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The House Sitter

Page 8

by Peter Lovesey

“You’ll also need a pencil and a large sheet of paper. One rule for each pair, one pencil and one piece of paper. Decide now who will collect the rule, and who comes for the pencil and paper. Quietly. Is everyone ready? Then we’ll begin now.”

  They carried out the instructions well. She explained that they would be measuring the length of their shoes, and showed them how to make two marks on the paper, and measure in centimetres. Most of the children understood and started making marks. She moved among them, assisting the slower learners.

  After twenty minutes she said, “Now we’ll see what results we have.”

  Not all of the kids had fully understood, so there were a few strange answers causing hilarity among those who had done the thing properly. Aidan, who was Haley’s partner, reckoned the length of his shoe was eighty-four centimetres.

  “I expect you used the wrong end of the rule,” Miss Medlicott said. “What about you, Haley? What was your measurement?”

  Haley held up the paper. She seemed to be hiding behind it.

  “No, I’m asking you to tell me the length of your shoe in centimetres.”

  Haley turned and whispered something to Aidan.

  Aidan said, “She says fifteen, miss.”

  “Thank you, Aidan, but I’d like to hear it from Haley.”

  Again Haley whispered to Aidan, who said, “She can’t, miss. Her daddy said she isn’t to speak to you.”

  After a moment, Miss Medlicott said, “Very well. Who’s next?”

  She thought about asking Haley to remain behind to explain exactly what her father had said, but she decided the child was under enough pressure already. Something very wrong was happening in that family. She would have another word with the mother.

  Diamond didn’t mention to Hen Mallin that he intended visiting Wightview Sands beach before returning to Bath. She might have taken it as interference. He was going there, he persuaded himself, purely from altruism. To contribute as fully as possible to Hen’s investigation, he needed to visualise the scene.

  He didn’t inform Dr Seton either, until they were most of the way down the road to Wightview Sands and Seton remarked, “I don’t remember coming this way.”

  “We didn’t. I thought you’d like to see where your colleague was found.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Well, I do, and as I’m driving…” His stock of altruism was all used up.

  This being towards the end of the afternoon, the oncoming lane was busy with cars leaving the beach, but the southward side was clear. At the car park entrance, they were asked for a pound.

  “We’re not here for the beach,” Diamond told the attendant. “I’m a police officer, here about the murder.” He held his warrant card up to the cubicle.

  “Bath and North-East Somerset?” the man said. “I thought this was a Sussex investigation.” He had the look of a petty official, tight, thin mouth and ferrety eyes. Dark hair flattened to his skull.

  Diamond gave him the benefit of the doubt. “You’re perfectly right. I have a kind of watching brief. You can help us, in fact. Where’s the lifeguard hut?”

  “Park near the beach café and you’ll see it,” he said. “Are they under suspicion, those lifeguards? They’re Aussies, you know.”

  “That’s the bit of beach where the body was found, I was told.”

  “So was I,” the man said. “I was stuck in here issuing tickets, so I missed all the excitement.”

  “You must have let the police cars through.”

  “I meant I missed what was happening on the beach.”

  “Do you happen to remember the woman who was killed?”

  “Out of a thousand or more who came past me? I’m afraid not, my friend. No doubt I met the murderer as well, but don’t ask me to pick him out.”

  They drove through and parked where he’d told them. “Want an ice cream?” he asked Dr Seton, as they were passing the serving hatch of the beach café.

  “I haven’t had such a thing for years,” Seton said

  “Give in to it, then. It’s allowed. Wicked, but not illegal,” he said, having his own private joke. “If you don’t want an old-fashioned ice cream there are plenty of things on sticks. Take a look at the diagram and pick one out.”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure.”

  “Go for it, man. You look like a Classic Magnum fancier to me.”

  “All right.”

  When Diamond had paid for two Magnums and handed one over, he said, “Looking at that board with all the different shapes and colours, I was thinking they’d make a nice research project for someone.”

  Seton gave him a frown and said nothing.

  They moved across the turf and sat on the stone wall above the pebbles. The tide was some way out, so Diamond was able to point to where the sand met the stones. “That’s approximately where she was found, I gather, in a white two-piece swimsuit. Don’t suppose you ever saw her in a swimsuit, Dr Seton.”

  “Certainly not.”

  Diamond was the first to finish his Magnum. He said he’d go and have a word with the lifeguards. Unfortunately the two lads on duty hadn’t been around on the day of the murder. “You want to speak to the Aussies,” one of them said. “They know all about it.”

  He would have to leave the Aussies for another day. He crunched across the pebbles to Seton and said, “Let’s go. Mustn’t keep you from your researches.”

  Seton didn’t smile. He was probably thinking Diamond was a suitable case for analysis.

  7

  Diamond got back to Bath just before seven and dropped Dr Seton outside his lodgings, where else but in Odd Down? He swore a few times to release the tension, lowered the windows for some fresh air, and then set off directly for the university campus at Claverton.

  Tired from all the driving, which he knew he didn’t do well, he found himself in the early evening snarl-up. Coming down Wellsway into the city in a slow-moving line of traffic he let his attention wander. Halfway down, they had erected one of those mechanical billboards with rotating strips that displayed three different ads. These had the same slogan, BECAUSE IT’S BRITISH METAL, but the pictures altered. He watched an image of Concorde being replaced by the Millennium Bridge-and then jammed his foot on the brake just in time to avoid running into the bus in front of him. Fortunately the driver behind him was more alert.

  He was relieved to complete the drive without mishap.

  The Department of Behavioural Psychology was quiet at this hour, though not deserted. A research student confirmed that Professor Chromik had been in earlier.

  “Do you happen to know where he lives?”

  The young man shook his head.

  “It’s important.”

  “You might catch him at the end-of-semester bash later tonight if he hasn’t already pissed off to Spain, or somewhere.”

  “Where’s it held?”

  “The clubhouse at the Bath Golf Club.”

  Dr Seton hadn’t mentioned a staff party. Possibly his colleagues had decided not to tell him.

  There was time to go home to Weston and shower. He called the nick to make sure he still had a job, as he put it to Keith Halliwell. Nothing more dramatic had happened in Bath than a middle-aged streaker running down Milsom Street. “He didn’t have a lot to show to the world,” Halliwell said. “Nobody complained.”

  “How did we get to hear about it, then?”

  “A Japanese tourist tried to get a photo. The streaker grabbed the camera and carried on running and we had to decide whether to do him for theft. But you know how it is trying to nick a naked man. Not one of the foot patrols answered the shout, so he got away. The camera was recovered later behind a bush in Parade Gardens.”

  Unwisely, Halliwell asked if the trip to Bognor had turned up anything.

  “Which reminds me,” Diamond said. “You went up to the university and spoke to the professor, right? Did he tell you about the tosser he unloaded on me for the day?”

  “Not a word,” Halliwell said.
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  “Is that the truth?”

  “Didn’t you get on, guv?”

  “Don’t push me, Keith. I have a strong suspicion you were in on this.”

  “In on what? I’m not following you at all.”

  He seemed to be speaking sincerely, so Diamond moved on to other matters. “What’s this professor like? I’m going to meet him tonight.”

  “He’ll talk. Doesn’t give much away, but I don’t know how much there is to tell. The dead woman was very brilliant, he said. She’s on the list of approved offender profilers and the university seem to be under some obligation to let her go off and assist with investigations.”

  “Pressure from the Home Office?”

  “Could be. All their undergraduate students have to be found placements in their third year for job experience. Some of them go to the Crime Analysis Unit at the Yard.”

  “Did he talk about the cases she’s involved in?”

  “He was guarded about that.”

  “Let’s see if I can catch him off guard tonight.”

  He took that shower, and decided on the dress code for a university staff party at a golf club on a summer evening. Cream-coloured trousers, navy shirt and pale blue linen jacket. As a safeguard, he tucked a tie into an inner pocket. Golf clubs could be sniffy about open necks. The shirt was a favourite, made of a fabric that didn’t crease. In the year since Steph had died, he’d scorched a couple of shirts trying to iron them.

  It was after eight when he parked his old Cortina in a nice position outside the club, only for some member to point out that he was in the space reserved for the club captain. Tempted to riposte that the captain wasn’t using it, he controlled himself and found another berth. As an extra gesture to conformity, he put on the tie, a sober-looking black one with a repeat design of silver handcuffs, some wag’s bright idea for a birthday gift for a copper.

  Inside, he located the psychology crowd in a private room upstairs. Plenty of beards and bow ties. Leather jackets seemed to be de rigueur for the men and black trouser suits for the women. Picking a glass of wine from a passing tray, he steered a course around the groups to where a dark-haired woman in a silvery creation with a plunge stood alone and conspicuous.

  “You don’t have the look of a trick cyclist,” he told her.

  She said, “Can I take that as a compliment?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m Tara, the PA.”

  “To the boss man, by any chance?”

  “He’s the only one of this lot who rates a PA. And who are you?”

  “The unlucky cop who took Dr Seton to the seaside today.”

  Tara gave the beginning of a smile, and no more. Like every good PA, she was discreet-which Diamond was not.

  “After five hours in the car with that weirdo I deserve this drink,” he said, and told her his name. “Which one is Professor Chromik?”

  “Over on the right, with his back to us.”

  “Frizzy black hair and half-glasses?”

  “That’s him. Did he invite you, then?”

  “No, but I’m here to talk to him. You must have heard about Dr Emma Tysoe.”

  Her features creased. “It wasn’t really Emma?”

  “Seton identified her.”

  She put her hand to her throat. “None of us thought it was possible. She went missing, but… this!”

  He was silent, giving her time to take it in.

  “And here we are, enjoying ourselves,” she said. “Did you come here specially to tell the professor?”

  If the truth were told, he hadn’t. He’d come to ask questions, not pass on the bad news. It hadn’t occurred to him that someone had to tell them, and it was unlikely Seton would have got in touch already. However, it legitimised his presence here. “I intend to break the news to him,” he said as if it had always been his painful duty. “Have you any idea what she was doing down at Wightview Sands?”

  She lifted her shoulders a fraction. “Maybe she likes the seaside.”

  “Was she on holiday?”

  “Not officially. She had this arrangement to take time off to help the police with difficult cases. I expect you know about it. She told us she was on a case. But she usually lets us know where she is. She phones almost every day to check in.”

  “But not this time?”

  “That was why we got worried in the end. No one had heard from her for something like three weeks. I kept phoning the flat in Great Pulteney Street, but got no reply. I went round there myself one lunchtime and saw a heap of mail waiting for her.”

  “Didn’t anyone know what case she was on?”

  “I assumed she’d told Professor Chromik, but it turned out she hadn’t. He asked me if I’d heard from her.”

  “Hush-hush, was it?”

  “I couldn’t say. I can’t think why anyone would want to murder her, whatever she was working on. She was only an adviser.”

  “What about her personal life? Was there a boyfriend?”

  “She never mentioned one. She wasn’t the chatty sort. A lovely person, but she didn’t say much about her life outside the department. Mind, I don’t blame her. They’re a nosy lot. It goes with the subject.”

  “Who were her special friends at work, then?”

  “Nobody I noticed. She seemed to stay friendly with everyone.”

  “Even the ones who had to fill in when she was away?”

  “People grumbled a bit. They do when there’s extra work being assigned. A few harsh words were spoken in the last few days.”

  “About Emma skiving off, you mean?”

  “Well, it could be taken that way, but they’ll be regretting it now. It’s not a reason for murdering anyone, is it?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  He drifted away from Tara and stood for a while watching the Behavioural Psychology Department socially interacting. It was not so different from a CID party, the high flyers hovering around the boss while the subversives formed their own subgroups and the touchy-feely element played easy-to-get on the fringe.

  In this heated atmosphere the tragic news circulated rapidly. You could see the stunned expressions as it passed around. The moment arrived when Professor Chromik was informed. Frowning and shaking his curly head, he disengaged himself from his colleagues and moved towards the door, perhaps to use a phone. Diamond stepped in fast.

  “You’ve just heard about Dr Tysoe, I gather? I’m Peter Diamond, Bath CID.”

  The professor’s brown eyes were huge through his glasses. “CID? It’s true, then? Appalling. Do you mind stepping outside where it’s more private?”

  They found a quiet spot below a gilt-framed painting of a grey-bearded nineteenth century golfer in plus-fours and cap.

  “The whole thing is a mystery, and I’m hoping you can help,” Diamond said. “We’ve no idea why she was at Wightview Sands, or who would have wished to murder her.”

  “It’s a mystery to me, too,” Chromik said. “I’m devastated.”

  “You must have known why she was away from your department.”

  “She was a psychological offender profiler.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, this is your territory, not mine.”

  Diamond recalled Halliwell’s comment about the professor not giving much away. “She’s employed in your department, isn’t she? She has to let you know if she takes time off.”

  “She did. She came to see me and said she’d been asked to advise on a case.”

  “When was this?”

  “Mid June.”

  “Can you be more precise?”

  “The seventeenth.”

  “… to advise on a case. Is that all she said?”

  “It was confidential.”

  “You mean she told you about the case and you’re refusing to tell me? Confidentiality goes out of the window when someone is murdered.”

  Chromik caught his breath in annoyance. “That isn’t what I said. She was not at liberty to speak to me about the matter. I c
an tell you nothing about it. That’s why I said it’s your territory.”

  “You don’t even know who contacted her?”

  “No.”

  “And you let her go off for God knows how long?”

  “Emma was trustworthy. If she said it was necessary to take time off, I took her word for it. She promised to let me know as soon as she was able to return to her normal duties. That was the last I heard.”

  He seemed to be speaking truthfully, but the story sounded wrong. Either Emma Tysoe had been tricked, or she’d put one across the professor. If some senior detective wanted the help of a profiler, surely he wouldn’t need to insist on secrecy?

  “Are you certain she was honest?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Is it possible she wasn’t working on a case at all, and simply took time off for a few days by the sea?”

  Chromik shook his head so forcefully that the black curls quivered. “Emma wouldn’t do that. She valued her profiling work too much to put it at risk with a stupid deception.”

  It was said in a way that made Diamond sound stupid for asking. Well, he didn’t have a degree in psychology, but he wasn’t intimidated by this academic.

  “I’m trying to throw you a lifeline, professor. Your handling of this tragic episode is going to be questioned, not just by me, but by your superiors, I wouldn’t wonder, and certainly by the press. It sounds as if you let this member of your staff run rings around you.”

  “I resent that.”

  “It’s not my own opinion,” Diamond said, dredging deep for a word that would make an impact on this egghead. “It’s the perception. Do you know anything about her life outside the university?”

  “In what way?”

  “Relationships?”

  “No idea.”

  “Did you appoint her to the job?”

  “I was on the appointments committee, yes. We were fortunate to get her. A first class brain, without question one of the most brilliant psychologists of her generation.”

  “So where did she come from?”

  “She did her first degree in the north. Then she was at one of the London colleges for her Ph.D.”

  “I meant her home town, not her college career.”

  “I can’t recall.”

 

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