Peter Lovesey - The Headhunters

From deep in her subconscious she dredged up an old saying. ‘But if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.’

It stopped him in his tracks.

He took a few seconds to think about it before saying, ‘Another thing: you’re still holding this man, Kernow. Why?’

‘He’s been under strong suspicion for some time. He knew the first victim, Meredith Sentinel, and met her in London. And we’ve established that he visited the print works and spoke to victim number two, Fiona Halliday. What is more, he served two years for GBH.’

‘I know all that, but if Cartwright is your man-as everything seems to suggest-Kernow can reasonably claim wrongful detention. I’m not his solicitor, but if I were, I know what I’d be doing.’

How could she explain the feeling in her bones that Cartwright was not the killer, even in the face of all the evidence?

‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir.’

‘This has become a high profile investigation. I can bring in some big hitters from another division.’

‘No thanks.’

‘It may be necessary.’

‘It isn’t, and I don’t expect it to become so,’ Hen said with all the authority she could muster.

After cradling the phone she went outside the building. Some people keep going on caffeine. She knew what her fix was.

By standing with her back in the open doorway she had some protection from the rain. How the anti-smoking brigade would view this, she didn’t like to think. Some of the fumes would certainly drift over her shoulder into the building, try as she did to blow them across the car park.

She’d been there about a minute when she was aware of someone standing behind her. She edged to one side and said, ‘There’s room.’

They didn’t squeeze by, so she turned and saw it was Stella, looking uncomfortable, as well she might.

‘Come to clear the air, have you?’ Hen said. ‘You’ll have a job.’

‘They’re saying upstairs that you took some flak from headquarters because of me,’ Stella said. She continued to stand inside at a safe distance.

‘A little.’ Hen was forced to turned her head to exhale.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You know what it’s about?’

‘Paddy phoned me at home last night. I didn’t get much sleep.’

‘What amazes me, Stell, is that I can generally bank on you to carry out a search. It was so bloody obvious, that pool with the ghastly blue cover. I don’t know how you missed it.’

‘I didn’t,’ she said.

‘Even those two wretched women… What did you just say?’

‘I looked in the pool. I had Sergeant Malcolm from uniform lift the cover at both ends. We didn’t take it off completely because I could see it would be a major operation putting it back. Stupid. Everything was so tidy in the house that I got into a mindset of leaving the place as we found it.’

‘Go over it again.’

‘We switched on the lights and I knelt down and looked under the cover and couldn’t see anything. The sergeant did the same. Don’t ask me how, but we must have missed the body.’

‘You were sure the pool was empty?’

‘I really thought so.’

‘And you had lights on? Could you see to the other end?’

‘I thought so at the time. I’m really sorry.’

‘And when it was over, you put it all back in place?’

‘Tried to. It’s quite technical. Sergeant Malcolm said you need an Allen key to adjust the bolt things that hold the springs in place. We had to leave some of them undone.’

She recalled Gemma Casey saying one end had not been fixed properly. Stella wasn’t making this up. ‘If the body was lying on the bottom would you have missed it?’

‘I can’t understand how, with the lights on as well.’

‘How deep is it?’

‘Not much over two metres. The water was clear.’

‘I saw.’ Hen puffed on her skinny cigar. ‘I thought you must have failed to notice the pool. You failed to notice the body.’

‘That’s worse,’ Stella said.

‘I wasn’t going to say it, but you’re right.’

‘Don’t know about you,’ Gemma said to Jo as they drove away from Apuldram, ‘but I don’t feel like going back to work after that.’

‘Starbucks?’

‘Great suggestion.’

‘Some people call them pigs,’ Jo said.

‘The police, you mean?’

‘Yes. I’ve always thought it was unfair. Until today. That’s what they are-pigs. They’re disgusting. We do the public-spirited thing and report what we found in the pool, proving Cartwright must be the killer and what do we get in return? The third degree. Anyone would think we were murderers.’

‘And they’re still holding Jake.’

‘It breaks me up, Gem. It’s sadistic.’

They each had a black espresso and an almond croissant, to restore the blood sugar, as Gemma put it.

Jo hadn’t finished her diatribe against the police. ‘It was insulting. The Hen woman was questioning me about my background, how long I’ve lived here, all kinds of stuff you only ask of criminals.’

‘We did break into a house, matey.’

‘Not to steal.’

‘We were in the wrong, Jo. She gave me a going-over, too. It wasn’t about us actually. It was about her annoyance that we discovered something she missed.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Good thing she doesn’t know the whole truth.’

Jo frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘Us being the first to find Fiona’s body.’

‘Christ Almighty, yes. Keep your voice down, Gem.’

‘In fact, you found all three bodies.’

Jo blinked and gasped. ‘That’s true.’

Gemma gave her conspiratorial grin. ‘And we associate with a man who confessed to murdering a fourth.’

‘Rick.’ Jo’s throat was dry. ‘But we don’t believe him, do we?’

‘I think we’ll find out soon. Mallin knows about him. She calls us a clique and she warned me not to cover up for my friends. I don’t think she meant you.’

‘She meant Jake.’

‘I doubt it. I think she’ll soon be knocking on Rick’s door.’

‘You’re making me nervous,’ Jo said. ‘This was supposed to calm us down. I don’t like to think what Rick might say under questioning.’

‘He’s rock solid. Don’t worry.’

Hen didn’t bother much with snail mail. Everything that mattered reached her by phone, email, or internal memo. The few letters with her name on them got dropped into a tray on her desk and could stay unopened through the day. Most were junk. A few were from attention-seekers who’d seen her on television or in the press. Rarely anything worth troubling over.

So it wasn’t unusual that a typed envelope with a London postmark didn’t get opened until mid-afternoon.

It wasn’t even a proper letter.

She almost tossed it aside without reading it.

The sender had scribbled a few words on a Post-it attached to a white invitation card. ‘Found this among Merry’s papers,’ was all Austen Sentinel had written before adding his initials.

The wording couldn’t have made more impact if it had grabbed Hen by the throat. Embossed lettering on fine, cream-coloured board.

In September, 1987, the skeleton of a mammoth was uncovered on Selsey’s East Beach and excavated by a team from Brighton University, assisted by volunteers. To mark the twentieth anniversary of this notable event you are invited to a reunion barbecue on the section of beach where the dig took place.

Saturday 15 September, 8.30 p.m. Free food, drink, and eighties music.

No reply necessary. To have fun with old friends just turn up.. like the mammoth did.

She now knew why Meredith Sentinel had returned to Selsey for the first time in twenty years.