brain hadn’t made the jump, so Diamond laid out the facts as he saw them. “Back at the house he gassed these blokes and Porter and trussed them up and put them in the Range Rover and drove here. He must have had a vehicle waiting, right? So he transferred Porter into his own motor and drove off, God knows where. The least we can do is find the treadmarks his tyres made.”

The last twenty minutes had been too frantic and traumatic for Barneston to give a thought to anything so basic as treadmarks, but he nodded his head sagely as if it had always been in his plans and ordered everyone off the turf and onto the hard surface of the lane. The ground was already marked with many footprints as well as the contents of the guard’s stomach. Crime scene tape was fetched and used to seal off the area.

Hen said, “That’s better. Feel as if we’re getting a grip, even if we aren’t.”

“He’s away,” Barneston said bleakly. “He’s hung us out to dry.”

“Snap out of it, Jimmy,” Diamond told him. “Have you sent for the SOCOs yet? I’d get one of those sergeants onto it if I were you.”

“Good point.” He went over to arrange it.

When he came back, he was still in the same fateful frame of mind. “We can check the motor inside and out and every inch of the field, but let’s face it, we knew fuck all about this guy before this, and we’re still up shit creek.”

That kind of talk didn’t go down well with Diamond. “Haven’t you heard of DNA?”

“What use is that without a suspect? We don’t know a thing about him.”

“We know several things,” Diamond said. “He’s extremely well informed on our security. Somehow he found out Porter was transferred here. He knew how to get in without activating the alarms or panicking the dog. He must have had some kind of training or inside information. He has access to gas, not CS, but something that knocks you out completely. He’s well organised, very focused. He could have killed the guards, but he chose not to.”

“Christ, that’s not bad,” Barneston said, the interest reviving in his eyes.

“Common sense,” Diamond said dismissively.

But Hen wasn’t letting it pass so lightly. “Uncommon good sense, more like, and a lot better sense than any of those berks at Bramshill ever talk. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

Barneston appeared to agree, because he asked Diamond what he recommended next, and there wasn’t a hint of irony in his voice.

“The Mariner’s car is the thing to concentrate on,” the big man answered. “Obviously it was parked in this lane for some time. There’s a chance someone drove by and noticed it. A farmhand, maybe. These are quiet lanes, but people are moving farm machinery around a lot of the time. I’d order a house-to-house on all the inhabited places in the vicinity, asking (a), if they saw anyone along the lanes, or crossing the field—which I think is more likely—and (b), if they noticed a vehicle parked here, or being driven away.”

“I was thinking along those lines myself,” Barneston said.

“Great minds,” Hen said with a wink that only Diamond saw. “And, of course, you’ll have your SOCOs going over the house and the Range Rover and all of this area. We ought to get some of his DNA out of this.”

“We can hope.” He moved off to speak to one of his team.

Diamond turned to Hen and said, “Any more of that and I’ll buy you a damned great spoon.”

“Why?”

“Stirring it up between Barneston and me. ‘Uncommon good sense’.”

“Quite the opposite, Pete. I was throwing him a lifeline. Can’t you see he’s poleaxed, poor love? His whole world has blown up in his face. He’s lost the man he was supposed to be protecting. He’s got a neurotic woman in another so-called safe house who is going to go bananas when she hears about this, and who wouldn’t? He knows Bramshill will come down on him like a ton of bricks, and what’s more they’re going to decrypt those deeply embarrassing files any time. No wonder he’s in such a state.”

He couldn’t feel the same degree of sympathy. He said (and immediately regretted it), “Why don’t you give him a cuddle, then?”

“Sod off, mate. He badly needs advice from someone with sand in his boots and a few ideas in his head. If you want to stay involved in the hunt for the Mariner, ducky, this is your opportunity.”

“
Our
opportunity,” he said, recouping a little.

“That goes without saying,” Hen said. “You’d better talk to him man to man.”

They remained there while the paramedics arrived and took the two SO12 guards away for treatment. They would be questioned again, but there was little prospect that they’d remember any more. Not long after, a team of three SOCOs drove up and pulled on their white protective overalls. Jimmy Barneston pointed out some potential treadmarks to the right of the Range Rover. The SOCOs looked at all the other marks they had to contend with and didn’t seem overly impressed.

Barneston eventually came back to where Diamond and Hen were watching the action from behind the tapes. He was looking marginally more in control. “All the farms and houses in the area are being visited.” He cleared his throat. “There was something you said just now. You suggested this could be an inside job, seeing that the Mariner found out about Porter being moved here.”