Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

“Is this the way you run things?” she asked when he caught up with her. “Anyone with a different opinion gets clobbered?”

“Don’t try me,” he told her. “You know where you went wrong in there. You’ve got a good brain, Ingeborg, or you wouldn’t be on the team. Use it.”

“That’s what I was trying to do.”

“You’re not press any more. You’re a very new member of CID. Have you heard any of them talk to me like you just did?”

She took a breath and hesitated. “No, guv.”

“Getting along with them is just as important as keeping on the right side of me. At present they’re giving you the benefit of the doubt. You’re new and eager to impress, but you must learn to do it with more subtlety. Remember the pesky kids at school who sat at the front and were forever putting up their hands to answer questions?”

A little sigh escaped. “That was me.”

He just about managed to conceal his amusement. “Well, have the good sense to see it from other people’s points of view. Theirs, and mine.”

She nodded. “I’ll try, guv. Thanks.” The blue eyes flashed an appeal. “Do you still want me to check that list?”

“You bet I do.”

After she’d gone, he reached for the phone and called Hen. He’d promised to let her know when Ken Bellman was being brought in for questioning. He didn’t get that far.

“I was just about to call you,” she said. “We’ve all been glued to the TV, watching the news breaking. Haven’t you?”

“Jimmy Barneston’s press conference?”

“That’s what we expected to see. It’s been overtaken. Peters-field police have found the body of a young white male on a golf course.”

“Matthew Porter?”

“Nobody is saying yet, but of course it’s him. They haven’t said what he died of, but they’re treating it as murder.”

The body had been found by the greenskeeper, out early checking whether a fresh cut was necessary. After a warm summer’s night there was barely a hint of moisture in the turf and he was thinking about mowing some of the fairways when he made the discovery. It was face up in one of the bunkers at the eighteenth, close to the clubhouse but hidden from view by the slope. Definitely male, definitely young and definitely Matthew Porter, a sensational fact confirmed by the early risers who came over for a look before the police erected a tent around the body. The corpse was fully clothed, in jeans and a polo shirt. There was a hole in the side of the head.

This was a local golf club, near Petersfield. Nobody of Matt Porter’s eminence had ever played the course, so it was something of a coup to have an Open winner at the eighteenth, even in this inactive state. Everyone agreed that it was a dreadful tragedy, but there were strong undercurrents of excitement. There were no complaints that the day’s playing arrangements were interrupted. Instead of teeing off for the final hole, players marched up the fairway to the clubhouse, passing as close as they were allowed to the crime scene. As the news spread, a number of members came in specially. The bar did good business.

The police and forensic officers went through their routines. Access to the scene was easy, this being the eighteenth and so close to the parking area around the clubhouse. Obviously the killer had been able to drive to within a short distance of the bunker. It was established soon that the body must have been killed elsewhere and dumped here.

The hole in the victim’s head was a challenge to the pathologist who examined the body at the scene. Apparently it was not made by a bullet. His first thought was that some kind of stud gun may have been used, the sort used in the construction industry to fire steel pins into masonry. His other suggestion was an abbattoir gun, with a captive-pin mechanism. At this stage of the day the press conference announcing the crossbow shooting of Axel Summers had not taken place.

In fact, Jimmy Barneston’s big occasion that afternoon turned out to be an embarrassment. He had spent the second half of the morning in the safe house with Anna Walpurgis-an experience on a par with lion-taming-and then arrived late and marched straight into the briefing room before anyone informed him what had been found at Petersfield. A short way into his opening statement one of the reporters asked him to confirm whether the body at the golf course was that of Matthew Porter.

Barneston stiffened like a cat that has wandered into a dog show. There was total disarray. One of his colleagues took his arm and steered him away from the cluster of microphones. He went into a huddle with other officers. Finally he returned red-faced and said, trying to sound as if he had always known about it, “The body found this morning has not yet been formally identified. Until this formality is complete, I am not at liberty to comment. I shall continue with my statement about the murder of Mr Axel Summers.”

Of course the press didn’t let him escape so lightly. He was hammered with questions about Porter and the identity of the third name on the Mariner’s hit list. In the end he conceded that Porter was probably the dead man, but staunchly refused to name Anna Walpurgis. He reeled out of there, eyes bulging, and went looking for someone to jump all over.

Hen Mallin agreed with Diamond that the questioning of Ken Bellman had to take priority over what was happening in Petersfield. By now, Matt Porter’s body would be at the mortuary and the forensic team would have searched the scene and picked up anything of interest. Best leave Jimmy Barneston to sift the evidence.

That evening she drove straight from work to the beach at Wightview Sands, partly because she wanted to refresh her memory of the scene, and also because a lone walk (and smoke) by the sea is as good a way as any of getting one’s thoughts in order. This had been a pig of a case. There was still precious little evidence, and even that was circumstantial. Emma Tysoe’s files had helped, but they weren’t as telling as a fingerprint or a scrap of DNA. If Ken Bellman put his hand up to the crime, he’d deserve a pat on the head and a vote of thanks from his interrogators. More likely, he’d deny everything, and Peter Diamond-known to be tough in the interview room-would give him a roasting. Hen didn’t care for confessions under duress.

She drove up to the car park gate just before seven. The man on duty asked for a pound and she said she was a police officer.

“How do I know that?” he asked.

“For God’s sake, man. I’m investigating the murder. I’ve been here on and off for a couple of weeks.”

“I was on, you know,” he said.

“What?”

“The day when the woman was murdered. I was on duty, but I can’t tell you who did it. Can’t see a thing from here.”

She was hearing an echo of a voice she seemed to know, an odd way of spacing the words, with almost no intonation. Familiar, too, was the self-importance, as if it mattered whether he had been on duty. She looked at him sitting in his cabin, and didn’t recognise his brown eyes and black hair, brushed back and glossy. She normally had a good memory for faces.

“I’ll show you my ID, if you insist,” she said, reaching behind for her bag.

He did insist. He waited until she produced it, and only then pressed the gate mechanism.

“And what’s your name?” Hen asked, before driving through.

“I’m Garth. Don’t be too long, will you? We close at eight thirty.”

It came to her as she was cruising up the narrow road that runs alongside the beach. She did know the voice. She’d only ever spoken to him on the phone. Am I speaking to the person responsible for the murder?… Are you sure you’re in charge? He was the jobsworth who’d phoned in when Dr Shiena Wilkinson had turned up looking for her Range Rover. The reason she hadn’t seen him was that she’d sent Stella to deal with it.