The House Sitter

opportunity while she was serious to clarify a couple of points. “When we talked last time about British Metal, you said there weren’t any lay-offs you could remember towards the end of your husband’s connection with the company. I checked with your people, and your memory is right. The only redundancies in that time-and since- were by agreement. Some people took early retirement on generous pension arrangements.”

“We’re a good firm to work for.” The kettle came to the boil and she poured water onto the grains of Nescafe in Georgina’s Royal Doulton cups.

“Thanks.” Diamond picked his off the table. “So I’ve got to look elsewhere for someone really embittered, someone who wants to get back at the company. You said before you took over the sponsorship committee, or whatever it’s called, that the handing out of funds was all rather disorganised. Your husband didn’t take much interest in the PR side. In your own words, it was anyone’s guess who got lucky.”

“And it was,” she said.

“But your idea was to sponsor events and people that put the name of British Metal before the public, so you backed high profile projects like the Coleridge film and top sportsmen like Matt Porter.”

“Darn right we did.”

“It obviously got up the Mariner’s nose, because he set out to sabotage your programme in a vicious way.”

“I guess.”

“As he doesn’t appear to have been a disgruntled employee, he could be one of the people who lost out through these changes you introduced. You said your husband gave thousands away without asking what the company got back in publicity, and you mentioned bursaries in particular. Pardon my ignorance. What’s a bursary?”

“Don’t you know?” she said-and then winked. “I didn’t, either. I had to ask. It’s when money is given to people in colleges for research and stuff. We were giving big, big sums to support nerds studying the behaviour of ants, for Christ’s sake, guys in their mid-thirties who should have been earning a crust in an honest job like you and me.”

“Ants?”

“And other stuff. Polymers. What are they -parrots? British Metal was getting nothing back from it.”

“So you axed the bursaries and switched the funds into media projects like films and sport?”

“You bet I did!”

“You know what I’m thinking?” he said. “Some of these nerds, as you call them, are deeply entrenched in their universities. What if one of them was so angry about losing his bursary that he decided on revenge? Do British Metal have a list of the people who lost out?”

“We must have,” she said.

“Any idea how many?”

“About ten. Not many more.”

“I’ll get that list in the morning. Who would I ask? Mrs Poole, the lady I spoke to before?”

“She’s the one.”

He looked at the time. “I must get back to the lads downstairs. You have our number in case of a problem?”

She said in a plaintive voice, “Does being without a man count as a problem?”

He winked. “Surely not to someone who named herself after a nun?”

Only a short time after he was back on Bennett Street, a call came through on his mobile. “Is this the nunnery?” he said playfully.

“No, matey,” said Hen’s husky voice, “it’s Bognor CID.”

“You? You’re working late.”

“Wasting my precious time,” she told him. “I thought I’d pass on the bad news. Neither of those Australian boys matches the fingerprints in Emma’s car. They’re back in the pub now. What am I going to do?”

“That’s tough.”

“And how. I really thought we were getting somewhere. I’ve run out of suspects.”

He tried to give it thought. Difficult, when he was focused on the Mariner. “Do you still think she was killed for the car?”

“Ninety per cent sure. Did I tell you her key was still in the ignition?”

“Was it definitely her personal key?”

“The evidence is pretty strong. It had a Bath University keyring.”

“So it was taken from her on the beach. You said ninety per cent sure. What’s your ten per cent theory?”

“That he killed her for some other reason and took the bag and drove away the car to make identification difficult.”

“That isn’t bad, Hen. He did hold us up. I’d give it better than ten per cent. This guy abandoned the Lotus at some caravan site, you said, and covered it from view, right?”

“Yes.”

“If he was only interested in nicking the car, why would he abandon it so soon after?”

“Panic. He went for a joyride, used up all the petrol in the tank-”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes. Empty tank. I mean really empty, Peter. The needle was well down in the red section. I think he was scared to fill up. And in case you’re in doubt whether someone would kill for a car, just read the papers. Casual murder is the feature of our age. People are killed for their phones, their purses, their clothes. Some old lady was beaten to death the other day for her shopping bag containing a packet of bacon and two tins of beans.”

He needed no convincing. Six months ago he’d handled a case of murder for a mountain bike. “I didn’t know about the empty tank. That does alter things. Your joyrider theory looks the best. Can I get back to you tomorrow on this? There’s something stirring in my brain and it’s not going to surface right away.”

“I’ll listen to anything from your upper storey, my old love, even your fantasies about nuns.”

Thinking time was a luxury in the modern police. It had been largely replaced by sophisticated, high-tech intelligence-gathering. The Sherlock Holmes school of detection had long since been superseded by computers and people in zip-suits looking for DNA samples. So this silent night was a rare opportunity to bring some connected thought to bear on the mysteries of the beach strangler and the Mariner. He sat in his car across the street from Georgina’s house and mused on the problems. Sherlock would have smoked a pipe-or three. Diamond had a Thermos of coffee and five bars of KitKat.

He was fairly certain that the Mariner had declared a private war on British Metal and its beneficiaries. The key was to find the cause of the hostility. It looked increasingly as if this murderer could have been a loser in the changes Anna had introduced. The peculiar character of the crimes, the use of the crossbow and the taunts picked from The Ancient Mariner, suggested an obsessive, embittered personality willing to take risks to make his point. This was a killer with a monstrous grudge. Two hapless people had died in a bizarre way simply because they were sponsored by the company. To use a chilling but apt phrase, he’d made examples of them. He’d issued a challenge by naming his second and third victims-a calculated risk offset by what seemed the ability not only to predict each precaution the police would take; but to outfox them as well and penetrate their security. Was he an insider, a rogue policeman?

Difficult to reconcile with the link to British Metal.

Yet he’d spirited his way into the safe house to snatch Matt Porter. It must have required inside knowledge to pull that off.

Diamond thought back to Bramshill and his visit there, to the people in the know about the case: that supercilious twit, Haydn Cameron, and his coy superior, the Big White Chief. Was it conceivable that the Mariner had a line into the staff college? Or into Special Branch itself? What of the officers guarding Matt Porter? Were they as loyal as they should have been? Was Jimmy Barneston entirely reliable? These were all trusted, long-serving officers.

In the morning, he would obtain that list of academics who had been deprived of their bursaries under Anna’s new regime. It looked the most promising avenue now.

He opened his flask and sipped some coffee. The light was still on in the bedroom. He liked Anna, but with a few caveats. Sparkle, she’d called him. He didn’t care for that. The sort of name you’d give to a clown. And she was turning Georgina’s house into a tip. But essentially she was an original, a lively, good-humoured woman. If