Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

Halliwell said, “We’ve been right through the building. There’s no one in there, guv.”

“There won’t be.” Still staring at the wall, Diamond crossed his arms over his chest to control his hands. They were starting to shake. “What’s written here is the truth. He’s beaten us. I don’t know how, but he’s done it. He’s got to Anna, and he’s got Ingeborg as well.”

One of the team on duty said in his own defence, “We’ve had round-the-clock surveillance, sir. No one went in except DC Smith.”

“You saw no one go in,” Diamond said without even turning his head to look at the speaker.

“But the place is empty. He got out as well, with the two women. It’s a bloody impossibility.”

“Shut up, will you?” He looked to his right. “Keith.”

“Guv?”

“The roof. These are terraced houses. The roof is the only way I can think of.”

Together they ran upstairs, up two storeys to the attic, a surprisingly spacious room with surprising contents-the secret Anna had wanted to impart to Diamond. Eccentric, weird even, but harmless and of small consequence now. Georgina’s attic was occupied by a family of people-sized teddy bears dressed in knitted garments and seated around a table laid for tea with real cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits. “Try the window,” Diamond said, blotting out the rest of the scene.

It was a small double-sash, and Halliwell made an effort to shift it, but with no success. “I don’t think this has been opened, guv.”

Diamond had a go, and felt the resistance. The thing wouldn’t budge a fraction.

“Look, it’s been painted over at some time,” Halliwell said, pointing to where the bottom rail of the window met the sill. An unbroken coat of paint connected them. “He didn’t go this way.”

“Bloody hell. How did he do it, then? The back of the house?”

“I don’t think so. Every door and window is still locked from the inside. She had locks on all the ground floor windows and fingerbolts on the door.”

Diamond pressed his hands to his forehead and shut his eyes, desperate to make the mental leap that was wanted. It wasn’t for want of trying that he didn’t succeed. But there was another way to approach this problem, and he had the vision to recognise it. All he’d done so far in this emergency was what the Mariner would have predicted, reacting to events by trying to understand them, charging up the stairs in the hope of finding which way the Mariner had escaped with the two women. Truly there wasn’t time for that. Ingeborg and Anna had been missing for an hour already. Not much could be gained from discovering how it had been done.

He said to Halliwell, “Where has he taken them? That’s the priority. That’s what we’ve got to work out.”

Halliwell didn’t say a word. The answer was beyond him.

Beyond Diamond, too, it seemed. He shook his head and sighed heavily. After a long interval, he started to talk, more to himself than Halliwell. “This man has a sense of the dramatic. He went to all the trouble and risk of leaving Porter’s body on the eighteenth hole of a golf course-just for the effect. The act of murder wasn’t enough. It had to be done in the most symbolic way. He’ll have worked out something for Anna, some place of disposal that he considers fitting. But where?”

Where? His body strained to do something, to race off in some direction with sirens blaring and stop the killing. But until his brain supplied the answer, any action would be futile. While he floundered like this, apparently indecisive but actually groping for the truth, two lives were on the line, for nothing was more certain than that the Mariner would kill again.

Georgina’s giant teddies, immobile in their chairs, reinforced the inertia in his brain. He couldn’t stay in the room any longer. “No use standing here,” he told Halliwell. He led the way downstairs, still trying to animate his tired, shocked brain. But the physical action of moving about the house was no help. It solved nothing. Down on ground level again, he was still without an explanation or a plan.

Forcing himself to face the worst outcome, he tried once again to work out the Mariner’s strategy. In all probability, he’d have killed Ingeborg first. Inge, poor kid, was extraneous to the plot. She’d walked into the crossfire because of inexperience and blind courage and the stupid overconfidence of her boss. I should never have left her in charge, he told himself. I could have stopped her if I hadn’t slept through the call they say she made to me. God knows I’ve made mistakes before, but this is the worst ever.

And I failed Anna, the Mariner’s target, the last name on the death list, that free spirit, railing against all the constrictions in her witty, boisterous way, yet actually resting her trust in me. Arrogantly, I assumed I could protect her. How wrong we both were!

Self-recrimination wasn’t going to help.

Instead, he forced his thinking back to the Mariner and his embittered plot. He visualised the execution of Anna, first tied up, or drugged senseless, then despatched, almost certainly by a crossbow bolt to the head. The body would be driven to whichever location the Mariner had selected as appropriate.

The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!

Think ahead, he urged himself. It’s the only chance I’ve got now. I have to out-think him, anticipate him for once. He’s already picked the place where her body will be discovered, somewhere fitting, or symbolic, like that eighteenth hole. He wants the world to know how clever he is. Where is it?

Somewhere appropriate to Anna. Her pop music career? Some place that links with a song title. Or her name?

No, he told himself. The Mariner isn’t interested in her career. He’s entirely taken up with the part of her life that affected him. If I’m right, and he was one of those academics whose bursaries were taken away, he blames her personally for that. This is the climax of his killing spree. He’ll have thought of something that makes the point. He’s been hitting back at British Metal by killing the people they sponsor, but Anna is different from Summers or Porter. She hurt him. He’ll turn her death into some emblem of his anger.

Now something was beginning to stir in his memory. Faint and tenuous, just out of reach, it tantalised him for what seemed an intolerable interval before vanishing again.

He felt certain it was significant, and it derived from personal experience, an observation he’d made some time ago, not in the last twenty-four hours, or even the last week. Surely, he reasoned with himself, if it’s of any significance, it must have a connection with British Metal.

And now the image surfaced. Concorde taking off.

Because of British Metal .

He gave a cry that was part-triumph, part self-reproach. He’d got there at last. That mechanical billboard he’d driven past on Wellsway with the rotating images. The slogan perfectly summed up the Mariner’s twisted rationale. All the bitterness, his justification for the killing, was encapsulated in those four words.

He explained his reasoning to Halliwell. “And as far as I know,” he added, “it’s the only one of its kind in the city. Have you seen another?”

“No, guv. I know the sign you mean. Shall we go?”

He thought for a moment and shook his head. “I’d bet anything that’s where he means to leave the body, but not in broad daylight. It’s too busy up there. He’ll go tonight, when it’s dark.”

“And then we ambush him?”

“Too late, Keith. He’ll have killed them both already. Remember he killed Matt Porter first and transported the body to the golf course. We’ve got to find him before tonight.”