The House Sitter

by Peter Lovesey

  “Is that definite?” asked Shanahan. “Couldn’t it have been made by some kind of necklace?”

  “Unlikely. If you look here,” said Dr Keithly, pointing to the nape of the neck. “See the crossover? And there’s some scratching on this side where she tried to tug the ligature away from her throat.”

  “Christ. Didn’t you notice this when you were carrying her?”Shanahan said accusingly to the lifeguard.

  “Don’t turn on me, sport. I wasn’t looking at her neck. There was nothing tied around it.”

  Shanahan sounded increasingly panicky. He could foresee awkward questions from CID. “How could this have happened on a beach in front of hundreds of people? Wouldn’t she have screamed?”

  “Not if it was quick and unexpected,” the doctor said. “She might have made some choking sounds, but I doubt if she’d have been heard. What surprises me is that no one saw the killer actually doing it.”

  “She was behind a windbreak.”

  “Even so.”

  “She was probably stretched out, sunbathing. It would have been done close to the ground, by someone kneeling beside her.”

  Vigne said, “Hadn’t we better report this? It’s out of our hands if it’s murder.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” Shanahan said, much relieved. “You’re not so thick as you look.”

  3

  Two hours were left before sunset. The local CID had arrived in force and sealed off the stretch of beach where the body was found, but they need not have bothered. Most visitors had left at high tide when only a small strip of pebbles remained and the breeze had turned cooler. Away from the beach, several barbecues were under way on the turf of the car park, sending subversive aromas towards the police vans where the search squads and SOCOs waited for the tide to turn.

  Henrietta Mallin, the Senior Investigating Officer, was already calling this case a bummer. A beach washed clean by the tide couldn’t be less promising as a crime scene. There was no prospect of collecting DNA evidence. The body itself had been well drenched by the waves before it was lifted from the water.

  The SIO was known to everyone as Hen, and superficially the name suited her. She was small, chirpy, alert, with widely set brown eyes that checked everything. But it was unwise to stretch the comparison. This Hen didn’t fuss, or subscribe to a pecking order. Though shorter than anyone in Bognor Regis CID, she gave ground to nobody. She’d learned how to survive in a male-dominated job. Fifteen years back, when she’d joined the police in Dagenham, she’d been given more than her share of the jobs everyone dreaded, just to see how this pipsqueak female rookie would cope. A couple of times when attending on corpses undiscovered for weeks she’d thrown up. She’d wept and had recurrent nightmares over a child abuse case. But she’d always reported for the next shift. Strength of mind got her through- helped by finding that many of the male recruits were going through the same traumas. She’d persevered, survived a bad beating-up at a drugs bust, and gained respect and steady promotion without aping male attitudes. There was only one male habit she’d acquired. She smoked thin, wicked-smelling cigars, handling them between thumb and forefinger and flicking off the ash with her smallest finger. She used a perfume by Ralph Lauren called Romance. It said much for Romance that it could triumph over cigar fumes.

  “You boys got here when?” she said to the uniformed officers who had answered the shout,

  “Four forty-two,” PC Shanahan said.

  “So how was the water?”

  “The water, ma’am?”

  She brought her hands together under her chin and mimed the breaststroke. “Didn’t you go in?”

  Shanahan frowned. He wasn’t equal to this, and neither was his companion, Vigne. Hen didn’t need to pull rank. She was streets ahead on personality alone.

  She explained, “You reported suspicious injuries at five twenty. Forty minutes, give or take. What were you doing, my lovely?”

  Shanahan went over the sequence of events: the call to the doctor, the search of the beach and the doctor’s arrival and discovery of the ligature marks. He didn’t mention the cans of Sprite and the spot of sunbathing while they waited for the doctor.

  “Am I missing something here?” Hen said. “You didn’t notice she was strangled until the doctor pointed it out?”

  “The body was inside the hut, ma’am.”

  “Didn’t you go in?”

  “It was dark in there.”

  “Is that a problem for you, constable?”

  He reddened. “I mean I wouldn’t have been able to see much.”

  “There was a torch.”

  “The lifeguard didn’t produce it until the doctor arrived.”

  “Did you ask him for one?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you carry one in your car?”

  An embarrassed nod.

  “Heavy duty rubber job?” she said, nodding her head. “They come in useful for subduing prisoners, don’t they? But there is a secondary use. Did you look at the body at all?”

  “We checked she was dead, ma’am.”

  “Without actually noticing why?”

  Shanahan lowered his eyes and said nothing. Vigne, by contrast, looked upwards as if he was watching for the first star to appear.

  Hen Mallin turned her back on them and spoke instead to one of her CID team. “How many cars are left, Charlie?”

  “In the car park, guv?”

  With her cigar she gestured towards Shanahan. “I thought he was half-baked.”

  “About twenty.”

  “When does it close?”

  “Eight thirty.”

  She checked her watch. “Get your boys busy, then. Find out who the cars belong to, and get a PNC check on every one that isn’t spoken for. The victim’s motor is our best hope. I’m tempted to say our only hope. Have you spoken to the guy on the gate?”

  “He didn’t come on duty until two. He’s got no memory of the victim, guv. They just lean out of the kiosk and take the money. Thousands of drivers pass through.”

  “Was anyone else directing the cars?”

  “No. There are acres of land, as you see. People park where they want.”

  She went through the motions of organising a line of searchers to scour the taped-off section of beach, now that the tide was on the ebb. Around high-water line they began picking up an extraordinary collection of discarded material: bottletops and ring-pulls, cans, lollysticks, carrier bags, plastic cups, an odd shoe, hairgrips, scrunches and empty cigarette lighters. Everything was bagged up and labelled. She watched with no expectation. There was no telling if a single item had belonged to the victim.

  “Did anyone check the swimsuit?”

  “What for, guv?”

  “Labels. Is it a designer job, or did she get it down the market? Might tell us something about this unfortunate woman. We know sweet Fanny Adams up to now.”

  “The towel she was lying on is top quality, pure Egyptian cotton, really fluffy when it’s dry,” the one other woman on the team, DS Stella Gregson, said.

  “There speaks a pampered lady.”

  “I wish,” Stella said. She was twenty-six and lived alone in a bed-sit in a high-rise block in Bognor.

  “Never mind, Stell. Some day your prince will come. Meanwhile come up to the hut and give me your take on the swimsuit.”

  Stella had a complex role in the CID squad, part apologist for her boss, part minder, and quite often the butt of her wit. She’d learned to take it with good humour. Her calm presence was a big asset at times like this. Together they crunched up the steep bank of pebbles.

  “We can assume she was murdered some time in the afternoon,” Hen said, as much to herself as Stella. “I asked the lifeguard if there was any stiffening of the muscles when they carried the body up the beach, and he didn’t notice any. As a rough estimate, rigor mortis sets in after three hours or so. In warm conditions it works faster. I’d like the opinion of the pathologist-when he finally gets here-but…”

&nbs
p; “She was strangled here?” Stella said in disbelief, turning to give her boss a hand up the last of the steep ascent.

  “That’s the supposition.”

  “On a public beach?”

  “I know,” Hen said. She paused to draw a breath at the top of the bank. The smoking wasn’t kind to her lungs. “My first reaction was the same as yours, Stell, but I’m changing my mind. We can assume she was lying down, enjoying the sun, like most people are on a beach, and she had a windbreak around her head and shoulders, as the lifeguard stated. That means the killer was screened on three sides. He could choose his moment when no one was coming up the beach towards them.”

  “Not easy, “ Stella was bold enough to point out. “On a beach as crowded as that, people are going back and forth all the time, for a swim, or just to look at the water. And some of the sunbathers are stretched out with nothing else to do except watching others.”

  “You can’t see much through a windbreak. He could strangle her without anyone realising what he was up to. She’d be relaxed, maybe lying on her side with her eyes shut. Even asleep. If they arrived together, he’s already in position beside her. If not, he flops down as if he’s going to sunbathe with her. They’re lying on sand, so she wouldn’t hear him arrive. When he thinks no one is watching, he pulls the ligature over her head and tightens it before she knows what’s happening. If anyone did get a look, they could easily think they were snogging. Any sound she makes will be muffled. A beach is a place where no one gets excited if a woman screams.”

  “Even so.”

  “Don’t you buy it, Stell?”

  Stella gave a shrug that meant she was dubious, but couldn’t supply a more plausible theory. “There must have been people really close. They’re stretched out in their thousands on a gorgeous day like today.”

  “But they wouldn’t expect to be witnesses to a murder. Not on a south coast beach on a Sunday afternoon.”

  They found the lifeguard sitting outside his hut. His duties had ended two hours ago, but he’d been told to wait, and at this end of the day he was looking less macho than a young man of his occupation should, with goose-pimpled legs and a tan steadily turning as blue as his tattooed biceps. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was massaging the backs of them.

  Hen asked him his name. It was Emerson. He was Australian. Almost certainly didn’t have a work permit, which may have accounted for his guarded manner.

  “You were here keeping watch, Mr Emerson,” she said to him, making it sound like dereliction of duty. “Didn’t you see what happened?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You lads have little else to do all day except study the women. Didn’t you notice this one?”

  “She was some way off.”

  “But you don’t sit on your backside all day. You’re responsible for the whole beach, aren’t you?”

  “That’s true in theory, but-”

  “You didn’t notice her?”

  “There were a couple of thousand people here, easy.”

  “Have you seen her before, on other days?”

  A shake of the head.

  “Do you remember anyone who was on the stretch where she was found?”

  “The guy who told us about her.”

  “This was when?”

  “Getting on for high tide. Around four thirty.”

  “Describe him. What age?”

  “About thirty.”

  “Go on.”

  “Tall and thin, with short, brown hair. Skin going red. Do you want his name?”

  Hen said with more approval, “You got his name?”

  “Smith.”

  A sigh and an ironic, “Oh, thanks.”

  “But he has a kid called Haley.”

  An interested tilt of the head. “How do you know this?”

  “Earlier in the afternoon she was lost. Smith came up here and reported it. I told him kids often get lost and I’d spread the word. He told me where they were sitting and I said he should try the beach café, where the ices are sold. Kids stand in line for a long time there and sometimes the parents get worried. But I found the kid myself, looking lost, only a short way from here.”

  “Waiting for an ice cream?”

  “No. She’d come to our hut with some friends for first aid and then got separated from them.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  He shook his head. “It was one of the other kids who needed the first aid. Hit in the face with a Frisbee. Haley was OK. I handed her back to her mother.”

  “The mother?” Hen said, interested. “You met her mother as well?”

  “Right.”

  “Smith’s wife?”

  “I guess. The kid called her mummy for sure. A bottle blonde, short, a bit overweight. Red two-piece. She was in tears when I turned up with Haley.”

  “So you saw exactly where these people were on the beach?”

  “I didn’t go right over. The mother ran up when she saw me with the kid.”

  “The woman who was murdered must have been somewhere near them.”

  “If you say so. It was really crowded.”

  “Where was Haley’s father at this time?”

  “Don’t know. Still searching, I guess.”

  “And he was definitely the same man who told you about the dead woman?”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Did he give his first name?”

  “No. He just said his missing child was called Haley Smith, aged five, and he described her.”

  “Did he have an accent?”

  “Accent?”

  “Where was he from? Round here?”

  “Couldn’t say. You poms all sound the same to me. He wasn’t foreign, far as I could tell.”

  “So Haley was returned to her mother?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Then Mr Smith comes back and tells you he’s found a dead woman?”

  “That was a good half-hour after. I went back with him to look and it was true. The tide was already washing over her.”

  “How was she lying?”

  “Face down, stretched out. You could easily think she was asleep.”

  “I understand she was behind a windbreak.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you see any other property? A bag?”

  “Only the towel she was lying on. I got some lads to help us move her.”

  “Did Smith help?”

  “He joined in, sure. We got her up here and into the beach hut.”

  “How did you know she was dead? Did you feel for a pulse?”

  “No need.”

  She said with a sharp note of criticism, “You’ve had first-aid training, I take it? You know you should always check?”

  “She’d gone. Anyone could tell she’d gone.”

  “That simply isn’t good enough for someone in your job. You know why I’m asking, Sunny Jim? If you’d felt for the pressure point on her neck you would have noticed the ligature mark.”

  The lifeguard didn’t answer.

  “So you dumped her in the hut and put in a nine-nine-nine call. Why didn’t you ask Smith to stick around after the body was brought up here? You must have known we’d want to speak to him.”

  “I did. I asked him.” Relieved to be in the right again, he responded with more animation. “I said, ‘The police’ll want to talk to you.’ Those were my actual words. He said he had nothing to tell the police. His wife and kid were waiting and he had a long drive home. I asked him a second time to hold on for a bit, and he said he needed to see his wife and tell her what was going on. He promised to come back, but he never did.”

  “They hardly ever do,” Hen said, making it sound like a comment on the fickle tendencies of mankind as a whole. With a knowing glance at her companion, she turned away.

  Before the two of them stepped inside the beach hut, Stella said, “Guv, do you really think you should smoke in here?”

  Hen looked at the half-spent cigar as if it was a foreig
n object. “Do you object?”

  “The pathologist might.”

  She stubbed it out on a stone wall.

  Inside, she directed the torch beam up and down the corpse. “Any observations?”

  “Would you point it at the head, guv?” Stella knelt and studied the line of the ligature, gently lifting some of the long, red hair. “The crossover is at the back here. Looks as if he took her from behind. Difficult to say what he used. Not wire. The mark is too indefinite. Would you hold it steady?” She bent closer and peered at the bruising. “There’s no obvious weave that I can see, so I doubt if it was rope. Leather, maybe, or some fabric?”

  “Let’s ask the pathologist,” Hen said. “I thought you were going to tell me how she rates in the fashion stakes.”

  So Stella fingered the hair, looking at the layers. “It isn’t a cheap haircut.”

  “Is any these days?”

  “All right. She went to a good stylist.”

  “The manicure looks expensive, too.”

  “Obviously she took care of herself.”

  “The swimsuit?”

  “Wasn’t from the market, as you put it. See the logo on the side of the shorts? She won’t have got much change out of two hundred for this.”

  “A classy lady, then? No jewellery, I notice.”

  “No ring mark either.”

  “Does that mean anything these days?”

  “Just that she doesn’t habitually wear a ring. Did they find any sunglasses?”

  “No.”

  “I would have expected sunglasses. Designer sunglasses.”

  “Dropped on the beach, maybe. We can look through the stuff the fingertip search produced. Thanks, Stell. What kind of car does a woman like this tend to own? A dinky little sports job?”

  “Maybe-for the beach. Or if she’s in work, as I guess she could be, a Merc or a BMW would fit.”

  “Let’s see what the car park trawl has left us with.”

  Outside, Emerson the lifeguard asked if he was needed any more.

  Hen Mallin, half his size, took out a fresh cigar and made him wait, coming to a decision. “What time is it?”

  “Past eight. I’m supposed to be meeting someone at eight.”

  “You’re meeting one of my officers and making a statement.” She flicked her lighter and touched the flame to the cigar. “Then you’ll be free to go.”