The House Sitter

by Peter Lovesey

  “Mike, can you see her?”

  He said with his irritating, offhand manner, “She’ll be somewhere around.”

  “I can’t see the girls she was with. Oh, God. Mike, where is she?”

  “She won’t be far away.”

  “We’ve got to find her.”

  “You told her we were going for a swim. She saw us.”

  “But she isn’t here.”

  He began to take it seriously. “If she’s lost, someone will have taken her up to the lifeguards. I’ll check with them. You ask the people who were sitting near us.”

  She dashed back to their spot. No sign of Haley. The woman with copper hair was lying on her side as if she’d been asleep for hours, so Olga spoke to the teenagers.

  “No, I’d have noticed,” one of them said. “She hasn’t been back since you ate your sandwiches. Pretty little kid with dark hair in bunches, isn’t she?”

  “You’re sure you haven’t seen her?”

  “We’ve been here all the time. She went the wrong way, I expect. Not surprising, is it, with all these people?”

  Olga asked the French family. They seemed to understand what she was saying and let her know with shrugs and shakes of the head that they hadn’t seen Haley either. She looked up to where the lifeguards had their post, a raised deck with a wide view of the beach. Mike was returning, looking about him anxiously.

  She felt the pounding of her heart.

  “They’re going to help us find her,” he said when he reached her. “It happens all the time, they told me. All these sections between the groynes look the same. They say she’s probably come up the beach and wandered into the wrong bit.”

  “Mike, I don’t see how. I told her several times to look for the flags.”

  “Maybe there’s another flag further along.”

  “She’ll be panicking by now.”

  “Yes, but it’s up to us not to panic, right?”

  Easy to say.

  “You stay here. This is the place she’ll come back to. One of us must be here,” he said. “I’ll check the next section.”

  She remained standing, so as to be more obvious when Haley came back-if she came back. Appalling fears had gripped her. A beach was an ideal hunting ground for some paedophile. Her Haley, her child, could already be inside a car being driven away.

  “She’ll be all right,” one of the teenagers said. “Little kids are always getting lost on beaches. It happened to me once.”

  Olga didn’t answer. She was shivering, more from shock than cold. Supposedly a non-believer, she started saying and repeating, “Please God, help us find her,” out there on the beach. All around her, people continued with their beach activities, unaware of her desperation.

  Mike came quickly around the edge of the groyne shaking his head. He wasn’t close enough to be heard, but it was obvious there was nothing to report. The worry lines were etched deep. He pointed as he ran, to let Olga know he would search the section on the other side. She folded her arms across her front. Her teeth were chattering.

  “Why don’t you cover up your shoulders?” one of the teenagers suggested. “There’s a wicked breeze since the tide turned.” She got up and brought a towel to Olga. “Try not to worry, love,” she said, wrapping it around her and sounding twice her age. “Someone will bring her back.”

  Olga couldn’t speak. She wanted to be doing something active towards finding Haley, organising search parties, alerting the police. Instead, she had to stand here, gripped by fear and guilt. How selfish and irresponsible she had been to go for that bathe and stay so long in the sea. She’d put Haley completely out of her mind while she and Mike enjoyed that stupid romp in the waves.

  “Isn’t that your little girl?”

  “What?” She snapped out of her stupor.

  The teenage girl who had brought her the towel was still beside her. “With the man in the red shorts on the bit above the beach.”

  “Oh, my God!” Haley, for sure. She was holding the hand of a strange man, the pair of them standing quite still. Olga screamed Haley’s name and started running up the beach towards them. “She’s mine! That’s my child! Haley!”

  Haley shouted, “Mummy!” and waved her free hand. The other was still gripped by the man, a shaven-headed, muscled figure in tight-fitting red shorts that reached to his knees. He didn’t attempt to leave.

  Continuing to shriek, “He’s got my child! That’s my child!” Olga scrambled up the steep bank of pebbles, nightmarishly slipping back with each step, yet oblivious of the pain to her bare feet.

  As soon as she was close enough she shouted, “What are you doing with my child?”

  He called something back. It sounded like, “Easy, lady.”

  “Let go of her!”

  She stumbled the last steps towards them and heard him say, “I just found her. I’m the lifeguard.”

  She had to play over in her brain what he had said because it was so clear in her mind that he was evil, a child-snatcher.

  But when she reached the stone embankment above the pebbles, the man released Haley, who flung herself at her mother with arms outstretched.

  “Oh, Mummy-I was lost.”

  “What happened? Are you all right, darling?”

  “This man found me.”

  He said, “Did you hear me, Mrs? I’m the lifeguard. She was in our hut. One of her friends went there for first aid.”

  “One of those girls I was playing with was hit in the face by the Frisbee,” Haley said. “It wasn’t me that threw it. Her eye was hurt, so we all went up to get some help. She’s all right now. Her mummy came and took her and her sister away. I was left. I couldn’t see you anywhere.”

  Olga felt tears streaming from her eyes. She apologised to the lifeguard, and thanked him all in the same sentence. Haley was still in her arms, gripping her possessively. She’d had a big fright. Olga carried her back to their spot on the beach. Mike hadn’t returned, but the people around smiled and asked if Haley was all right.

  Olga explained what had happened. She looked in the picnic bag and found a can of drink for Haley. “We’ll be leaving as soon as Daddy gets back,” she said. “The tide’s coming in, anyway.”

  People were packing up all around them. The French family dismantled their windbreak and folded their towels. The teenagers said goodbye and carried the loungers back to the store. Of those around them, only the copper-haired woman appeared intent on staying until the tide forced her to move. It was practically at her heels.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He went looking for you. He’ll be back soon.”

  “We’ll have to get up soon, or we’ll get wet.”

  “I know. We can give him a few minutes more. We might have to meet him at the car.”

  “Is he cross with me?”

  “I’m sure he isn’t. We’ll tell him what happened.”

  Olga used the time to fold the towels and fill the bags.

  Presently Haley asked, “Why isn’t that lady packing up? Her feet must be getting wet.”

  The child was right. The woman hadn’t made any attempt to move yet.

  Olga couldn’t see her properly. The windbreak was around her head and shoulders. Probably if Olga hadn’t already made such an exhibition of herself she would have popped her head over the canvas and said, You’d better move now, sweetie, or you’ll get a wave over you any minute. The experience with Haley had temporarily taken away her confidence.

  A little further along, the lager lads with their empties heaped in front of them were watching with obvious amusement the progress of the tide towards the woman’s outstretched feet.

  Olga looked round for Mike, and there he was at last, striding towards them.

  “Brilliant! She came back, then. Are you OK, Hale?”

  Haley nodded.

  Mike kissed her forehead. “Thank God for that.”

  Olga started to explain what had happened, but was interrupted by Haley.

  “Mummy, don�
��t you think we ought to wake the lady up? She’s going to drown.”

  “What are you saying?” Full of her own drama, she’d shut everything else out of her mind. Now she saw what Haley was on about. “God, yes. Mike, you’d better go to her. She’s out to the world. I don’t know what’s the matter with her.”

  He said, “It’s none of our business, love.”

  “There’s something wrong.”

  With a sigh that vented all the day’s frustration, he stepped the few paces down the beach to where the water was already lapping right around the windbreak. He bent towards the woman. Abruptly he straightened up. “Bloody hell-she’s dead.”

  2

  Isn’t this a job for the police?” Mike Smith said.

  The lifeguard gave him the look he used for people who “ drift out to sea in inflatables. “By the time they get here, sport, she’ll be three feet under water.”

  “Have you called them?”

  “Sure.”

  Three of the lads who had been drinking lager came over to see what was happening and got asked to help move the body. One walked away, saying he wasn’t touching a dead person, but the others stayed, and so did Mike. Ankle deep, they lifted the corpse and carried it up the shingle and past the lifeguard post to the turf above the beach, watched by a sizeable, silent crowd. The lifeguard asked them to lay the body down for a moment. Evidently he didn’t want it in his hut. He went inside and came out with a key and opened a nearby beach hut.

  “We’ll take her in there.”

  Once the dead woman was deposited on the floor of the narrow wooden building, the lager lads walked away, and Mike started to go with them, but the lifeguard said, “Hold on, mate. You can’t leave. You found the body.”

  “What do you mean, ‘found the body’? I was on the beach like everyone else. Anyone could see she wasn’t moving when the tide came in.”

  “The police’ll want to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to them,” Mike said. “I don’t know who she is. We just happened to be sitting behind her.”

  “Was she with anyone?”

  “Not that I noticed. Look, my wife and kid are waiting in the car. We’ve got a long drive home.”

  “The police should be along shortly.”

  “I’ll tell my wife, then.”

  “You’re coming back?”

  “Sure.”

  Mike marched to the car park, got in the car and started the engine.

  “Is that it?” Olga asked.

  “Yup.”

  “We don’t have to talk to the police?”

  “We’ve had enough hassle for one day. We’re leaving.” He put the car in gear and drove across the turf to the road leading to the exit.

  He had to make way for a police car coming at speed with siren sounding and blue light flashing. It stopped a short distance ahead, opposite the lifeguards’ hut and two policemen got out.

  “Are you sure this is right?” Olga asked.

  “We can’t tell them anything. We know bugger all. We don’t know who she was or why she snuffed it. All they’ll do is keep us here for hours asking idiot questions.”

  Inside five minutes they were in a long line of traffic heading away from the coast.

  Police officers Shanahan and Vigne stood in shirt-sleeve order outside the open door of the beach hut where the woman’s body lay. They hadn’t gone right in. The lifeguard offered them each a can of Sprite and they accepted. Somehow it made a morbid duty more tolerable.

  “Are we one hundred per cent certain she’s dead?” PC Shanahan asked. He seemed to be in charge, young as he appeared with his innocent blue eyes and smooth skin.

  “You’ve only got to look at her,” the lifeguard said.

  This they were in no hurry to do. In the doorway they could see the undersides of her feet, bluish-white and wrinkled by the water. That was enough for now.

  “It’s not up to us. A doctor has to certify she’s dead.” Shanahan turned to PC Vigne, who looked at least five years his senior. “Haven’t you sent for the police surgeon, lamebrain?”

  Vigne used his personal radio.

  “What happened to her things?” Shanahan asked.

  “Things?”

  “Bag? Clothes?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. We just lifted her up and brought her here.”

  “She must have had some things with her.”

  “She was lying on a blue towel. I can tell you that.”

  “There you go, then. Handbag?”

  “Didn’t notice one.”

  “We’d better go and search. We won’t know who she is until we find her bag.”

  The lifeguard said, “How do you know she had one?”

  “Keys, purse, money. Where did she keep them?”

  “A pocket?”

  “Was she wearing something with pockets?”

  The lifeguard shook his head. “Two-piece swimsuit.”

  “So let’s look for a bag. Where exactly was she lying?”

  They closed and padlocked the door of the hut and stepped at a businesslike pace along the path above the beach. The waves were rattling the pebbles and the exact spot where the woman had been found was two feet under water already. Most people had quit the stretch of beach, except for an elderly couple just above the waterline in deckchairs. Shanahan asked if they had noticed anyone pick up a beachbag or anything else belonging to the person who was taken from the water. The woman said she must have been asleep. The old man was obviously gaga.

  “Is that the towel?”

  “Where?”

  Shanahan pointed. He had spotted something blue shifting in the foam at the margin of the tide. “Would you mind?” he asked the lifeguard. “We’re not dressed for the water.”

  So the towel was recovered, a large, plain bath towel. A search of the bank of shingle above the sea produced nothing else. There should have been a windbreak, the lifeguard announced. When they’d first seen the woman, a windbreak had been set up around her. Someone must have seen it abandoned and decided it was worth acquiring. “They’ll take anything that isn’t nailed down.”

  “They can keep it as far as I’m concerned,” said Shanahan.

  “We’re looking for a bag.”

  “That’ll be gone, too. Something I’ve noticed about beaches,” the lifeguard said from the rich store of his experience. “None of the usual rules apply. People find stuff and think it’s fair game to take it if no one is around. Well, we’ve all heard of beachcombing. The bastards pick up things they wouldn’t dream of keeping if they found them in a street.”

  “Great,” Shanahan said. “To sum up, we’re supposed to identify this woman from one blue towel and the costume she was wearing.”

  The lifeguard was more upbeat. “At the end of the day you’ll find her car standing all alone in the car park. That’s your best bet. Most people come by car. This beach isn’t the sort you walk to.”

  “Unless someone nicked the car as well.”

  “Or she was driven here by a friend,” said Vigne. A few years in the police and you expect no favours from fate.

  They radioed back to say they were unable to identify the dead woman and some of her property was missing. They were ordered to remain at the scene and wait for the doctor.

  So they sat in the sun on the canvas seats outside the hut, with the wind off the sea tugging at their shirts.

  “What age is she, this woman?” Shanahan asked.

  “Don’t know. Thirties?”

  “As young as that? Makes you think, someone dying like that.”

  “Heart, I suppose.”

  “Do you reckon?”

  “Is sunstroke fatal?”

  “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “My money’s on heart. Could happen to anyone.”

  Vigne said, “There’s something I heard of called sudden death syndrome.”

  “Come again, lamebrain.”

  “Sudden death syndrome. You can be perfectly fit and go to b
ed one night and never wake up.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” the lifeguard said.

  “But she wasn’t in bed,” Shanahan said. “She was stretched out on the beach.”

  “There are worse places to die than a beach on a nice afternoon.”

  “That’s priceless,” Shanahan said, “coming from a lifeguard. You should write that on a board and fix it to your hut.”

  A dark-haired woman in a suit and carrying a bag stopped in front of the three of them reclining in the sun, and said, “Nice work, if you can get it.” This was Dr Keithly, the police surgeon.

  They all stood up.

  “You’ve got a corpse for me, I was told.”

  “In that beach hut,” Shanahan said.

  The lifeguard added, “A woman.”

  “She came to you feeling ill?”

  “No.” He explained how the body was found. “Do you want me to open up, Doc?”

  “Well, I hate to spoil the fun, but… please.”

  Presently Dr Keithly stood in the entrance to the hut beside the feet of the deceased. “I could do with some light in here.”

  “I’ll fetch a torch.”

  “That will help.”

  Torch in hand, she stepped around the outstretched legs. She was silent for some time, crouching beside the body.

  Shanahan stood in the doorway, watching until the examination was complete. It seemed to take an age. “What’s the verdict, doc? Definitely dead?”

  “We can agree on that.” Dr Keithly stood up and stepped out, removing her plastic gloves. She sounded less friendly now. “Did you take a proper look at her?”

  “We were waiting for you.”

  She turned to the lifeguard. “But you recovered the body.”

  “With a bit of help.”

  “You got a good look at her, then. Didn’t you notice anything unusual about her appearance?”

  “Such as?”

  “The mark around her neck.”

  “What mark?”

  “I’d say it was made by a ligature. She seems to have been strangled.”

  “Christ almighty!” the lifeguard said.

  “Come and see for yourselves.”

  This had to be faced. All three men squeezed into the hut and watched as the doctor pointed the torch at the neck of the dead woman, lifting the reddish hair. A broad line extended right around the throat.