The Headhunters (23 page)

Without another word to Gemma she walked across the patio to a small leaded window and smashed it. Three blows made a hole big enough for her to reach inside and unfasten the latch.

‘Who would’ve thought it?’ Gemma said.

‘What?’

‘Jo Stevens. Housebreaker.’

‘Are you going to help me in?’

They slid a plant tub against the wall and Jo used it to climb up and through the window space. She found herself in a toilet and stepped down by way of the pedestal. She located the living room, unlocked the patio windows, and let Gemma in.

‘Hooligan,’ Gemma said.

‘Accomplice.’

‘What happens now?’

‘We see what we can find, and preferably something that links him to Meredith Sentinel. Letters, photos, an address book. Anything.’

‘Shall I start in here, then?’

‘Better,’ Jo said. ‘I’ll do upstairs.’

She felt uneasy walking through someone’s home uninvited, but her reason for being there outweighed the reservations. She knew at once that she wouldn’t find much in common with Denis Cartwright. The stairs were carpeted in a bright synthetic green only a man would have chosen, and an insensitive man at that.

She found his bedroom. Better start in the most promising place, she decided. The colour scheme here was equally hideous: the walls in khaki with yellow stripes. The bed was king-size, with a brown quilt. A couple of pictures of old sailing ships were on the wall. No personal items on view. Not a single photo. A stack of books by the bed showed he was a reader of C.S.Forester and Patrick O’Brian—more evidence of a maritime interest.

In the wardrobe his bow ties had a drawer all their own. All the clothes were neatly folded and tidily arranged, but gave off a smell that reminded her of charity shops. She opened the bedside cabinet drawer. Cartwright took diazepam and was a chocolate eater. Nothing to suggest he was also a murderer.

The en suite was clean and bare. He’d taken his washing kit with him.

She went to the top of the stairs and leaned over. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Zilch,’ Gemma called back. ‘I don’t think much of his taste in music. It’s all brass bands and military stuff.’

‘I’ll join you shortly.’

She found a small guest bedroom that—at a stretch—might have been meant for a woman to use. The wallpaper was more feminine, sky blue with daisy shapes. A queen-size bed left little space for much else. A white dressing gown made of towelling hung in an otherwise empty built-in wardrobe. The only picture was a cheap print of Dell Quay. Why do people choose to hang pictures in their houses of local scenes they can visit in five minutes? She could find no evidence that any woman had recently used the room. Why would she, if she was the lover? Only, Jo thought, if the lady found his bedroom wallpaper so off-putting that she insisted on doing the business here.

She checked the bathroom and another bedroom converted into a computer room except that the computer had gone. The police must have taken it. There were just some outmoded diskettes, a printer, mouse-mat, mouse, and loose cables.

‘The place has been stripped of anything interesting,’ she told Gemma downstairs.

‘I know. I found a space where a filing cabinet stands. You can see where the sun bleached the wall above it, and there are paper clips on the floor.’

‘If he was more untidy I’d hope to find something. Isn’t it infuriating?’

‘Don’t let it get you down,’ Gemma said. ‘We’ll think of another angle. Want a glass of sherry? I found some in a cupboard.’

‘I need something for sure.’

Gemma poured amontillado into two glasses. ‘We’re not too smart, you and me.’

‘Why?’

‘Leaving our fingerprints everywhere. The break-in wasn’t the neatest, either.’

‘Is anyone going to care? We haven’t nicked anything. I haven’t seen anything I’d want to nick.’

‘We’re drinking his sherry.’

‘He owes us,’ Jo said, ‘for being such a tosser.’

Gemma laughed. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

The break-in had achieved one good result. The pair were back in harmony again, as united as they’d been when they quit the yoga class together. ‘If my parents could see me now,’ Jo said, ‘they’d die of shame, poor old dears. They’re so conventional.’

‘Mine are dead,’ Gemma said, ‘so I can be as shameful as I want and nobody gives a stuff. Actually, I envy you. I’d like to have someone to shock.’

‘Rick?’

‘He shocks
me
.’

‘He’s serious, though, and serious people are easy to kid along.’

‘Maybe, but they can bite back. I was in a cold sweat when he said he’d killed Denis Cartwright.’

‘Me, too,’ Jo said.

‘I guess you’re right about Rick making that up, but this house does have the feel of a place that’s lost its owner for good.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Somewhere in the far distance a police siren wailed. Gemma looked anxious. Jo shook her head.

‘So what’s next on the agenda?’ Gemma said. ‘Any more break-ins planned?’

Another shake of the head from Jo. ‘I’m running out of ideas. I’m worried sick about Jake and what’s happening to him.’

‘I got that message a while ago. You won’t be much use to anyone if you get yourself in a state.’

‘What would you do, Gem?’

‘To help Jake, you mean? I’d chat up some of the guys down at the boat yard, or in the pub at Dell Quay, and see if anyone knows if Cartwright owned a boat and if its still on its mooring. Or gone.’

‘Cool. I like it.’

‘Shall we go, then?’

They came out through the patio door, which meant leaving it unlocked. Obligations changed after you’d crossed to the criminal side. As Gemma pointed out, if any other housebreakers wanted to go in and leave more fingerprints they were welcome.

The pity of it was that nothing had been achieved except to put them in more trouble. Jo stood on the patio thinking about Cartwright. ‘Does he have a car? He must, living out here in the country. Where is it?’

‘There’s no garage,’ Gemma said. ‘I reckon he leaves it on the drive.’

‘What does he drive?’

‘A big old Peugeot Estate. Red.’

‘For one guy?’

‘He delivers orders. Plenty of room in the back.’

‘Is that why you have such a dinky car—so you can’t be asked to deliver stuff?’

Gemma smiled.

‘If he was sailing off somewhere,’ Jo said, ‘he may have left his car at the quay.’

‘Good thought. Want to look?’

‘Before we do,’ Jo said, facing the garden, ‘there’s one other place we ought to check.’

‘Where?’

‘We haven’t seen under the cover.’ She went down the steps to the pool, where the sheet of heavy duty blue polypropylene was stretched across the pool and tiled surround and fastened with straps and springs to anchors set in concrete.

‘Can we shift it?’ Gemma said doubtfully.

Jo walked around the edge and stopped at the far end. ‘Some of these springs aren’t properly attached. If we can free some more, the whole lot will get loose. There are tools in the shed.’ Hang the consequences, she thought. We’re here to do a job. She broke in again and chose a metal stake she could use as a crowbar, returned, passed it under one of the six-inch stainless steel springs, and levered it upwards. The looped end slid over the head of the anchor with a twang and the tension eased. She freed two more.

‘Keep going,’ Gemma said.

‘Get another stake from the shed and help me.’

They worked steadily along the pool edges, forcing off the springs.

In a short time the cover began to dip at the centre. The side that had been freed was dragged into the pool and starting to sink.

‘This can’t be the recommended way,’ Gemma said. ‘We’ll end up with the cover on the bottom.’

‘So what?’ Jo was too fired up to be concerned. ‘Like we said, we’re not leaving the place as we found it. Can you free some more on the other side?’

Action of any sort was such a relief.

They progressed along both sides of the pool until the cover was entirely unfastened. It didn’t sink.

‘There’s some air trapped under it,’ Gemma said.

Jo wasn’t sure. ‘Gem, I don’t think it is air. Come round this side and help me give it a pull.’

Gemma joined her and they grabbed the edge and hauled, stepping back as far as they could go. The whole thing weighed a lot.

‘We’re in the flowerbed,’ Gemma said.

About a quarter of the cover was out of the water.

‘Oh, no!’ Jo said. She dropped the cover and ran to the edge of the pool. Every pulse in her body pounded.

The far edge of the cover was undulating in the blue water. A human leg protruded from it.

twenty

JO COULDN’T SPEAK.

Gemma let go of the pool cover and joined her at the water’s edge. ‘Oh my God, what have we got here?’

Pure panic.

Jo felt as if her throat was gripped by an unseen hand.

‘Is it him?’ Gemma asked.

Jo found her voice. ‘Not unless he paints his toenails.’

A gasp from Gemma. ‘Another dead woman?’

‘She looks well dead to me.’

‘Shall we do a runner?’

‘Can’t do that again,’ Jo said, trying to get a grip. ‘The police have got to be told.’

‘Who’s going to tell them?’

Jo didn’t answer. ‘I’m not touching her, but I think we should pull the cover off and see who she is.’

‘Let’s do it then.’

Together they dragged more of the cover back and revealed the gruesome spectacle of a chalk-white female corpse floating face upwards, but mostly submerged, the head low in the water and the abdomen slightly distended and seeming to keep it from sinking. The torso was contained by a pink one-piece swimsuit in nice condition, at odds with the dead flesh.

Gemma said. ‘Gross. I feel like covering her up again.’

‘That would be difficult.’

There was a shocked silence.

‘Well, who is she?’ Jo said in an effort to be practical.

‘I don’t think we’re going to find out. Even if we knew her, would we recognise her in this state?’

Jo let out a long, shaky breath.

Neither spoke as each struggled to subdue the nightmare. Finally Gemma spoke again. ‘It’s your call. What do we do?’

Jo said for the second time, ‘Tell the police, of course. If they need proof that Cartwright is a serial killer this is it. Three drownings.’

‘They’ll get us for the break-in.’

‘Bollocks, Gem. This matters more than anything you and I have done. It proves they’ve got the wrong man. They’ll have to let Jake go.’

‘What do we say to them?’

‘That we did some investigating ourselves because we suspected Cartwright all along.’

‘They won’t like it.’

‘They can lump it.’ She took the phone from her pocket. ‘Are you with me, or do I do this alone?’

‘I’m on the team, kiddo,’ Gemma said, ‘but I’ll vomit if I stay here looking at that.’

‘We’ll call them from the car.’

THE INCIDENT room was short of senior officers when the call came. Hen and Stella were having another session with Jake in the interview room. Sergeant Murphy, still wrestling with Cornish drowning statistics, found himself dealing with the new emergency. He coped well, got the name of the informant and the Apuldram address, and radioed for a car to speed to the scene. Then he knocked on the door of Interview Room 2.

Hen came out saying this had better be something special.

Paddy Murphy updated her.

Special it was.

She shook her head. ‘Another one? I had a gut feeling this might happen. And the body is at Cartwright’s place in Apuldram? But we sent a search team there.’

‘They didn’t look in the pool, apparently. The cover was over it.’

Hen’s face turned crimson. ‘Morons! That’s the first place I would have looked.’ She was on the point of demanding names. Then, appalled, she remembered who she’d put in charge of the search team.

Stella.

Loyal, dependable Stella, who she’d insisted came with her as deputy when she’d transferred to Chichester. How could Stell have missed something as obvious as the pool?

‘To be fair, guv,’ Murphy was saying, ‘the search team were looking for Cartwright, or clues to his whereabouts. He wouldn’t have hidden in the pool because he’d never have been able to fit the cover over himself.’ He was straining every sinew to cover for Stella. Everyone in the team adored her.

But Murphy’s special pleading only forced Hen to counter it more strongly. ‘You can’t excuse them, Paddy. Someone is going to be hung out to dry for this. Who discovered the body?’

Murphy cleared his throat like a bit-part actor playing to the gallery. ‘Two of the women you interviewed: Jo Stevens and Gemma Casey.’

Hen’s eyes didn’t register much. The long pause was enough to show her reaction. ‘This gets worse. Those two?’

‘It seems they weren’t impressed with our efforts.’

‘
They’re
not impressed? I’m not impressed.’

‘So they did some sleuthing of their own.’

‘They had the savvy to search the pool after our team ignored it? Give me strength. Are they still at the scene?’

‘I told them to wait. A car will be there by now. I radioed all units as soon as the shout came.’

‘I must get out there. Make sure everyone is alerted: crime scene people, pathologist. I’ll need anyone from uniform we can raise. Where’s Gary?’

‘Canteen, I think.’

‘Tell him to bring his car to the front, and fast.’

She went back to Stella. The interview was suspended. Jake would remain in custody while the new incident was dealt with. She said nothing to Stella except that a body had been found at Apuldram. The reckoning would have to wait.

She tried to compose herself on the drive. Her anger had to be pushed to the back of her mind while she assessed the new situation. A third body—presumably another homicidal drowning— removed all uncertainty. A serial killer was at large on her patch. She no longer needed to spend time probing motives. Psychopaths killed routinely on the slightest of pretexts. This one was in the habit of drowning women. It could be as simple as that. He’d stake out his locale near water and wait for an opportunity. Or he’d lure the victim to it. They could be charming and persuasive, these nutters.

On the face of it, Cartwright now had centre stage. A body in his pool, his garden, surely clinched it, allowing that he’d gone missing. The manhunt must be stepped up, using Interpol. He’d kill repeatedly until he was caught.

Yet the strange thing was that the search of his house and office hadn’t yielded any clue to a fixation with drowning. His hard disk had been picked apart for downloads that would confirm his guilt. He was a sailing enthusiast, admittedly. Looked at the websites, read the books, took the magazines. But floating on water wasn’t the same as wanting to be in it with your hands on some poor woman’s shoulders, forcing her under for minutes on end until she drowned.

Denis Cartwright appeared to be a loner with no history of mental illness, no previous, whose divorce had left him out of touch with everything except his business, obsessive about tidiness and eccentric in dress (the bow ties), but friendly to his staff, vulnerable to advances from an ambitious young woman like Fiona, yet with no obvious potential for violence. You’d expect to have found something if it existed.

His ex-wife might have given some helpful insights. Unfortunately she’d died of cancer three years after the divorce. There were no children and no close relatives.

Hen felt in her pocket and fingered her pack of cigarillos.

Extra pressure was inevitable now that a third victim had been found. A media frenzy would follow. Just as surely, the high-ups in headquarters would question whether an officer of chief inspector rank was competent to investigate. Trouble was looming about the use of the helicopter this morning. And when they learned that Cartwright’s house and garden had been searched previously and the body missed they’d really have something to chew on. She didn’t relish the next couple of days.

Sensing, correctly, that this wasn’t the right time to comment on victim number three, Gary asked, ‘Did you get much out of Jake, guv?’

She stared ahead. Large drops of rain were hitting the windscreen. Typical of the day so far if the crime scene took a drenching that washed away all traces of the killer. ‘What did you ask?’

‘About Jake.’

The big man still in custody was just one more problem. ‘If I tell you he’s not saying much, you’re going to say, “So what’s new?” The latest on Jake is that he’s not said anything to incriminate himself. Yet.’

‘But he resisted arrest.’

‘He’s an ex-con. He doesn’t expect any favours from us. I don’t blame him for that.’

‘And what does he say to the fact that he met Fiona as well as the first victim?’

‘Nothing sinister in it, according to him. He was at the printer’s ordering Christmas cards for the nature reserve. He claims she came by and asked if he was being looked after and he answered yes and those were the only words she ever spoke to him. In fact, he was more interested in Gemma Casey, who we’re shortly going to meet again. They went ten-pin bowling together. A cosy little quartet was formed that evening. Jo Stevens was the other woman and she was partnered by a man called Rick, who I haven’t met yet. But I’m seeing more than I wish of the two women. They’re a pain in the backside.’

‘Is Jo the one who acted as a decoy at Pagham this morning?’

‘Yes, she’s batting for Jake.’

‘What does Rick think about that?’

‘I just told you I haven’t met the guy. I gather he switched to Gemma. And now the same two women turn up in Apuldram sniffing around Cartwright’s place and finding the body that my own officers missed. God, I could do with a smoke. Put your foot down, Gary.’

SHELTERING FROM the downpour under a conifer, she’d got through two of her cigarillos and was lighting a third when the pathologist arrived. The white-clad crime scene officers and uniform PC’s had secured the area around the pool with tape and retreated to their transport. Everyone had a valid excuse to stay under cover until the pathologist had done his stuff. Only the dead woman lay exposed to the rain, adrift in the middle of the pool, any parts of the pink costume above the waterline now as saturated and strawberry-coloured as the rest.

Dr Kibblewhite was new to Hen, a tall white-haired man with a stoop and a squeaky voice. He was carrying a huge blue umbrella with the words SAVE TUFTY written on it in white. ‘A freebie from a previous case,’ he explained to Hen. ‘You never know what’s coming your way in this job. Tufty was a pedigree bull under threat of slaughter in a bovine TB scare. There was a huge campaign and more tests were ordered and he was saved and it was champagne all round, but one of his supporters was unwise enough to pat him on the head. I did the autopsy. Would you mind holding the brolly over me? Should keep us both dry with any luck.’

They stepped out to the pool’s edge and Kibblewhite rubbed some warmth into his surgical gloves and drew them on. ‘She’s no use to me where she is.’

‘That’s where she was found,’ Hen said.

‘If you think I’m going to wade out to see her, you’re mistaken,’ he said. ‘Can someone find a boat hook and pull her to the side?’

A boat hook in a private garden?

Hen called Gary over and explained the problem. He went across to the garden shed and returned with a rake.

‘Well done, young man,’ Kibblewhite said when the floating corpse had been pulled to the pool edge. ‘Now fetch some help and let’s see if you can land the beauty.’

Gary shouted for assistance and two uniformed officers came running from under the trees. Ropes were passed under the body and it was hoisted from the pool and gently lowered onto the tiled surround.

With Hen holding the umbrella with one hand and a tissue to her nose with the other, Kibblewhite crouched and began the examination. ‘My estimate is that she’s been in the water more than two days and less than five,’ he said after he’d pulled some hair from the head and examined the wrinkled hands and feet. ‘The obvious results of immersion.’

‘Drowning?’ Hen asked.

‘I said immersion. There’s a distinction.’ Kibblewhite turned to look up at her. ‘I can tell you now, Chief Inspector, that you’ll hear nothing about drowning from me at this juncture, and you may not hear it at all.’

‘And what’s the good news?’

‘I mean it. After several days have gone by, as they obviously have, it’s not easy to form an opinion and I certainly won’t give you one at the poolside.’ He’d taken a tape recorder from his pocket and started addressing it in a way that brooked no interruption. ‘Maceration well under way. Skin tissue deteriorating already.’ As if on second thoughts he turned to Hen again. ‘Pardon me if that sounded unfriendly. It wasn’t meant as such. But don’t expect any Quincy–type revelations from me.’

‘Did you say Quinsy?’

‘Quincy, M.E., as on television. The M.E. standing for medical examiner. You must have seen it. He solves the mystery and outwits the police every time. I first got hooked in the late seventies.’

‘Before my time.’

‘Isn’t it on any more? It was a while ago. I’ve got the entire series on DVD. The technical stuff is way out of date now, but I enjoy the stories. I expect you watch that CSI thing.’

‘Can you say anything that will help us identify her?’ Hen asked, not wanting to go any further down the television road.

‘Not a lot. The slight distension you see is trapped gas and will have brought the body to the surface. Left any longer the effect will increase markedly. She’s small in stature, smaller than you and probably slimmer, if I may be personal. Age fifty, give or take.’

‘Give or take how much?’

‘Five years. May I continue? Dyed hair and painted nails— which you can see for yourself.’

‘Bruising?’