‘The contents of the fridge-the meat and fresh veg you told me about-suggest she was killed before she could prepare the lunch. I think she got out of bed Sunday morning, put on her swimsuit and bathrobe, and went downstairs to the pool for her morning swim. The killer was waiting there.’
‘Rick. The bastard. I know you don’t want to finger anyone at this point, but who else knew about her daily swim?’
Hen refused to be sidetracked. She was explaining the timing. ‘I couldn’t understand how you failed to notice the body when you searched the Apuldram pool on Monday morning.’
‘Me neither.’
‘I believe the body was moved there after you checked the pool.’
‘You’re saying he left her here overnight and then came back for her?’
‘Late Monday.’
The line went silent while Stella took this in. ‘That’s cool,’ she said finally. ‘And so cunning. I sound the all clear and he moves in with the corpse. It could have stayed under cover all winter if the two women hadn’t come snooping.’
‘And it shifted suspicion to Cartwright.’
‘This has got to be someone with inside knowledge, guv. Rick must have heard about the search. From his girlfriend Gemma, no doubt.’
At her end of the phone, Hen smiled. Stell had really got it in for Rick. ‘What was his motive, then?’
‘He’d tired of Sally. He was passionate about Gemma. He wanted to escape from the Sunday lunch routine.’
‘I’m not convinced, Stell. He didn’t need to kill her. He could have told her it was over and stopped going.’
‘Some people do anything to avoid a face-to-face row.’
‘Murder?’
‘Don’t forget there are two other victims. Murder is no big deal when you’ve done it before. He reckoned he had a foolproof method, drowning them.’
‘I’d be more impressed if we could link Rick to the other murders. I don’t know what connection he had to Meredith or Fiona.’
Stella continued to stoke the flames of her suspicion. ‘He’s been around from the beginning. Jo found Meredith’s body and who was it who happened to be dating Jo at the time? Rick. Then he started dating Gemma, who worked with Fiona. There is a link, you see.’
‘We can say much the same for Jake.’
‘Guv, Jake had nothing to do with Sally. She was Rick’s woman.’
Hen saw sense in that. ‘I’ll have another try with him.’
Jo had reached a point in the mercy mission where she felt rather foolish. If she went any further, the water would come over the tops of her wellies, so she was forced to take them off and carry them, wading barefoot with her skirt pulled up to her thighs. Even so, her mood was buoyant. She’d see Jake tonight and have a good laugh about this.
Not far ahead was the timber-framed flint cottage she knew to be Miss Peabody’s, and it was on higher ground than she remembered. Some water might have penetrated to the ground floor, but this wasn’t the emergency she’d pictured. She waded through the remaining surface water and up a definite incline to the front door. A sandbag was across it.
Rick had decided he didn’t need a solicitor. ‘When you find the inside of my car is clean, you’ll have to let me walk.’ he told Hen.
‘I’ll be frank with you,’ she told him. ‘I’m interested in other deaths as well as Sally’s.’
Alarm briefly visited Rick’s eyes. He passed both hands over his bleached hair, smoothing it. ‘Oh that,’ he said with a too-obvious effort to sound unflustered. ‘You’ve been talking to Jo and Gemma. I made that up, about killing Cartwright. It was a running joke that got out of hand when Jo took it seriously. No sense of humour, that woman.’
Killing Cartwright? This was a whole new angle on the case.
Up to now, Hen hadn’t got Rick down as a humorist. He appeared to want to talk, so she and Gary listened.
‘The beginning of it was that Gem couldn’t stand her boss, so we all got to thinking up weird ways of getting rid of him. Fun ways. I don’t think Jake joined in, but he’s got as much fun in him as a bowl of cold porridge. He was listening, though.’ Rick’s eyes widened as a thought struck him. ‘Was it bloody Jake who put you on to me? He’d take anything as gospel, that guy. Anyway, I made up this story about bashing Cartwright’s head in and disposing of the body at a papermill, turning it into pulp, so he’d be in the news. In the news. Joke, right?’
Hen had failed to smile, but she gave a nod.
‘It was a touch too realistic for Jo and freaked her out. Gemma believed me too, but she didn’t take it the same way. I think she really did want to see the back of Cartwright. But for Christ’s sake, it was a joke.’
Hen turned to Gary. ‘It must be the way he tells ’em.’
‘Only a bloody joke,’ Rick insisted.
‘A poor taste joke.’
‘This all started with the girls,’ he said in his defence. ‘They were having a laugh about it before any of the bodies were found. I joined in, like you do, to keep the conversation going. I suppose it got out of hand later, but don’t believe a word of it. Nothing happened, right?’
‘Have you finished?’ Hen enquired.
‘Er, I suppose so.’
‘Now let’s talk about Meredith Sentinel.’
He blinked, as if the switch to another victim had derailed him. ‘Can’t help you. Didn’t meet the woman, don’t know anything about her.’
‘I’ll fill you in, then,’ Hen said. ‘She came to Selsey expecting to attend a beach barbecue, a reunion of the mammoth excavation twenty years ago. A proper invitation was sent to her.’ She took the bagged card from her desk drawer and held it for Rick to see.
He gave it a glance. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Twenty years ago, Meredith was a new student at Brighton. She was part of the dig. A great experience for her. A good memory. She expected to meet old friends when she returned here in September. Instead, all she met was her murderer. The grand reunion was a hoax. I notice you have an impressive string of letters after your name. Where did you do your studies, Rick?’
He took a deep breath, kept her waiting and finally gave a broad grin. ‘Edinburgh.’ Who said he didn’t have a sense of humour?
‘All of them?’
‘That’s where I was living until nineteen-ninety-two.’
It wasn’t the triumph Rick expected. Mentally, Hen excluded him. Suddenly she’d cut off. She still had the invitation in her hand and she stared at it as if she hadn’t seen it before. An entirely new line of thought had popped into her brain. She was tempted to end the interview there. But there was a chink of light ahead, and she decided to go for it. She restored her full attention to Rick.
‘You and Gemma are pretty close? An item, as they say?’
‘Good friends.’
‘Very good friends, according to her. She’s a local lass. She tells me she was only fifteen in the year the mammoth was dug up. It must have made an impression, though. It was a big deal in Selsey at the time. Some of the local kids joined in. The weather was really good by all accounts. A chance to show off their bikinis and meet some students. Has she told you about it?’
This was invention on Hen’s part. Nothing about the stronger attraction of Duran Duran. She had some expectation that he would answer yes.
He didn’t. Instead he said, ‘She told me once that she had more hands-on experience of fossils than Jake would ever have. I thought it was a joke. You don’t find out with Gem. I guess she could have meant the mammoth
