The Headhunters

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘Rick, you made your point,’ Gemma said. ‘We’re not going to steal your toys, okay? If you and me are going to Portsmouth, isn’t it time we thought about leaving?’

  AT HEN’S request, the crime scene investigator who had supervised the search on behalf of Hampshire CID was at Fiona’s house. He was in a bandsman’s uniform, blue with gold epaulettes and a gold stripe down his trousers. ‘I’m a trombonist in the town band and we’ve got a concert tonight,’ he explained.

  ‘Good of you to come. I won’t keep you long. I gather this job was dusted and done some days ago?’ Hen said after introducing herself.

  ‘The day after the body was found in the Mill Pond.’

  ‘Did anything useful come out of it?’

  ‘Nothing obvious,’ he said. ‘If there was a struggle it didn’t take place in here.’

  ‘What have you taken away for analysis? Plenty of prints, hairs, and fibres?’

  ‘As many as we need. Some of her used clothing. I’ll give you the list. We’ve left enough to keep you interested. The computer, address book, phonepad, camera, handbag.’

  ‘Was she an organised person?’

  ‘She was an accountant, wasn’t she? The interior was cleaned regularly. Everything had its place. Even the boy’s room is tidy.’

  ‘Did you find out how long she’s lived here?’

  ‘Two years, I gather. The place is rented from a firm in Havant. Beautiful location. Probably cost her.’

  ‘Her life,’ Hen said.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Is there any sign she had a visitor before she was murdered? Cups, glasses, tinnies?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No break-in?’

  ‘Only where the plod forced the front door. They left plenty of traces, by the way. No help at all to my team.’

  ‘Not my plod,’ she said. ‘Emsworth’s. I’m from Chichester, where we flit through a scene like butterflies.’

  ‘I’d pay good money to see that.’

  In fifteen minutes, she and Gary had the place to themselves. The CSI’s zinc dust was everywhere.

  ‘Talk about leaving traces,’ she said as they entered the living room. ‘Are you any good with computers?’

  ‘Reasonably,’ Gary said.

  ‘See what you can bring up. And I don’t mean football results. I’ll be poking around upstairs.’

  The main bedroom said plenty about Fiona. A queen-size divan with pink chiffon draped in an inverted V above the bed head. Lace-edged pillows. Quilt in matching pink, with rosebud motif. Television, phone, radio, bowl of now-wrinkled white grapes. In the bedside drawer, a box of New Berry Fruits, two Danielle Steels, and a Rampant Rabbit vibrator. White laminate kidney-shaped dressing table with triple mirrors on which the SOCOs had excelled themselves. Enough La Prairie products for a month of makeovers, plus some perfumes Hen had never heard of. She was sure of one thing: not-from-your-local-supermarket was written all over them.

  The clothes in the wardrobe had been chosen shrewdly for work and play. Several accountant-style suits, formal, sober and expensively lined. A dozen or so dresses that looked frolicsome even on hangers. There wasn’t much Hen would have called neutral. The shoes and boots, too, stored in hanging fabric compartments, could be rated as hot and cold, with nothing lukewarm.

  She understood what the crime scene chief had meant about tidiness. Everything folded and stacked like a new boutique before the first customers walked in. Easy to use, and easy to examine. Yet Hen had a premonition, soon confirmed, that nothing like a letter or a diary would be tucked under the contents. The knicker drawer was precisely that, twenty or more pairs, sorted by colour. If Fiona had any secrets they wouldn’t be here.

  She called downstairs to Gary, ‘How goes it?’

  ‘It doesn’t, guv. You have to know the password to get in. Most people don’t bother with one.’

  ‘This lady would,’ she said. ‘Leave it, then. We’ll get a computer geek to do the trick.’

  ‘Want me upstairs?’

  She smiled to herself. ‘No. I’ll be down in a mo.’

  Time to take a look at the boy’s room. To her credit, Fiona had decorated it with imagination, a ceiling of stars and a wall with spaceships zooming upwards. Another wall had Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper, and the bed itself was shaped as an engine. There were toys in boxes and some books on a shelf. None of the disorder you expected from a small boy. Hen’s guess was that, on the day the child went to stay with his father, Fiona had immediately tidied everything.

  Downstairs again, she picked up the large brown leather handbag and emptied the contents onto the kitchen table. ‘These look like filing cabinet keys. See if any fit the one in the corner,’ she told Gary.

  The purse had more than two hundred pounds in notes. She started checking the plastic.

  ‘First one I tried,’ Gary announced.

  ‘Good—and are the files nicely labelled, as I would expect?’

  ‘Alphabetical.’

  ‘See what there is under C for car.’ Meanwhile Hen was studying the driving licence—a first sight of the dead woman’s picture. The red hair looked spectacular even under the laminate. A pale, solemn face, with neat features.

  ‘There’s a brochure for a Xsara Picasso,’ Gary said.

  ‘A brochure? Nothing else?’

  ‘That’s all there is, guv.’

  ‘She had a licence. There must be some documentation. Look under R for registration.’

  He wasn’t long in announcing, ‘Not here.’

  At Hen’s suggestion he tried C for Citröen, P for Picasso, and X for Xsara, all without success.

  ‘Maybe she keeps all the docs in the car. Did you happen to notice if there was a Picasso in the road outside?’ she asked. ‘The house doesn’t have a garage, so she’d be bound to park it on the street.’

  ‘I didn’t see one, guv.’

  ‘Odd. Surely a woman like this would use a car for work. Check the vehicle index on the PNC, would you, Gary?’

  Tucked among the credit cards was a photo of a small boy beside a sandcastle. He had red hair and gaps in his teeth. The smile rated high on the aaah-factor.

  Gary soon had the information. ‘Just as we thought, she owns a Picasso. Silver, two-thousand-six reg.’

  ‘Owned,’ Hen said. ‘Why don’t you take a short walk along the street and see if we missed it somehow?’

  While he was outside, she listened to the answerphone. Someone called Gemma from work had called twice asking Fiona to get in touch and enquiring if she was all right. There were various cold calls. Nothing from the ex. Presumably he hadn’t needed to call. He would have assumed all was well until he returned the son to the house.

  Gary returned, and he had a he-man with him, a middle-aged skinhead with muscles and a confident manner. ‘This is Mr Bell, from next door.’

  ‘Francisco,’ Mr Bell said with a defiant stare suggesting he wasn’t wholly comfortable with the name. ‘My old lady is Italian. She always said I could call myself Francis if I didn’t like it, but I said that’s a girl’s name.’

  ‘Frank?’ Hen suggested.

  ‘Then the kids at school call you Frankenstein. No thanks. I’ll stick with what I was given.’

  Gary said, ‘I was asking Mr Bell about the victim’s car.’

  ‘Nice motor,’ Francisco said. ‘Two-thousand-six reg. She used to park it out front.’

  ‘It isn’t there now,’ Hen said. ‘We were wondering where it might be.’

  ‘Can’t help you.’

  ‘She didn’t rent a garage, I suppose?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘The keys aren’t in the house and neither are the documents.’

  ‘You think someone nicked it? Was that what she was killed for?’

  ‘Too early to say,’ Hen said. ‘You’re from next door, are you, Francisco? Were you here on the day she died?’

  ‘Might have been. If you’re asking if I saw anything, I didn’t. I work as a secu
rity officer in Portsmouth most nights. Catch up on my sleep next day, so I miss a lot of what goes on.’

  ‘You met Fiona, I expect?’

  ‘A few times, yeah.’

  ‘A good neighbour, was she?’

  ‘I s’pose. There wasn’t no trouble, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Quiet, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you notice any visitors?’

  ‘Her ex called once a week with the sprog.’

  ‘Their child, you mean? Did you meet him, the ex-husband?’

  He shook his head. ‘No reason to.’

  ‘What about other callers? Anyone you noticed?’

  ‘What do you think I am, some old git with nothing to do but stare out the window?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d answer my question, Francisco.’

  ‘I didn’t see squat, okay?’

  ‘No, it isn’t okay,’ Hen said. ‘I’ve seen a report stating that you and a work colleague of Fiona’s called in to report her missing and you were both outside the house when the patrol car turned up.’

  He didn’t even blink at that. ‘So?’

  ‘So you not only saw one of her callers, but you spoke to the woman and agreed to call nine-nine-nine. Don’t tell me you didn’t see squat when it’s on record that you did.’

  He shrugged. ‘That babe woke me up, didn’t she? I’ve never seen her, before or since. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Fiona was murdered a few yards from your front door, that’s the deal,’ Hen said, increasingly impatient with him. His size and looks didn’t intimidate her. ‘Waste any more of my time and you’ll get nicked.’

  He held up both hands. ‘All right, lady. Stay cool.’

  ‘Do you have a key?’

  ‘Come again.’

  ‘Key—to this house?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘Neighbours often do—neighbours who can be trusted.’

  ‘That’s below the belt.’

  ‘You say you’re a security man. Position of trust. You look like a bouncer to me. Is that what you do?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? Look, I come here voluntary when your boy asked me. I don’t have to listen to this.’

  ‘Francisco, it looks as if someone stole Fiona’s car. Not only that, but they came inside the house and took the registration certificate and all the documentation relating to the car. They didn’t break in. They let themselves in with a key.’

  ‘Got to be the killer, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘He dumps her in the Mill Pond and grabs her handbag and uses the key to let himself in here. Then he gets into the files, takes the paperwork for the car, and makes his getaway. He can flog the car later.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Hen said, ‘but there’s a problem with it. If he leaves in her car, what did he do with his own?’

  ‘Didn’t have one.’

  ‘How did he get here, then?’

  ‘Dunno. Bus?’

  ‘In all the time I’ve been investigating crime I’ve never heard of a killer arriving at the scene by bus.’

  ‘He’s local, then.’

  ‘He still drove away in Fiona’s Picasso. Where to?’

  Francisco scratched his cropped head. ‘You’ve got me there.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Hen said with a smile that took Francisco by surprise. ‘Our problem, not yours. That’s where a homing device comes in useful.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A bug. You’d know all about them, being in security.’

  ‘The car was bugged?’

  ‘Apparently. You can get them on the internet, dinky little things you put out of sight under the dash or in the boot. Fiona must have been proud of that car.’

  ‘How do you know she bugged it?’

  ‘The leaflet is in the files under S for security. The pinpoint tracker. The signals are bounced off a satellite, I gather, and we can access them on her computer. Unfortunately, as Gary will tell you, there’s a firewall device on the computer so we have to wait for a whizz-kid to help us.’

  ‘So you don’t know where the car is?’

  ‘Tomorrow we will. Maybe later tonight. And of course when we find it we can test for traces of DNA. You can’t drive a car without leaving some. Thanks for coming in, Francisco. If we need you again we know where to find you.’

  ‘Right, yes.’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  ‘Gary will see you out.’

  After the door was closed and Gary returned, he said, ‘Is that true about the bug?’

  ‘Francisco thinks it is.’

  ‘You made it up?’

  She nodded. ‘Let’s see what he does next.’

  twelve

  THE CRUSH IN THE Slug and Lettuce was getting too much, so they decided to look for a meal elsewhere. Jo asked Jake if he was vegetarian. He gave his slow smile and said, ‘No. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘I was thinking with you being so keen on, em . . . ’

  ‘Hugging trees?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What I meant is that you respect living creatures.’

  Jake nodded. ‘But vegetables have a life, too.’

  She wasn’t certain if he was serious. The smile had gone.

  They went for a Chinese meal in the Hornet and ordered mainly rice and vegetable dishes with some chicken. Using chopsticks, he helped her to some of each, saying this was the custom.

  ‘Have you been to China, then?’

  He shook his head. ‘I had a Chinese cellmate.’

  After some talk about their surroundings, Jo said, ‘I’m glad the others didn’t want us to spend all evening with them.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘It’s not that I dislike them. Just that in company Rick is . . . I don’t know what the word is.’

  ‘A gadfly?’

  ‘You’ve got it. Makes me feel uncomfortable. What was that business about Gemma’s boss, when she said he was history now and Rick said he was tomorrow’s news, or something like that, and they laughed and went all secretive?’

  ‘Rick went secretive,’ Jake said. ‘Gemma wanted to let us in on it.’

  She recalled the moment now and Jake’s memory was spot on. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Rick closed her down, as if you and I couldn’t be trusted. It went from joking to deadly serious. What did he mean by “tomorrow’s news”? They know something we don’t. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Sounds as if they expect he’ll be found dead.’

  ‘That’s what I took it to mean.’ She thought about what she was agreeing with and changed it. ‘No, it was stronger than that, as if they know he’s dead.’

  ‘Maybe they do.’

  Surprised, she asked, ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The police could have told them to say nothing.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘The next of kin are told first.’

  ‘That’s what it was about, then.’ But in truth she doubted if the police had anything to do with it.

  HEN’S CAR was across the street from the Mill Pond, parked in Bridge Road. She and Gary sat waiting in the dark, passing the time listening to a local radio phone-in about policing and how it had changed, mostly for the worse.

  Once Hen muttered, ‘Give me strength.’

  Another time: ‘Who are these people?’

  Finally, after a sharp, impatient breath. ‘Any minute now one of them is going to say when he was a boy he was caught nicking apples and the local bobby clipped him round the head and it did him no harm and he’s been a model citizen ever since.’

  The caller wasn’t the next, but the one after. The clip round the head was for letting off a firework in a bus, but the effect was just as long-lasting, about seventy years of blameless living.

  Gary stared at Hen wide-eyed, as if she’d picked the Grand National winner. ‘How did you know that was coming, guv?’

  ‘It’s a gift, Gary.’
<
br />   ‘Really?’

  ‘You could pick it up. Listen to enough old coots like that and you’ll be as good as I am.’ She switched to another station.

  Tedious as the wait was, they remained on watch. Their position was ideal. There was only one route away from Fiona’s house. Every vehicle had to come towards them and make a turn. They were perfectly placed to follow.

  ‘You tell them good, guv,’ Gary said.

  ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘Porkies. The bug in the car. I believed every word.’

  ‘Good. Let’s hope Francisco did.’

  ‘“S for Security” was a brilliant touch.’

  ‘If I’m right,’ Hen said, ‘he’s been into the house and seen inside that filing cabinet. He’ll have nicked the registration document from there, so, yes, it ought to worry him.’

  ‘D’you think he killed her, guv?’

  ‘One step at a time, Gary.’

  ‘Step one: he leads us to the car.’

  ‘He could lead us to some nightclub where he’s on the door.’

  ‘Christ, I hope not.’

  Forty minutes had gone by since they’d driven away from the house and parked here. No way could Francisco have eluded them. Hen thought it possible that up to an hour would pass before he made his move. Even if he was not wholly convinced by her story about the homing device in Fiona’s car, it would prey on his mind.

  ‘Do we know what he drives?’ Gary asked.

  ‘You saw the cars along there.’

  ‘There were only two anywhere near the house, both of them old heaps really, a yellow 2CV Dolly and a beaten-up green Land Rover.’

  ‘Somehow the Dolly doesn’t sound right for a nightclub bouncer.’

  A few spots of rain appeared on Hen’s windscreen and when she used the wipers the whole thing smeared. She found a cloth and asked Gary to clean up. He was outside and wiping when some headlights approached from the Mill Pond.

  ‘Get back in.’

  He wouldn’t be recognised in the dark, but they needed to move off sharply if necessary. He was quickly into his seat.

  ‘Can you see what it is?’

  ‘Looks like the Dolly.’

  When it turned left they saw the driver. Unless Francisco had disguised himself in false boobs and a blonde wig, he still hadn’t made his move.