Peter Lovesey - The Headhunters

‘You’re talking about cavemen?’

‘Survivors. The ones who came out winners. Quit talking about killers as if they’re another species. You may not care to admit it, but you’d take another person’s life if you were driven to it.’ He was in earnest now. This wasn’t idle chat.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Jo said, matching him for seriousness. ‘Those ancestors you’re talking about are prehistoric. Haven’t you heard of civilization? Mankind has moved on. The great majority of us want a peaceful existence. Yes, there are horrible exceptions, but those who commit them are outcasts and should be treated as such. What do you say, Gem?’

‘I say he’s winding you up, sweetie.’

‘I meant every word,’ Rick said. ‘Look in any playground and you’ll see it in action, the little psychopaths bullying, stealing, lying, fighting. We call it antisocial behaviour as if it doesn’t apply to the rest of us, but when he hits me my instinct is to hit him back, not walk away.’

‘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 Citroen, 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.’