The House Sitter

by Peter Lovesey

  “But you’re OK?”

  Anna said in a croak, “Thanks to you, Sparkle. Man oh man, that was bloody heroic!”

  26

  Ken Bellman was forced to wait twenty-four hours before having the satisfaction of telling his story to the chief investigating officers. Diamond needed to catch up on his sleep. Hen Mallin wanted to tie up another case before leaving Bognor. And Jimmy Barneston had been called urgently to the staff college at Bramshill.

  A lot more happened in that twenty-four hours.

  Anna Walpurgis, quickly and fully restored, moved out of Bennett Street and back into the Bath Spa Hotel. From there, she made a series of shopping trips, contributing handsomely to the economy of the city. As well as buying five new outfits for herself, she treated Ingeborg to a stunning red leather suit. And there was a present for Diamond: a widescreen TV and DVD player combined, with a disc of herself in concert. “Just so you don’t ever forget the broad whose life you saved, Pete.”

  Red-faced, he thanked her.

  Keith Halliwell’s skills as a home decorator were put to good use in Georgina’s house, repapering the wall the Mariner had defaced with the red marker. A team of professional cleaners went through the building, tidying up and restoring the place to inspection order.

  In Bognor, Garth Trumpington was charged with the murder of Dr Emma Tysoe. His fingerprints matched those on the stolen car. A check with the duty roster at Wightview Sands car park showed he’d been in the kiosk when Emma arrived on the day of the murder and off duty at the time she was killed. He asked if he would get a lighter sentence if the court was told he hadn’t meant to strangle her. He claimed that the shoulderstrap of her bag got entangled around her neck and tightened while he was struggling with her. No one would venture an opinion on that one.

  So it was early on Thursday afternoon when Ken Bellman and his solicitor were ushered into interview room two at Manvers Street, where Diamond, Hen and Barneston were already seated. The solicitor’s presence was only a formality. One glance at Bellman told them he was as eager as the Ancient Mariner himself to tell his story, all they wanted to know, and much they didn’t. He’d been caught with the murder weapon in his hands and made no attempt to conceal his guilt. He intended to justify his actions now. Nothing would stop him. The glittering eye was all too apparent. The Mariner hath his will.

  “None of this would have happened if British Metal hadn’t pulled the rug from under my research project,” he said with control, taking his time. “The work I was doing up at Liverpool won’t mean much to anyone who isn’t in electronics, but it was the culmination of years of study. All I wanted was the chance to get on with my project. It was my purpose in life. I got up every day eager to do more.” He paused to register the impact of the outrage against him. “Imagine how I felt when I was told by the head of department that I’d lost my funding through no fault of my own. There was no appeal, and no other possibility of finding another sponsor. I was out. Overnight. Later, I was told about this woman Anna Walpurgis being the new broom at British Metal and wanting to make sure the sponsorship money brought a return for the company. Sickening.”

  “Did you try for some funding from anywhere else?” Hen asked.

  “Wasted a month and a hell of a lot of energy writing to other firms. ‘We’re fully committed for the next eighteen months.’ ‘We regret to say we’re cutting back on sponsorship because of the economic downturn in our industry.’ Blah, blah, blah. I gave up and came south and got a job in London. What a comedown.”

  “In electronics?”

  “A security firm installing anti-theft systems.”

  “This was in central London?” Diamond put in, understanding how it tied in.

  “The head office is. They’re very big. I worked all over the south.”

  “And I suppose they had the contract for Special Branch?”

  He said with a superior smile, “You’re catching on. We won the contract to upgrade the security on all their properties. I designed the circuits. I had to be vetted, of course. They’re very sensitive about who they employ. But I’m cleaner than clean. I was given the top security rating.”

  Jimmy Barneston muttered, “Bloody hell.” Special Branch had blamed him for their failings. He’d come here straight from a roasting by the Bramshill overlords.

  “And that’s how I got to know the codes for all the latest safe houses. They came in useful when I wanted to spring Matthew Porter.”

  Barneston’s eyes flickered keenly. “So you had all this planned from way back?”

  “No, I only decided to get my revenge on British Metal when I saw an item on TV about them putting a huge amount of money into a film, something about upgrading an arthouse film into a blockbuster movie. That really got to me. I mean, my bursary was peanuts to what Summers was given for this crap film about a two-hundred year old poem. How does mankind benefit from that? These ponces who make films are burning up millions on things that add nothing to people’s knowledge. My work was important, and real, and I’m not bullshitting when I tell you it would have been a notable contribution to computer science. A few days later I saw in the paper that this kid Porter had been handed a fortune by British Metal just because he can roll a small white ball into a hole. I flipped. I’ve never been so angry in my life.”

  “But you didn’t kill in anger,” Diamond said.

  A new quality came into Bellman’s voice, a distinct note of pride. “That isn’t my style at all. I approached it as a scientist should, starting by assembling all the information I had at my disposal and then deciding how to maximise its potential. The objective was to damage British Metal and its sponsorship programme.”

  Hen said, “Couldn’t you have done that without resorting to murder?”

  He gave her a surprised look. “How? I needed to make an impact with newspaper headlines. Letters to the editor won’t do that. Protest vigils? What do they achieve? Sudden death is the only thing that gets through to people in these violent times. Listen to the news any day and you’ll see that I’m right. I needed a campaign that guaranteed those headlines. I’m not squeamish. I can do what’s necessary to get attention.”

  “Taking life?” Hen said, making clear her revulsion.

  “How about my life?” he said, his voice rising. “My research was trashed, my academic reputation, my hopes and dreams and all the work I’d already put in. Nobody gave a damn about me. My future, my career, was tossed aside to give even bigger handouts to these fat cats. I saw no problem in putting them down. As I was telling you, I worked from my strengths. First, my inside knowledge of the security arrangements in the latest safe houses. Second, I’d seen a former university friend on TV.”

  “Emma Tysoe.”

  “Emma, yes.” He grinned at Diamond and there was total contempt in the way he said, “You tried to pin the wrong murder on me, didn’t you? Got it all wrong. I didn’t kill Emma. She was far too useful to me. But I mustn’t jump ahead. One evening I happened to watch this programme about psychological offender profilers and there was a face I knew, a girlfriend from my student days, being called out to all the most difficult cases of serial murder. She was now a star in the profiling world. Based at Bath University. Quite a celebrity. I decided to renew the friendship.”

  “You moved to Bath just to get friendly with her again?”

  “The timing couldn’t have been better. Once I’d decided to make use of my inside knowledge of safe houses it was sensible to get out of the security systems job as soon as possible, and I have no family arrangements, I can live anywhere I can find a job, so I applied for the IT post with Knowhow & Fix. Easy little number for me, low profile and flexible hours. And just as you were saying, I started going out with Emma. I knew she was likely to be brought into the investigation once they began to see how complex it was, and even if they used someone else, Emma was close enough to the police to feed me some inside knowledge.”

  “Luckily for you, she was assigned to the case,” Diamo
nd said. He wanted to encourage this frank talking. “So you were firing on all cylinders.”

  But Bellman didn’t want anything to sound easy. “Luck didn’t come into it. Haven’t you been listening? I calculated that she would be of use to me. I went to no end of trouble to revive that friendship.”

  “I follow you,” Diamond said, indulging him. “It was deliberate.”

  Hen said, “As cold-blooded as that?”

  He didn’t rise to the comment. Clearly he saw no problem in cynically exploiting a relationship. “Well, I got my plan under way. I put down Summers, the first of the fat cats. And seeing how everything comes down to presentation these days, I decided to dress up the action with an Ancient Mariner theme. Remarkable, isn’t it? A lot of that poem could have been written with me in mind.”

  Jimmy Barneston made a sound of displeasure deep in his throat. He was a restless presence, locked into his own disappointment.

  “The crossbow?” Diamond prompted Bellman. “Where did you get that?”

  “A man in Leeds who works in the Royal Armouries Museum and makes replicas as a hobby. I heard of him through the Internet. You’ve seen the bow, haven’t you?”

  “Pointing at my chest, thank you.”

  He nodded. “It’s a beautiful weapon, easy to use, quick and efficient. I guess it will end up in the Black Museum. It deserves no less.”

  “So you murdered Axel Summers…”

  “… and set the whole thing in motion.” Bellman smoothly completed the statement. The memory of the killing didn’t appear to trouble him at all. “The blueprint was there from the beginning, as you know, because I shared it with you. I gave you people the names of the second and third victims. Has that ever been done before in the history of crime? I don’t think so. The whole point was to force you to send Porter and Walpurgis to the high security safe houses I could break into, and it worked. I knew a lot about the thinking of Special Branch.”

  “Through Emma?”

  “She was brought in very soon, as I calculated. She wasn’t all that keen to talk to me about the case, but she confided her thoughts to her computer-which, naturally, I updated and made secure for her-so, knowing her password, I could hack in when I wanted and read her latest findings. Highly instructive, even down to the progress of our relationship. I have to admit I’m not the world’s most expert lover, and it wasn’t all complimentary. In fact, my plans began to go adrift when that oversexed detective on the case started his own relationship with her.”

  Barneston blinked and sat forward, jerked out of his introspection. “What did you say?”

  Bellman continued with the narrative. “Emma did her best to dump me, as you know. That’s how I nearly got my fingers burnt, trailing after her, trying to cling onto her. She wasn’t indispensable to the project, but she was my window on you people, so I didn’t intend to lose her.”

  A phrase Emma had used of the Mariner came back to Diamond: “emotionally disconnected.” Much of what she had deduced about him was accurate.

  “You followed her to the beach and tried to talk her round,” Hen said.

  Bellman said with his self-admiring grin, “And so became your number one suspect. I had to keep my nerve then. Have you found the actual killer yet? I’m sure it was an opportunist murder. Poor Emma! She didn’t deserve that, even though she was stupid enough to give me the brush-off.”

  “You had your alibi, the petrol receipt,” Diamond said. “All that stuff about losing it under your handbrake wasn’t true, was it? You were stringing me along.”

  “Dead right, Mr Diamond, and do you know why?”

  “Because it distracted me from your real crimes.”

  “Come on now.” He curled his fingers in a sarcastic beckoning gesture. “You can do better than that. Thanks to your interest in me, I was on the inside again, getting a sense of what was going on here, in the police station. I knew Walpurgis was in Bath at that hotel, and I guessed you would move her to some other house when you discovered I was on the scent.”

  “It was on the radio about her being in Bath,” Diamond said to make clear he hadn’t been entirely taken in.

  “Right. And give me my due. I played fair. I let you know I was up with the news. I sent a little message to Walpurgis at the hotel. I hope they passed it on.”

  “ ‘… a frightful fiend doth close behind her tread.’ ”

  “She got it then. Excellent. As I was saying, I was perfectly willing to spend time at your nick listening out for the gossip. When I was first brought in, the news was just going around that the ACC was going on holiday. When I came back to show you the receipt, I had a nice chat with the desk sergeant, a bit of a joke about the boss being away. He got very cagey when I mentioned her. It didn’t require rocket science to find out where you were holding Walpurgis.”

  “Where did you get her address? She’s ex-directory.”

  “She’s the only female ACC, and her name is often in the local press. She isn’t in the phone book, as you say, but she votes in elections. She’s in the electoral register. People forget how simple it is to check up on them. I went to the library and asked to see the register. It’s all in the public domain.”

  “We know you got into the house opposite during the night. You’ll admit you were lucky the basement wasn’t lived in?”

  “No,” he said, affronted by the suggestion. “Empty basements are the norm if you walk along Bennett Street. Either that, or they’re in use as store places. Let’s be frank. Your so-called security was seriously at fault, Mr Diamond. It was rubbish.”

  “We caught you, didn’t we? Where did you get your chloroform?”

  “My old university. They kept a row of bottles in one of the labs. Chloroform has gone out of fashion for anaesthetics, but it’s still widely used as a solvent.” He smiled. “The effect of inhaling the stuff is rather enjoyable before the victim goes under. Ask Ingeborg. She might remember.”

  “I told you all this was on tape,” Diamond said.

  “I heard you.”

  “You’ve admitted to everything.”

  “I’m not ashamed of it, either. I look forward to my day in court, when I shall repeat it all for a wider audience.”

  Such self-congratulation was hard to stomach. The entire performance had been repellent. Murderers of Ken Bellman’s type, seeing themselves as the maltreated victims, are the most unrepentant. True, he had a genuine grievance at the beginning. But the vengeance he took was out of all proportion. He had expressed not a word of remorse for the killing of people who had done nothing to damage him. As he said it himself, they were “put down.” It was as callous as that.

  Diamond walked to the car park with Barneston and Hen.

  “I feel as if I need a shower after that,” Hen said.

  “I practically thumped him for one thing he said,” Barneston said.

  Neither of the others asked what.

  “And he still thinks he’s the bee’s knees,” Hen said.

  “But none of that came out when we interviewed him for the beach murder,” Diamond said. “I thought he was a weak character at the time.”

  “ ‘A piece of pond life’, you called him.”

  “He’s that, for sure. But I didn’t see him as the Mariner. He fooled us, Hen, and I blame myself. I was doing the interview.”

  “And I was asking you to soft-pedal,” she said. “Don’t knock yourself, Peter. You got everything else right. The British Metal connection and the fact that he was a pissed-off academic. Did you ever get that list of the people who lost their bursaries?”

  “On my desk.”

  “And was his name on it?”

  “Yes. I just didn’t get a chance to see it on the morning we nicked him.”

  “But you would have got there,” Hen insisted. “You did all right. And I hate to say that you solved my murder for me, by fingering Garth, but let’s face it, you did. I was up a gum-tree with those Aussie lads.” She opened her car door and then held out her hand to
him. “But don’t let it go to your head. You’re still a pushy bastard.”

  On the day Georgina Dallymore returned from her Nile cruise and let herself into the house in Bennett Street, Sultan was curled up as usual in his basket in the hall. The big ball of fur opened both eyes briefly but didn’t get out to greet her.

  “Exhausted, are you, my darling?” she said. “That makes two of us. But the difference is, I’ve got every right to be tired. I’ve had such an exciting time.”

  The place looked immaculate, maybe even better than she’d left it. You wouldn’t know anyone had stayed here. Yet when she opened the visitors’ book, there was the name of Anna Walpurgis with the date and the comment “I’ll always remember my visit here.” How good it was to come home to a tidy house and a famous name in the visitors’ book and a contented cat, she thought. The house sitter had been one of Peter Diamond’s better suggestions.

  Peter Lovesey

  ***

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