Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

“That’s something she didn’t tell me,” he said, slightly miffed.

“It’s not a thing a woman would say to a man,” Ingeborg said. “I asked if there were theories doing the rounds of the staff.”

“About Emma’s murder?”

“Yes. The consensus seems to be that anyone who does offender profiling is taking a risk.”

“They think some villain was out to get her before she fingered him?”

“Almost as if it was her own fault, yes. Helen Sparks hinted that there was a certain amount of envy that Emma was the only one approached by the Home Office.”

“Envy, eh?” he said, putting a hand to the back of his neck and easing a finger around his collar.

“But not enough to be a motive for murder.”

“How would Helen Sparks know?”

“She’s a pretty good judge, guv.”

“You’re probably right. Is that it, then?”

“As far as I’ve got. I haven’t yet talked to the people at Knowhow & Fix. That’s next.”

“In short, we haven’t come up with anything that conflicts with what he told us at the interview?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep at it,” he said. “I’m putting more and more resources into the Mariner enquiry. If you can nail Ken Bellman by your own efforts, you’ll do us all a good turn, Ingeborg.”

He went out to get lunch and buy some lemon sole.

On his return he was told there had been a call from Bognor CID. He got through to Hen. She asked if anything new had come up and he told her about the latest note from the Mariner.

She was shocked. “So he’s in Bath already?”

“Yes-sooner than I expected. Still ahead of the game.”

“Could he know where Anna Walpurgis is?”

“I don’t see how.”

“If he wants to find out, all he has to do is follow you, Peter. He knows you’ll lead him there at some point.”

“I hope I’m not so obvious as that,” he said with injured pride.

She switched to the matter she’d originally called about. “Want to hear my news? We’ve found Emma’s car.”

“The Lotus? Where?”

“Only a couple of miles from the beach, in a caravan park. The key was still in the ignition. It was parked beside an empty caravan and hidden under one of those fabric covers people put over cars. It’s at the vehicle centre now, being examined for fingerprints and DNA. The forensic guys are confident.”

“A breakthrough at last.”

“We hope so. Have you fingerprinted Ken Bellman?”

“We will now, Hen. We will now.”

So how was it for you?”

“If you’re asking me is she still alive, the answer is yes.” After a night on watch outside Georgina Dallymore’s house, Keith Halliwell was in no mood to trade humour with his boss. He’d come into the police station on sufferance, under instructions to report on the vigil.

“Have you actually spoken to her?” Diamond asked.

“Only on the mobile. The curtains were still drawn at nine, when John Leaman took over from me, so I checked. She wasn’t thrilled to get a wake-up call, but she answered. At least she knows we care.”

“Any signs of suspicious behaviour in the street?”

Halliwell shook his head. “It was dead quiet.”

“You checked the parked cars?”

“Made a list of all the numbers. I know a lot about Bennett Street I never knew before. It has more lace curtains per house than any other street in the city. And I can tell you how many chimney pots there are. The average is nine.”

Diamond said, “What I really want to know is how the Mariner found out she was in Bath and staying at the Bath Spa. He’s too well informed, Keith.”

“I can give you the answer to that.”

This straightforward statement in the same downbeat tone almost passed Diamond by. When it registered after a couple of seconds he grabbed the arms of his chair. “Go on, then.”

Halliwell said, “It was on Galaxy 101.”

“Come again.”

“A radio station. I was talking to one of the young guys on watch with me. He heard it the night she arrived.”

“On radio ?”

“Yes. Some DJ played one of her hits, saying he’d heard a rumour she’d been spotted in Bath. The next thing of course is that a listener calls in to say he saw her checking in to the Bath Spa Hotel.”

“And the Mariner happened to be tuned in.”

“Or heard of it from someone else.”

“As simple as that,” Diamond murmured as if he’d just been told the secret of a conjuring trick. “Who’d have thought that kind of stuff would go out on radio?”

Halliwell looked too tired to enlighten his boss about the way broadcasting had changed since commercial radio came in. Some people never listened to anything except the BBC.

But Diamond wasn’t blaming the DJ. “It wouldn’t have happened if Special Branch were doing their job,” he complained. “They should have smuggled her in through the back entrance of the hotel instead of parading her at the check-in. My God, I’ve lost all respect.”

Halliwell’s head was starting to sink from sheer fatigue.

“If I’m honest,” Diamond added, “I didn’t have much in the first place.” Still fretting over the security lapse, he sent Halliwell home to catch up on some sleep.

One mystery solved, then. And a little of the gloss rubbed off the Mariner’s shining reputation. He’d heard it on the radio.

Ideally Diamond would have called a case conference this morning to bring everyone up to date on recent developments. Instead, information was being circulated through the bush telegraph. Bath’s small murder squad was fully stretched to maintain this round-the-clock vigil. John Leaman was now on watch in Bennett Street with four plain clothes officers. After the lapse in the hotel, Diamond reckoned, he should be fully alert.

Towards the end of the morning he looked into the incident room. Soon the least experienced member of the squad would have to take a shift on the Bennett Street roster. He’d kept Ingeborg busy digging into Ken Bellman’s past, shielding her from front-line duties. It wasn’t good practice. In theory, she should face the same risks as anyone else. Knowing how sod’s law worked, when she was on watch, the killer would make his move.

“Did you get out to Knowhow & Fix?” he asked her.

“Yes, guv. They look like a bunch of students to me, all shorts and T-shirts. Bellman is one of about ten consultants on their list. He’s liable to be called out at any time, including weekends, but a lot of the work is done from home, so they don’t keep track of his movements.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We know where he was in the hours leading up to the murder. That’s on record, so he’s got no alibi. What do they say about him as an employee?”

“No complaints. They’re satisfied with his work. He seems to be up with the latest technology, which is what counts in IT.”

“Previous employment?”

“Like he said, he was with a London firm.”

“In SW1,” Diamond recalled.

“As a techie-a technical support programmer.”

This meant little to Diamond, but he knew London pretty well from his days in the Met. “SW1. That’s very central. Westminster, Downing Street, St James’s. Scotland Yard is there. Not many computer firms, I would think. It’s all government departments. Civil servants.”

“They use computers, guv.”

“I suppose they do. Why did he move to Bath? Do his bosses know?”

She shook her head. “They say he came with good references. He’s quiet. Doesn’t talk about himself or anything personal.”

“They don’t know what brought him here?”

“No.”

“Did we ask when we interviewed him? I don’t believe we did. For a young man with a good job in IT in central London, a move to the provinces seems a strange career choice.”