The House Sitter (29 page)

“We’re a good firm to work for.” The kettle came to the boil and she poured water onto the grains of Nescafé in Georgina’s Royal Doulton cups.

“Thanks.” Diamond picked his off the table. “So I’ve got to look elsewhere for someone really embittered, someone who wants to get back at the company. You said before you took over the sponsorship committee, or whatever it’s called, that the handing out of funds was all rather disorganised. Your husband didn’t take much interest in the PR side. In your own words, it was anyone’s guess who got lucky.”

“And it was,” she said.

“But your idea was to sponsor events and people that put the name of British Metal before the public, so you backed high profile projects like the Coleridge film and top sportsmen like Matt Porter.”

“Darn right we did.”

“It obviously got up the Mariner’s nose, because he set out to sabotage your programme in a vicious way.”

“I guess.”

“As he doesn’t appear to have been a disgruntled employee, he could be one of the people who lost out through these changes you introduced. You said your husband gave thousands away without asking what the company got back in publicity, and you mentioned bursaries in particular. Pardon my ignorance. What’s a bursary?”

“Don’t you know?” she said—and then winked. “I didn’t, either. I had to ask. It’s when money is given to people in colleges for research and stuff. We were giving big, big sums to support nerds studying the behaviour of ants, for Christ’s sake, guys in their mid-thirties who should have been earning a crust in an honest job like you and me.”

“Ants?”

“And other stuff. Polymers. What are they —parrots? British Metal was getting nothing back from it.”

“So you axed the bursaries and switched the funds into media projects like films and sport?”

“You bet I did!”

“You know what I’m thinking?” he said. “Some of these nerds, as you call them, are deeply entrenched in their universities. What if one of them was so angry about losing his bursary that he decided on revenge? Do British Metal have a list of the people who lost out?”

“We must have,” she said.

“Any idea how many?”

“About ten. Not many more.”

“I’ll get that list in the morning. Who would I ask? Mrs Poole, the lady I spoke to before?”

“She’s the one.”

He looked at the time. “I must get back to the lads downstairs. You have our number in case of a problem?”

She said in a plaintive voice, “Does being without a man count as a problem?”

He winked. “Surely not to someone who named herself after a nun?”

“No, matey,” said Hen’s husky voice, “it’s Bognor CID.”

“
You?
You’re working late.”

“Wasting my precious time,” she told him. “I thought I’d pass on the bad news. Neither of those Australian boys matches the fingerprints in Emma’s car. They’re back in the pub now. What am I going to do?”

“That’s tough.”

“And how. I really thought we were getting somewhere. I’ve run out of suspects.”

He tried to give it thought. Difficult, when he was focused on the Mariner. “Do you still think she was killed for the car?”

“Ninety per cent sure. Did I tell you her key was still in the ignition?”

“Was it definitely her personal key?”

“The evidence is pretty strong. It had a Bath University keyring.”

“So it was taken from her on the beach. You said ninety per cent sure. What’s your ten per cent theory?”

“That he killed her for some other reason and took the bag and drove away the car to make identification difficult.”

“That isn’t bad, Hen. He
did
hold us up. I’d give it better than ten per cent. This guy abandoned the Lotus at some caravan site, you said, and covered it from view, right?”

“Yes.”

“If he was only interested in nicking the car, why would he abandon it so soon after?”

“Panic. He went for a joyride, used up all the petrol in the tank—”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes. Empty tank. I mean really empty, Peter. The needle was well down in the red section. I think he was scared to fill up. And in case you’re in doubt whether someone would kill for a car, just read the papers. Casual murder is the feature of our age. People are killed for their phones, their purses, their clothes. Some old lady was beaten to death the other day for her shopping bag containing a packet of bacon and two tins of beans.”

He needed no convincing. Six months ago he’d handled a case of murder for a mountain bike. “I didn’t know about the empty tank. That does alter things. Your joyrider theory looks the best. Can I get back to you tomorrow on this? There’s something stirring in my brain and it’s not going to surface right away.”

“I’ll listen to anything from your upper storey, my old love, even your fantasies about nuns.”

He was fairly certain that the Mariner had declared a private war on British Metal and its beneficiaries. The key was to find the cause of the hostility. It looked increasingly as if this murderer could have been a loser in the changes Anna had introduced. The peculiar character of the crimes, the use of the crossbow and the taunts picked from
The Ancient Mariner
, suggested an obsessive, embittered personality willing to take risks to make his point. This was a killer with a monstrous grudge. Two hapless people had died in a bizarre way simply because they were sponsored by the company. To use a chilling but apt phrase, he’d made examples of them. He’d issued a challenge by naming his second and third victims—a calculated risk offset by what seemed the ability not only to predict each precaution the police would take; but to outfox them as well and penetrate their security. Was he an insider, a rogue policeman?

Difficult to reconcile with the link to British Metal.

Yet he’d spirited his way into the safe house to snatch Matt Porter. It must have required inside knowledge to pull that off.

Diamond thought back to Bramshill and his visit there, to the people in the know about the case: that supercilious twit, Haydn Cameron, and his coy superior, the Big White Chief. Was it conceivable that the Mariner had a line into the staff college? Or into Special Branch itself? What of the officers guarding Matt Porter? Were they as loyal as they should have been? Was Jimmy Barneston entirely reliable? These were all trusted, long-serving officers.

In the morning, he would obtain that list of academics who had been deprived of their bursaries under Anna’s new regime. It looked the most promising avenue now.

He opened his flask and sipped some coffee. The light was still on in the bedroom. He liked Anna, but with a few caveats. Sparkle, she’d called him. He didn’t care for that. The sort of name you’d give to a clown. And she was turning Georgina’s house into a tip. But essentially she was an original, a lively, good-humoured woman. If anything happened to her, he would not forgive himself.

He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Almost midnight. Presently he would do the round of his team, seeing if anyone had anything to report.

Before that, he gave some thought to the Wightview Sands murder. The finding of Emma Tysoe’s sports car, empty of petrol and with the key still in the ignition, certainly suggested a joy-rider, but was it likely someone would kill for the gratification of a drive in a car? Personally he hated travelling at high speed, yet he knew the fascination cars exerted on some people. You couldn’t park a car like a Lotus in certain parts of Bath and expect to find it when you returned. The attraction was almost sexual. They saw a special model and lusted to possess it. Advertisers had tapped into that for years. Every night on the television you were persuaded that if you had a powerful motor your sex life would go into overdrive as well.

On a beach, where nothing was the same from one day to the next, where different people and different cars come and go, the temptation was strong. It wasn’t difficult to conceive of some oddball who saw an attractive woman step out of a smart car and made up his mind to joyride it. The killing of the woman was a prelude to stealing the car, and the driving of it was the climax.

Horrible, yet not impossible.

Again, he was conscious of some elusive memory, a connection with all this that he couldn’t pinpoint. He knew better than to force it. Let the subconscious work on it, he told himself. When I’m busy with something else it will come to me.

He screwed the top back on the flask and got out of the car and looked at the stars. Two thousand miles away, on the Nile, Georgina would be asleep in her cabin, travelling at a civilised speed, unaware of all this interest in her house. Thank God.

He strolled towards the Assembly Rooms at the end of the street, where one of the team was stationed in a doorway just out of the lamplight.

“How’s it going?”

“Nothing to report, sir. A couple of people across the street came home ten minutes ago. That’s all.”

“Stay tuned, then.”

The man at the Saville Row turn gave him a similar response. Most of Bath was asleep.

The sum of the sightings so far was three couples and about six cars, not one of which had stopped in Bennett Street.

He returned to his car. Out of interest he tried to find Galaxy 101, the radio station that had let the cat out of the bag. Instead, he got some inane chat show about people’s experiences after eating curry. “What sad people listen to these things?” he said aloud, turning up the volume.

“Yes?”

“A guy on his own, coming up Lansdown, sir. He’s got a backpack with something in it. Looks heavy. Shall I stop him?”

“No. Stay out of sight. Just watch him and report.”

“He’s made the turn into Bennett. Coming your way.”

“OK.”

Another of the team, at the corner of Russell Street, announced that he could now see the man. Diamond turned in his seat and he had him in sight, too. Average height, baseball cap, both hands at his chest under the straps of the backpack, as if to ease the weight from his shoulders.

“What’s he carrying—a computer he’s knocked off?” the man on Russell Street said.

“If it is,” Diamond said, “we’re not interested.” This was a focused operation. “Just watch where he goes.”

The man remained on the side of the street opposite Georgina’s. He didn’t cross. Presently, he went down some steps to a basement flat and let himself in. If he had been out burgling, he would never know how lucky he was.

She said, “Piss off, will you? I’m asleep.”

“Everything’s under control,” he told her. “But you know my number. Keep me informed.” He also handed her the spare key of Georgina’s front door.

“Aren’t you going for a kip, guv?”

“Keep me informed. Anything at all. And stay in regular touch with Anna. You can go in there for breakfast if you want. A word of advice. Don’t ask her to cook for you.”

He left her in charge. He was tired, but there were crucial things to be done.

She said with heavy disapproval, “Is the world coming to an end? Have the Martians landed in Bognor? No one calls me before nine. Don’t you know that, whoever you are?”

“Hen, this is Peter.”

“Buster, if you were Saint Peter I still wouldn’t want to come to the phone this early.”

“Will you listen to me, Hen? I’ve been up all night.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve been trying to get a grip on a vague idea about Wight-view Sands that seemed to be hovering somewhere in my brain. It came to me a short while ago.”

“Can it wait?”

“No. I want to pass it on to you now, for what it’s worth.”

“Be my guest,” she said with a sigh.

“This joyriding theory of yours. If it’s true, the killer was more interested in the car than the victim, right? The motive was to steal that handsome car and belt the life out of the engine for a couple of hours.”

“That about sums it up.”

“You said it’s not the first time at Wightview. Am I right? Other cars—nice cars—have been nicked and later found abandoned?”

“Over the past year, yes.”

“You thought kids were responsible?”

She yawned. “We’ve been over this before, Peter.”

“So what if we’re dealing with a serial joyrider, someone who makes a habit of pinching cars from the beach? Generally he follows the owner onto the beach and waits for them to go for a swim, leaving their bag or clothes unprotected. Then he helps himself to the car key and drives off in their nice car.”

“That’s the pattern.”

“Now, on this occasion, the owner didn’t go for a swim. By all accounts, Emma Tysoe remained where she was, stretched out on the sand. Our thief watches her and waits . . . and waits. He can’t snatch the bag containing the car key because she’s being careful with it, keeping the shoulder strap close to her hand. He’s tantalised. He really covets that car. In the end he decides to go for the bag while she’s still there. He moves in. There’s a struggle. She hangs onto her bag. Trying to get it away from him, she passes the strap over her head. He grabs it, twists and strangles her. That would explain the ligature. Or the strap came away from its fixing and he twisted the free end around her neck. Are you with me?”