Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

“Thanks, but no,” Stella said. “Unless…” She gave Dr Wilkinson an enquiring look and was grateful for a shake of the head.

The car park man still hovered. “I expect you thought Dr Wilkinson was the victim, being the owner of the Range Rover.”

Stella gave him a look she reserved for really pathetic cases. “I’m asking you to leave us now, Mr, em…”

“Garth,” he said. “My name’s Garth.”

When the two women were alone, Shiena Wilkinson said, “I understand you took my car away because you thought it belonged to that unfortunate woman who was found dead. Well, I need it back-urgently.”

“Understood.”

“It contains things essential to my work. I’m a doctor.”

“And I’m a detective, so I know you are.” Stella smiled to ease the tension. “You’ll get your things back directly. But as for the car, you’ll need to hire another for the next day or two. We had to look inside. We’ll put the damage right, of course.”

“ Damage ?”

“We broke a window.”

“I thought you had bunches of keys for a job like that.”

“We couldn’t wait. We had a body, obviously murdered. We needed to identify her quickly.”

“Point taken,” Dr Wilkinson said in a more accepting tone.

“What made you leave it here?”

“That’s personal. I was going to collect it today. Hairy moment for me when it wasn’t here.”

“Do you mind telling me?”

She sighed. “I met a friend on the beach yesterday and spent the night with him in Brighton. He took me there in his car. It’s as simple as that. He offered to bring me back today to collect mine and he did.”

Stella drove the young doctor to the motor vehicle forensic unit to collect her medical bag and other things. On the way, Shiena Wilkinson talked about the man she’d met. He was Greg, a college friend she hadn’t seen for a couple of years, though they’d phoned each other. It seemed he regularly came to the beach to surf. He’d produced a bottle of cooled Chablis from an icebox he had in his car, and it had been like revisiting her student days because she’d got (in her own words) “rather mellow as the day wore on”. At the end of the afternoon Greg persuaded her she was in no state to drive (women being more susceptible to alcohol than men-at which Stella rolled her eyes, and Dr Wilkinson said, “Yes, but more to the point, I’d drunk two-thirds of the bottle”) and suggested it would be safe to leave the Range Rover overnight. If there was a problem, he’d say he was a member of the windsurfers’ club and square it with the car park man.”

“Was he worth it?” Stella asked.

“Are they ever?”

Stella asked which section of the beach the couple had been on. It was too much to hope they had witnessed something.

“Close to where I parked my car, almost opposite the club.”

Too far off.

“Did you hear about the body being found?”

“At the time? No.”

“News travels fast. I thought maybe people along the beach knew what was going on.”

“If I’d known, I’d have offered to help. It’s something you do, in my job. What time was she found?”

“What time did you leave?”

“Quite early. Around four, I think.”

Wrong woman, wrong place, wrong time of day.

After she’d been on TV, Hen Mallin returned to the incident room and told her team they weren’t just to sit around and wait for witnesses to get in touch. “What about the other cars left there on Sunday evening? There were three, apart from the Range Rover. One belonged to Claudia, the Boxgrove blonde. That leaves two.”

Sergeant Mason, the man who had contacted the Police National Computer, said, “Another Mitsubishi and a Peugeot, both registered to men.”

“I remember. I suppose they’re not still there, by any chance?”

“Both gone, guv.”

“Did you keep a note of the numbers?”

Mason sighed and shook his head.

“Or the owners’ addresses?”

“Sorry. I thought when we fixed on the Range Rover…”

“But I did, and I checked with the PNC,” the keeno, George Flint, said with unconcealed self-congratulation. He produced a notebook. “The Mitsu was registered to a guy by the name of Thomas West, 219 Victory Road, Portsmouth, and the Peugeot is down to a Londoner, Deepak Patel, 88 Melrose Avenue, Putney.”

“Nice work, George.”

He beamed.

“Follow it up, would you?” she told him in the same affable tone. “See if there’s any link with a missing woman.”

From looking like a golden retriever being stroked on the head, he changed to a snarling pitbull. “You mean go there?”

“In a word, yes. Take DC Walters.” Walters was the newest officer on the team, so green that he still thought speed was what you did on the motorway and H was a sign for a hospital.

Flint’s face said it all. What a way to reward initiative.

Stella said to the boss, “Speaking of missing persons, I looked at the MPI. You know how it is, guv. Thousands of names.”

“Yes, but we’re only interested in the ones reported in the past twenty-four hours.”

“It could take another week before our victim gets on the index. We’re talking about a missing adult here, not a kid.”

“Fair point. Keep checking each day. Do we have the list of all the objects picked up on the beach?”

“That’s in hand.”

“Meaning, no, we don’t.”

“It’s a long list, guv.”

“Get it on my screen by six tonight. And, speaking of tonight, does anyone have a problem working overtime?”

No one did, apparently.

In spite of all the overtime, nothing startling emerged in the next twenty-four hours. The television appeal brought in over seventy calls from people who believed they had seen the victim on the beach on Sunday. As Hen remarked to Stella, “I’m beginning to wonder if there was anyone on that bloody beach who wasn’t female with copper-coloured hair and a white two-piece swimsuit.”

The team were kept busy taking statements and the computer files mounted up, but no one was under any illusion that a breakthrough was imminent.

George Flint visited Portsmouth and London and spoke to the owners of the Mitsubishi and the Peugeot. Each had good explanations for leaving their vehicles in the car park overnight. The Mitsubishi had run out of fuel and its owner had got a lift back to Portsmouth from a friend who vouched for him. He’d returned with a can of petrol the next day. The Peugeot owner had gone for a sea trip along the coast to Worthing with some friends in a motorised inflatable and returned too late to collect his car. No women were involved in either case.

The inventory of items found on the beach gave no obvious clue. A pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with a broken side-piece could have belonged to the victim, but how could you tell without DNA or fingerprint evidence?

“Why does anyone choose to strangle a woman on a crowded beach in broad daylight?” Hen asked Stella. “I don’t buy theft as the motive. I really don’t.”

“We don’t know what she had with her,” Stella said. “Maybe she was carrying a large amount of money.”

“On a beach? No, Stella, there’s something else at work here.”

“Crime of passion?”

“Explain.”

“A man she’s dumped gets so angry that he kills her.”

“What-follows her to the beach?”

“Or they drive there together to talk about their relationship, and she tells him it’s over, there’s a new man in her life. He turns ballistic and strangles her. Then he picks up her bag and returns to the car park and drives off. If they came together and he left alone it explains why we didn’t find her car at the end of the day.”