The Headhunters

THREE

A regular at the garden centre was Miss Peabody, a white-haired, straight-backed woman always in the same pink hat like a huge scoop of strawberry ice cream on top of her head. She was in each day shortly after opening time, but emphatically a visitor rather than a customer. None of the staff could recall her buying anything. Her routine was to wander the aisles noticing plants that were ailing. ‘I know about plants,’ she would say to whichever of the staff she could buttonhole, ‘and you’ve got pansy wilt. Come and see.’ She was usually right, but on a busy morning when a consignment of bulbs had to be checked and bagged up, pansy wilt wasn’t a high priority. Adrian, the manager, advised the staff to treat the old lady with courtesy and find a reason to move away. He said he couldn’t ask her to leave. She lived just down the road in Singleton and regarded the garden centre as an extension of her own small garden.

This Monday morning, she’d crept up behind Jo.

‘Did you know you’ve got black spot?’

Jo dropped the trowel she was using. ‘For crying out loud! You gave me a start, Miss Peabody.’

‘Black spot, my dear, on your heart’s desire. Do you want me to show you?’

‘If it’s there, Miss Peabody, we’ll deal with it.’

‘You shouldn’t have let the fallen leaves lie there. It’s a fungus and they’re spreading it.’

‘The roses aren’t really my responsibility, but I’ll pass it on. Oops, I’ve just remembered I should have made a phone call. Excuse me.’

Jo started walking fast, too fast for Miss Peabody. Any direction would do.

She hadn’t gone far when something else brought her to a stop like a cartoon cat. A man in a black leather coat striding up the next aisle. Was it wishful thinking that he was unusually tall? He was in sight for a moment, then hidden behind the camellia display. Automatically her hand went to her hair and checked it. She wasn’t certain this was Jake, but she’d be an idiot not to find out.

At the end of the row she slowed to a dignified walk. Karen, one of the sales staff, was with the man. From the back he looked right. He was tall enough. Please God, she thought. And Karen was clearly having difficulty understanding him.

As if by telepathy, he turned, blinked, frowned, and gave that lopsided smile that made him look as if he’d come from a session at the dentist’s.

Heart pounding, she stepped closer. ‘This gentleman is a friend of mine, Karen. May I help?’

‘Please do.’ For Karen it was as good as the U.S. cavalry arriving. ‘We’ve established that he wants some plant labels. I was about to show him the range, but if you’d like to… ’ She was round that display stand and out of sight before finishing the sentence.

‘This is a surprise, Jake.’

The big man shrugged, but it was a friendly shrug. If nothing else, he remembered her.

‘You didn’t know I work here? No, you wouldn’t.’ She was floundering for the right words, wanting to show how pleased she was without overwhelming him. ‘It’s labels you want, then. Is that to do with the nature reserve? I thought everything grew wild.’

‘Shingle plants,’ he said.

‘Single?’

‘Shingle.’

‘Oh.’ It meant nothing.

‘Sea campion.’

She was all at sea herself.

He struggled to get something else out. ‘Vi-.’ At the second and third attempts he didn’t get past the V. He grimaced and the words came in a rush. ‘Viper’s bugloss.’

How unfortunate after so much effort that she’d never heard of it. ‘I don’t think we stock anything like that.’

He flapped his hand. ‘Labels.’

‘Of course. Labels. Karen said. For some special plants?’

Much nodding.

‘Ah. So people can tell what they are and respect them?’

He nodded again and she breathed a sigh of relief. The point was made and they could move on.

‘I get the idea. You’ll be wanting something easy to read and quite robust.’ She sorted through the selection of plant labels while thinking how she might turn the chance meeting into something more. ‘These might be just the thing, don’t you think? They’re on tall metal spikes, so you’re not tying anything to the plant.’

‘They’ll do.’

‘But you may like to see some others.’

‘How much?’

He wanted to get out fast and it could only be because of shyness. The opportunity was slipping. ‘But they are a bit expensive,’ she told him. ‘How many do you need?’

‘Hundred and fifty.’

‘That’s a big order. I’ll see if we can get a reduction. Look, the manager will have to okay it. He’s expected in ten minutes or so. Would you mind waiting? I can get you a coffee.’

He took a step backwards. For a privileged customer he was giving a fair impression of a trapped animal.

The garden centre had its own cafe, used mostly by the staff and known unofficially as the Down Tools. She sat opposite him at a white wrought iron table, hardly believing her luck. ‘I was in Selsey recently.’

‘I saw.’

She was confused again. ‘Really? I didn’t see you.’ Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, you read about me in the paper? Horrid. That experience has put me right off the place.’

A look of rejection came into his eyes, as if she was blaming him for what happened.

‘I don’t mean that,’ she added at once. ‘What a wimp. I’ve got to get over it, haven’t I? Actually, I like the beach a lot. I’m sure it has some of those plants you were mentioning.’

The brown eyes still looked as if there was no hope left in the world.

She wasn’t giving up. ‘In fact I was thinking-before I found what I did-it was a pity you weren’t there to point out some of the features. You must know the beach well, being local. It even crossed my mind that you might have been out that morning, but of course you weren’t.’

He was silent.

This was awfully hard work, but Jo persisted. ‘Are you sometimes down there for a walk?’

‘Depends.’

‘Oh?’

‘Some weekends… ’ His voice trailed off.

She widened her eyes and smiled in encouragement.

He cranked himself up again. ‘… I have to work.’

‘Like me. We do most of our business at the weekends, but I can usually switch with someone if I need time off.’ She took a breath. She was about to push harder at the door than she ever had with a man. ‘Jake, I enjoyed being with you that time at the film. I’d really like to know you better.’

Too hard.

He uttered a loud, ‘Ho,’ and looked away, towards the exit.

She fingered her hair, coiling some and then releasing it, wishing she hadn’t spoken, but what else could she have tried?

It seemed that the ‘Ho’ wasn’t a putdown, because he turned his eyes back to her and said, ‘For real?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me?’

‘That’s what I meant.’

He raked a hand down his face and the fingers made pale lines in the flesh. The guy was under terrific stress. The dire possibility crossed Jo’s mind that he might be gay and hadn’t come out yet. Finally he managed four pitiable words. ‘Not much company, me.’

‘Jake, that’s for others to judge, isn’t it?’

A long pause followed. ‘Where, then?’

‘How about a walk on the beach?’

He tugged at his shirt collar as if it was too tight.

‘I was thinking Selsey, in spite of what I said. I don’t want one bad experience to spoil it for me, so I ought to go back as soon as possible. Having you for company will make it so much easier.’

After more work on the collar he gave a nod.

She turned a mental cartwheel. ‘Cool. And I’ll try not to stumble over a body this time.’

He gave the novocaine smile.

By the same painstaking process they worked out that they would both be off work on Friday. She went to look for Adrian, and negotiated a reduction on the plant labels. Jake paid for them, muttered his thanks, and was gone.

There was excitement of a different sort after lunch. Over the public address she was called to Adrian’s office. Unusual: it was his custom to seek people out on the shop floor, see what they were up to. Mystified, she checked her appearance before obeying the summons.

A young man in an off-the-peg suit that didn’t hang well was standing just inside Adrian’s door. Also, seated on the opposite side, a woman better dressed, in a navy two-piece. They didn’t look as if they’d come to buy flowers. ‘This is Miss Stevens,’ Adrian told them without addressing Jo at all.

The woman spoke. ‘Perhaps you’ll leave us for a while, then.’

Adrian quit his office like a greyhound from the trap.

Jo understood why when the woman said, ‘We’re police officers. DCI Mallin, Chichester CID,’ and showed a warrant card. The rapid way she spoke made the DCI sound like a forename. The card showed she was a detective chief inspector.

The guy in the cheap suit-plainclothes in an extra sense-was evidently playing the nice cop. He introduced himself as Gary Pearce, Detective Constable, placed a chair for Jo and said as if she had done the police a great favour, ‘You found the body on Selsey beach and reported it, right? Would you mind telling us about it.’

‘I already told-’

‘No you didn’t,’ DCI Mallin cut in. ‘Not to us. Sit down, please.’ She was a small woman with a substantial presence.

Jo was glad of the chair. This sudden face-to-face with the law had thrown her. Her legs had gone wobbly. She’d been trying to move on from that gruesome business. ‘There isn’t much to say. I drove to Selsey and went for an early morning walk along the front.’

‘Any special reason?’ DCI Mallin asked.

‘Exercise, I suppose.’

‘Why Selsey?’

She wasn’t going to tell them about Jake. He had no conceivable connection with what had happened. ‘I like it there, that’s all.’

‘Many people about, were there?’

‘A few. Some in cars, some walking dogs. Not many. It was early and quite breezy down there.’

‘See anyone you knew?’

‘I don’t live there.’

‘We know that, Josephine,’ DCI Mallin said in a withering tone that made Jo even more uncomfortable. ‘If you simply answer the questions, you’ll help yourself as well as us.’

‘It’s Jo. My name. No one calls me Josephine.’ But my mother does, she thought. No wonder the name humiliates me.

‘Jo it is, then. I have the same trouble,’ the chief inspector said as if she realised she’d been a touch too severe. ‘I was named Henrietta and that’s a mouthful I don’t care for. People close to me call me Hen. Not him, though.’ She tilted her head at DC Pearce but she didn’t smile and neither did he. ‘My question, Jo, is did you see anyone you know on Selsey beach?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all right, then. Carry on with your statement.’

She hadn’t thought it was anything so formal as a statement. She was just telling what happened that Sunday morning when she found the dead woman. ‘I don’t know how much you want to hear.’

‘Start from when you first got there,’ DC Pearce suggested, seating himself quite close to her on the edge of Adrian’s desk.

She found it easier speaking to the young constable. She cast her thoughts back. If they wanted the entire story, they could have it. ‘I parked the car at the bottom of the High Street and walked all the way along the front, past the lifeboat station and the fishermen’s huts. I’d been on the path for some time, at least twenty minutes, and I wanted to get closer to the waves before I turned round, so I picked a section of the beach at random. After I’d been at the water’s edge a few minutes I turned and climbed up, and that was when I saw her against a breakwater. Well, at that point I didn’t know it was a person. I saw her pale skin under some seaweed and wondered what it was and went to investigate and had the biggest shock of my life.’

‘Against a breakwater, you said?’

‘Yes, they’re really massive, about ten feet tall on the side where she was. She was right up against the wood, partly hidden behind one of those posts that support it all.’

‘Was anyone else about?’ DC Pearce asked.

‘No one I noticed. I would have asked for help, wouldn’t I? I had to go up to the top and call at the nearest house that backs onto the beach. The people phoned nine-nine-nine and I waited for the police to come.’

‘Hold on a bit,’ DCI Mallin said. ‘Before you went up to the house, didn’t you try to resuscitate her?’

‘She was well dead.’

‘How do you know that? Did you feel for a pulse?’

‘I didn’t touch her. I could see.’

‘See she wasn’t breathing, you mean?’

‘It was obvious,’ Jo said, more annoyed than defensive. ‘Her skin was deathly white. There was seaweed clinging to her. Flies.’

‘Have you ever done a life-saving course? People apparently dead can be saved with mouth-to-mouth or chest compressions. Drowning cases offer the best hope of recovery. But I won’t labour the point. We’ve established that you did nothing. Carry on.’

Jo’s so-called statement had long since ground to a halt. ‘I don’t know where I was.’

‘Waiting for the police,’ DC Pearce prompted her.

‘Where?’ Hen Mallin asked.

‘What?’

‘Where did you wait? On the beach?’

‘Of course.’ To keep up her confidence she reminded herself that this hard-nosed chief inspector was Hen to her friends. She’d also noticed that the chief inspector’s fingers were nicotine-stained. Even the police experienced stress.

‘Did you notice anything of interest?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stuff lying around.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘We’re asking you, Jo,’ Hen Mallin said. ‘It isn’t our job to put words in your mouth. Apart from the dead woman, was there anything you noticed along that bit of beach?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Hen Mallin spelt it out as if to an Alzheimer’s patient. ‘You were there, Jo. We weren’t. The place has been covered by the tide many times since that morning. Things get moved, washed out to sea, covered over. The site isn’t of much use to a crime scene investigation team now, but while you were there it was fresh.’

At the words crime scene, Jo’s insides clenched. ‘Are you saying there was a crime?’

‘Didn’t you notice?’

‘Notice what?’

‘The marks on the flesh.’

‘I expect there would be some. It’s a stony beach.’

‘Bruising to the neck consistent with finger pressure.’

A pulse throbbed in her temple and she thought she would faint. ‘No-how dreadful!’

‘We’re treating it as a violent death and possibly murder.’

Gooseflesh was forming on her arms.

‘She drowned, as you must have guessed,’ DC Pearce said in a tone meant to make it less of a shock, ‘and the marks suggest she was held under the water.’

‘Horrible.’

‘Yes.’

‘I had no idea. And this happened at sea?’

‘Not in the way you mean,’ Hen Mallin said.

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘You’re assuming she was attacked on a ship. We don’t think so. Human skin immersed in water for any length of time gets bleached and wrinkled. It used to be called washerwoman’s hand, but these days we don’t use the term. This woman’s skin was in good condition, wet from the waves, and no more. We think the attack happened close to the beach.’

‘I can’t believe this.’

‘It seems she was in the water with her killer and held under until she stopped breathing. Now do you see why your recall of the scene is so important?’

She released a large, shaky breath. And nodded.

Hen Mallin pressed on with her questions. ‘You found the body at the base of the breakwater, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘As you pointed out, they stand ten or twelve feet high, those breakwaters. On the one side, that is. On the other, the stones are stacked almost to the top, so you don’t see much timber at all. It’s the action of the tide, dragging the stones from under one breakwater and heaping them against the next one.’

Jo waited for her to get to the point.

‘And the sea was quite rough. Had been for some hours. Do you follow me? If the body had been washed up, it wouldn’t have got where you found it.’

It was as if they were questioning her account. ‘That’s where it was.’

‘So it looks as if the tide went out and the body was left there, more or less where she drowned. That would explain why it was on that side of the breakwater.’

‘I suppose.’

‘You didn’t find any clothes nearby?’

‘No. Why?’ She knew the question was stupid as soon as it left her mouth, but all this had come as a shock.

‘She’s not going to be on a public beach in no more than her knickers.’

‘There weren’t any clothes that I could see.’

‘You must have wondered where they were, surely, finding a poor dead woman almost naked.’

‘I don’t know what I thought. I was very upset when I discovered what it was I’d found.’

‘You didn’t look around, then?’ Hen Mallin’s brown eyes regarded her with disbelief, if not disapproval.

Jo felt annoyed by the question. ‘I’m not an expert like you. I thought she’d been washed up by the tide. I’m only the person who happened to find her.’ She almost added that they were making her feel like a suspect, but she stopped herself in time. ‘Was she…?’

‘Raped? Apparently not. The signs weren’t there, but who can say what was in the mind of the killer? Something that starts out as sex play can turn ugly if the woman doesn’t welcome it.’

These words, ‘raped,’ ‘killer,’ ‘sex play,’ and ‘ugly’ struck Jo with near-physical force. ‘Do you think they knew each other, then? They went to the beach together for a swim?’

‘That’s our present assumption.’

‘And he held her under and she drowned?’

‘He, or she. We consider every option.’

‘Why?’

‘Why was she attacked?’ Hen Mallin turned up her palms. ‘No one can say yet. The killer could have planned it, expecting she’d be taken for some unfortunate woman who fell overboard. You understand why I’m asking if you remember anything from the scene?’

‘Who was she?’

‘We don’t know yet. She could be local. Equally she could have come from miles away. Or been brought there by her killer.’

‘Poor woman.’

‘Yes. Whoever she was, her luck ran out that weekend. Cast your mind back, Jo. Who did you see along the front?’

‘Nobody I knew.’

‘That isn’t what I’m asking. I don’t expect names. I want your recollection of everyone you noticed.’

‘That’s hard.’

‘Think for a bit. Take your time.’

She frowned. The finding of the body had pushed everything before that moment into a hazy, unimportant background. For much of the walk she’d been absorbed in her own thoughts, hoping against the odds to meet Jake. She’d been on the lookout for tall men, that was one sure thing.

‘There was a young guy who passed me early on. He was tall, over six feet, and wearing a fleece and tracksuit trousers. Grey, I think. And he had an iPod. Well, I saw the earphones.’

‘You say he passed you. Do you mean overtook you?’

‘No, he was coming towards me.’

‘From the direction of the body?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think-’

‘Hair colour?’

‘God, this is difficult. Darkish brown and short.’

‘Age?’

‘Younger than me. Mid-twenties probably.’

‘Was he in a hurry?’

‘He was walking quite fast when I saw him. He could have been a jogger.’

‘Did you speak?’

She shook her head. ‘There wasn’t even eye contact.’

‘But you’d remember him if you saw him again?’

‘I might. I can’t say for sure.’ She felt responsible, drawing attention to this guy who probably had nothing to do with the body. ‘He wasn’t the only man I saw along the beach. There was another, in combat clothes, down at the water’s edge throwing a ball for his dog.’

‘What-near the body?’

‘No. I told you nobody was there. This was further back, closer to those wooden buildings where the fish are sold.’

‘Go on,’ DC Pearce said. ‘We’re with you.’

‘I watched the dog running into the waves to collect the ball. It was a large black poodle.’

Maybe a pit bull would have impressed them more. The two detectives lost all interest in the dog owner. They didn’t even ask the colour of his hair. ‘When you saw the first man, the guy in the tracksuit,’ Hen Mallin said, ‘it was early on in the walk, you said?’

‘I think so.’

‘Not far from where you left the car?’

‘Probably.’

‘You wouldn’t have noticed if he got into a car himself?’

‘I told you. He passed me. I didn’t look back.’

‘Fair enough.’ Hen looked at her colleague. They’d run through their repertoire. ‘There’s nothing else you remember from that afternoon?’

‘I’ve told you all I know.’

They left soon after. Although something was said about thanks and cooperation, Jo felt it was only lip service. She’d had a mauling. She needed another coffee before she could face work again.

That evening one of those small cars that look as if it they’ve been sawn off at the back was parked in the spot she always used outside her flat, so she had to go looking for another place. Typical. The only space she could find was way up the next street. Serious damage to property (namely, one yellow Smartcar) was on her mind as she finished humping two bags of shopping the two hundred yards to her door.

Before she got there someone stepped out of the offending car and stood waiting for her.

Gemma.

‘Can I help with those?’

‘You’d better, seeing that you nicked my parking place.’

‘Sorry.’ Gem sounded worried, more worried than ill-judged parking warranted.

‘Problems?’

‘Mind if I come in? I’ve had a godawful week and it’s still only Monday.’

Supper would have to wait. Inside, Jo opened the bottle of merlot she’d bought for herself and carried two drinks to the sofa. The two friends sat facing the switched-off television.

‘It’s my butthead boss again,’ Gemma said. ‘You remember I was telling you about Fiona from accounts? Well, it seems I read the signs all wrong. She’s giving him the come-on now. In the last couple of days she’s appeared at work all done up like the next Big Brother contestant in really unsuitable clothes, low-cut tops and skirts a teenager would think twice about wearing.’

Jo was still feeling frayed from her session with the police and it wasn’t easy to take Gemma’s problems seriously, but she made the effort. ‘I thought she was the homespun type. That’s what you told me.’

‘And how wrong I was. That line she gave me about being embarrassed by all his interest was a load of horse hooey. She was sounding me out, making sure I wasn’t going to make a play for him myself.’

‘And what does he make of it?’

‘Laps it up, naturally. He’s starting to give her jobs that mean reporting back to him directly. Every time she comes in he sends me out on some errand.’

‘Do you think they’re at it in the office?’

‘Parallel parking? I wouldn’t put it past them. There’s some fooling around for sure, but that isn’t here nor there. What really upsets me, Jo, is that I think he’s grooming her for my job.’

‘Really?’ For all her efforts, Jo wasn’t sounding as outraged as the story demanded.

Fortunately Gemma didn’t seem to notice. ‘Yesterday she was told to take a spess-that’s a specification-from a client. That’s what I do. I should have done that.’

Jo rallied a bit. ‘Bloody cheek. Did you tell him he’s out of order?’

‘No. I’m a coward basically.’

‘You’ve got to stand up for yourself or she’ll trample all over you. If it happens again, you march into that office of his and tell him you won’t stand for it.’

Gemma shook her head. ‘I know what’ll happen if I do. My office experience up against her pulling power? No contest.’

‘The place can’t run without you.’

‘I wish that was true. I was talking to Rick and he said no one is indispensable.’

‘You’ve discussed it with Rick?’

‘We had a drink last night.’

‘And he wasn’t much comfort by the sound of it.’

‘He said the writing is on the wall. I’d better see what’s on offer at the job centre.’

‘Oh great!’ Jo’s fighting spirit surfaced. ‘Listen, Gem. Rick is way off message here. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re practically running that firm on your own. If you want out, okay, but if you want to keep the job you’ve got to hit back.’

‘What can I do? Call in the Headhunters?’

‘Let’s think. Like you say, she’s played the sex card, and that’s got him all fired up. We give him the cold shower treatment.’

‘How?’

‘You say he’s giving her the chance to meet clients. What if she makes a mistake that costs the firm a lot of money?’

‘I’m sure she will, given time, but I can’t afford to wait for it to happen.’

‘Exactly. You help it along. I don’t know how your office works, but if, say, an order comes in for three hundred booklets it won’t look good for the fair Fiona if her paperwork says thirty thousand.’

‘I add some zeros? She’d notice. She’s trained in accounts.’

‘It’s a matter of when it’s done. You intercept the order after it’s left her and before it goes to the printer. You can find a way of doing that, can’t you?’

‘I guess I can… but it’s sneaky.’

‘Gem, I don’t get you. Don’t you think she’s being sneaky, doing you out of your job?’

Gemma looked as if the sun had come out. ‘Back of the net. Yes, I could use her computer and alter the figures at source and reprint the order. It would be simple to do.’

‘Remember, for this to work it has to be several zeros, not just one.’

‘A major boo-boo?’ Gemma’s eyes shone again.

‘Precisely. And the beauty is, she won’t know for certain that she didn’t make the mistake herself. We’ve all done that, pressed one key too hard and made a row of letters.’ Jo was surprising herself with her relish for this underhand plot.

‘Do you think I’ll get away with it?’ Gemma said. ‘I’ll be the obvious suspect.’

‘If she points the finger at you, she’s admitting she’s made an enemy of you by targeting your job. She won’t want to do that.’

‘What about Mr Cartwright? He’s going to think it was me.’

‘Let him. He won’t be able to prove a thing. And he can’t be certain it wasn’t Fiona who screwed up. The main thing is he won’t dare put any more of your work her way.’

‘I’m going to do it,’ Gemma raised a clenched fist. ‘I feel heaps better now.’

Jo, too, was much recovered.

‘I knew I could depend on you,’ Gemma said. ‘You know what?’

‘Tell me.’

‘When I top the bastard, you’re definitely on the team.’