The House Sitter

was a model husband; just that his wife hadn’t reported him.

Stella was wary. It would be all too easy to cast Littlewood as Dr Wilkinson’s killer, then find he was thirty miles away at the time.

She drove to Godalming and found the refuge north of the town, a derelict mansion someone had rented for a peppercorn. The rotten window frames were barely holding the glass. There were broken tiles on the ground by the front door. But someone answered the knock and it was a relief to hear that Ann Little-wood was alive and still in residence.

The mental picture Stella had built up couldn’t have been more wrong. The battered wife was a huge woman with arms like a wrestler’s. She was sitting on a bench in the overgrown garden, trying ineptly to shell peas. An entire pod’s worth shot out of her hands when Stella approached. Perhaps someone had tipped her off that the police were here.

“I only want to ask about your husband.”

Ann Littlewood didn’t look up. “Don’t want to talk about him.”

Stella picked some of the peas off the ground and dropped them in the colander. “Can I help with these?”

After serious thought, Mrs Littlewood made room on the bench by shifting her substantial haunches from the centre to one end. Stella sat beside her and scooped up a handful of pods.

“This isn’t to do with the way he treated you. It’s about something else.”

“What’s he supposed to have done now?”

“We’re not sure. Does he have a car?”

“A Ford Fiesta. It’s taxed.”

“Does he use it much?”

“Can’t afford to. Didn’t they tell you we’re on the social?”

“Does he ever drive down to Wightview Sands at the weekend?”

“All that way? What for?”

“The beach?”

“You’re joking. He’s never been near the place. He hates the sea. He’s always in the Blacksmith’s Arms at the end of our road or sleeping it off in the churchyard. What would he want with the beach?”

A burgeoning scenario withered and died. Stella had almost persuaded herself that Littlewood had driven to the beach with a few six-packs and chanced upon his enemy Shiena Wilkinson sunbathing close by. She preferred it to the notion that he’d followed her there in the car.

She tried a different tack. “Has Dr Wilkinson been to visit you here?”

“Why should she? I’m all right. It’s just bruises and stuff. You’ve only got to touch me and I bruise.”

“So you haven’t heard from her?”

“She’s busy, isn’t she? Got people who are really ill to look after.”

Between them, they finished shelling the peas.

“I’ll be given a load of spuds to peel now,” Ann Littlewood said as Stella left her. “This is no holiday.”

All the signs were that she would discharge herself and return to her violent husband in a matter of days.

Hen Mallin called St Richard’s hospital at eleven thirty and asked if Dr Mears, a colleague of Shiena Wilkinson, had been in as arranged to identify the body recovered from Wightview Sands. He had not. A call to the health centre revealed why. At eleven fifteen in the Waitrose supermarket one of the doctor’s patients had collapsed with chest pains. Dr Mears was at the hospital, in attendance at an intensive care ward, not the mortuary. The living had priority over the dead.

Hen seriously thought about having twenty minutes with her Agatha Christie tapes. It was that or another cigar. This case was an obstacle course. She had to be certain that the body was Dr Wilkinson’s. Stella had reported back with news of a violent character who had created a scene in the surgery the week before. Really they should interview this man as early as possible. Yet all she could do at present was chain-smoke.

She got through two more deciding how to pitch the TV appeal. She wanted her message to reach the Smiths, the family who had reported the dead woman on the beach. It was a tough decision whether to name them and their child, Haley. Normally you kept children out of it, but this name pinpointed them and might prompt friends and neighbours into asking if they were the Smith family in the news. On balance, she thought she would go for it. The Smiths might not even have heard about the strangling. Some people sailed through life without ever reading the papers or looking at television news.

She would also ask for other witnesses. Plenty of the public had been on that stretch of beach when the body was found. The sight of four men lifting a lifeless woman from the water must have created some interest. And who were those four men? Smith, for sure, the lifeguard for another, and two others. How much had they seen?

By the time she went in front of the cameras she would expect to know if the dead woman was Dr Wilkinson. If the information was right that the doctor’s nearest relatives lived in Canada, she’d make sure the police over there were requested to break the news to the family. Then she could go public and show a photo of the victim on TV-no reason not to-and ask for help in tracking her movements up to the moment of her murder. They’d need a bank of phones to handle all the calls coming in.

Now it was a case of drafting the text for her short slot in the regional news. Maybe thirty seconds. Every word had to count.

Satisfied at last with what she would say, she went for a late lunch in the station canteen. Half the murder squad was down there drinking coffee. She couldn’t blame them.

Hen enjoyed her food. Light lunches were out. She had a theory that in this job she could never be certain where the next meal would come from, so she stoked up with carbohydrates like a marathon runner packing energy before the race. Steak and kidney pie and chips today, followed by apple tart and custard. She claimed she could go for hours after a lunch like that, though she wouldn’t turn down a good supper.

At two thirty-eight, a call came in from a car park attendant at Wightview Sands. Hen was back in the incident room to take it.

“Yes?”

The speaker was self-important, typical of a certain kind of minor official, and he obviously had difficulty accepting a woman as chief investigating officer. “Am I speaking to the person responsible for the murder?”

“Not literally. He’s the one I’m trying to catch. If you want the person heading the enquiry, that’s me.”

“The senior detective?”

“Right. Have you something to tell me?”

“I’m speaking from the car park at Wightview Sands.”

“I’ve been told that.”

“Are you sure you’re in charge?”

“Look, do you have something to tell me, squire, or not? We’re very busy here.”

“I’m not personally involved,” he said. “If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wrong. I wasn’t even on duty when the woman was found.”

“So what’s this about?”

“Actually a lady here would like a word with you.”

What a relief. “Put her on, then.”

The new voice was easier on the ear, low-pitched for a woman, well in control. “I understand you’ve taken possession of my Range Rover. My name is Shiena Wilkinson. How do I get it back, please?”

5

Hen Mallin’s television appeal needed some rapid script changes now. So it was Stella who drove out to Wightview Sands and met Dr Wilkinson. Not an easy assignment.

The first thing she noticed was the hair. Mrs Bassington, the health centre receptionist, had been right. It was emphatically more chestnut than copper. Thick, long, and worn loose, as if to make clear Shiena Wilkinson was off duty. She was in T-shirt and close-fitting denim shorts, with a figure that… well, maybe she looked more like a GP