The Headhunters

TWENTY

Jo couldn’t speak.

Gemma let go of the pool cover and joined her at the water’s edge. ‘Oh my God, what have we got here?’

Pure panic.

Jo felt as if her throat was gripped by an unseen hand.

‘Is it him?’ Gemma asked.

Jo found her voice. ‘Not unless he paints his toenails.’

A gasp from Gemma. ‘Another dead woman?’

‘She looks well dead to me.’

‘Shall we do a runner?’

‘Can’t do that again,’ Jo said, trying to get a grip. ‘The police have got to be told.’

‘Who’s going to tell them?’

Jo didn’t answer. ‘I’m not touching her, but I think we should pull the cover off and see who she is.’

‘Let’s do it then.’

Together they dragged more of the cover back and revealed the gruesome spectacle of a chalk-white female corpse floating face upwards, but mostly submerged, the head low in the water and the abdomen slightly distended and seeming to keep it from sinking. The torso was contained by a pink one-piece swimsuit in nice condition, at odds with the dead flesh.

Gemma said. ‘Gross. I feel like covering her up again.’

‘That would be difficult.’

There was a shocked silence.

‘Well, who is she?’ Jo said in an effort to be practical.

‘I don’t think we’re going to find out. Even if we knew her, would we recognise her in this state?’

Jo let out a long, shaky breath.

Neither spoke as each struggled to subdue the nightmare. Finally Gemma spoke again. ‘It’s your call. What do we do?’

Jo said for the second time, ‘Tell the police, of course. If they need proof that Cartwright is a serial killer this is it. Three drownings.’

‘They’ll get us for the break-in.’

‘Bollocks, Gem. This matters more than anything you and I have done. It proves they’ve got the wrong man. They’ll have to let Jake go.’

‘What do we say to them?’

‘That we did some investigating ourselves because we suspected Cartwright all along.’

‘They won’t like it.’

‘They can lump it.’ She took the phone from her pocket. ‘Are you with me, or do I do this alone?’

‘I’m on the team, kiddo,’ Gemma said, ‘but I’ll vomit if I stay here looking at that.’

‘We’ll call them from the car.’

The incident room was short of senior officers when the call came. Hen and Stella were having another session with Jake in the interview room. Sergeant Murphy, still wrestling with Cornish drowning statistics, found himself dealing with the new emergency. He coped well, got the name of the informant and the Apuldram address, and radioed for a car to speed to the scene. Then he knocked on the door of Interview Room 2.

Hen came out saying this had better be something special.

Paddy Murphy updated her.

Special it was.

She shook her head. ‘Another one? I had a gut feeling this might happen. And the body is at Cartwright’s place in Apuldram? But we sent a search team there.’

‘They didn’t look in the pool, apparently. The cover was over it.’

Hen’s face turned crimson. ‘Morons! That’s the first place I would have looked.’ She was on the point of demanding names. Then, appalled, she remembered who she’d put in charge of the search team.

Stella.

Loyal, dependable Stella, who she’d insisted came with her as deputy when she’d transferred to Chichester. How could Stell have missed something as obvious as the pool?

‘To be fair, guv,’ Murphy was saying, ‘the search team were looking for Cartwright, or clues to his whereabouts. He wouldn’t have hidden in the pool because he’d never have been able to fit the cover over himself.’ He was straining every sinew to cover for Stella. Everyone in the team adored her.

But Murphy’s special pleading only forced Hen to counter it more strongly. ‘You can’t excuse them, Paddy. Someone is going to be hung out to dry for this. Who discovered the body?’

Murphy cleared his throat like a bit-part actor playing to the gallery. ‘Two of the women you interviewed: Jo Stevens and Gemma Casey.’

Hen’s eyes didn’t register much. The long pause was enough to show her reaction. ‘This gets worse. Those two?’

‘It seems they weren’t impressed with our efforts.’

‘They’re not impressed? I’m not impressed.’

‘So they did some sleuthing of their own.’

‘They had the savvy to search the pool after our team ignored it? Give me strength. Are they still at the scene?’

‘I told them to wait. A car will be there by now. I radioed all units as soon as the shout came.’

‘I must get out there. Make sure everyone is alerted: crime scene people, pathologist. I’ll need anyone from uniform we can raise. Where’s Gary?’

‘Canteen, I think.’

‘Tell him to bring his car to the front, and fast.’

She went back to Stella. The interview was suspended. Jake would remain in custody while the new incident was dealt with. She said nothing to Stella except that a body had been found at Apuldram. The reckoning would have to wait.

She tried to compose herself on the drive. Her anger had to be pushed to the back of her mind while she assessed the new situation. A third body-presumably another homicidal drowning- removed all uncertainty. A serial killer was at large on her patch. She no longer needed to spend time probing motives. Psychopaths killed routinely on the slightest of pretexts. This one was in the habit of drowning women. It could be as simple as that. He’d stake out his locale near water and wait for an opportunity. Or he’d lure the victim to it. They could be charming and persuasive, these nutters.

On the face of it, Cartwright now had centre stage. A body in his pool, his garden, surely clinched it, allowing that he’d gone missing. The manhunt must be stepped up, using Interpol. He’d kill repeatedly until he was caught.

Yet the strange thing was that the search of his house and office hadn’t yielded any clue to a fixation with drowning. His hard disk had been picked apart for downloads that would confirm his guilt. He was a sailing enthusiast, admittedly. Looked at the websites, read the books, took the magazines. But floating on water wasn’t the same as wanting to be in it with your hands on some poor woman’s shoulders, forcing her under for minutes on end until she drowned.

Denis Cartwright appeared to be a loner with no history of mental illness, no previous, whose divorce had left him out of touch with everything except his business, obsessive about tidiness and eccentric in dress (the bow ties), but friendly to his staff, vulnerable to advances from an ambitious young woman like Fiona, yet with no obvious potential for violence. You’d expect to have found something if it existed.

His ex-wife might have given some helpful insights. Unfortunately she’d died of cancer three years after the divorce. There were no children and no close relatives.

Hen felt in her pocket and fingered her pack of cigarillos.

Extra pressure was inevitable now that a third victim had been found. A media frenzy would follow. Just as surely, the high-ups in headquarters would question whether an officer of chief inspector rank was competent to investigate. Trouble was looming about the use of the helicopter this morning. And when they learned that Cartwright’s house and garden had been searched previously and the body missed they’d really have something to chew on. She didn’t relish the next couple of days.

Sensing, correctly, that this wasn’t the right time to comment on victim number three, Gary asked, ‘Did you get much out of Jake, guv?’

She stared ahead. Large drops of rain were hitting the windscreen. Typical of the day so far if the crime scene took a drenching that washed away all traces of the killer. ‘What did you ask?’

‘About Jake.’

The big man still in custody was just one more problem. ‘If I tell you he’s not saying much, you’re going to say, “So what’s new?” The latest on Jake is that he’s not said anything to incriminate himself. Yet.’

‘But he resisted arrest.’

‘He’s an ex-con. He doesn’t expect any favours from us. I don’t blame him for that.’

‘And what does he say to the fact that he met Fiona as well as the first victim?’

‘Nothing sinister in it, according to him. He was at the printer’s ordering Christmas cards for the nature reserve. He claims she came by and asked if he was being looked after and he answered yes and those were the only words she ever spoke to him. In fact, he was more interested in Gemma Casey, who we’re shortly going to meet again. They went ten-pin bowling together. A cosy little quartet was formed that evening. Jo Stevens was the other woman and she was partnered by a man called Rick, who I haven’t met yet. But I’m seeing more than I wish of the two women. They’re a pain in the backside.’

‘Is Jo the one who acted as a decoy at Pagham this morning?’

‘Yes, she’s batting for Jake.’

‘What does Rick think about that?’

‘I just told you I haven’t met the guy. I gather he switched to Gemma. And now the same two women turn up in Apuldram sniffing around Cartwright’s place and finding the body that my own officers missed. God, I could do with a smoke. Put your foot down, Gary.’

Sheltering from the downpour under a conifer, she’d got through two of her cigarillos and was lighting a third when the pathologist arrived. The white-clad crime scene officers and uniform PC’s had secured the area around the pool with tape and retreated to their transport. Everyone had a valid excuse to stay under cover until the pathologist had done his stuff. Only the dead woman lay exposed to the rain, adrift in the middle of the pool, any parts of the pink costume above the waterline now as saturated and strawberry-coloured as the rest.

Dr Kibblewhite was new to Hen, a tall white-haired man with a stoop and a squeaky voice. He was carrying a huge blue umbrella with the words SAVE TUFTY written on it in white. ‘A freebie from a previous case,’ he explained to Hen. ‘You never know what’s coming your way in this job. Tufty was a pedigree bull under threat of slaughter in a bovine TB scare. There was a huge campaign and more tests were ordered and he was saved and it was champagne all round, but one of his supporters was unwise enough to pat him on the head. I did the autopsy. Would you mind holding the brolly over me? Should keep us both dry with any luck.’

They stepped out to the pool’s edge and Kibblewhite rubbed some warmth into his surgical gloves and drew them on. ‘She’s no use to me where she is.’

‘That’s where she was found,’ Hen said.

‘If you think I’m going to wade out to see her, you’re mistaken,’ he said. ‘Can someone find a boat hook and pull her to the side?’

A boat hook in a private garden?

Hen called Gary over and explained the problem. He went across to the garden shed and returned with a rake.

‘Well done, young man,’ Kibblewhite said when the floating corpse had been pulled to the pool edge. ‘Now fetch some help and let’s see if you can land the beauty.’

Gary shouted for assistance and two uniformed officers came running from under the trees. Ropes were passed under the body and it was hoisted from the pool and gently lowered onto the tiled surround.

With Hen holding the umbrella with one hand and a tissue to her nose with the other, Kibblewhite crouched and began the examination. ‘My estimate is that she’s been in the water more than two days and less than five,’ he said after he’d pulled some hair from the head and examined the wrinkled hands and feet. ‘The obvious results of immersion.’

‘Drowning?’ Hen asked.

‘I said immersion. There’s a distinction.’ Kibblewhite turned to look up at her. ‘I can tell you now, Chief Inspector, that you’ll hear nothing about drowning from me at this juncture, and you may not hear it at all.’

‘And what’s the good news?’

‘I mean it. After several days have gone by, as they obviously have, it’s not easy to form an opinion and I certainly won’t give you one at the poolside.’ He’d taken a tape recorder from his pocket and started addressing it in a way that brooked no interruption. ‘Maceration well under way. Skin tissue deteriorating already.’ As if on second thoughts he turned to Hen again. ‘Pardon me if that sounded unfriendly. It wasn’t meant as such. But don’t expect any Quincy-type revelations from me.’

‘Did you say Quinsy?’

‘Quincy, M.E., as on television. The M.E. standing for medical examiner. You must have seen it. He solves the mystery and outwits the police every time. I first got hooked in the late seventies.’

‘Before my time.’

‘Isn’t it on any more? It was a while ago. I’ve got the entire series on DVD. The technical stuff is way out of date now, but I enjoy the stories. I expect you watch that CSI thing.’

‘Can you say anything that will help us identify her?’ Hen asked, not wanting to go any further down the television road.

‘Not a lot. The slight distension you see is trapped gas and will have brought the body to the surface. Left any longer the effect will increase markedly. She’s small in stature, smaller than you and probably slimmer, if I may be personal. Age fifty, give or take.’

‘Give or take how much?’

‘Five years. May I continue? Dyed hair and painted nails- which you can see for yourself.’

‘Bruising?’

‘No chance of finding any. Look at the state of the skin. When I’ve examined the internal organs I may have more to tell you.’ He stood up. ‘Where’s that young man disappeared to?’

Gary was summoned again.

‘Help me turn her over,’ Kibblewhite said, producing a second pair of gloves.

Hen said, ‘Are you all right with that, Gary?’

‘I think so, guv.’

When the manoeuvre was complete, Kibblewhite said, ‘No signs of wounding that I can discover. I’ve done all I can here. I’m going to make a dash for it now. Do me a favour and keep the umbrella over her until they take her away. You can return it to me at the autopsy. ’

‘When will that be?’

‘Tomorrow morning at the mortuary. Be warned. Cases like this take longer than average.’

Hen gave Gary the umbrella to hold. ‘You’re allowed to take the gloves off now.’

‘Will it be for long, guv? I feel such an idiot standing here with everyone watching.’

‘Ignore them. You look distinguished, like a butler.’

‘A butler?’

‘The gloves, Gary. You don’t need them. And if I can be personal, do you wear that suit when you’re off work?’

‘No, guv. T-shirts and jeans mostly. I was told if you want to become a suit, you’d better wear one.’

‘It’s about ambition, is it? No bad thing. I don’t know where you got that advice. It may be true for lawyers and undertakers, but not CID. Our job is about blending in. I won’t think any less of you if you come in your jeans tomorrow.’

He looked as if the sun had come out. ‘Thanks.’

‘Are the two women still out front? I’ll speak to them shortly.’

‘You first,’ Hen said, pointing at Gemma.

‘We’re in this together,’ Jo said.

‘Doesn’t mean I see you together,’ Hen said. ‘I want two witness statements and we’ll do it inside, in the dry. I’m going to open the house.’

‘It’s open already,’ Gemma informed her. ‘You can get in round the back by the patio doors.’ She glanced at Jo. ‘We might as well own up, sunshine. They’re going to find out sooner or later.’

‘You’ve been inside?’ Hen said, resigned to more lawbreaking.

‘For a search,’ Gemma said.

‘Oh, how enterprising.’ Hen set off round the house to the rear and saw the smashed window. ‘And such subtlety.’ She slid the patio door aside. ‘Wait here under the canopy, Miss Stevens.’

In the living room she and Gemma sat in armchairs. Gary had finished his stint with the umbrella and joined them.

‘What on earth were you doing here?’ Hen asked Gemma after going through the preliminaries.

Gemma had wide, persuasive, blue eyes. She tried to make it all sound as sensible as insurance. ‘My friend Jo was deeply upset when you arrested Jake yet again. She thinks he’s being victimised and she wants to do something to help him.’

‘By creating a distraction?’

‘Not at all.’ Gemma wasn’t going to be intimidated. ‘This was properly thought through. We talked it over and decided my boss, Mr Cartwright, very likely killed Fiona and maybe the other woman as well, so we came here to look for evidence.’

‘You took the law into your own hands and broke in?’

‘When the law is heading up a blind alley someone has to point the way,’ Gemma said, and folded her arms as if expecting to be challenged.

‘Before we go any further,’ Hen said, ‘I’d like to hear why you in particular suspect Denis Cartwright is capable of murder.’

‘We’ve been over this. I worked with the man. Fiona led him on outrageously and he fell for it.’

‘I know all that,’ Hen said. ‘Didn’t you hear my question?’

‘He was driven beyond all.’

‘So Fiona brought it on herself, did she? The old story.’

‘I’m not excusing him,’ Gemma said. ‘I was putting myself in his shoes. He’s a yellow-bellied coward if you really want to know. Anything unpopular with the staff, he asked me to speak to them. He wanted everyone to think he was mister nice guy. But if he was pushed into a corner I’m sure he’d bite back. That was Fiona’s big mistake.’

‘She pushed him into a corner?’

‘Onto his office floor, to be accurate. And they weren’t discussing the petty cash.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘My office is next door. I heard the audio version.’

‘Did anyone else know of this?’

‘It was all round the office. She wanted a top job and a seat on the board.’

‘If this is true, and Cartwright felt pressured, he may have had a motive. But nothing like this happened with the other victims.’

‘I can’t say, can I? I don’t know what went on between them and him.’

‘We haven’t found any connection. We’ve searched his house, his computer, his office at work. Nothing. But we’re quite sure Fiona’s killer also murdered Meredith Sentinel.’

‘What about the woman in his pool, then? If that isn’t a connection, I don’t know what is. That’s two out of three.’

Hen didn’t challenge the statement. ‘When you got here this afternoon, did you break in and search the house first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Find anything?’

‘No.’

‘And then you decided to look in the pool. Whose idea was that, yours, or Jo’s?’

Gemma frowned. ‘I don’t think that’s important.’

‘I’ll be the judge,’ Hen said.

She shrugged. ‘Jo thought of it. Either of us could have done.’

‘And was that blue cover in place?’

‘Right across the pool, but we managed to shift it. One end wasn’t properly attached, and that helped.’

‘What do you mean, not properly attached?’

‘Some of the springs weren’t fixed to the bolt things. That made it easier to get a start.’

‘What did you expect to find?’

‘We were looking for Mr Cartwright, weren’t we? He’s the missing person, after all. We didn’t know anyone else was missing. Have you found out who she is?’

‘Not yet.’

‘We did the decent thing reporting it,’ Gemma said in a too-obvious attempt to excuse their conduct. ‘We shouldn’t have broken into the house, but we found the body for you.’

Hen wasn’t giving votes of thanks. ‘Have you been in trouble before?’

‘What-with the police? Certainly not. You can check your records.’

‘You’re local, are you?’

‘I’ve lived here all my life.’

‘Do you have family down here in Sussex, then?’

‘Only an old aunt and I don’t see much of her. My parents died in a crash when I was nine. And in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t the maladjusted kid who turned to crime. I was with foster parents until I was seventeen.’

‘And then?’

‘A flat of my own. I went to Chichester Tech, as it was known then, got myself an Ordinary National Diploma in business studies, and took the job at Fishbourne. If you let me off with a caution I won’t trouble you again.’

Right now Hen had more on her mind than Gemma’s misdemeanour. ‘This man Rick is the fourth member of your little clique.’

‘Rick’s got nothing to do with this,’ she said at once.

‘You’re in a relationship with him.’

‘I wouldn’t call it that. He’s a friend. We’ve been out a few times. We don’t live together.’

‘You four band together and help each other out, is that right?’

‘Isn’t that what friends do?’

‘Provided it’s legal. But if you had serious doubts about one of your friends it wouldn’t be wise to cover for them. Loyalty is one thing. Conspiracy to cover up a crime is something else. Do you follow me?’

Gemma nodded.

‘Gary will help you with your written statement. You’ll have to give evidence at the inquest as well. Make sure it’s accurate.’

The next one could wait.

Hen went out to check on the search she’d organised of the garden area around the pool. The chance of a smoke was incidental to her supervisory duty.

About twenty unfortunate officers in uniform were moving slowly with heads down across the sodden turf in the unrelenting rain. She found the senior man from the crime scene investigators and asked if there was any chance of recovering DNA from the pool cover.

‘You think the killer handled it?’ the man said.

‘I’m sure of it. The body was hidden underneath and the two women found the cover in place, but one end had a few springs loose. He must have tried to fasten part of it at least to the things that keep it stretched.’

‘The anchors.’

‘Right. You’ll take it to the lab?’

‘Of course. But you must allow that the house owner would have handled it on a number of occasions. If we find any trace of his DNA, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty. And of course the women who found the body will have left some of their skin tissue on the fabric. It’s not so simple as it might appear.’

‘Nothing ever is.’

She went back to the house and questioned Jo for ten minutes. Little came out of it except the repeated insistence that Jake was innocent and should be released. At such times Hen despaired of her own sex.

Back in the garden she checked with the searchers and shook her head when she saw the result: a few rusty nails and the plastic cap from a tube of sunscreen. She watched the body being stretchered away to the mortuary van. The most pressing need was to identify the victim. But how? The face was too far gone to use in a photo appeal. The woman hadn’t been wearing a ring, or jewellery. The pink swimming costume looked like a standard garment unlikely to yield much.

She pondered the possible events leading up to the murder. The woman was most unlikely to have arrived at the house in a swimming costume. Logic suggested she’d changed out of her day clothes in the house. None had been found, but that was surely because the killer disposed of them, just as he’d disposed of Meredith Sentinel’s clothes the night he’d murdered her on Selsey beach. He’d realise they would help with identification.

If the latest victim had been persuaded to change for a swim she must have trusted her killer. You don’t get into a private pool with a stranger. She must have known him and come to the house. Who else could her host have been but Denis Cartwright? He’d got into the water with her and drowned her.

No.

Something was wrong here. Cartwright had been missing for almost two weeks. This body had been in the water for a much shorter interval-two to five days, the pathologist had estimated.

Was Cartwright alive, then? Had he returned to the house with this woman, persuaded her to join him for a swim, and drowned her?

Any other scenario was too far fetched. The killer pretends he owns the house and pool and makes elaborate arrangements to fool the woman into visiting? No chance.

Hold on, she thought. I’m assuming too much here. Kibblewhite spoke of immersion, but refused to say the woman had drowned, or anyone had drowned her. Did she die accidentally? A sudden heart attack while in the water?

Were other people present? A swimming party? Drinks, larking about, and she hits her head on the stone surround and nobody notices until it’s too late?

Whichever elaborate story you dream up, you’re faced with the fact that the woman’s death was concealed. Nobody pulls a cover across a small private pool without noticing a body in the water. It was a hidden crime, hidden with the expectation that nothing would be found until next year when the weather was warm enough for swimming.

The bottom line was this: Cartwright’s pool, in Cartwright’s garden, and Cartwright was missing.