Peter Lovesey - The Headhunters

In her heart she knew that couldn’t be so. Jake would fold. He wasn’t capable of explaining anything under the workover he’d get. They’d harass and bully him until he broke down. They’d find some spurious evidence and stitch him up.

She used the Kleenex this time.

Stop being a wimp, she told herself. All this speculation was negative and wouldn’t help Jake or herself. The sensible thing was to get more information. Knowledge was strength, and if anyone needed some strength right now, she did. The dead woman’s name was distinctive and so was her husband’s. He was a university lecturer. Lecturer in what, and where?

She collected her laptop, switched on, put the name ‘Sentinel’ into a search engine and waited to see if anything came up.

Over a hundred hits appeared straight away. This was hot news:

Selsey Murder Victim Named

Police investigating the murder by drowning of a woman in Selsey have today named the victim as Mrs Meredith Sentinel, 38. She was the wife of Dr Austen Sentinel, a geology lecturer at Imperial College, London, who has recently returned from a conference in St Petersburg. He was not aware of his wife’s disappearance. Upon finding she had not used their Islington house for several days he informed the police. From his description they linked her to the murder victim and confirmed the identity with photographs. This morning he formally identified the body as that of his wife.

Mrs Sentinel was American by birth and came to this country to pursue an academic career. She met and married Austen Sentinel in 1990, when she was an undergraduate and he a visiting lecturer at the University of Sussex. She later obtained a D. Sc in Zoology and was employed part time at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. Her parents still live in Louisville, Kentucky, and are reported to be devastated.

As yet the police have been unable to account for the circumstances of Mrs Sentinel’s death. Her almost nude body was found on the beach at Selsey, West Sussex, on September 30. The post mortem revealed that she was held under water until she drowned. Despite an extensive search of the beach and adjacent gardens her clothes have still not been found. She had not indicated to her husband that she intended to visit Selsey while he was abroad.

DCI Henrietta Mallin of Chichester CID is leading the enquiry and has appealed for help from the public. ‘We have interviewed a number of individuals who were on the beach on the day the body was found, but we still know very little about Mrs Sentinel’s last hours. Anyone with information should contact Sussex Police using the emergency number.

Another website had a photo of the couple wearing evening clothes and holding glasses of wine. Meredith Sentinel was blonde and her hair was pinned up except for some wayward strands suggesting that the party had passed the point when perfect grooming mattered. The look in her blue eyes helped to create the impression. A gorgeous, sexy woman, Jo thought. The birdwatcher theory was unravelling already. She couldn’t imagine this charmer sitting in a freezing hide waiting for a Brent goose to fly in.

Austen Sentinel, too, was a looker, quite a hunk for an academic: broad-shouldered, tall, and tanned. The hair was dark, a mass of tight curls. The confident brown eyes left little doubt that his plans for later matched his wife’s. His hand curled over her bare shoulder.

On another website Jo was startled to see her own name. Little else was accurate. Described as a resident of Selsey (wrong), she was supposed to have stumbled over the body (she didn’t stumble over anything) whilst exercising her dogs (what dogs?) on Medmerry Beach (East Beach). A salutary reminder not to believe everything on the internet.

Austen Sentinel’s name cropped up on numerous websites unrelated to the murder. He’d written books and articles and was much quoted in scientific literature. Apparently he was a serial attender of conferences in foreign countries. Was this significant? How did the beautiful wife amuse herself while he was away? Selsey, for all its charms, wasn’t the obvious place a lively lady might choose to visit.

The phone went. She let the answerphone play to find out who was on the line. The voice was Gemma’s.

‘Have you heard, poppet? They’ve discovered who your mystery woman was.’

Trust Gem to want to chew it over. But she wasn’t the only one. Jo badly needed shaking out of her embattled state of mind, and no one was a better shaker than Gemma. She switched off Glenn Gould and picked up the phone. ‘Hi. Just heard your voice. Yes, I caught the news on local radio.’

‘A university wife in nothing but her kecks,’ Gemma said. ‘Am I completely out of touch, or is this the end of civilisation as we know it?’

‘I know. I’d already convinced myself she must be some poor homeless woman with a stack of problems.’

‘My thought exactly,’ Gemma said. ‘Mind, she was probably an alky. They’re well known for irrigating the tonsils, aren’t they, university types?’

‘Some of them,’ Jo said. ‘There’s a picture on the internet of these two holding wineglasses.’

‘Completely stonkered.’

‘I don’t know about that. No, I think that’s unfair. Everyone’s been snapped with a glass in their hand at some stage.’

‘If it’s the same picture I just saw on South Today, “stonkered” is being charitable.’

‘She’d had something to drink before she died,’ Jo said. ‘There were traces in her blood, but not a huge amount, the paper said.’

‘She was probably gaga. The stress gets to these lecturers’ wives, trying to keep up with intellectuals. In the end they don’t know if it’s pancake Tuesday or half-past breakfast time. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know, university life.’

‘I didn’t know you went to uni.’

‘Chichester Tech-as was. They’re all universities now, aren’t they? Doesn’t matter if it’s Oxbridge or Chi. The same things go on. You know the saying, don’t you? If you want to get laid, go to college, but if you want an education use the library.’

‘Oh, Gem!’

‘True. They arrive as freshers thinking it’s all about lectures and essays and quickly find out their pointy-head tutors are expecting a shag. Some of them are dim enough to come across. And a few get spliced. It never lasts. A couple of words out of turn at high table, the confidence goes, and they’re ready to jump off a cliff.’

‘It wasn’t suicide, Gem. Someone drowned her.’

‘Okay, she was such a misery-guts she drove him to it.’

‘Oh? What are you suggesting now? The husband killed her? I thought he was in St Petersburg.’

‘His story. Who’s going to check?’

‘I’m sure the police will if they have any suspicions. He must have given a lecture there.’

‘It might have been scheduled but there’s no telling he actually gave it. Or-how about this? — he gave his spiel on the first day and caught a plane home the same night and did the deed.’ Gemma on cracking form, weaving an entire whodunnit out of nothing.

‘Why would he bring her all the way down to Selsey?’

‘You don’t piss on your own doorstep.’

‘We’re talking about an intelligent guy, Gem. There are cleverer ways of killing your wife than drowning her and leaving the body on the beach.’

‘Ah, but he meant it to be taken for suicide or an accident. He didn’t bargain for the marks on the neck.’

‘You really think he did it?’

‘The spouse is always the main suspect.’

‘They don’t seem to have charged him.’

‘Like you say, they’ll check the alibi first. See if he really was in St Petersburg.’

‘A moment ago you said they wouldn’t check.’