The Headhunters

SIX

The first bars of Colonel Bogey sounded in Jo’s bag. She took out her mobile and pressed the green key.

‘Sweetie, how are you placed?’

Too bad. The caller wasn’t Jake. Five days had gone by and she’d heard no more from him. It was Gemma.

‘You mean right now?’

‘I mean can you come over?’

‘Where to?’

‘The print works. Fishbourne. You know it, don’t you?’

‘Is that wise? I might meet someone.’

‘It’s okay. The boss isn’t in.’

‘What’s the problem, then?’

‘Bit of a mystery. Tell you when you get here-if I haven’t spontaneously combusted by then.’

Even allowing for Gemma’s dramatising, this sounded like an emergency. The last week had been stressful enough, but you back your friends when help is asked for. Wondering what she was getting into this time, Jo told Adrian the boss she was feeling woozy, got into the Panda, and drove the couple of miles to Fishbourne.

Kleentext Print Solutions was housed near the railway station in a boxlike 1950s utility building with a cluster of wooden annexes where the real work was done. Jo parked beside a silver delivery van and used the main entrance, under a sign saying ADMINISTRATION. Inside, she was confronted by a six-foot wall of cartons that screened off the reception desk. She squeezed past.

‘I hope you’re from the council.’

The receptionist’s voice was confrontational.

Jo gave her name and explained why she was there.

‘So you’re not.’

‘Not what?’

‘From the council. They should have sent someone to collect that lot,’ the receptionist said, eyeing the cartons. ‘They’ve been there two days, blocking my light. How can I do this job when I can’t see people coming? It’s really inconvenient.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ Jo said, privately suspecting the opposite.

Gemma was waiting on the top floor when the lift opened, arms wide in welcome. ‘You’re a true amigo. Where would I be without you?’ She gave Jo a hug. ‘Come and see the office. It’s all right. I’m entirely alone.’

Her workplace was carpeted and comfortable, with veneer panelled walls and framed scenes of Chichester with picture lights over them. Her desk was on one side and a large leather sofa on the other. Copies of Country Life, Trout and Salmon, and Today’s Golfer were displayed on a low glass-topped table. The aroma of coffee came from somewhere.

‘Cosy.’

‘Have a seat.’ Gemma waved her to the sofa. ‘Did you notice all those boxes downstairs?’

Jo smiled. ‘Is that what half a million brochures look like?’

‘Until we pulp them, yes. Hillie on reception throws a wingding every time I walk by.’

‘How did your boss take it?’

‘This is the kick in the pants. The ratbag hasn’t seen them. It’s Thursday and he hasn’t shown his face all week. The last I saw of him was Friday when he sloped off early with Fiona. He hasn’t phoned or anything.’

‘How about Fiona?’

‘She’s off work too.’

Jo raised an eyebrow.

Gemma nodded. ‘You’re onto it. She’s reeled him in, hasn’t she? What’s your reading of it? A week in Paris?’

‘It does look suspicious,’ said Jo.

‘Suspicious? I’ve heard of dirty weekends, but a whole week is gross. And not so much as a postcard to say sorry.’

‘Mean.’

‘Mean? You can do better than that.’

‘All right,’ Jo said. ‘What a prick!’

Gemma added seamlessly, ‘… as Fiona remarked in the honeymoon suite at the Paris Ritz. She’s way ahead of us. It knocks our little scheme on the head, doesn’t it? He’s not going to sack the creature for incompetence if he’s just spent the week playing mothers and fathers with her-not unless she’s rubbish at that as well.’

‘Smart lady.’

‘All those bloody council brochures, Jo. What am I going to do with them?’

Sometimes it takes an outsider to think of a solution. Jo sensed she was expected to supply one. ‘Does everyone know they were ordered by Fiona?’

‘Not really.’

‘Spread the message, then. Fiona ordered these by mistake. Shout it from the rooftops. It’s ammunition for later. Then get them pulped, like you said. They’ve lost their impact now.’

‘What a waste.’

‘Spoils of war. The reckoning comes later.’

‘He can’t invoice the council for the true cost.’

‘I should hope not,’ Jo said. ‘I don’t want it going on my council tax.’

‘You’d think he’d have been in touch,’ Gemma said, and it was apparent how deep this had gone with her. ‘Muggins is running the show here.’

‘Bosses can do stuff like that, take off when they want. He knows he can depend on you to hold the fort.’

‘Yes, and when he comes back I’ll be shown the fort door. It’s so bloody unfair. I feel like stamping my little foot.’

‘You can do better than that,’ Jo said.

And Gemma responded to the challenge. ‘Nail him to the wall and play darts with him. Put him in the lion enclosure wearing a zebra suit. Dose him with laxative and stand him on guard at Buckingham Palace.’ She sighed. ‘Help me, Jo. What can I really do?’

‘What we need,’ Jo said with a show of sisterly defiance, ‘is a master plan.’

Gemma held up her hand for a high five. ‘Put it there, hon. I knew I could rely on you.’

Jo slapped her palm against Gemma’s without the faintest notion what to suggest.

Fortunately Gemma had it worked out for herself. ‘This may sound sneaky. Well, it is sneaky, but this is war, right? I’m not supposed to know Fiona is off with Mr Cartwright. On the face of it, as the temporary team captain, I ought to be getting worried about her. Not a word has come in. She could have had a heart attack and be lying dead in her house. There’s a four-year-old kid. She’s obviously farmed him out to the father, or some friend, but I’m not to know that, am I? The poor wee bairn could be in that house in total squalor trying to feed raw potatoes to his dead mother.’

Jo was amused and showed it. ‘This is good, Gem.’

‘So I already phoned a couple of times and left messages on the answerphone asking Fiona to get in touch urgently.’

‘That’s good, too.’

‘The decent, caring thing is to go round to the house and speak to the neighbours. Chances are they don’t know anything. I doubt if she told the people next door she’s shacking up with the boss for a week. All this fuss is because we’re worried about the kid. You see where I’m coming from?’

‘It’s being responsible.’

‘Exactement. I knew you’d have the answer.’ She’d supplied it herself, but for some reason she wanted Jo to take the credit. ‘The next step is to try and break in, but that’s a matter for the police.’

At the mention of police, Jo’s heart rate stepped up. She didn’t want another meeting with Hen Mallin. She tried not to show it.

Gemma was still in full flow. ‘They force an entry and listen to the answerphone and look at the letters and find she hasn’t been there all week. After that, it’s in the lap of the fuzz. They may take no further action.’

‘Unlikely.’

‘That’s what I think. They’ll want to know when she was last seen. They’ll probably come here and talk to the workforce. Someone may have seen her getting into Mr Cartwright’s car on Friday afternoon.’

‘Right, and you’ll be in denial, appalled at the idea.’

‘Do you think it’ll make the papers?’ Gemma’s hyperactive imagination was ahead of Jo’s.

‘The absent mother? Could do. In any case, the affair will be all round the office, and none of your doing. All you did was act responsibly.’

Gemma’s big eyes locked with Jo’s. ‘Tell me, wise one. Can it go wrong?’

‘I can’t see how. It may not unfold exactly as we think, but whatever happens they’ll walk into a hotbed of scandal when they get back. He’ll find it impossible to promote her.’

‘Or sack me?’

‘Or sack you.’

‘So will you come with me?’

Jo played the question over.

‘Where?’

‘To Fiona’s house, of course. Doing this alone will spook me out.’

A volley of no’s exploded in Jo’s head. She’d had her brush with the police and it hadn’t turned out nicely. ‘Couldn’t you take someone from work? It would look so much better if you did.’

‘Why?’

‘When you go to the police station they’ll be sure to ask who we are. If I say I’m your friend it won’t sound half so official as if I’m another Kleentext employee.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘It does to the police. They could think you’re wasting their time.’

Gemma heaved a huge sigh. ‘Ain’t that the truth and no mistake. But sweetie, I don’t know who else to ask. Like I said to you the other day, I’m not the flavour of the month here.’

Jo had some sympathy, but nothing would induce her to cross swords with DCI Mallin again.

Now Gemma gave a self-pitying sniff and her eyelashes moistened. ‘Please?’

A compromise was wanted here. ‘Tell you what,’ Jo said. ‘Why don’t I come with you for company, but stay out of sight so it will look as if you’re acting all alone for the good of the firm?’

‘Cool.’

Jo seemed to have got it right.

‘Babe,’ Gemma said. ‘I’m going to pay you the supreme compliment. You’re better than a line of coke.’

Fiona lived in Emsworth, a coastal resort, small, red-brick, and with an unfortunate history. Once noted for the excellence of the local oysters, said to excel those of Whitstable and Colchester, the town supplied some for a civic banquet in Winchester in 1902. Within days a number of the guests became ill with typhoid and died, among them the Dean of Winchester Cathedral. You don’t kill a dean without repercussions. In the enquiry it was alleged and later admitted that all of Emsworth’s sewage was pumped into the harbour beside the oysterbeds. Mischief makers suggested that the oysters owed their unrivalled size and flavour to their food source. The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers imposed a national ban. Cause and effect was never established beyond doubt, but Emsworth oysters became notorious and the industry collapsed overnight. These days the town was better known for its large colony of swans. Fiona had a terraced house facing across the Mill Pond, a less than adequate name for a ten-acre sheet of water that took a half hour to walk round. Here a hundred or more swans were ever-present, along with mallard ducks, coots, and gulls. Jo drove the Panda up the narrow road between the water’s edge and the houses.

‘Here we go, then,’ Gemma said.

‘Here you go,’ Jo said. ‘I’m sitting here. Remember?’

She stopped some way short of the house and watched Gemma step up to the front door and try the bell. No one came, but of course it would have surprised them both if Fiona had appeared. Gemma tried a couple more times and bent down and peered through the letterbox. Then she turned towards the car and flapped her hand to let Jo know she was getting no response.

‘Idiot,’ Jo said between gritted teeth. If anyone was watching they’d know for sure that the two of them were in this together. She looked the other way at a group of swans.

Gemma stepped around the dividing hedge and tried next door. An upstairs window opened and a shaven-headed man in a white vest leaned out.

In the car, Jo pulled down the sun visor.

The man seemed to be a caring neighbour and a typical male as well, all brass and swagger. He came downstairs and out to the front and tried Fiona’s doorbell himself. He stepped onto the small front lawn and looked through the living room window. A short consultation followed. The man went back inside his own house and returned with a mobile. The plan was racing ahead. This was clearly phase two: Call the police.

Jo slid so far down in her seat that her head was below the steering wheel.

Presently the passenger door opened and Gemma looked in. ‘Trying out a new position?’ She was on a high again. The neighbour’s show of cooperation had pumped up her adrenalin. ‘Take it from me, it wouldn’t be comfortable in the driver’s seat. I’d say it was damn near impossible.’

‘I’m trying to stay out of sight.’

‘And succeeding. For a moment I thought you’d gone AWOL. He’s a hunk to die for, that neighbour. Did you check those pecs? He’s called Francisco and he works nights as a bouncer in Portsmouth. What a waste. Hasn’t seen anything of her or the child for a week and said we should definitely report it. He saved me the trouble of calling the police.’

‘You don’t have to relay all this to me,’ Jo said. ‘You can tell me later. I’m supposed to be invisible, okay?’

‘Lighten up, poppet. He’s back in his house putting on a shirt. Funny, he didn’t mind me seeing his tattoos, but he gets dressed for the rozzers.’

‘They’re definitely coming, are they?’

‘Relax. They won’t be here for ten minutes.’

Jo wasn’t waiting for that. ‘Look, Gem, I think this might work better if I get out and take a walk along the path. I’ll come back after they’ve gone.’

‘Be like that.’

‘We agreed I keep a low profile.’

‘Sure thing, kiddo.’

‘You don’t sound nervous any more.’

‘It’s turned out rather well. Francisco could be the find of the week. The last time I set eyes on a hunk of manhood like that, he was tossing a caber. Well, I think it was a caber.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed.

‘Hold on a mo. You’re forgetting what this is all about. You’re supposed to be worried about Fiona and the little boy, right?’

Jo got out of the car and started a brisk walk along the bank, intent on putting distance between herself and Gemma. She’d lost all confidence. No way would that daft creature play her part convincingly with the police. Still, she reminded herself, that was down to Gemma. This was her show. The overriding need at this stage was not to be a part of it.

Annoyingly a flotilla of swans and ducks swam beside her, keeping up. She had missed a trick here. Anyone patrolling the Mill Pond had a duty to toss in pieces of bread or, preferably, seed. She was ignoring them and they weren’t giving up.

Ahead was the sailing club. Soon she would disappear from view behind the clubhouse, safe from waterfowl and nosy parkers. She risked a glance back. The find of the week had put on a red shirt and was striking a pose in the middle of the road, arms folded, legs astride, like the genie of the lamp. Gemma was sitting on his garden wall swinging her legs, anything but anxious about Fiona and her son.

People, Jo thought. The ones who are most fun are the least reliable.

The walk brought her past the club to the southern extreme of the Mill Pond where the road became the top of a harbour wall. She would head back on the side opposite the house, where she could safely watch any developments while seeming to admire the scenery.

She now had a view of the sea, the marshy inlet between the islands of Thorney and Hayling. Here, through the narrow Emsworth Channel, waves of invaders had come in times past. It wasn’t beyond imagination to picture a Viking ship approaching on the high tide.

The sea wall curved and she faced inland, with the town as a backdrop. To her right were mud flats with boats beached by the low tide. Across the Mill Pond she didn’t yet have a sight of Fiona’s house. She quickened her pace and crossed the little bridge to the quay where another sailing club, the Emsworth Slipper, occupied the former mill. The road turned past a tea room and a malt house and emerged as Bridgefoot Path. Across the water she could see everything.

A police car had arrived and stopped just ahead of her Panda. It wasn’t flashing its emergency light. This was evidently just a routine enquiry. Two men in uniform were in conversation with Gemma and the hunk of manhood, Francisco. Presently one returned to the patrol car and took something bulky from the boot. It proved to be an enforcer, the miniature battering ram used to gain entry. They swung it only once. The door sprang open and the police went inside.

On her side of the water, Jo found a bench and sat down to watch. From this distance no one could connect her with what was going on. Gemma was still outside, chatting with her new friend Francisco. Jo expected the police would soon emerge and confirm that Fiona and her son were not inside, an anticlimax everyone ought to welcome.

Activities on this side of the Mill Pond went on regardless of what was happening across the water. Two teenage boys were fishing near the malt house. To Jo’s right, a mother and toddler were throwing bread to the swans and finding that the gulls swooped in and took most of it.

The police emerged from Fiona’s door. One was using his personal radio. The other said something to Gemma. There was no apparent excitement about what they’d found inside. Some time was spent making the door secure again and then they got in their car and drove off.

Jo got up and resumed her walk towards the little bridge at the top end. In under ten minutes she was across and back to where she’d left her car. Francisco had gone back inside his house and Gemma was waving to her, incapable of keeping a low profile.

‘Hi, poppet. Mission accomplished. No rotting bodies inside, I’m glad to report. They’re going to check with her ex and see if the boy is with him. They listened to the answerphone and picked up my messages, so our master plan worked beautifully.’

‘Let’s be off, then.’

‘No hurry. If we stick around I’m thinking Francisco might offer us a cuppa. The phone inside his house started ringing, so he left me here.’

‘Gemma, I’m not supposed to be here.’

‘Doesn’t matter any more, does it? The fuzz have gone. He’s not just muscle. He’s got personality in buckets. I don’t know what aftershave he uses, but it’s turned me into a tart.’

‘Look, I only agreed to do this if you kept me out of it.’

Gemma folded her arms. ‘What is it with you, Jo? Are you on their most wanted list?’

‘I found the dead woman on Selsey beach. Remember? They made me feel like a suspect. It was horrible.’

‘Chill. I keep telling you, they’ve done their job and gone. Francisco won’t blab when I tell him you’re my best friend.’

Jo let out a sharp, angry breath. ‘You don’t get it, do you? The whole point is that you’re not supposed to have brought a friend. Listen, I’m out of here. It’s up to you if you want a lift.’ She turned and walked towards the car. This was no empty gesture. When she started the motor she would be off.

Behind her, Gemma shouted, ‘I fancy the guy. Since when has that been a crime? I’m not a fucking nun, you know.’

And that’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one, Jo thought. She didn’t turn her head. She unlocked, got inside and then realised there was a hitch. The car was facing south and the way home was north. A three-point turn in that narrow road was an invitation to reverse into the Mill Pond. Instead of making a speedy getaway she would have to pass Gemma and find a turning point at the end where the sailing club was.

So be it, she thought. She switched on and moved off.

Gemma was in the middle of the road, waving her arms like ground crew showing a jumbo where to taxi. No way could the car get past without running her over.

Jo braked.

Gemma came to the side and jerked open the door. ‘All right, I’ve reconsidered. Give me a lift and I’ll take my vows. Promise.’

Jo gave a rasping sigh. At this minute the humour didn’t appeal.

Gemma got in and they drove on. But they hadn’t gone thirty yards when she said, ‘Bloody hell. Stop the car.’

‘For Christ’s sake.’ Jo glanced in the mirror, fully expecting to see Francisco outside his house again. He was not. ‘What’s up now?’

‘In the water.’ Something was definitely amiss. There was urgency, if not panic, in the voice.

Jo braked and turned her head to see. Not a duck was swimming there. The only thing worthy of comment was what she took to be a clump of seaweed close to the surface, its reddish-brown tentacles shifting gently with the water’s slight movement.

‘I’ve got to check.’ Gemma flung open the door and ran to the edge.

‘Check what?’ Jo switched off the engine and joined her.

From the bank she saw what had shocked Gemma. They weren’t looking at seaweed. The tentacles were fronds of reddish hair. Just visible at a lower level in the murky water was the rest of the corpse, face-down and dressed in a black top and jeans.