Peter Lovesey: The Headhunters

As always there were people walking their dogs, although fewer than usual this morning.

You could spot anyone coming from a long distance. A man of Jake’s height would be more obvious than most. She passed one tall guy a good bit younger, in a fleece top and tracksuit trousers. A jogger, maybe, though he was walking. He had iPod earphones.

Not that she expected to see Jake. Nothing had been arranged. But a chance meeting wasn’t out of the question. She told herself she wasn’t even sure if she wanted it to happen today. He might think it was a set-up. How cringe-making would that be? Far better at some time in the future.

Only a short way on she was reconsidering. A chance meeting might not be so hard to handle. The way she pictured it, they would exchange a few friendly words and then move on. Unless. Unless what? Well, unless he suggested they stop and sit on one of the benches facing the sea.

Get real, she told herself. He’s Gemma’s boyfriend and she’s your friend from yoga. You can’t behave like that.

Absorbed in these thoughts, she strolled for another ten minutes or more, past the lifeboat station and the upended dinghies opposite the place where the fish was sold.

It was increasingly obvious that Jake was nowhere on the front.

This end of the beach was divided by stout wooden breakwaters, and the tidal movement had produced a strange effect. On the side facing her the stones were heaped almost to the top, but on the reverse the wood was exposed, producing a drop of at least ten feet.

At one point she paused to watch a youngish man in army fatigues throwing a ball for a large frisky poodle. They’d been hidden below the breakwater until she got level with them. The dog was running fearlessly into the waves, emerging with the ball and insisting on a repeat performance.

What now, then? She had the choice of continuing the walk on the path above the beach or venturing down in one of these sections between the breakwaters and coming to a forced stop. This, in the end, was her choice. She picked a stretch inhabited only by herring gulls bold enough to stand their ground as she approached, the wind ruffling their feathers. She stood for a while watching the breakers until the same wind that was producing the spectacular choppy sea started to chill her, threatening a headache. She wished she’d put comfort before image and worn the woolly hat after all. Time to turn back, she decided. She was struggling up the bank of stones when her attention was caught by a pale object in the shadow of the breakwater.

All kinds of rubbish is cast up on a beach, particularly when the sea is rough. At first sight this had the smooth curved surface of a large fish, a beached dolphin perhaps.

Jo went closer and lifted away some seaweed. This was no dolphin, nor any other marine species.

She had found a human body.

‘No way! All I ever find is lolly-sticks and fag-ends. What did you do?’ Gemma asked when they met the next Saturday in Starbucks.

‘Went up the beach and knocked at the door of the first house I came to. They called the police.’

‘So whose body was it?’

‘Some woman. She was nude except for her pants.’

‘Drowned?’

‘They thought she probably fell overboard and got washed up.’

‘In her Alan Whickers? That doesn’t sound likely.’

‘I don’t know. If she was sunbathing on the deck of some yacht, a freak wave could have swept her overboard.’

Gemma raised her eyebrows in mocking disbelief. ‘You reckon?’

‘It’s only a suggestion. There has to be an inquest, doesn’t there? They look at reports of people lost at sea.’

‘What age would she have been?’

‘Late thirties, the cop said. I didn’t go too close when I took them down to see. I just pointed to where she was. They took my details and said I could leave. They’re going to put something in the paper in case anyone knows about her. A reporter phoned me later.’

‘Didn’t you get a look at the face?’

‘No, thank God. She was turned away from me.’

‘Are they certain she’d been in the water? She might have snuffed it on the beach.’

‘Some seaweed was twisted round her. It’s more likely she came in on the tide. They say the sea gives up its dead, don’t they?’

Gemma was remembering something. ‘When I was having my winter break in Tenerife last year there was a body washed up on the beach and the locals said he was an asylum seeker. These poor bloody Africans put to sea in boats that are unsafe and hundreds of them never make it. Was your woman black?’

‘Extremely white, by the time I saw her. I don’t think she was an asylum seeker.’

‘Escaping from the Isle of Wight,’ Gemma said, that fertile imagination at work again.

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘You’re smiling, but there are prisons on the Island.’

‘Her pants didn’t look prison issue to me.’

‘Honey, these days they don’t wear kit with little arrows over it.’

‘Naff off, will you?’

They were perched on tall stools by the front window watching the people walk by. The pedestrianised North Street in Chichester, stiff with shoppers, was a far cry from Selsey beach last Sunday morning. ‘The way you tell it,’ Gemma said, ‘you don’t seem to have panicked. If it had been me, I’d have run a three minute mile, screaming all the way.’

‘Strangely enough, I didn’t feel anything at the time,’ Jo said. ‘I mean, I didn’t trip over her, or anything. If I had, I might have screamed. I noticed something large and pale under the seaweed and walked over to where she was and that was it.’

‘I’ve never seen a dead body.’

‘That was my first. There isn’t much to it.’ She gave Gemma a faint smile. ‘If you’re going to murder your boss like you said the other day you’ll have to face up to it.’

‘Won’t be so scary if I’m expecting it. What I wouldn’t like is finding one I didn’t know was there, like you did. They’re always doing that in films.’

‘The people who make films are out to shock you, aren’t they? The quick burst of music and the sudden close-up? Real life isn’t like that.’

‘Real death.’

‘All right. Real death. It’s not the big deal we’re all led to believe. Don’t worry, Gem. When the time comes, you’ll be fine, just fine.’

‘I’m going to need someone like you to keep the heeby-jeebies at bay.’

‘I’m not sure I want to be party to a murder.’

‘A brilliant undiscovered murder.’

‘If you insist.’ She smiled and sipped her coffee. ‘You know, if they served this in smaller mugs, everyone would drink it quicker and the place wouldn’t get so crowded.’

‘It’s their marketing strategy. You bet they’ve worked it out. There are good commercial reasons for large mugs, but don’t ask me what they are.’

A tall, good-looking guy in a suit paused outside the shop and appeared ready to come in, then changed his mind and walked on.

‘Did we do that?’ Jo asked.

‘We were the reason he stopped in the first place,’ Gemma said. ‘He’ll be back.’

‘You wish.’ They weren’t teenagers. They were in their thirties. Jo had been thinking for some time it would be no bad thing if they started behaving like grown-ups.

But Gemma wasn’t of the same mind. ‘Did you see the size of his feet?’

‘No. Should I have? Why?’

Gemma shook with laughter. ‘If you don’t know by now, I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Oh, that.’ Jo sniffed. ‘It’s a myth.’

Gemma spooned some of the froth from her coffee and licked it. ‘Mind if I ask something personal?’

‘Ask away. If it’s off limits I’ll tell you.’

‘You and your squeeze. Have you known him long?’