The House Sitter

by Peter Lovesey

“What’s that when it’s at home?”

  “I guess it’s shortened to fit the space. Psychiatric outpatient?”

  “That’s hardly a profession, guv.”

  “What’s your theory, then?”

  Stella pressed some keys and switched to a glossary of abbreviations and found the answer: psychological offender profiler. “She’s not a patient. She’s a shrink. I’ve seen them on TV telling us how to do our job.”

  Stella’s reaction was understandable. Television drama had eagerly embraced profiling as a fresh slant on the well-tried and ever-popular police series. Cracker had been Sherlock Holmes updated, an eccentric main character with amazing insights who would point unerringly to the truth the poor old plod couldn’t see. The professionals never missed an episode, yet claimed it was a million miles from the real thing.

  Hen was more positive. “Profilers have their uses. The best of them are worth listening to. Check her out, Stella. Is there a photo? See if you can get one on screen.”

  This took some organising with Bath police and when it appeared on the monitor it was in black and white and not the sharpest of images. It must have been taken in bright sunshine that picked out the features sharply but whitened the flatter areas of the brow and cheeks, giving no clue as to flesh tone. Wide, intelligent eyes, an even nose and full lips, a fraction apart, showing a glimpse of the teeth. A curved jawline above a long, narrow neck.

  Even so, it convinced Hen. “That’s our lady. I’ll put money on it.”

  “All bets are off,” Stella said. “I agree with you.”

  “I feel I know her better looking at this than I did beside her body,” Hen said. “There’s a bright lady here.”

  “It’s the eyes, guv.”

  “What do we know about her?”

  “Her job.”

  “Have we ever used her?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “What was she doing on our patch, then?”

  “Sunbathing. It’s allowed.”

  Hen merely nodded. “There’s a list of profilers approved by the NCF-the National Crime Faculty at Bramshill. Let’s find out if she’s on it and what they know about her. I’ll take care of that. And you can get on to Bath police again. Presumably she lives or works there if they reported her missing.”

  “Are you sure?” the young-sounding sergeant in Bath queried. “She only went onto Missing Persons yesterday.”

  “Would I call you if I didn’t think this was a good match?” Stella said.

  “It’s so quick, though.”

  “Not for us. We’ve had a body on our hands for twelve days. Can you send someone to look at it?”

  “The next of kin, you mean? You’ll have to be patient with me. I’m not fully up with it.”

  “Why not? It’s been on national television. Didn’t I tell you she was murdered?”

  “Yikes-you didn’t.”

  “So you’d better get up with it fast. Are you CID?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Why don’t you get hold of someone who is and ask him to call me in the next ten minutes? I’m DS Gregson, at the incident room, Bognor police station.”

  The name of Bognor never fails to kindle a smile. There is a story told of that staid old monarch, George V, that it was his favourite seaside place, and on his deathbed he was offered the incentive that if he got better he might care to visit Bognor, whereupon he uttered his last words, “Bugger Bognor”-and expired. According to his biographer, they were not his last words at all. He spoke them in happier circumstances when told that thanks to his patronage Bognor was about to be accorded special status as Bognor Regis. It’s still worthy of a smile.

  “Bognor?” Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond repeated.

  “But the body was found at Wightview Sands,” the sergeant who had taken the call informed him, then, listening to his own words and thinking how daft these places sounded, wished himself anywhere but in Diamond’s office.

  However, Diamond said without a trace of side, “I know Wightview Sands. Big stretch of sand and a bloody long line of beach huts. And this is murder, you say?”

  “They say, sir.”

  “A Bath woman?”

  “Emma Tysoe. A profiler.”

  “A what?”

  “Psychological offender profiler. She helps out in murder enquiries.”

  “She’s never helped me.”

  The sergeant was tempted to say Perhaps you didn’t ask. Wisely, he kept it to himself. “All I know is that she was reported missing by the university. She often goes away on cases connected with her work, but she always keeps in touch with the department. This time she didn’t get in touch. After some days, they got concerned.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “A flat in Great Pulteney Street.”

  “Posh address. There must be money in profiling, sergeant.”

  “It’s only a basement flat, sir.”

  “Garden apartment,” Diamond said in the tone of an upmarket estate agent. “No such thing as a basement flat in Great Pulteney Street. Why haven’t I heard of this woman before?”

  The sergeant sidestepped that one.

  “How was she topped?” Diamond asked.

  “Strangled. It’s been in the papers.”

  “It’ll be all over them when they know what she did for a living. Strangled on a beach?”

  “On a Sunday afternoon when everyone was down there.”

  “Odd.”

  “They don’t have any witnesses either.”

  “People are holding back, you mean? Someone must have seen it. This is weird. You’ve got me all of a quiver, sergeant.”

  He sent a couple of young detectives to Great Pulteney Street to seal the missing woman’s flat and talk to the neighbours. One of them was DC Ingeborg Smith, the sometime newshound, bright, blonde and eager to impress, recently enlisted to the CID after serving her two years in uniform. He asked Keith Halliwell, his trusty DI, to go up to the university and establish that Emma Tysoe was known to the Psychology Department.

  Then he collected a coffee from the machine-with a steady hand for a man who was all of a quiver-and passed a thoughtful twenty minutes pondering why a profiler should have been strangled on a public beach on a Sunday afternoon. Finally he called Bognor and spoke to Stella Gregson. Inquiries into the background and movements of Emma Tysoe were well under way, he told her. He looked forward to full cooperation over this case, which he expected would require a joint approach. He would therefore accompany the identity witness to Bognor and use the opportunity to make himself known to the SIO.

  “He sounds pushy,” Stella told Hen Mallin.

  “Peter Diamond? I’ve heard of him, and he is. I’ve also heard that he pulls rabbits out of hats, so we’ll see if his magic works for us. Don’t look so doubtful, Stella. I’ve handled clever dicks like him before. When they stand up to take a bow, you pull away the chair.”

  “I guess we can’t avoid linking up with Bath.”

  “We’re not going to get much further unless we do. That’s where Emma Tysoe lived, so that’s where we look next.”

  And Diamond duly arrived that afternoon, a big man of about fifty with a check shirt, red braces and his jacket slung over his shoulder. Going by looks alone, the beer belly, thrusting jaw and Churchillian mouth, he was pushiness personified. With him was a less intimidating individual, altogether smaller and more spry, a kind of tic-tic bird in tinted glasses.

  “This is Dr Seton,” Diamond said. “He’s a professional colleague of Dr Tysoe, here to see if he can identify the body.”

  Dr Seton’s face lit up, suggesting he was relishing the prospect. “But I have to make clear I’m not a doctor of medicine,” he said. “I’m a behavioural psychologist.”

  “No one in Dr Tysoe’s family was available,” Diamond said, virtually admitting Dr Seton was second best. “There’s a sister, but she’s in South Africa.”

  “Good of you to come,” Hen said to Dr Seton.
<
br />   “He was volunteered by the professor,” Diamond said. “Shall we get on with it?” Considering Dr Seton had given up most of his day, this seemed unnecessarily brusque.

  Hen started as she meant to go on with Diamond. She knew he must have quizzed Seton thoroughly on the journey down and could probably have summed up the salient facts in a couple of sentences. However, she intended to hear everything first hand. “Before we do, I’d like a few words of my own with Dr Seton- that is, if you don’t object.”

  Diamond shrugged.

  She swivelled her chair away from him and asked, “So, Dr Seton, are you involved in Emma Tysoe’s work as a profiler?”

  “Absolutely not,” the man said, as if it was tainted. “That’s extracurricular.”

  “Something she does independently?”

  “I believe it arose out of her Ph.D research into the psychology of violence.”

  “So you have some idea of what she does?”

  “She acts as an adviser to the police.”

  “Regularly?”

  “Pretty often, yes. She has an arrangement with the university and takes time off when required.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Enviable,” Diamond said, winking at Hen.

  “And was she currently working on a case?” Hen asked Dr Seton, ignoring Diamond.

  “I presume so. We hadn’t seen her for a while.”

  “But you wouldn’t happen to know the details?”

  “No.”

  “Did she keep it to herself, the offender profiling?”

  “It doesn’t interest me particularly. We all have different areas of interest.”

  “So what’s yours, Dr Seton?”

  “Masturbation.”

  For a full five seconds nothing was said. Diamond, who had spent the last two hours with the man and must have known what was coming, was gazing steadily out of the window at the trees in Hotham Park. Stella covered her mouth with her hand.

  Dr Seton ended the silence himself. “The subject was rather neglected until I started fifteen years ago. Surprisingly little was known of the psychology, yet it’s a fascinating aspect of behavioural science and, let’s face it, something we’ve all experienced.”

  “Hands on,” Diamond said, but only for Stella’s ears. Still with her hand over her mouth, she made a sound like a car braking.

  Now he had started on his pet subject, Seton didn’t want to stop. “It was unfortunately branded as a sin by the religionists, so there’s this burden of guilt that goes with it. Genesis Thirty-eight. I can quote if you like.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Hen managed to say. “Getting back to Emma Tysoe, do you share an office with her?”

  “No. It was decided I should have my own room.”

  Diamond murmured, “I can’t think why.”

  Stella closed her eyes and went pink in the face.

  Hen carried on resolutely, “So do you know her well?”

  “Not particularly. We meet in the staffroom on occasions.”

  “Does she have any close friends in the department?”

  “How would I know? I’m not sure why the professor picked me for this.”

  Diamond said, “Perhaps he thought you should get out more.”

  Stella made the braking sound again.

  Hen’s glare at Diamond left the big man in no doubt that she’d had enough. “All right. Let’s go to the mortuary.”

  Stella drove them to St. Richard’s, and not much was said on the way. Hen asked Dr Seton if Emma Tysoe gave lectures and was told all the staff were timetabled to lecture. Dr Tysoe normally did five hours a week and her topic was forensic psychiatry. When she was away on a case, colleagues would cover for her and usually tried to speak on something from their own field that related to the course. Nobody asked Seton what he found to talk about.

  In the anteroom of the mortuary the formality of identification was got through quickly.

  “That’s her.”

  “Dr Emma Tysoe?”

  “Yes.”

  Out in the sunshine, Hen lit up a cigar and said to Stella, “We passed Outpatients’ on the way in. Why don’t you take Dr Seton there and buy him a cup of coffee? I need to check a couple of things with Mr Diamond.”

  So Stella found herself reluctantly paired off with the masturbation expert, while Hen flashed a not-too-sympathetic smile and a promise of, “We won’t forget you.”

  “The pay-off?” said Diamond to Hen, as they moved off.

  “She was practically wetting herself laughing in my office,” she said. “She had it coming.”

  “She’s with the right man, then.”

  She didn’t smile. Diamond would have to work hard to overcome that bad first impression.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I know a better place.”

  “I hoped you might.”

  These two strong individuals sat opposite each other at a table in the staff canteen like chess-players. They’d collected a pot of tea and Hen was determined not to be the one who poured. After Diamond had eaten a biscuit, slowly, he said, “Do you take yours white?”

  She nodded and reached for the milk. “Are you going to pour?”

  It seemed a fair distribution of the duties. “OK, I’m sorry about Seton,” he had the grace to say. “As you probably noticed, he’s a one-subject man. I had two hours of it in the car.”

  “Do you think the professor picked him specially?”

  “I’m sure of it. And I’m sure everyone had a good laugh about it after we’d driven away.”

  “You could have tipped me off.”

  “But how? It’s not the kind of thing you can whisper in a lady’s ear.”

  She weighed that. “Probably not,” she conceded finally. Then: “For pity’s sake, how does he carry out this research? Oh, never mind. I’ll hear it all from Stella.”

  “When I get back to Bath, I’ll speak to the prof,” Diamond said, putting down the teapot. He hadn’t done too well. Two pools of tea had spilt on the table. “Don’t you find metal pots always pour badly? The prof should be able to tell me more about the cases this woman was advising on. I’m assuming her death is in some way related to her job.”

  “It has to be followed up,” Hen agreed, dropping a paper napkin over the spillage and wiping it.

  “So what’s been happening down here?” he asked. “Do you have anything else under investigation?”

  “Serious crimes? Nothing we’d need a profiler for, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Sleepers? We’ve all got sleepers.” He meant the unsolved crimes that stayed on file.

  “A few of those, but none we’re actively pursuing. Believe me, I didn’t ask her to come and neither did anyone else I know.”

  “Who are your neighbours? Hampshire police? Did anything happen in Portsmouth? Now there’s a place with a reputation. Naval base. All kinds of scams at the docks.”

  “Portsmouth docks are more of a theme park these days,” she told him. “I’ve spoken to them, and they haven’t used her either.”

  “She must have been down here for a reason.”

  “Unless it was a holiday. People do go on holiday.”

  “Dr Seton didn’t seem to know about it.”

  Hen said, “Dr Seton seems to have narrow vision.”

  He smiled. “It’s supposed to turn you blind, isn’t it?”

  Her real reason for setting up this tête-à-tête had to be faced. “You’ll report back to me on this?”

  “Full consultation,” he said after a slight pause. “It’s a joint investigation.”

  “It was initiated here,” Hen made clear. “The incident room is at my nick. I’ll take the decisions.”

  He said, “I wouldn’t want to pull rank.”

  “Then don’t. It’s a West Sussex murder.”

  “She’s a Bath and North-east Somerset woman. You may find the focus of the investigation is off-limits for you. Then you’ll need my help.”

  “Need i
t? I’m depending on it,” Hen said. “Bath nick is my second home from now on.”

  He grinned. Without getting heavy, they had reached an understanding. “And you’ll be welcome. So what’s happening at this end?”

  She told him about the TV appeal and the difficulty in finding a genuine witness. “Plenty of people offered help, but not the ones we want most.”

  “Who are they?”

  “A family of three who were sitting close enough to notice her failing to move when the tide came in. The man fetched the lifeguard.”

  “A responsible citizen, then?”

  “But we’ve heard nothing from him since.”

  “Do you have a description?”

  “We have a name.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  She told him and he smiled. She told him about the daughter called Haley who had been lost for a short time.

  “Haley is better than Smith,” he said. “Not so many Haleys about. Have you tried the local schools?”

  “No joy.”

  “People drive miles to the seaside,” he said. “They could be Londoners, or from anywhere. My way, even. Do you want me to take it on?”

  She was guarded in her response. “For the present, I’d rather you found out what you can about Emma Tysoe’s life and work in Bath.” But it had not escaped her that he’d deferred to her. Maybe this man Diamond was more manageable than people said. “Now that we have her name, it’s going to open up more avenues.”

  “As you wish,” he said. “And let’s get our names into the open. I’m going to call you Henrietta from now on.”

  “Try it, and see what happens,” she told him with a sharp look. “I’m Hen.”

  “Fair enough. Is it time we rescued your colleague from the one-gun salute man?”

  “Stella? Not yet,” she said with a steely gleam in her eye. “I think I’d like a second cup. How about you… Pete?”

  Haley Smith’s teacher, Miss Medlicott, was telling the class about their project for the afternoon. “We’re going to do measuring.

  Presently I’ll ask some of you to come to the front and collect a metric rule. Not yet, Nigel! Then you’ll work in pairs with the person sitting on your right. Anyone without a person sitting on his right put your hand up now.”

  Without fuss, she made sure everyone had a partner.