Peter Lovesey - The Headhunters

‘Oh, but it is if you weren’t where you said you were. Did you leave St Petersburg?’

A long pause while he seemed to be deciding if he could tell a downright lie and bluff it out. Apparently not. ‘Yes.’

‘Returning at the end of the three weeks to check out?’

‘You’re treating me like a schoolboy who played truant.’

‘Who was the old colleague, Dr Sentinel?’

‘A Finnish geologist. You wouldn’t even be able to repeat the name if I gave it to you.’

‘Try me.’

‘Dr Outi Koskenniemi.’

‘You’re right.’ Hen handed him a pen and one of her personal cards. ‘On the back, please.’

Shaking his head at this imposition, Sentinel printed the name.

‘Male or female?’ Hen asked, looking at the card he’d returned.

He hesitated before saying, ‘Female.’

Hen lifted an eyebrow.

His shoulders slumped and all the fight went out of him. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’ve got the picture now. I was playing away, so to speak, and I’m bloody ashamed it should have happened when Merry was being murdered. One can’t re-run events, unfortunately.’

‘Was this lady at the conference?’

He shook his head. ‘She lives in Helsinki.’

‘Excuse me. My geography isn’t the best.’

‘It’s a short hop by plane.’

‘So you travelled there and stayed with her. You’d better write down the address for me.’

‘I don’t want Outi involved.’

A fine time for gallantry, Hen thought. ‘She’s your alibi. You went missing from the conference at a sensitive time.’

Shaking his head, he added the address.

Hen leaned back in her chair. ‘You and your friend Outi must have planned this when you got the invitation to St Petersburg. Has it happened before?’

‘This was my first visit to Russia.’

‘But not to Helsinki?’ The answer to that was written all over his face. ‘That explains it, then. An affair of the heart. Your marriage to Meredith wasn’t roses all the way, in spite of what you told me last time?’

‘I was in shock when we spoke.’

‘Agreed. And now you can be more frank.’

He felt the knot of his tie as if it was too tight. ‘Merry and I stopped sleeping in the same room a long time ago. We continued to live together because neither of us wanted all the hassle and expense of separation.’

‘Did she know about your Finnish lady?’

‘I expect so. I got to know about some of her male friends. We didn’t discuss them, but the signs were there for me to see.’

Hen recalled him accusing her of appalling bad taste for suggesting Meredith might have met someone else. She let it pass, feeling she was on the brink of a breakthrough here. ‘Was there a man friend down here in Sussex?’

‘Of course.’

‘You knew?’

‘She didn’t come here for the scenery.’

‘Who was he?’

‘It’s obvious.’

‘Not to me.’ Getting a straight answer was a major challenge. ‘I’m asking for his name.’

He shrugged and looked away.

‘Don’t know?’ said Hen, ‘Or won’t tell?’

He was silent.

‘You just said it was obvious who he was.’

‘Obvious that some man existed,’ he said.

‘Isn’t there some way of finding out? A name she let slip? Phone calls? Letters?’

If Dr Sentinel was capable of recalling anyone at all, he was in no frame of mind to be helpful. ‘I wasn’t that inquisitive about her fancy men. “Better not to know,” was my philosophy, or you start making comparisons with yourself and losing confidence.’

Hen was so frustrated that she departed from her script. ‘You couldn’t have missed the man I have in mind. He’s six foot six.’

‘There you are then,’ Sentinel said smoothly. ‘I’m five nine. That would be a blow to my self-esteem.’

She wished she’d kept quiet about Jake. A tactical error. ‘When we spoke before, you went so far as to suggest that the murderer must be somebody with local knowledge.’

‘Obvious, isn’t it?’ He was recovering some of his poise. And arrogance.

‘Yes-and we’re working on that assumption.’

‘And you have a suspect?’

‘More than one,’ she said, trying to compensate for the gaffe over Jake.

‘Not much of a friend if he murdered her.’

She was trying to keep her cool. ‘You’ll have read in the papers that we linked this case to another murder by drowning. It’s vital that we catch this killer. Any detail about the men she met recently could put us onto him.’

‘You’re not listening, Chief Inspector. I just told you I didn’t wish to know anything about them.’

‘Is there a woman friend Meredith might have confided in?’

‘I doubt it. Most of her friends were male.’

‘Did she keep a diary?’

‘Never had the time. Speaking of which… ’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d like to leave now.’

Hen ignored that. She felt certain there was more to be winkled out from this unpromising source. ‘You talked about the time you first visited Selsey, to excavate the mammoth on the beach. Meredith was a Brighton University student who joined the dig, and that’s how you met.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Do we really have to go over this?’ He’d taken a near knockout punch, but he was back on his feet and fighting.

‘I’d like to know who else was on that dig.’

‘Ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Twenty years ago and you want names?’

She continued to prompt him. Obnoxious as he was, he could provide the crucial link. ‘You said the work had to be done fast because of the tides, so you recruited everyone you could get.’

‘It was a miracle I found anyone at all. The term hadn’t started, so I had to phone around for students I taught and, frankly, any Tom, Dick, or Harry who was up at the university early, as well as locals in Selsey. But if you think I kept a list of their names, you’re mistaken.’

‘I expect you wrote about the mammoth later for some scientific journal.’

‘At some length. It was a major event for this country and I was a young man with a career to pursue. I’ve lectured on it extensively. Only last June at Brighton in commemoration week I gave the Howard Carter lecture to mark the twentieth year since the dig.’

‘As recently as that? Who were the audience?’

‘All the VIPs from the vice-chancellor down, plus some experts and enthusiasts. It was a full house, and appreciative, I may add.’

‘Good to go back, was it?’

‘I’m not sentimental, Chief Inspector.’

‘Did you meet any of your original team?’

‘There you go again. I’ve taught hundreds of students since. If I met them, I wouldn’t recall their names.’ With his giant ego, he’d wiped them all from his memory.

‘With one exception,’ Hen said.

‘Oh?’

‘Your wife.’

‘Well, yes,’ he conceded without much grace.

‘Was she at the lecture?’

‘Merry?’ he said, as if the idea was preposterous. ‘She’d heard it all before. She called it my spiel. No, she was out and about in London being wined and dined by some fossil hunter, no doubt.’

Hen’s antennae twitched. ‘Fossil hunter? Why do you say that?’

‘Because those were the types she was most likely to meet at the museum. In archaeology we often talk of finds. The term had its own special meaning for Merry.’

‘No fossil hunter in particular?’

‘You’d have to ask her. But of course it’s too late now.’

This was like being baited. Each time Hen got close, the lure was jerked out of range. ‘Was this lecture of yours illustrated?’

‘Certainly.’ The words were guaranteed to flow when anything to Sentinel’s credit was mentioned. ‘I showed a selection of slides and some newsreel footage. The dig was photographed officially and covered by the media as well.’