The House Sitter

by Peter Lovesey

  “But she seemed relaxed?”

  “I thought so. And I can’t remember any more about her until later when we had a crisis of our own, with Haley going missing after Mike and I had been for a swim. I was asking people if they’d seen her, but the woman looked as if she’d been asleep for hours, so I didn’t disturb her.”

  “Definitely asleep?”

  “Well, how can you tell? I didn’t look closely to see if she was breathing, or anything.”

  Hen asked a question. “Who was it who found Haley?”

  “The lifeguard. I saw him holding her hand and I thought for a moment he was abducting her.”

  “Which lifeguard?”

  “He was the only one I saw. No hair, or very little. Very muscular. Australian, by his accent.”

  Hen nodded and murmured to Diamond, “Emerson.”

  Diamond resumed. “So you got your child back, and she was the one who noticed that the tide had reached the woman?”

  “Yes. We couldn’t see all of her but her legs were poking out of the windbreak and it was obvious she wasn’t moving. Mike went to look, and you know the rest.”

  “He alerted the lifeguard?”

  “They carried her-Mike and the lifeguard and a couple of young blokes-over the stones to one of the beach huts and put her in there. Then we left. That’s all I can tell you, I think.”

  He said in a mild, almost dismissive tone, in consideration to young Haley, “Obviously you know she was strangled at some stage of the afternoon. You didn’t notice anyone else with her?”

  “Nobody. Didn’t hear anything or see anything. It must have happened while we were swimming. That’s all I can think.”

  “So the last time you saw her alive was just before you had your lunch?”

  “Yes, about one-thirty, I think.”

  He thanked her, and looked to Hen to see if she had anything to ask. She obviously hadn’t. And it was no use questioning the child, because she’d spent most of the day playing near the water’s edge.

  They drove to Horsham, Hen leading the way in her car. She hadn’t forgotten her promise of a pub lunch and the Green Dragon was her choice. She picked her way to it unerringly, parked and strode inside while Diamond was still finding a place to put his car. Brisk and boisterous, it seemed the right setting for her. There were two main drinking areas, a large screen TV and bar billiards.

  “Fish and chips suit you?” she suggested when he reached her at the counter where the food was ordered. “We’ve plenty of time. A little bird told me Jimmy is out of the office until three.”

  So he found a table in the main eating area, known as the conservatory, and fetched the drinks, two half-pints of Tanglefoot. He usually drank cheap lager, but this seemed the kind of place where you raised your sights and went for a full-bodied beer. Tom Jones was coming over the sound system.

  “It’s not too loud, is it?” he remarked to Hen.

  “I like it. But I’d forgotten they don’t let you smoke in this area,” she said. “Before you sit down, do you mind if we move to the patio?” She led him outside to a table with a plate of uneaten baked beans someone had also used as an ashtray. “I always find my level eventually.”

  “But will they find us with the lunch?” he said.

  “No problem.” She took out her cigars and lit one. “I told them I’d be with the Sean Connery lookalike.”

  They talked for a while about films, or at least Hen did. He hadn’t been to a cinema since Steph died. It seemed Bognor was a good place to catch the latest movie. English seaside towns usually had more than one cinema, she remarked. There were so many wet afternoons when there was nowhere else to go.

  Then they talked shop again. “Thanks for sending me Emma Tysoe’s files,” she said. “We’re a lot wiser about all kinds of things.”

  “Well, it’s helpful to know the names on the Mariner’s death-list,” he said smoothly, as if Jimmy Barneston’s amours were well down the scale. “Bramshill had no intention of telling us.”

  “Top names, too. Young Matt Porter is one of my pin-ups. I don’t want him getting killed.”

  “He’ll be all right if he does as they say.”

  “He sounded stroppy.”

  “But his manager Macaulay makes the decisions, and he’ll crack the whip. The woman sounds more at risk.”

  “Anna Walpurgis? Do you think she’ll quit the safe house?”

  “It sounded as if she was causing problems.”

  “And how,” Hen said. “Jimmy will bring us up to date.” She paused before saying, “How do you want to play this?”

  “Straight bat. I’ve brought my copy of the files. I think we should let him have a read before we say a thing.”

  “Good thinking. But then what?”

  “We simply ask what happened next. We’re entitled to know if he slept with her the night before she was murdered. And anything she said that might throw light on it. Did she tell him she was planning a day on the beach? Did she feel under threat from anyone at all?”

  “And what were Jimmy’s own movements that day? He’s got to prove he has an alibi.”

  “Are you going to tell him?” Diamond said.

  She blew out smoke and flashed a big, beguiling smile. “It would come better from you, sweetie.”

  This time he didn’t argue. All along, he’d expected to be eyeball to eyeball with Barneston. He was confident of Hen’s support when the going got tough.

  He said, “There’s another thing I’d like to find out from JB, and it goes back to when Emma Tysoe was first brought in on the case. How many people knew? Bramshill were in on it, obviously. So was Jimmy. But who else?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “So you’re still holding on to the possibility she could have been killed by the Mariner?”

  “I haven’t excluded it.” A bland admission. Deep down, he was more committed. From the beginning, everyone had told him the cases were unconnected, so his stubborn personality wanted to prove the opposite.

  Their food arrived shortly after. Hen slid the vinegar towards him. “I expect you’re quite a connoisseur of fish and chips.”

  “Living alone, you mean? Actually I’m a pizza specialist.”

  “Do you cook for yourself at all?”

  “Pizzas from the freezer. I sometimes open a tin of beans. I could be asking you these questions.”

  “Me?” Hen said. “The canteen at Bognor nick is second to none.” She leaned back in the seat as if her attention was taken by a group of young office workers celebrating someone’s birthday. They all had paper hats. Then her eyes returned to Diamond and she took a long sip of beer before saying, “I heard about your wife being murdered last year. I know you don’t want sympathy. Just wanted to say-as a total outsider-you’re bearing up better than I would.”

  “Thanks. I’ve learnt a few tips about living alone,” he said, sidestepping the heart-to-heart he saw coming. “One thing you can depend on absolutely. If you go to the bathroom, you just get settled and somebody will ring the doorbell. If you’re able to get there in time it’s a bloke selling oven gloves. If you don’t make it, you find a card to say you missed the postman and you’ve got to go into town and collect a parcel.”

  She smiled. “Don’t I know! And when you collect, it isn’t a parcel at all, but a letter from some plonker who forgot to put on a stamp.”

  “Yes, and when you pay up and open the letter it’s from the doctor to say you need a booster jab for anti-tetanus.”

  “So what’s the tip?”

  “Don’t use your own bathroom. Use the one at work.”

  Hen shook her head. “There’s always someone in there.”

  End of exchange, thanks be. He’d been told more than once not to bottle up the grief, but it wasn’t in his nature to discuss it with anyone. The process had been drawn out over many months, still without closure. The shooting, the funeral, the investigation, the arrest, the trial and, yet to come, an appeal. The open wound remained and the pai
n didn’t go away. Let no one underestimate the effect of murder on the surviving spouse.

  The music had switched to “Staying Alive.” They finished their food as fast as possible and left on foot for the police station, a ten-minute walk through the park that would do them good after fish and chips, Hen assured him.

  He asked how the Wightview Sands end of the investigation had been going, and she told him she hadn’t yet traced the second lifeguard, but she had a name and a mobile phone number- which had not helped, as they couldn’t make contact with it. The assumption was that the phone needed recharging.

  “What’s his name?” Diamond asked.

  “Laver.”

  “Straight up?”

  She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just that the first lifeguard-the one we met-is called Emerson, or claimed to be. Laver and Emerson were two of the biggest names in Australian tennis in the sixties. They won God knows how many Grand Slam titles between them. They played doubles together as well.”

  “You think they were having us on?”

  “Having someone on for sure. It could be about casual labour and work permits, rather than what happened on the beach that day. They’d have thought up more original identities if they knew it was a murder enquiry. Is Emerson still working there?”

  “The last I heard, he was,” Hen answered. “I’ll follow this up.”

  They reached the north end of Horsham Park, where the three main emergency services are sited. At the police station, they were asked to wait in an office, because DCI Barneston was still not back.

  “What time is it?” Diamond asked the sergeant. “He has a good lunch break.”

  You could generally count on the lower ranks enjoying a poke at the high-ups, but this sergeant didn’t rise to it. Was Barneston an example of that rare breed, a chief inspector popular with the lower ranks?

  They had an upstairs room to themselves. It was typically barren of anything of interest. There were three plastic chairs and a table stained with tea. On the wall facing the door were two notices about foot-and-mouth regulations and a map of West Sussex.

  “A bloody ashtray would help,” Hen said as she lit up.

  Diamond was looking at the map. “How far are we from Bognor, then?”

  “About twenty-five. You take the A29.”

  “And Wightview Sands?”

  “Probably another ten miles on top. Why?”

  “If Emma Tysoe was here with JB the night before she was murdered, she had a drive of thirty-five miles to Wightview Sands. From what I can see, Worthing or Brighton would have been nearer.”

  “Or Bognor.”

  “Or Bognor,” he echoed. “But why Wightview Sands?”

  “It’s different, isn’t it?” Hen said. “All those places are seaside towns. Wightview is only a beach-well, there’s a small village set back from the shore, and some posh houses. There’s almost nothing along the front except one beach café and a long row of beach huts. You haven’t got piers and pubs and amusement machines by the hundred. It’s quiet.”

  “Unspoilt.”

  She wagged a finger. “Hold your horses, squire. You won’t get me to say Bognor is spoilt.”

  “It sounds as if she went to Wightview because she knows the place. It was what she wanted. Somewhere to relax.”

  “Presumably. Unless she’d agreed to meet someone.”

  “Doesn’t appear so. She arrived on the beach late morning, after the Smiths, put up her windbreak, lay on her towel and that’s about all we know until she was found dead. We have about two thousand suspects.”

  “A shortlist of four,” Hen said.

  “Four? Let me try. The ex-lover, Ken. The two lifeguards under false names. And the Mariner.”

  “Check.”

  “But you left out Jimmy Barneston.”

  She creased her features. “You don’t really rate him?”

  “I want to hear his story. Where is the guy?”

  Hen, unable to supply an answer, took the question as rhetorical. She was still brooding over the suspects. “There are problems with each of them. We don’t know how Ken or the Mariner knew she was on that beach on that particular morning.”

  “But both are single-minded characters,” he said. “They could have followed her. What about the guy in the black T-shirt who tried to chat her up and got nowhere? He could have been Ken. Apparently they recognised each other. She wouldn’t have been too happy if he turned up unexpectedly. He got the brush-off, but he could have come back in the afternoon.”

  “The two suspects we know for certain were on that beach are the two Australian guys,” Hen said, doggedly working through the possibilities, “but we don’t have a motive for them. There’s no suggestion that this was part of a sexual assault.”

  “Theft? Her beachbag was missing.”

  “But we agreed it’s dead simple to steal a bag on a beach. You don’t have to strangle someone if you’re only after cash and credit cards.”

  He yawned, and checked the time again. “True.”

  “However, we haven’t found her car yet.”

  “Good point, Hen.” He snapped his fingers. “Now that raises the stakes. A Lotus Esprit might be a prize worth having for a young guy living on a shoestring without a work permit. He steals the bag-her bag and no other-because it contains her car key. He’s seen her park this beautiful car-”

  “People have been killed for less.”

  “A lot less. I rather like it, Hen. I’m not sure if I like it more than the Mariner, or Ken, or the man in the black T-shirt, but it’s persuasive, very persuasive. There’s only one problem with it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Any one of our other two thousand suspects could have done it.”

  At this point the smoke alarm went off.

  Order was restored after an embarrassing few minutes explaining to the safety officer that, as visitors, they hadn’t taken note of the no smoking signs all over the building. The only places you could light up were the canteen and the interview rooms, provided that the interviewee wished to smoke as well.

  “You want to try patches,” Diamond told Hen when she took out her lighter again. They were standing outside the front entrance of the police station.

  “You know where you can put your patches, chummy.”

  The placid street life of Horsham continued in front of them while that cigar was reduced rather quickly to a tiny butt.

  “It’s bloody near four o’clock. I’ll go inside and see if they can get a message to him,” Diamond said.

  The desk sergeant had changed. This one didn’t appear to know that they were waiting outside. Diamond had to identify himself.

  The sergeant apologised. “You’re waiting for DCI Barneston, sir? He won’t be coming back this afternoon. He’s dealing with an incident.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “I wasn’t informed, sir-except that he’s tied up for the rest of the day and probably tomorrow as well.”

  “Well, I’m going to need his mobile number. I’ve come from Bath to see him, and another officer outside has come up from the coast.”

  Not so simple. Getting Barneston’s number was like trying to steal meat from a pride of lions. By sheer force of personality he eventually obtained it on the say-so of a CID inspector.

  When he got through, he found Barneston incensed at being troubled. “Who the fuck put you onto me? Didn’t anyone tell you there’s a fucking emergency here?”

  Diamond gritted his teeth. “We’re coming to see you.”

  “You’re joking. I’m dealing with a crisis here.”

  “So are we, and you’d better listen up, Jimmy, because it concerns you.”

  “What are you on about?”

  “Emma Tysoe came to see you the day before she was strangled.”

  After a long hesitation, Barneston said, “You know about that?”

  “There’s a whole lot more we know.”

  Another pause. Then: “I’
m at Littlegreen Place, South Harting. That’s near Petersfield. It’s laughingly described as a safe house.”

  15

  Littlegreen Place was a large, brick-built house standing in chain-fenced grounds on the northern escarpment of the South Downs. There was no other building within sight. When Diamond drove up, with Hen Mallin seated beside him, the electric gates were open and three police minibuses, two patrol cars and a Skoda were parked on the drive

  Someone with a tripod over his shoulder and a camera in his free hand came from the open front door, heading for the Skoda, and Diamond asked him if DCI Barneston was about. The man nodded towards the interior.

  “Got your pictures already?” Diamond said, just to be civil to someone else in the pay of the government.

  “Waste of time,” came the reply, and it set the tone for what was to come.

  They went inside, through a sizeable entrance hall, in the direction of voices that turned out to be from the kitchen. Jimmy Barneston, looking like a football manager whose team has just been relegated, was slumped at the table, his head in his hands. Two others in plain clothes, holding mugs, were standing together watching a uniformed inspector speaking urgent orders into a mobile phone.

  “Are you supposed to be here?” one of them asked.

  Diamond identified himself and Hen and asked what was happening.

  “You tell us.”

  Hen said, “Jimmy?”

  Barneston raised his eyes, but that was the extent of it.

  Diamond asked, “Is someone going to let us in on this?”

  Barneston gave a groan that was part threat, part protest, as if his sleep had been disturbed.

  The inspector using the phone moved out of the kitchen into what was probably a laundry room.

  Diamond put a hand on Barneston’s shoulder. “You cocked up, is that it?”

  This got a response. He looked up and said with a heavy emphasis, “Not me.”

  “The people on duty?”

  He nodded, all too ready to shift any blame. “Two hours ago, a call was made to this place, a scheduled call, to the Special Branch officers supposed to be guarding, em, a person under threat.”