The Headhunters

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘He’s been abroad, hasn’t he? Someone was going to tell him.’

  ‘Was he shocked?’

  ‘Disbelieving.’

  ‘Kept his cool, then. What’s he like?’

  ‘Toffee-nosed, if I’m any judge, but I suppose he would sound like that to one of the plod, with all his education,’ Stella said. ‘He seemed to think it was a bit off, his wife being killed down here.’

  ‘He’d have preferred the stockbroker belt?’

  The remark was meant to ease the stiffness between them. Stella took it for what it was, smiled and shrugged. ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Does he have any explanation?’

  ‘For her death? No. They haven’t spoken on the phone since he flew to St Petersburg three weeks ago. He’s often away at conferences, he said, and he doesn’t call her, phoning from hotels being such a rip-off.’

  ‘Were those his exact words?’

  ‘I was giving the sense of them. He said “exorbitant.”’

  ‘He must have a mobile.’

  ‘“The price of using one from Russia is iniquitous.” His words.’

  Hen shaped her lips into a silent whistle. ‘Has the romance gone out of this marriage, by any chance?’

  ‘His wife wasn’t wearing a ring.’

  ‘I wouldn’t read too much into that, Stell. A lot of wives don’t.’

  ‘You’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, are you, guv?’

  ‘Well, he cared enough to make enquiries. And he’s wasting no time in coming here.’

  ‘To make a good impression, maybe?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be succeeding with you. What’s wrong with the guy?’

  ‘You know what voices are like on the phone. You can tell a lot.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he might have a guilty conscience? I can’t think why, when he has a cast-iron alibi.’

  ‘It’s not unknown for a spouse to hire a hitman.’

  This earned a chuckle from Hen. ‘So we have a theory already, and we haven’t even met the poor sod. Give him a chance, Stell.’

  ‘The main thing is, we know who our victim is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hen said, ‘I knew our luck would change when we got out of that lousy caravan.’

  JAKE WAS waiting at the entrance to the beach car park when Jo drove in. Good thing he was so tall, because she wouldn’t have known him otherwise. He was in a navy blue jacket with the hood over his head like a boxer ready to enter the arena. Maybe he thought of this outing as a contest. She hoped not. More likely he wanted to be inconspicuous. Difficult when you’re six foot six.

  ‘We made it this time,’ she said.

  ‘You made it last time.’ His response came fast and free, a promising start.

  The rain had given way to a spell of sunshine and there was a sharp breeze. The sea looked choppy, if not quite so wild as when Jo was here last time. She locked the car and they started along the path. Not many people were out.

  On the drive down, she’d decided to tell him the whole sorry story about Fiona. Gemma had blabbed to Rick, so why shouldn’t Jake be told? He wouldn’t use the information to score points as Rick did at every opportunity. He’d be a sympathetic listener and wise counsel.

  She missed nothing in the telling: the plot to undermine Fiona, the search of the house by the police, the finding of the body, and the news that Gemma was being questioned. Jake heard her in silence, occasionally using his foot to steer away pebbles the tide had deposited on the path.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything directly from Gemma,’ she finished up, ‘so I don’t know what the police got out of her. She could still be with them at the print works, I suppose. I don’t like to phone her in case they’re with her.’

  ‘She’ll call you,’ Jake said.

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping. I’ve brought my mobile. Do you think they’re holding her?’

  He shook his head. ‘What for?’

  ‘I mean if there was some suggestion that Fiona was pushed in.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘I don’t know. How else did she get in the water?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t seem to have thought of this.

  She said, ‘I’m wondering if she’s ashamed to call me because she dropped me in it. There could be a police car waiting outside my house.’

  ‘If there is . . . ’ He opened his hands in a gesture of emptiness.

  ‘I shouldn’t panic?’

  ‘They’ve got nothing on you.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘They’ll be wanting to talk to someone else.’

  ‘Mr Cartwright, Gemma’s boss? That’s for sure. He’s got a tale to tell. Yes, he’s got to be a crucial witness.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  There was a change in Jake, and it was positive. He wasn’t just responding to prompts from her. He was making points and asking questions.

  She shook her head. ‘We’ve only got Gemma’s word for what he’s like, and I’m not sure she’s a good judge of character. She pictured him as a freeloader who got others to do all the dirty jobs while he kept his hands clean and worked on his image.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a killer.’

  ‘I agree—but where is he?’

  ‘Keeping out of the way.’

  ‘There is another possibility,’ she said. ‘He could be dead as well, lying in the Mill Pond. I bet they’re searching it as we speak. All that joking about thinking up ways to kill him was fun at the time, but it may have taken an ugly turn now.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You think he’s hiding somewhere?’

  ‘It’s more likely.’

  ‘Especially if he killed Fiona.’ She almost wished it were true and all the uncertainty were over.

  ‘Why would he?’

  ‘His motive, you mean? Fiona was overplaying her hand, according to Gemma, wanting a place on the board at the printer’s, or just demanding money. She was on the make, by all accounts.’

  ‘That’s only one version,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Well, yes, Gemma’s, like I said. Can we believe her?’

  He didn’t answer.

  Jo said, ‘All this speculation isn’t helping, is it?’

  He smiled.

  She said, ‘I know. I’m my own worst enemy. Not good for my nerves.’

  They’d passed the southernmost point of Selsey Bill and now the East Beach came into view. First there was a large step down. Jake jumped into the shingle, turned, and held out his hand to help her down. A thoughtful gesture. She gripped the hand gratefully and made the jump. Her first physical contact with him. It was short-lived. He relaxed the grip and thrust both hands in his pockets.

  ‘You see the lifeboat station?’

  She wasn’t certain if he was being serious. You could hardly miss it. The raised steel gangway projecting over the waves to the boathouse and slipway was about the only feature of the long stretch ahead. ‘Yes, I see it.’

  ‘Sixty years ago a prep school stood a short way back from there.’

  ‘What—on the beach?’

  ‘Above high water . . . then.’

  ‘Erosion got it?’

  He nodded. ‘They built a lifeboat house in the twenties, close to the beach. They had to keep adding to the gangway. In thirty years it was eight hundred feet out to sea.’

  ‘Oh, my.’ She felt as she made the response that she sounded a touch too impressed. She wanted so much to encourage this dialogue he’d started.

  ‘Shingle and sand over clay,’ he said. ‘Easily eroded.’

  ‘But a whole building like a school going. That’s scary.’

  ‘It didn’t get washed away.’

  ‘I understand. It was no longer habitable, so it was pulled down.’

  ‘Soon after that, in the mid-fifties, the sea wall was built. Until then, this coast was disappearing faster than anywhere in Britain.’

  ‘I know erosion is a hot topic with
the locals, but I didn’t realise it had been happening on that scale.’

  He stretched out his arm and made a sweeping movement in the direction of the sea. ‘Somewhere out there is a deer park.’

  She laughed, ‘Oh, yes?’

  But he was serious. ‘In the time of Henry VIII, it was hunting country. Fishermen still call that stretch of sea “the park.”’

  ‘Hard to imagine.’

  ‘And still further out is a cathedral, they say.’

  ‘Under the sea?’

  Jake didn’t waste words on make-believe. ‘There was this Bishop of York called Wilfrid.’ He drew a long breath, priming himself for the story. He related it slowly and with pauses, and the impact was stronger than a more fluent speaker could have managed. ‘Wilfrid was banished from the north for opposing the king, so he came south. Arrived in Sussex at a bad time, after three years of drought. Crops failing, desperate times, so he taught the people to fish. And the rain came, and he could do no wrong. He preached and built a monastery and a cathedral. When I say “built,” I mean he was the overseer. The locals did the heavy work. That was in the seventh century.’

  He’d got through. She felt like hugging him. ‘An entire cathedral?’

  ‘Wilfrid knew about building. He’d already built them at Ripon and York. It was Benedictine.’ In his hood, staring out at the water, Jake could have been taken for one of the monks.

  ‘How did a building of that size get destroyed?’

  ‘Three centuries later, the Church ordered a new one to be built in Chichester.’

  ‘There’s gratitude. Enough to turn the locals right off Christianity.’

  ‘Maybe their cathedral was already under threat from the sea.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be finding excuses for the Church,’ she said, tongue in cheek. ‘Selsey people built that cathedral and they deserved to keep it.’

  ‘They did, in a sense.’

  ‘How do you mean?

  ‘In bits. You can still find chunks of marble and Caen stone in local buildings.’

  ‘They looted it?’

  ‘Reclaimed,’ he said, looking out to sea.

  DR AUSTEN Sentinel looked slightly older than his picture on the internet but still didn’t fit their stereotype of an academic. He was lightly tanned, casually dressed in linen jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and Reeboks. On another day in a different situation, he could have passed for a sportsman.

  Little was said during the drive to the mortuary. Until formal identification had taken place there was no justification for asking questions about the marriage, so Hen confined herself to summarising the few known facts about the finding of the woman on the beach. Sentinel contributed nothing except single-word responses. His thoughts seemed to be on the ordeal to come.

  When the sheet was drawn back to display the dead woman’s face there was a moment of uncertainty because he stared, frowned, and shook his head.

  ‘Isn’t that your wife?’ Hen said.

  He released a long breath, vibrating his lips. ‘I’m at a loss to understand how this happened.’

  ‘But she is—’

  ‘Merry, yes.’ Death has a way of making everything sound tasteless.

  ‘You’re confirming that this is your wife, Meredith Sentinel?’

  ‘I just said. Can we leave now?’

  Hen closed the car door on the widowed man and used her phone to call the incident room.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Stella said after she was told. ‘Are you bringing him in now? Because we’ll need to break the news as soon as possible. Don’t ask me how, but the hounds have picked up the scent. They know you took someone to the mortuary, at any rate. I’ve taken two calls in the last ten minutes.’

  Hen was philosophical about the leak. She doubted if it originated with the police. Obviously she’d been spotted entering the mortuary with Dr Sentinel. The public were quick to pass tips to the press. So, for that matter, were mortuary attendants. ‘No problem, Stell. You can say we’ll be issuing a statement within the hour.’

  She walked round to her side of the car and got in. ‘You have my sympathy, sir.’

  Dr Sentinel said, ‘I’m finding this difficult to take in. You’ll have to make allowances.’

  ‘Of course, but we need to talk at the police station.’

  ‘I can’t help you. I can’t get my head round this.’

  ‘You know a lot more about her than we do.’

  He sighed. ‘She drowned in the sea, you said?’

  ‘Someone murdered her, sir, and it’s our job to find out who, and why.’

  ‘You’ll be making this public, I expect?’

  ‘Very soon. That’s part of the process.’

  THEY STROLLED on, past the lifeboat station and the fishing boats. The world was a happier place now. In Jake’s company, the worries of the last twenty-four hours were not so threatening. Jo would have liked to tuck her hand inside his arm. It was a pity the moment didn’t seem right. An opportunity might come, but it wasn’t yet. She cared too much to risk giving him the wrong impression. Like some chaste woman out of a Victorian novel, she thought.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. An unexpected question. Mostly he avoided anything personal.

  ‘Fine. Just fine.’

  ‘About walking here, I mean.’

  She grasped what he was saying. They were almost level with the section of beach where she’d found the corpse and she hadn’t given it a thought. The mobile incident room was no longer parked there. Briefly she wondered how Jake knew which section it was, and then decided anyone with an interest in the matter would have no difficulty finding out. Everyone local would have seen that big police trailer and it was obvious that the bit of beach was just below there.

  ‘I think I’m over that,’ she said. ‘Being with you makes it all right.’

  As if embarrassed, he stepped a little to the right, putting distance between them.

  This process of getting to know him was a learning curve. She tried to sound more objective, more fact-based. ‘You’re from Cornwall and yet you know this place as if you were raised here.’

  ‘My job.’

  ‘Local history?’

  ‘Erosion and such. Or conservancy, I should say.’

  ‘It’s a lot more than that, what you’ve told me about this strip of coast. So unexpected. I mean on the face of things it’s just a long stretch of shingle, pretty unromantic. Then you tell me it looks out onto a hidden deer park and a cathedral.’

  ‘Folklore says you can hear the bells at low tide.’

  She turned to look at him. He wasn’t all factual statements. ‘Now you’re laying it on.’

  He shrugged and looked down towards the water’s edge, and she had a sense that he was enjoying this. ‘Good place for fossils, too.’

  ‘Do you collect them?’

  ‘I have a few at home. And just about here . . . ’ He stopped and measured a slice of the seafront with his hands ‘ . . . the skeleton of a woolly mammoth was found.’

  ‘On the beach?’

  ‘At low tide, after a storm raked off the shingle and sand and laid bare the clay.’

  ‘A mammoth?’

  ‘A fisherman found it and marked the place. The bones were recovered by a team from Brighton University.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Twenty years ago. A young specimen that would have stood about nine feet tall.’

  ‘Big enough.’

  ‘Elephant-size, at any rate. The biggest mammoths grew to fourteen feet.’

  She gazed at the foreshore, trying to imagine the scene. ‘What an experience, excavating something like that. Those university people must have been over the moon to get such an opportunity.’

  ‘You never know what will show up here. Mostly relics of the last ice age. Bones from rhinoceros, straight-tusked elephant.’

  ‘Where is the mammoth now?’

  ‘London. Natural History Museum.’

  ‘The Selsey Mammoth. Has anythin
g else been found, other than bones, I mean?’

  ‘We get the metal detectorists here looking for Roman gold.’

  ‘And finding any?’

  ‘They were finding it before detectors were invented. A hoard of three hundred coins on the West Beach. A solid gold bar. A pair of armlets.’

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘Only fossils. But you have to wait for the right conditions when the clay beds are exposed.’

  ‘Low tide?’

  ‘Spring tides are best. If you like, I could take you when the chance comes.’

  ‘I’d enjoy that.’

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Sorry. This could be Gemma.’ She put it to her ear.

  It was, and she sounded in good heart. ‘Jo darling, is this a good time?’

  ‘Sure.’ Considerately, Jake had turned away and stepped down the beach towards the sea. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d stayed.

  ‘Sorry to miss Starbucks,’ Gemma was saying, requiring a shift in thought of half a million years. ‘Rick told you about my problem.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Well, after much thought, they didn’t bang me up in jail.’

  ‘I should think not.’

  ‘It wasn’t so hairy as I expected at first. Would you believe they called me at seven-thirty in the morning on a Saturday, when I’m trying to get a proper lie-in? What they wanted was to be let into the office and shown where Fiona worked. They asked me all about her, and the boss.’

  ‘Did they know she had something going with him?’

  ‘They did when I’d finished with them. They spent a long time in his office and took his computer away. Asked me loads of questions about his attitude to women and where he takes his holidays and if he drinks and stuff like that. He’s the prime suspect, for sure.’

  ‘Are they treating it as a crime, then?’

  ‘You bet they are. These were CID, not plain old cops in uniform.’

  ‘Who was in charge? A woman detective called Mallin?’

  ‘No. Have you got friends in the police?’

  ‘Far from it. She’s the tough cookie who interviewed me about the dead woman I found at Selsey.’

  ‘She’d be West Sussex, then. Emsworth is Hampshire. Another county. Different set of cops. Didn’t fancy either of mine, if you want to know.’

  Something to be thankful for, Jo thought. ‘I don’t see why the CID have to be involved. It could have been an accident, or suicide.’