Love You Dead

55 Monday 2 March

Tooth arrived back in his hotel room soon after 11 a.m., having walked the few miles there and back to Roedean Crescent. He’d talked to two builders who were Polish and they had trouble understanding him. He explained he was a private detective working for a car insurance company, and that the occupant of the house, Jodie Bentley, whom he was trying to find, had given her name as a witness at an accident. But he got very little from them.

They worked for a London property management company engaged by the house’s owner, and were currently fitting new guttering. There had been a break-in last week, which was why they’d boarded up that particular window — it was the one where the intruder had entered. They seemed pretty glad the window was boarded up, because of the reptiles in the room, which neither of them had liked the look of. They’d seen the woman — she’d asked them to board up the window, but they were not able to tell him anything about her, or when she was due back.

At this moment there seemed only one way to find out. And that was to keep watch on her house until she returned. However long that took. Which was fine.

Back in his days as a sniper, he’d once sat for three weeks in the shell of a building, in blistering heat, permanently thirsty and hungry, with scorpions, spiders and the occasional curious snake as his only visitors, waiting for his target to appear in the cross-hairs of his sight. The spray of crimson from the exploding enemy head, when he’d finally pulled the trigger, had made it all worthwhile.

Sitting in a rental car, for however long it took for Jodie Bentley to return home, would be relative luxury.