Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

“I know. We can give him a few minutes more. We might have to meet him at the car.”

“Is he cross with me?”

“I’m sure he isn’t. We’ll tell him what happened.”

Olga used the time to fold the towels and fill the bags.

Presently Haley asked, “Why isn’t that lady packing up? Her feet must be getting wet.”

The child was right. The woman hadn’t made any attempt to move yet.

Olga couldn’t see her properly. The windbreak was around her head and shoulders. Probably if Olga hadn’t already made such an exhibition of herself she would have popped her head over the canvas and said, You’d better move now, sweetie, or you’ll get a wave over you any minute. The experience with Haley had temporarily taken away her confidence.

A little further along, the lager lads with their empties heaped in front of them were watching with obvious amusement the progress of the tide towards the woman’s outstretched feet.

Olga looked round for Mike, and there he was at last, striding towards them.

“Brilliant! She came back, then. Are you OK, Hale?”

Haley nodded.

Mike kissed her forehead. “Thank God for that.”

Olga started to explain what had happened, but was interrupted by Haley.

“Mummy, don’t you think we ought to wake the lady up? She’s going to drown.”

“What are you saying?” Full of her own drama, she’d shut everything else out of her mind. Now she saw what Haley was on about. “God, yes. Mike, you’d better go to her. She’s out to the world. I don’t know what’s the matter with her.”

He said, “It’s none of our business, love.”

“There’s something wrong.”

With a sigh that vented all the day’s frustration, he stepped the few paces down the beach to where the water was already lapping right around the windbreak. He bent towards the woman. Abruptly he straightened up. “Bloody hell-she’s dead.”

Isn’t this a job for the police?” Mike Smith said.

The lifeguard gave him the look he used for people who “ drift out to sea in inflatables. “By the time they get here, sport, she’ll be three feet under water.”

“Have you called them?”

“Sure.”

Three of the lads who had been drinking lager came over to see what was happening and got asked to help move the body. One walked away, saying he wasn’t touching a dead person, but the others stayed, and so did Mike. Ankle deep, they lifted the corpse and carried it up the shingle and past the lifeguard post to the turf above the beach, watched by a sizeable, silent crowd. The lifeguard asked them to lay the body down for a moment. Evidently he didn’t want it in his hut. He went inside and came out with a key and opened a nearby beach hut.

“We’ll take her in there.”

Once the dead woman was deposited on the floor of the narrow wooden building, the lager lads walked away, and Mike started to go with them, but the lifeguard said, “Hold on, mate. You can’t leave. You found the body.”

“What do you mean, ‘found the body’? I was on the beach like everyone else. Anyone could see she wasn’t moving when the tide came in.”

“The police’ll want to talk to you.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to them,” Mike said. “I don’t know who she is. We just happened to be sitting behind her.”

“Was she with anyone?”

“Not that I noticed. Look, my wife and kid are waiting in the car. We’ve got a long drive home.”

“The police should be along shortly.”

“I’ll tell my wife, then.”

“You’re coming back?”

“Sure.”

Mike marched to the car park, got in the car and started the engine.

“Is that it?” Olga asked.

“Yup.”

“We don’t have to talk to the police?”

“We’ve had enough hassle for one day. We’re leaving.” He put the car in gear and drove across the turf to the road leading to the exit.

He had to make way for a police car coming at speed with siren sounding and blue light flashing. It stopped a short distance ahead, opposite the lifeguards’ hut and two policemen got out.

“Are you sure this is right?” Olga asked.

“We can’t tell them anything. We know bugger all. We don’t know who she was or why she snuffed it. All they’ll do is keep us here for hours asking idiot questions.”

Inside five minutes they were in a long line of traffic heading away from the coast.

Police officers Shanahan and Vigne stood in shirt-sleeve order outside the open door of the beach hut where the woman’s body lay. They hadn’t gone right in. The lifeguard offered them each a can of Sprite and they accepted. Somehow it made a morbid duty more tolerable.

“Are we one hundred per cent certain she’s dead?” PC Shanahan asked. He seemed to be in charge, young as he appeared with his innocent blue eyes and smooth skin.

“You’ve only got to look at her,” the lifeguard said.

This they were in no hurry to do. In the doorway they could see the undersides of her feet, bluish-white and wrinkled by the water. That was enough for now.

“It’s not up to us. A doctor has to certify she’s dead.” Shanahan turned to PC Vigne, who looked at least five years his senior. “Haven’t you sent for the police surgeon, lamebrain?”

Vigne used his personal radio.

“What happened to her things?” Shanahan asked.

“Things?”

“Bag? Clothes?”

“Couldn’t tell you. We just lifted her up and brought her here.”

“She must have had some things with her.”

“She was lying on a blue towel. I can tell you that.”

“There you go, then. Handbag?”

“Didn’t notice one.”

“We’d better go and search. We won’t know who she is until we find her bag.”

The lifeguard said, “How do you know she had one?”

“Keys, purse, money. Where did she keep them?”

“A pocket?”

“Was she wearing something with pockets?”

The lifeguard shook his head. “Two-piece swimsuit.”

“So let’s look for a bag. Where exactly was she lying?”

They closed and padlocked the door of the hut and stepped at a businesslike pace along the path above the beach. The waves were rattling the pebbles and the exact spot where the woman had been found was two feet under water already. Most people had quit the stretch of beach, except for an elderly couple just above the waterline in deckchairs. Shanahan asked if they had noticed anyone pick up a beachbag or anything else belonging to the person who was taken from the water. The woman said she must have been asleep. The old man was obviously gaga.

“Is that the towel?”

“Where?”

Shanahan pointed. He had spotted something blue shifting in the foam at the margin of the tide. “Would you mind?” he asked the lifeguard. “We’re not dressed for the water.”

So the towel was recovered, a large, plain bath towel. A search of the bank of shingle above the sea produced nothing else. There should have been a windbreak, the lifeguard announced. When they’d first seen the woman, a windbreak had been set up around her. Someone must have seen it abandoned and decided it was worth acquiring. “They’ll take anything that isn’t nailed down.”

“They can keep it as far as I’m concerned,” said Shanahan.

“We’re looking for a bag.”

“That’ll be gone, too. Something I’ve noticed about beaches,” the lifeguard said from the rich store of his experience. “None of the usual rules apply. People find stuff and think it’s fair game to take it if no one is around. Well, we’ve all heard of beachcombing. The bastards pick up things they wouldn’t dream of keeping if they found them in a street.”

“Great,” Shanahan said. “To sum up, we’re supposed to identify this woman from one blue towel and the costume she was wearing.”