The House Sitter (21 page)
Authors: Peter Lovesey
“Shall I ask Ingeborg to fetch him?”
“Why not? She’s got to get experience. Pick some muscle to go with her, but let her do the talking. Tell them to be there early, keeping watch on his movements, the walk to the paper shop, and so on. We want to make certain where he is. Another thing, Keith.”
“Guv?”
“Some office furniture found its way to the top corridor. It was stored originally in the room we’re using as our incident room. Georgina isn’t happy about it. See if you can shift it somewhere else.”
“Right.”
“Don’t look like that, Keith. It’s priority, OK?”
“OK.”
“Directly we get back?”
“If you say so, guv.”
“And can you get the team together this afternoon, say around three? There’s some news about to break that I want them to hear from me.”
They listened in silence to his prosaic, almost plodding account of the Mariner’s murderous agenda. Officially it was news to them, but their faces didn’t register much shock. Most, if not all, were familiar with the contents of the decrypted files. Only when he started telling them about the gas raid on the safe house did the interest quicken significantly. This was news to them, and it was pretty sensational. Yet no one interrupted. They were deeply curious to know where this was leading, how it affected them personally. Like the best storytellers, he kept them in suspense to the very end. “Yesterday, after the snatching of Matthew Porter, I spent some time with the SIO on the case, DCI Jimmy Barneston. I think I’ve convinced him that the third of the Mariner’s targets, Anna Walpurgis, isn’t safe any more in a so-called safe house. A radical rethink is necessary, to take the initiative away from the Mariner. I suggested bringing Ms Walpurgis to Bath.”
He paused, letting this sink in. There was a nervous cough from someone. A couple of people shifted in their chairs. No one was ready to say that the boss had flipped, but doubt was in the air.
Halliwell was the first to speak. “Do we have a safe house in Bath?”
“No—and that’s the point, Keith, to do something he isn’t expecting. It buys us a little time.”
“Don’t you think he’ll find out and follow her here?”
“I’m sure he will. That’s OK by me. He’ll be on our territory.”
“It’s a hell of a risk, guv.”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m telling you. Any of you could get involved as well. The man is dangerous and single-minded. Stand in his way, and you risk being eliminated.”
“Where will she stay?” Leaman asked.
“Yet to be decided. She’ll have a say in the decision.”
“She’s a fireball, isn’t she?”
“So I’ve heard.”
Ingeborg said, “She could stay with me, if you like.” The first to volunteer again, so keen to make her mark.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” At the back of my mind, he thought. “I brought this to your attention because the main facts of the case are being made public at a press conference as we speak. The papers will be full of it tomorrow.”
“Anna Walpurgis included?” Leaman asked.
“No. For obvious reasons that’s classified information. Don’t discuss it with anyone. But the Mariner will make the headlines, which will please him no end.”
“Give him enough rope.”
“That’s the general idea, John. Any other questions?”
“How does all this link up with Emma Tysoe?” Ingeborg asked.
“You put your finger on it. We don’t know. She was working on a profile of the Mariner, so in a sense she was shoved into the firing line. That was my early assumption. Now I’ve veered in the other direction.”
“Because of Ken?” He was reminded of her sharp questioning in the days when she worked as a freelance journalist. She’d put him through the grinder more than once. Bright and keen as she was, he didn’t want her dominating the case conferences.
“Not specially. We’ll find out more about him tomorrow. No, I’ve come to think of the Mariner as the kind of murderer who plans his crime like an architect, every detail worked out, measured and costed. But the strangling of Emma Tysoe wasn’t planned. Couldn’t have been. She only made up her mind to go to the beach the evening before she visited Jimmy Barneston. And the murderer couldn’t have known in advance which section of the beach she would choose, and if she used a windbreak and how close other people would be sitting. It had to be an opportunist killing. The variables would have horrified the Mariner.”
“So Emma wasn’t killed because of the job she did,” Ingeborg tried to sum up.
“I didn’t say that. I said it was opportunist. She could have been spotted by someone she’d fingered in the past.”
“Pretty unlikely.”
He eyed her sharply. “Why?”
“They’re all inside serving long sentences, aren’t they?”
“That’s something you can check for me.”
She’d walked into that one. There were smiles around the room.
Except from Ingeborg, who wouldn’t shut up. “But she hasn’t been doing the profiling all that long. What is it—four or five years at most?”
“Yes, and some of the sentencing leaves a lot to be desired. See what you can dig up for me.”
“Personally, I think Ken is a better bet.”
“Personally, I think we’ve heard enough from you, constable.
Bramshill gave me a list of all the cases she worked on. You’ll find it on my desk.”
He brought the meeting to a close. Ingeborg, flicking her blond hair in a way that left no doubt as to her annoyance, stepped in the direction of his office. He ambled after her.
“Is this the way you run things?” she asked when he caught up with her. “Anyone with a different opinion gets clobbered?”
“Don’t try me,” he told her. “You know where you went wrong in there. You’ve got a good brain, Ingeborg, or you wouldn’t be on the team. Use it.”
“That’s what I was trying to do.”
“You’re not press any more. You’re a very new member of CID. Have you heard any of them talk to me like you just did?”
She took a breath and hesitated. “No, guv.”
“Getting along with them is just as important as keeping on the right side of me. At present they’re giving you the benefit of the doubt. You’re new and eager to impress, but you must learn to do it with more subtlety. Remember the pesky kids at school who sat at the front and were forever putting up their hands to answer questions?”
A little sigh escaped. “That was me.”
He just about managed to conceal his amusement. “Well, have the good sense to see it from other people’s points of view. Theirs, and mine.”
She nodded. “I’ll try, guv. Thanks.” The blue eyes flashed an appeal. “Do you still want me to check that list?”
“You bet I do.”
After she’d gone, he reached for the phone and called Hen. He’d promised to let her know when Ken Bellman was being brought in for questioning. He didn’t get that far.
“I was just about to call you,” she said. “We’ve all been glued to the TV, watching the news breaking. Haven’t you?”
“Jimmy Barneston’s press conference?”
“That’s what we expected to see. It’s been overtaken. Peters-field police have found the body of a young white male on a golf course.”
“Matthew Porter?”
“Nobody is saying yet, but of course it’s him. They haven’t said what he died of, but they’re treating it as murder.”
T
he body had been found by the greenskeeper, out early checking whether a fresh cut was necessary. After a warm summer’s night there was barely a hint of moisture in the turf and he was thinking about mowing some of the fairways when he made the discovery. It was face up in one of the bunkers at the eighteenth, close to the clubhouse but hidden from view by the slope. Definitely male, definitely young and definitely Matthew Porter, a sensational fact confirmed by the early risers who came over for a look before the police erected a tent around the body. The corpse was fully clothed, in jeans and a polo shirt. There was a hole in the side of the head.
This was a local golf club, near Petersfield. Nobody of Matt Porter’s eminence had ever played the course, so it was something of a coup to have an Open winner at the eighteenth, even in this inactive state. Everyone agreed that it was a dreadful tragedy, but there were strong undercurrents of excitement. There were no complaints that the day’s playing arrangements were interrupted. Instead of teeing off for the final hole, players marched up the fairway to the clubhouse, passing as close as they were allowed to the crime scene. As the news spread, a number of members came in specially. The bar did good business.
The police and forensic officers went through their routines. Access to the scene was easy, this being the eighteenth and so close to the parking area around the clubhouse. Obviously the killer had been able to drive to within a short distance of the bunker. It was established soon that the body must have been killed elsewhere and dumped here.
The hole in the victim’s head was a challenge to the pathologist who examined the body at the scene. Apparently it was not made by a bullet. His first thought was that some kind of stud gun may have been used, the sort used in the construction industry to fire steel pins into masonry. His other suggestion was an abbattoir gun, with a captive-pin mechanism. At this stage of the day the press conference announcing the crossbow shooting of Axel Summers had not taken place.
In fact, Jimmy Barneston’s big occasion that afternoon turned out to be an embarrassment. He had spent the second half of the morning in the safe house with Anna Walpurgis—an experience on a par with lion-taming—and then arrived late and marched straight into the briefing room before anyone informed him what had been found at Petersfield. A short way into his opening statement one of the reporters asked him to confirm whether the body at the golf course was that of Matthew Porter.
Barneston stiffened like a cat that has wandered into a dog show. There was total disarray. One of his colleagues took his arm and steered him away from the cluster of microphones. He went into a huddle with other officers. Finally he returned red-faced and said, trying to sound as if he had always known about it, “The body found this morning has not yet been formally identified. Until this formality is complete, I am not at liberty to comment. I shall continue with my statement about the murder of Mr Axel Summers.”
Of course the press didn’t let him escape so lightly. He was hammered with questions about Porter and the identity of the third name on the Mariner’s hit list. In the end he conceded that Porter was probably the dead man, but staunchly refused to name Anna Walpurgis. He reeled out of there, eyes bulging, and went looking for someone to jump all over.
Hen Mallin agreed with Diamond that the questioning of Ken Bellman had to take priority over what was happening in Petersfield. By now, Matt Porter’s body would be at the mortuary and the forensic team would have searched the scene and picked up anything of interest. Best leave Jimmy Barneston to sift the evidence.
That evening she drove straight from work to the beach at Wightview Sands, partly because she wanted to refresh her memory of the scene, and also because a lone walk (and smoke) by the sea is as good a way as any of getting one’s thoughts in order. This had been a pig of a case. There was still precious little evidence, and even that was circumstantial. Emma Tysoe’s files had helped, but they weren’t as telling as a fingerprint or a scrap of DNA. If Ken Bellman put his hand up to the crime, he’d deserve a pat on the head and a vote of thanks from his interrogators. More likely, he’d deny everything, and Peter Diamond—known to be tough in the interview room—would give him a roasting. Hen didn’t care for confessions under duress.
She drove up to the car park gate just before seven. The man on duty asked for a pound and she said she was a police officer.
“How do I know that?” he asked.
“For God’s sake, man. I’m investigating the murder. I’ve been here on and off for a couple of weeks.”
“I was on, you know,” he said.
“What?”
“The day when the woman was murdered. I was on duty, but I can’t tell you who did it. Can’t see a thing from here.”
She was hearing an echo of a voice she seemed to know, an odd way of spacing the words, with almost no intonation. Familiar, too, was the self-importance, as if it mattered whether he had been on duty. She looked at him sitting in his cabin, and didn’t recognise his brown eyes and black hair, brushed back and glossy. She normally had a good memory for faces.
“I’ll show you my ID, if you insist,” she said, reaching behind for her bag.
He did insist. He waited until she produced it, and only then pressed the gate mechanism.
“And what’s your name?” Hen asked, before driving through.
“I’m Garth. Don’t be too long, will you? We close at eight thirty.”
It came to her as she was cruising up the narrow road that runs alongside the beach. She did know the voice. She’d only ever spoken to him on the phone.
Am I speaking to the person
responsible for the murder? . . . Are you sure you’re in charge?
He was the jobsworth who’d phoned in when Dr Shiena Wilkinson had turned up looking for her Range Rover. The reason she hadn’t seen him was that she’d sent Stella to deal with it.
She thought of Garth, the strip-cartoon muscleman who’d gone on for years in the
Daily Mirror
. Parents little realise what their son will grow up into when they give him the same name as a super-hero. Maybe trying to live up to the name turned him funny.
After parking on the turf near the beach café she found the gap between beach huts that led to the lifeguard lookout post, above where Emma Tysoe’s body had been found. You wouldn’t have known it was a murder scene now. Children were busy in the sand where the body was found, digging a system of waterways, their shadows long in the evening sun. The tidal action cleanses and renews. If the strangling had happened higher up, on the grass, the site would have been turned into a shrine, marked with flowers and wreaths.
Most of the day’s visitors had left. Nobody remained at the lifeguard platform at this stage of the day, so she stepped onto it herself to see how much they could observe from there. It was a simple wooden structure that needed repairing in places. A position well chosen for views of most of the beach. Yet they wouldn’t have been high enough to see over a windbreak to the person lying behind it.
She stepped off and moved down the shelf of stones to the sand, trying to picture the scene on the day of the murder. Emma Tysoe had spread out her towel and erected her windbreak a short way in front of the Smiths. The French family were to the right of the Smiths and three teenage girls to the left. At some stage of the morning, the man in the black T-shirt had come strolling along the sand and tried to engage Emma in conversation, even offered to join her. She’d given him his marching orders. This encounter—witnessed by Olga Smith—was the one possible lead they had apart from Emma’s own files. T-shirt man was still the best bet, deeply angered, perhaps, by the brush-off, and returning later to kill the woman who rejected him. It would be an extreme reaction, and a risky one to carry out, but rejection is a powerful motive.
Hen picked her way carefully over the children’s digging and out to a stretch of sand beyond the breakwaters, where she could walk freely. She lit one of her small cigars and let her thoughts turn to Peter Diamond. Up to now, he’d proved less of an ogre than she’d expected. He was brusque at times, but funny, too, and willing to listen. He wasn’t a misery-guts, like so many senior detectives. She couldn’t fault the way he’d conducted the case so far, keeping her informed of each development. Mind, he was a risk-taker. This plan of his to take over the protection of Anna Walpurgis could so easily go wrong. It gave him what he’d wanted all along, a legitimate reason to be involved. But what resources did he have in Bath, and what guarantee that a spirited woman wouldn’t upset everything? Hen could only hope he had a strategy. He’d talked of Walpurgis being “bait” to the Mariner. He’d set his heart on catching this killer, but at what cost?
One of the problems with all this concentration on the Mariner was that there was a big incentive to wrap up the Emma Tysoe case as fast as possible. Hen wasn’t going to allow Diamond to cut corners. The murder of Emma was a Bognor Regis case— hers. If Ken Bellman proved beyond doubt to be the killer, well and good. But if there were doubts, she wouldn’t let Diamond ride roughshod over them.
So she liked the man, enjoyed his company, admired his independent ways, yet couldn’t rest all of her confidence in him. The loss of his wife must have cast him adrift, even though he appeared strong. The shock was bound to have wounded him. She suspected he was hiding the pain.
She picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the water, watching it bounce several times before meeting a wave and disappearing, a trick she’d tried many times before but never mastered. Typical, she thought, that I do it when no one is here to see. She continued her walk as far as the flagpole at East Head. If she walked any farther she’d be late getting back to her car, and she had no confidence Garth would let her out of the car park.
Georgina Dallymore, the Assistant Chief Constable, was on her guard that morning. It wasn’t like Peter Diamond to knock on her door and ask if she could spare a few minutes. He was the man who avoided her at all costs. He’d once nipped into the ladies’ room and locked himself in a cubicle when he spotted her approaching along a corridor.
She folded her arms and rotated her chair a little. “To what do we owe this, Peter?”
“I expect you noticed the furniture disappeared from the corridor, ma’am?”
“No,” she said with a faint flush of pink. “I hadn’t noticed. Do I have you to thank for that?”
“No problem.”
“It had to be sorted. It was a fire hazard.”
“You can enjoy your cruise now. When are you off?”
She relaxed a little. He was only there to get some credit for doing a good turn. “Tomorrow, actually.”
“All set, then?”
“Pretty well.”
As if it was mere politeness, he asked, “What’s happening to the cat? That handsome white Persian?”
“Sultan. You know about Sultan?”
Everyone who’d been in her office knew about Sultan. There was a photo on her desk of this mound of fur with fierce blue eyes and a snub nose.
“Sultan, yes,” Diamond said.
“He has to go into a cattery, unfortunately. He doesn’t care for it at all, but you can’t let them run your life.”
“Shame. Quite a change in his routine.” He paused. “I don’t suppose he’ll suffer.”
“
Suffer
?” A cloud of concern passed across Georgina’s face. “I should hope not. The place is well recommended, and very expensive.”
“He doesn’t know that. Has he been there before?”
“No, this will be the first time.”
“Poor old Sultan.” Diamond picked up the photo in its gilt frame. “I’ve got a cat myself, just a moggy, but a character. They hate their routine being messed about. Personally, I favour having a house sitter if I go away. They stay in your house and look after the place and feed the cat as well. It’s nicer for your pet and you can relax knowing someone is there.”
“Ideally, that sounds a good solution,” Georgina agreed.
“Bit of a holiday for the sitter as well. In a city like Bath, house sitting is no hardship. You’re convenient for everything in Bennett Street.”
Now she frowned. This was becoming a touch too personal. “How do you know where I live?”
“You gave a party not long after you arrived. I came with Steph. Very good evening, it was.”
She looked relieved to have her memory jogged. “My ‘At Home’. It slipped my mind.”
“A house sitter would jump at the chance.”
“It’s a lovely idea, Peter. Unfortunately, it’s too late for me to start looking for someone now.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Georgina tried to appear unmoved, but he could see she was all attentiveness.
“If you’d like one, I may be able to help,” he offered. “I know of a lady shortly coming to Bath who would gladly look after your home—and Sultan—for no charge at all.”
“No charge?”
“A chance to stay in Bennett Street would be reward enough.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Georgina said. “Who is she?”
He sidestepped the question, letting his sales pitch sink in. “All you’d need to do is get in some tins of his favourite catmeat.”
“I bought those anyway,” she said, and there was something in her eyes she tried not to have there, a strong desire to clinch this deal and save herself some money.
“Then you’re laughing. You may have heard of her—Anna Walpurgis.”
The eyes widened. “The pop star?”
“As was. More a lady of leisure now. Very used to living in nice surroundings, until recently. Some maniac threatened her life and she’s been stuck in a safe house being looked after by Special Branch for some time. It’s Salman Rushdie all over again. She got so bored. It would do everyone a good turn if she could escape to Bath for a week.”
“Anna Walpurgis.” Georgina repeated the name, and there was a discernible note of awe. The idea of such a celebrity coming to stay in one’s house had definite attraction. “She wouldn’t give parties?”
“Good Lord, no. She’s keeping a low profile.”
“Is she under guard?”
“Not any more. It’s a step towards a normal life. I can keep an eye on her, make sure she’s able to cope.”
