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
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.
He said Summers had been planning this film for at least ten years and finally got the backing he needed about a year ago. He’d gone to infinite lengths to get the screenplay right, and the cast he wanted. It was over budget, but his films had a good record at the box office and no one was too concerned. He was very tired when he came home two days before he was killed. Prior to that he had been away filming in the Mediterranean for five weeks. He returned to Sussex knackered, but pleased that this phase of the project was complete. There was still a lot to be done, in particular the special effects sequences, bits now vivid in my brain like the skeleton ship with Death dicing with Life-in-Death, the souls of the crew whizzing upwards, the storms and calms and the water- snakes. Summers was modifying things he’d mapped out in storyboard form. He’d been too busy to do any entertaining since his return. Hadn’t even walked to the village for a paper, as he sometimes did when he was home.
On the evening of the killing, Wood served a light evening meal about six, loaded the dishwasher and left sharp at seven, on his bike. He noticed nothing unusual. No car parked in the lane and no strangers about. He left Summers in a good frame of mind, some crucial decisions about the film made. He was relaxed and looking forward to some late-night television programme. Wood met his friends at seven-fifteen and was driven to Plumpton for the pub quiz they’d entered as the local team. I’m satisfied he’s incapable of anything so callous as this killing.
After that, I had to get to the 4 p.m. case conference in Horsham and made it with not much to spare. Met in the incident room: the entire murder team and a couple of people from Bramshill. Jimmy Barneston chaired it. Watching him in action, I was more smitten than ever. He has a way of energising everyone, encouraging them to chip in and picking out the salient points. As expected, I was invited to contribute, but I made clear it was too soon to give them anything reliable, and I’d come to listen. They were OK with that.
Jimmy went through the various lines of enquiry. Sightings of cars around the village (inconclusive). Forensic reports on the fingertip search (little of interest). Crossbow manufacturers and retailers (more promising, although they don’t all keep records of customers). The crossbow bolt was picked for the job, apparently, with a three- bladed head normally used for killing game. He spent some time going over Summers’ career, pointing out that jealousies and hurts are common in show business. Even a man so popular and friendly must upset people when he makes decisions on casting and scripts. An embittered actor or writer might fit the profile of the killer. At the use of the ‘p’ word, heads turned to see if I had any comment. I looked steadily ahead and said nothing.
Two of Jimmy’s senior people gave similar rundowns on Porter and Walpurgis. Was there some deeply wounded person who had been damaged by all three? Apart from possible attendance at a TV awards dinner in 2001, nothing to connect them had so far been discovered.
A question was asked about the security arrangements for Porter and Walpurgis. Jimmy answered that steps had been taken to safeguard each of them, but for obvious reasons he was not willing to comment any further. A long discussion about the practicality of keeping Summers’ death out of the papers. Some kind of embargo could be enforced for a time, and the press would cooperate until word leaked out from some source-as it surely
