‘You’re so wrong about all this.’
‘Run this up your flagpole, Miss Stevens. I could have been fishing your body out of that harbour. We’ve had two drownings. It won’t stop at two. I know the way these psychos act. They seem normal enough, charming at times. But they’re extremely cunning because they have no moral sense. And they’re brilliant at concealing their true intentions. You’ve no conception of the risk you took by getting into his boat.’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’
‘You’re telling me he acted normally?’
‘Completely.’ She wasn’t going to report Jake’s heart-to-heart to someone so unsympathetic.
‘Right now he’s acting the runaway killer. Chew on that. You were definitely in the boat with him?’
There seemed no reason to deny it. Jo gave a nod.
‘And then he gave you his coat to wear?’
‘Obviously.’
‘So he knew we were coming. You told him. Someone tipped you off and you came here to warn him.’
‘No,’ Jo was able to say truthfully. ‘I live twenty minutes away. I would have phoned him, wouldn’t I?’
‘So how did he find out?’
This was trickier. Jo said nothing.
‘And from where? The printer’s.’
Hen was answering her own questions and starting to get them right. ‘Gemma, the PA. Can’t be anyone else. But what’s her game, tipping him off? She gave the impression she didn’t have much to do with him any more. She went out with him once and passed him on to some other hapless female. You, I presume. So you’re a friend of Gemma’s.’
Jo took the opportunity to say, ‘Like me, she knows he’s not a murderer. She’s good-hearted. She wouldn’t willingly get anyone into trouble.’
‘You’re a cliquey little lot, by the sound of it. How did you get to know this Gemma?’
‘Yoga.’
‘On the health kick, are you?’
‘We left pretty quickly.’
‘We’ll walk to the shore and see how the search is going,’ Hen said. ‘That’s if you don’t want to meditate in the car.’ She set off fast enough to demonstrate that a cigar smoker has functioning lungs, and Jo went with her.
Her sidekick Gary was directing operations using his personal radio. Most of the search team were just in sight, away up the shore.
‘What progress, Gary?’ Hen asked.
‘The tide’s on the ebb, which is useful,’ he said. ‘We found the marks where the dinghy was brought in for him to land, and some of his footsteps. Big feet.’
‘Big guy. Where?’
‘Just past the point they’re searching now. Unfortunately the footprints vanish where the mud ends and the shingle takes over.’
‘Are the dogs any use?’
‘They sniffed his coat and seemed to get interested in the footprints. We’ll see.’
‘There’s not a lot of cover here. We’re bound to find him.’ She turned back to Jo. ‘What brought you here this morning if it wasn’t to tip him off? He’s supposed to be at work, not entertaining his new girlfriend. You needed to talk, and urgently, right? What about?’
Hard to resist the temptation to blurt out the whole grisly story she’d got from Rick and Gemma about Cartwright’s murder. Whether true or not, it would create a diversion from Jake. But she doubted if anything would shake Hen Mallin’s conviction that he was the main man, the psycho who drowned women. Instead she just said, ‘I was depressed. I haven’t been sleeping well. He’s a kind man and a good listener.’
‘Are you lovers?’
The question couldn’t have been more direct. Jo knew she’d given the answer with her face, whatever words were spoken. ‘I don’t see what-’
‘So you are.’ Hen flapped her hand. ‘I’m not being nosy for no reason. Need to know who I’m dealing with. Did he also have sex with your friend Gemma?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You hope he didn’t.’
‘She told me they didn’t and I believe her.’
Hen shrugged and spoke to Gary as if Jo wasn’t there. ‘This guy obviously has a way with women, even though he’s an ugly brute. I doubt if it’s his skill at chatting them up, so what’s his secret?’
Gary took this as rhetorical and said nothing.
‘Four women,’ Hen went on, raising four fingers. ‘Our friend here, Gemma, Meredith, and Fiona. He went out with them all.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Jo said, provoked.
‘Oh, but I do. You just told me about Gemma and yourself and we already knew about the unfortunate two who were drowned. I’m sorry if I’m trampling on your feelings, Miss Stevens, but you have to face it. He’s a ladies’ man, and that’s the delicate way of putting it.’
‘You’re making it sound as if they were all his girlfriends, and that just isn’t so. He happened to know the woman found at Selsey on a professional level, because of his interest in fossils.’
‘He’s told you that, has he?’ Hen said. ‘And did he also explain why Meredith Sentinel came all the way down to Selsey to meet him when her husband was abroad? If that was professional, I’m the tooth fairy.’
Jo tried to stay calm. She knew she was being wound up in the expectation she’d give something away. ‘She didn’t come to meet him. You’re making this up to suit your theories.’
‘What, she came for her health, did she? And it was pure coincidence that Jake lives here?’
‘I’ve no idea why she came and neither has he. The first he knew of it was after she was identified, when it came out in the news.’
‘Dream on, dear,’ Hen said. ‘Did he tell you he also knew Fiona, the second victim?’
‘We haven’t discussed her.’
‘Surprise, surprise. How long has he lived in Selsey, by the way?’
‘I’ve never asked.’
‘Is he a Sussex man?’
‘I believe he’s from Cornwall originally.’
Hen snapped her fingers. ‘Right on. That’s where he kicked the young soldier out of the tree and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Cornwall it was.’ She swung around to Gary. ‘Get through to Paddy Murphy now and tell him to pinpoint Cornwall.’
With that sorted, she set off at a sharp pace along the shore towards the searchers. Ignored, Jo thought she had better follow. Making a bid for freedom wasn’t a serious option. Besides, she wanted to find out all she could about this misguided police enquiry. Someone had to stand up for Jake’s rights, or he’d be crushed.
A cool east breeze had started to disturb the mirror surface of the water, giving the gulls the incentive to swoop and glide. The tide was receding fast. In another hour it would begin reclaiming the foreshore.
The team was spaced at wide intervals across the pebble beach and right up to the scrub above it. The theory was that because Jake had come ashore on the Church Norton side of the harbour he’d holed up there rather than hiking to the opposite side-which, anyway, was more populated. The dog-handlers led, with the main search squad behind and the armed officers bringing up the rear. Progress was brisk. This was a manhunt, not a fingertip search.
Hen caught up with them and spoke to one of the sergeants out of range of Jo’s hearing. She seemed to be suggesting a change of method. Some of those closest to the waterline were sent higher up the beach.
‘What’s going on?’ Jo asked Gary, who had caught up.
‘They think he could have buried himself under the pebbles, but the boss says there’s no point searching so close to the water because it’s wet underneath and the stones are too small anyway.’
She hoped against hope that Jake had gone right off the beach and was hiding in the reeds. Yet another part of her knew that the longer he stayed at liberty the more guilty he appeared. That prison experience had left him
