The House Sitter (14 page)
Authors: Peter Lovesey
Then there’s the other kind of serial killer, equally as chilling, acting not on impulse, but from a clear motive such as revenge, or ambition, or greed, probably deriving from some seminal incident in his life. He has an agenda and the killing of his victims is purposeful. He’s not at all the same as the random killer who may claim to have a ‘mission’ to kill prostitutes, or gay men, or people of a certain racial group. He has made decisions to deprive certain individuals of life. He creates a role for himself in which he has the power to rectify what he sees as personal injustices.
I don’t know yet where to place the Mariner.
This evening I cooled off in the bath and drank lager from the fridge and lolled around in my Japanese dressing gown listening to Berlioz and thinking. Just before ten the phone went and I jumped up and grabbed it. Only Ken, making sure I was still on for Popjoy’s tomorrow. Couldn’t get too excited about the prospect. I mean, I
knew
we had a booking already, and I suppose it showed in my voice. For him it’s a very big deal. I could tell he was disappointed in me, but I told him I’d had a trying day and I’d be more like myself tomorrow night. He’s getting clingy and I’m not sure I like that.
And now it’s another day and I’m spending the morning at home with my books checking on the kinds of serial killers who choose or need to communicate information about their crimes. I just want to see if it’s an indicator. Jack the Ripper—if his letters are to be believed—must have been an early example of this type. ‘You’ll hear about Saucy Jack’s work tomorrow. Double event this time.’ Another was David Berkowitz, self-styled ‘Son of Sam’, who wrote to the police in 1976 claiming that he felt on a different wavelength than everybody else—‘programmed to kill’. About the same time in Wichita, Kansas, the so-called ‘BTK Strangler’ killed a family of four and followed it up with more murders of women. ‘How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?’ he demanded in a letter to a local television station. There’s a sinister element of showmanship in each of these cases. Unwise to draw conclusions from so small a sample, especially as two of them were never identified.
I’ve been through all the data I have on serial killers and I’ve yet to find any who actually
named their victims
in advance. This must be arrogance without precedent. Can it mean, I keep asking myself, that the Mariner is really only a bluffer? I’d like to answer yes, only my gut feeling is that he’s deadly serious. Many of these people I’ve been reading about were pathological liars, but their statements can’t be dismissed when they amount to boasts. This man is too self-centred, too full of his own importance, to bluff about the one thing he’s getting attention for. He has published his agenda and I fear he’ll carry it out unless he is stopped in time.
The police are looking for links between the victim, Summers, and the ‘targets’, Porter and Walpurgis, in the hope that this will lead them to the killer. I wish them luck, but I fear they may be wasting their time. These are media people, never out of public attention. There will be parties two or more of them attended, charities they supported, journalists who interviewed each of them. What matters is their link to the Mariner, if any.
That was the sum of my thoughts this morning. After lunch I washed my hair and turned my attention to what I would wear tonight. Finally chose the dark blue Kenzo trouser-suit with the padded shoulders I bought last year in Oxford. Slightly formal—it
is
Popjoy’s—and not too much of a come-on to Ken, who needs no encouragement. Oh dear, am I going cool on him?
The meal was the best part of the evening, a wonderful breast of pheasant as my main course and the most delicious
crème
brûlée
I’ve ever tasted to follow. You’d think that would have guaranteed the rest of the night would be a wow. Not so. Unfortunately, Ken picked a red Californian wine, Zinfandel, that always makes my head ache. I’m sure it was a good vintage, and expensive, but I wish he’d asked me first. He was doing his masterful bit, showing off to the waiter. In any restaurant they always give the wine list to the man and he takes it as a personal challenge to sound knowledgable about what’s on offer. Ken simply went ahead and ordered, murmuring something patronising about how I would enjoy this. Stupidly I drank a glass or two with the meal, not wanting to mess up the evening. My head started splitting before we got to the desserts. I was in no condition to talk about my day, as he suggested, and I didn’t want to hear about his, either. He was really miffed when the waiter asked if we would take coffee and I said what I really wanted was a glass of still water with two Alka Seltzers. Yes, I embarrassed him horribly. He showed it by leaving a huge tip, far bigger than he can afford.
Then he proposed to walk me home—me in a pair of strappy high heels!—all the way from Sawclose, at least half a mile. He claimed it would be romantic. Stuff that, I told him. I want a taxi. Unfortunately the theatre crowd had just come out and we spent the next twenty minutes trying to beat other people to a cab. He isn’t much good at that. Result: I wasn’t in the mood for the shag he expected when we finally got back here. I’m going to draw a veil over what happened. Ugly things were said, entirely by me. If he’d called me a prickteaser or something I might respect him more. He’s so nice he’s boring, but I can’t expect him to understand that. He listens to me, praises me up, treats me like a princess, and that’s OK—until the glitter wears off. Things went wrong in the restaurant and they weren’t really anyone’s fault, but it helped me to face facts. I happen to have a bigger-than-average appetite for sex and I needed a bloke and Ken came into my life at the right time and did the necessary in bed. And let’s give him credit: I’ve known a lot worse. We had five or six good weeks. Now it’s time to draw a line under them.
Basically, it’s over. I said too many horrible things for us to kiss and make up—ever. And to be honest, I’m relieved.
Diamond used the mouse to close the file and sat back in the chair. He needed a short break from this outpouring. There is only so much you can take in at a session, especially when you are extracting crucial information. He found it demanding to switch mentally between two murders, trying to catch the implications for both. On one level it was a fascinating insight into Emma’s analysis of the Summers case. Equally, it seemed to open the way to new lines of enquiry in her own murder. Ken, the lover on the skids, was a real discovery. Nobody in the Psychology Department had mentioned him. Not one of them he’d spoken to, Tara, Professor Chromik or Helen Sparks, seemed to have any knowledge of Ken’s existence. She must have been very determined to keep the worlds of work and home separate.
Ken had to be traced—and soon. He would get Halliwell and the team onto it.
The Summers case, also, was opening up nicely. It was a definite advance to have the names of the two “targets” Bramshill wanted to keep to themselves. They couldn’t object. This was all legitimate stuff. The names had come up as a direct result of research into the beach strangling. He had a right to know Emma’s thoughts in the days leading up to her murder.
His own emotions were mixed. There was no denying that he felt some guilt at peeking into her private journal, tempered by the knowledge that she had locked away essential information there. Some of it would surely have been passed on to the police if she had lived long enough to assemble the profile. The other bits—the intimate stuff about Ken—might well have a bearing on her own murder. He had to go on reading. As a professional, Emma would understand the justification. That’s what he told himself.
He reopened the file.
I got in touch with Jimmy Barneston today, wanting to follow up on a few matters. He’s terribly busy, but came to the phone and listened to everything I said, and seemed genuinely grateful for my suggestions. The main thing I wanted to get across was that I now believe the Mariner really does intend to kill those two he named, and he’ll be cunning and ruthless in carrying out his aim. The police should get them away, abroad if possible, and keep them under twenty-four hour surveillance. And it’s got to be kept up for months and years if necessary. Jimmy said he was confident of finding the bloke in a matter of days. He sounds convincing, too. I hope to God he’s right.
He said I was welcome to sit in on one of their case conferences and I’ve agreed to drive down to Horsham tomorrow. I’ll make another visit to Bramber in the afternoon without the murder squad in attendance. I’m probably kidding myself, but I feel I have a better chance of getting inside the mind of the killer if I stand where he did. I also plan to call on Axel Summers’ housekeeper. He lives in the village.
Ken left a message on the answerphone, asking me to call back when I get a chance. He wants to start over, I suppose. I’m going to ignore him. Our fling is over. A clean break. He thinks I’ll melt, but I won’t. Now that it’s done and dusted I can see there was never very much emotionally. I was keeping it going for the sex on tap, my personal demon, the tyranny of the hormones. Let’s be honest, he was rather good at it, but not world class. There’s better to be had. Let the quest begin!
Did some more reading today. This will not be easy, this case. You can’t make too many inferences from a single crime. The horrible truth is that I need the Mariner to kill again before I can make an accurate assessment of his psychosis—if he has one. It’s quite on the cards—I’d put money on it—that he has carried out crimes in the past, maybe even murders. But I can’t access them unless the police pick up some piece of evidence that links him to their records. So I’m hamstrung.
What age might he be? It ought to be possible to posit a range. The trouble he took to pick out the crossbow suggests someone reasonably mature, calculating, rather than impulsive. Not a youth, I would say.
The choice of “targets” is intriguing. They’re all huge names, but apart from that they don’t have much in common. Summers was creative and intelligent and over fifty. Porter is precocious, little more than a kid, certainly under twenty-one, famous for being young in a sport where older men dominate. Walpurgis is past thirty and very rich, still a celeb, but past her prime as a pop singer. Note: I must look at cases of celebrity slayers such as Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon. What was his motivation?
This afternoon I took a walk to the top of the street and spent a couple of hours in Sydney Gardens wandering the paths and mulling over the case. I was crossing the Chinese Bridge over the canal when a jogger stopped to chat me up. Tall, thinnish, fair hair. Not a bad looker. Offered me a cigarette. I thought, What sort of jogger carries a pack of cigarettes in his tracksuit? Gave him a smile and said I didn’t, and anyway I was waiting for someone. I am, in a way. But not a smoking jogger.
I notice Matthew Porter isn’t competing in the big golf tournament at Sunningdale this week. I hope he’s sensible enough to cooperate and lie low for as long as it takes. Wouldn’t know about Anna Walpurgis. She’s still a favourite of the tabloids. See-through dresses at film premieres. Married some millionaire twice her age and inherited a fortune when he died soon after. Then had a fling with a soap star. I can’t imagine a ball of fire like her lying low—unless it’s in someone’s bed.
So off I drove to Sussex again for a day that was to surprise me. Lunched well at a quaint, low-beamed place in Arundel and called at the bookshop there and was delighted to find a copy of
Hunting
Humans
, a Canadian study of multiple murder that has been on my want-list for some years.
Just as I hoped, no one was on duty at the Summers house in Bramber, so I let myself into the garden and tried to think myself into the Mariner’s brain as he stalked his victim that fine evening. It’s a safe bet that he drove there and parked somewhere along one of the quiet lanes. Probably he’d risk leaving the car really close. He wouldn’t want to be seen carrying the crossbow. A gunman in a country lane might not attract a second glance, but a crossbow is something else, awkward in shape, yet almost as long as a rifle.
I’m certain, looking at the scene, that he would have made a dummy run—maybe without the weapon—some previous evening, getting a sight of Summers sitting with his usual drink. If so, it would have been in the last couple of days after Summers finished filming the sea sequences. So the Mariner would have decided precisely where to set up. I know from Jimmy Barneston where the bolt appeared to have been fired from, a position fifteen yards or so away, behind a small rhododendron bush. Actually tried it. Lay on my tummy and looked down an imaginary telescopic sight at the wooden seat where the body was found. The place is incredibly quiet, apart from birdsong. He must have been in place before Summers appeared with his g&t. And after the bolt was fired, he calmly entered the house and left his note.
It helped to confirm some earlier thoughts. Here is a killer who is painstaking, yet audacious. If he’d shot his quarry and quit the scene, we wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of catching him. By choosing to leave a note, he issues a challenge, and takes a huge risk. He relishes the thrill of taking us on.
Aubrey Wood, the housekeeper, lives alone in a terraced cottage in the village. He was willing to talk when I explained who I was. Made me tea and brought out some home-made jam tarts that if they were from a shop would be way past their sell-by date. Poor man, I felt sorry for him. He’s around fifty, slow of speech, and not yet over the shock. He had a nice little number working for Axel Summers, and now he’s ‘on the social’. There aren’t many openings as a gentleman’s gentleman in Bramber. He’s not a countryman, so he’ll probably return to London. I understand there’s a modest legacy, a couple of thousand, coming his way.
He’d worked for Summers for nearly ten years, cooking and cleaning and doing jobs about the house. When Summers was away on film projects, he’d look after the place and sort the mail. He wasn’t asked to travel. But he saw various friends of his boss when they came to the house. He never detected any bad vibes.
