The House Sitter

13

In the incident room he found Keith Halliwell and Ingeborg Smith looking at a website for the British Crossbow Society. Clearly it was no use any longer trying to keep the murder of Axel Summers to himself. Clive had talked. Those two had put him through the third degree. They were professional detectives and it was their job to root out information.

“Vicious weapon, isn’t it?” he said, deadpan. “I’d better bring you up to speed on the file I’ve just been reading-unless you’ve got your own copies already.”

Ingeborg reddened and Keith grinned sheepishly.

He gave them all the facts he knew about the murder of Summers, ending with a belated warning that Bramshill wanted to keep the lid on it. “Emma Tysoe was involved in this case at the time of her death, so we have more than a passing interest in it, much as they’d like to insist we don’t. But we still have a duty to keep it from the public-and that means anyone outside the team, right?” He made eye contact with each of them.

And each nodded.

“I know,” he said. “You’re about to tell me I should put a gag on Clive, and I thought I had. I’ll speak to him again.” He took a glance at his watch. “I haven’t finished reading the files, and I’ll give you a fuller rundown when I’m through, later in the day, if my head can stand it. Meanwhile there are two things you can do. Ingeborg.”

“Guv?”

“We got a false impression of Dr Emma Tysoe from her colleagues up at the university. She wasn’t the shrinking violet they made her out to be. She had an above-average appetite for sex and a lover she dumped called Ken.”

“That’s all we know about him?”

“It’s pretty obvious he lives locally. Do some ferreting, will you?”

“Outside the university?”

“Outside the Psychology Department for sure. She kept her private life well hidden from that lot.”

“Wise.”

“Yes, if they’d known she was such a goer I’m sure someone would have wired her up and set up a research project. Anyway, Ken-whoever he is-has to be regarded as a suspect.”

“Because she dumped him?”

“Right. He took her for a meal at Popjoy’s the evening after she was given this profiling job. There was some little spat over the way he ordered the wine, but I think the writing was already on the wall.”

“You mean she was dating another bloke?”

Diamond wasn’t ready to go into that, not knowing how much tittle-tattle Clive had passed on. “They fell out before she slept with anyone else. Ken had passed his sell-by date, it’s clear from the file. I’m about to find out what happened next.”

Halliwell asked, “Will anyone else get to read this steamy stuff?”

He couldn’t suppress a touch of sarcasm. “One way or another, I’m sure you will, Keith. Now, the other matter I want you to follow up is the whereabouts of her dark green sports car. She mentions in the file that she didn’t put it in the garage one evening when she got back home.”

“In Great Pulteney Street?” Halliwell said. “It doesn’t have garages.”

“Right.”

“She rented one nearby?”

“That’s my assumption. And I want to know if the car is still in there.”

“How can it be?” Ingeborg said. “She’d have needed it to drive to Wightview Sands. She arrived there alone according to Michael Smith.”

“So where is it? They didn’t find anything belonging to her in the beach car park. They accounted for every car left there at the end of that day. What make is it?”

Halliwell glanced towards Ingeborg, saw the startled look in her eyes, and attempted to cover up. “As you recall, guv, Bognor were doing the index check.”

“And none of you thought to ask?” Diamond said. “I give up! Even I know how to do a vehicle check. Get on that bloody PNC yourselves.”

Ingeborg recovered enough to say, “I daresay one of her neighbours would know if she rented a garage nearby. Are there mews at the back of Great Pulteney Street? They’re very big houses.”

“Both sides,” said Halliwell. “You’ve got Pulteney Mews facing the Rec, and Henrietta Mews to the north.”

“Maybe a garage came with the flat. We can ask the landlord.”

“Do that,” Diamond said. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the basement, catching up on the next instalment.”

I’m keener than ever to make an accurate profile of the Mariner [Emma’s second file began]. Let’s confess an unprofessional thought to you, Computer: I’d love to amaze Jimmy with my findings. The problem is there’s so little data to go on. I keep reminding myself this isn’t a serial crime like others I’ve worked on. Not yet. As of today it’s a single crime with the threat of more to come. Fortunately, the little we know is so exceptional that I’m beginning to firm up on certain assumptions:

(a) The killer is above average in intelligence, educated to a pretty high level. [The Coleridge quote]

(b) He’s methodical and cool under stress. [The absence of any traces at the scene]

(c) He must have had some practice with the crossbow and knowledge of its firepower. [One bolt had to be enough]

(d) It’s quite likely he has experience of stalking and killing animals-i.e., treats the killing of people as a logical extension of the rough shoot or the cull. [The effective use of cover]

(e) He has an exalted opinion of himself and his ability to outwit the police. [The naming of future victims]

(f) He may feel he is underrated, or cheated by some failure in his own career. [Choice of famous victims suggests he envies people in the limelight]

(g) He is well up with media gossip and may even have inside information. [He knew when Summers was back from the Med]

Not enough to be of use to the police, unfortunately. It’s still too theoretical. He’s little more than a concept, some way short of being an individual. What Jimmy needs from me are notes that will pin him down as an individual. Age, appearance, living arrangements, daily routine. Oh dear, I’m still a long way from that degree of detail.

The way forward must be to look more closely at the choices the killer has made. Why pick Axel Summers, by all accounts a charming, well-respected and talented man? What is it about the others that singles them out for slaughter? Is it only that they are so well known?

I definitely need to know more about Porter and Walpurgis. How do they spend their time when they’re not working? Do they own houses in the country, like Summers? What are their backgrounds, their interests, their politics (if any)?

A few minutes ago I phoned Jimmy. Glad to say he sounded pleased to hear from me. You can tell straight away when a man wants to back off (don’t I know it, from past experience), and he doesn’t. But this was strictly business: I was putting my case for a meeting with Matthew Porter. It caught Jimmy unprepared and at first he dug in his heels and said he couldn’t risk it and anyway he didn’t want Porter being troubled. This young man is under enough stress already, and so on. Gently steering him towards the worst possible outcome, I made the point that while Porter is alive we have the chance to question him about people he may have crossed and threats he may have received. If we’d had that opportunity with Axel Summers, we’d have a list of suspects.

He saw the sense in this. The police have put all their resources into investigating the murder and providing elaborate protection for Porter and Walpurgis. Nobody has sat down with either of them and gone through their recent history looking for possible enemies. So Jimmy took the point. He said he’d need to talk to the high-ups. He promised to get back to me.

(Later, in bed) Nothing yet from Jimmy, but I’ve had Ken on the mobile wanting to start over, giving me the hard sell about how he’s missing me and his cat was sick yesterday and he almost pranged the car and he really loves me and can’t face life without me. What a wimp. I know if I give him the slightest encouragement he’ll be ten times as hard to get off my back. So I bit the bullet and told him I was seeing someone else-which gave him a seismic shock and showed him in his true colours. This guy who really loves me and can’t face life without me called me a slag and a whore and lots of other disgusting names. I just said, ‘Grow up,’ and switched off. Closure-I hope. We’ll see. I was very shaky, though, and poured myself a neat whisky-something I never normally do.

Keep thinking of things I should have said, like the cat isn’t the only one who’s sick.

I hope I sleep all right.

Better news. A message on the answerphone from Jimmy saying I should meet him in the coffee shop at Waterloo Station at 2.30 today. And I should erase the message after listening to it-real cloak and dagger stuff which was as good as saying he’d fixed the meeting with Matthew Porter. Brilliant.

I got to the station early and sat on one of those tall stools drinking an Americano. I’d put on the style for this, the dark red number with the split skirt. Black pashmina and matching tights. My Prada shoes. It’s not every day you get to meet a top sports star. I got some looks.

Jimmy showed up dead on time in a gorgeous light grey suit I hadn’t seen before. Purple shirt and matching tie with flecks of yellow. Cool. He kissed me on the cheek and steered me to the taxi rank. It was like being in a movie. I’ve never been at the sharp end of a crime investigation. In the cab, I sat close to Jimmy and slipped my hand under his arm and squeezed it. He smirked a little, but of course we were on a serious mission, so things didn’t get any more intimate than that.

He told me we were going to a safe house. Special Branch have a number of addresses in London where they protect VIPs under threat of terrorism, or informers changing their identities. Jimmy phoned the house from the taxi to say our ETA. The cab stayed south of the river, through Kennington and Brixton, and ended up at the war memorial in Streatham High Road, where Jimmy tapped the glass and told the driver to put us down. Nobody takes a taxi to the front door of a safe house. We walked for ten minutes or so through the backstreets, me beginning to think I should have worn something less conspicuous, but no complaint from Jimmy.

The house is in as quiet a road as you’re likely to find in London, old Victorian buildings with high chimneys and sash windows and tiny front gardens. I noticed a video camera quietly rotating under the eaves.

We didn’t need to knock. The front door was opened by an unsmiling honcho in a tracksuit and we stepped inside without being frisked (disappointing) and were shown straight into a back room where Matthew Porter, a young man in a green polo shirt and white jeans, was sitting in an armchair watching the racing on TV. On the floor beside him was a heap of unopened letters. He turned his head briefly to give us a glance, but didn’t get up or shift his feet from the coffee table in front of him, just pointed at the screen with the can of lager he had in his left hand. Never mind who we were, he was going to watch the finish of the race. A young man with attitude, I thought. So we stood tamely watching the horses race it out. The minder rolled his eyes as if to say he’d had plenty of this already, and then left the room.

The race result, when it came, didn’t cause much excitement. Only a yawn-and even then Porter ignored us until Jimmy gave my name and explained my reason for wanting to meet him. This achieved some eye contact, no more.

Case-hardened by all those seminars with grouchy students, I wasn’t going to take any of this personally, was I? I launched straight into my questions. Obviously, he’d been told about the murder and the note found at the scene, so I began by asking him if he’d ever met Axel Summers. He shrugged and continued to look bored, and I thought at first he was going to play dumb until I stopped and went away, but then he muttered something about always meeting people and not remembering them unless they were players. Trying another approach, I asked if he watched DVDs or videos and when he said he said there wasn’t much else to do in hotels I told him he might well have watched one of Summers’ films. This didn’t excite him one bit. I wasn’t doing too well.

I probed gently into his background, school, family and so on, and by degrees he loosened up. He was more comfortable talking about his start in golf. He must have done this many times in press interviews. His father, an amateur with a low handicap, had taught him to play when he was eleven. Their house backed onto a golf course in Broadstairs and he would practise shots at the nearest hole, the eleventh, early in the morning before anyone else was about. The club professional gave him lessons. At fourteen he was allowed to play a round with his father and made such an impression that the club rules were changed for him to become a member. A year later, he won the club championship. His progress since was phenomenal. He’d left school and turned professional at eighteen and started winning minor tournaments right away. Agents were keen to acquire him as a client and he soon had his own manager and sponsors and a regular caddie. His win in the British Open at the age of nineteen was what made him famous overnight. He told me all this in a deadpan delivery without conceit.

I asked if his parents still had a say in his career and he shook his head. They’d separated four years ago. His mother was now living in France with another man. His father was an ‘alky’. He said he didn’t want to talk about them. So who were the main people in his present life? His manager, Sid Macaulay, who looked after everything-his travel around the world, his interviews, his endorsements, even paid his tax. Girlfriends? He hadn’t time, he said, adding-with a smirk-apart from one-night stands. He was travelling most of the year-normally.

He told me his main home was a manor house in Surrey and he owned another near St Andrews in Scotland. He would be getting his own Lear jet later in the year. He’d pay a pilot to fly it because he didn’t have time to learn. His ‘hobby’ was watching television, especially scary films.

By now I was getting wiser about Matthew Porter. This looked like a case of arrested development. Golf had taken over his life before he had a chance to mature. All the decisions had been taken away from him. He did as he was told by the manager, lived in cocooned comfort and performed on the golf course when required. Sadly, it was stunting his personality. He couldn’t relate to other people unless they talked to him about golf. He had no opinions, no conversation and no ambition now he’d got to the top in the one sphere he inhabited.

I asked if his manager knew where he was, and he said it was the manager who’d ordered him to come to this place for his own safety and given him the pile of fanmail to answer. (Jimmy told me later that Special Branch had told Macaulay there was a death threat that had to be taken seriously, but they hadn’t given away any other details) He didn’t like it much, he confided, and he ought to be practising instead of sitting indoors.

Jimmy interrupted to say a move was planned to another safe house, away from London, with better facilities and maybe even the chance to get out and strike a ball from time to time.

It wasn’t what Porter wanted to hear. He’d been told the security measures were temporary because the killer would be arrested in a matter of days. He swore, not at Jimmy or me, but his predicament. He said he’d rather go abroad and play some golf tournament in the Far East. He’d be safe there. Jimmy pointed out that these days you’re not safe anywhere in the world from a determined assassin. Porter swore again and asked to speak to his manager. His phone had been taken away from him by the guards.

Jimmy stood firm, stressing that his team was following several promising leads and making progress. He told Porter in language he understood that this was a serial killer who had named him as the next victim, who almost certainly knew every detail of his daily routine, and definitely meant to carry out the threat.

At this, the protest melted. The interview got back on track, but not for long. I asked if he could think of any link with Anna Walpurgis. He’d heard of her, it was obvious. He pulled a face and said her music was crap. He liked Chill, ‘stuff that takes away the stress,’ and she was the opposite of Chill, all hype and frenzy. I asked if he was talking about her singing or if he’d met her-which brought the strongest response so far. He thought I was suggesting he might have dated her. Just for the record, young Matthew Porter thinks of the celebrated Anna as ‘that old boiler’. Let’s hope no one has the bright idea of putting those two in a safe house together.

I switched back to golf. With so much money at stake, I said, was there any pressure to fix results? He gave me a filthy look and said he always played his best. What about when you played different tournaments from week to week with the same players, I pressed him? You’re an outstanding player who will probably win most weeks. Isn’t there any arrangement to make sure others get a look-in sometimes?

If nothing else, it animated him. He went purple protesting that he always played to win. He said he wasn’t a cheat and I’d better shut my face (his verbal skills really coming into their own). To restore calm, I tried Jimmy’s tactic and reminded him that somebody meant to kill him if they could. I said my job was to find out if the threat came from a complete stranger or somebody he’d upset. Only then could I begin to form a profile.

Unexpectedly, the last word made an impression. He stared at me open-mouthed and asked if I was a profiler and I confirmed it. I don’t think Jimmy had used the term when he introduced me. Now it worked like a charm. He took his feet off the table and looked me up and down with real interest. I guessed what was coming next, and usually my heart sinks, but this time it was a plus. He pressed an unopened can of lager into my hand and asked if I did the same job as Fitz, in Cracker. All those hours of watching television in hotel rooms had turned him into a fan.

I didn’t give my standard answer (terrific television, but a million miles from my experience of the job). I swallowed and said that basically, yes, we both did the same thing. There were differences in approach, but like Fitz I helped the police by giving them pointers towards the likely suspect. He grinned and said I was better-looking than Robbie Coltrane, but what was I like in a fight? A joke! I smiled back and said I could look after myself, but the job shouldn’t really entail fighting. It wasn’t even about being tough and shouting at people. The scriptwriters had to make it look like that to keep up the interest. I was sure Fitz did a lot of quiet thinking that wasn’t shown because it wasn’t visual.

Jimmy, thank God, kept quiet. He could easily have said Fitz wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in any murder inquiry he’d led.

How I wished we could start over again. This pig of an interview would have been so much easier. In fact, we talked genially for twenty minutes more about his chances of meeting Robbie Coltrane and perhaps teaming up with him in a celebrity tournament. I promised to put in a word if I ever met the man. I’ve no idea if he’s a golfer, but he’s a Scot, so he could be.

When we left, Porter picked up a photo of himself from a stack on the table and signed it for me, first asking me my name and writing ‘To Emma the female Cracker, love Matt Porter.’ As he was handing it to me he hung onto my wrist and leaned towards me for a kiss. Poor kid’s feeling lonely, I thought, and turned my face to him and got my bottom groped at the same time. He lost my sympathy then.

All in all, the visit wasn’t the success I’d hoped for. At least I’d met target number two and satisfied myself there was no obvious link with Axel Summers or Anna Walpurgis. One thing I do believe: he won’t survive without police protection. I asked Jimmy how much longer they could expect to keep him in the safe house against his will. He said it was up to the manager. He thought Porter would do what he was told. He said they were losing money already. If he was released, it could give a whole new meaning to the sudden-death playoff. He’d been storing that one up, I reckon.

We walked back to Streatham High Road and Jimmy waved down a taxi. Much to my surprise, he asked the driver to take us to Crystal Palace. ‘Something I’ve laid on,’ he said mysteriously. ‘It’s a short drive from here.’

My imagination went into overdrive. Love in the afternoon? A luxurious hotel suite, with caviar and chilled champagne?

Dream on. He’d arranged for someone from the British Police Archers to demonstrate the crossbow. Once I was over the disappointment, it was truly amazing. The guy waiting for us near the dry ski-slope had brought two Swiss target bows for us to try. What I hadn’t appreciated is that they are very like a rifle in appearance, with a wooden stock shaped to fit against your shoulder. You have a trigger and telescopic sight, and of course a groove along the centre of the stock to guide the bolt when it’s released. The ‘cross’ part, making the shape of the bow, is the prod. I giggled a bit, always amused by funny words. He said it should never have been called a prod, but a rod. Someone made an inventory of King Henry VIII’s armour, and when it was copied by some scribe who knew nothing about crossbows, he wrote ‘Crossbowes, called prodds,’ and it got into all the standard works before anyone noticed the mistake. So they’re stuck with it.

The power of these things was a revelation. The bowstring is made of steel cable, but the force of the pull, at least two hundred pounds, is in the prod. We were each given a padded glove to wear on our left hand, the one that supports the bow, because if that cable snapped you could sever your fingers. But first he simply demonstrated what happens when the bowstring is cocked and the bolt is in place and the trigger pulled. The snap of the cable was awesome. The bolt thudded into a target thirty metres away.

I felt goosebumps on the backs of my arms and legs. I was glad I hadn’t seen Axel Summers’ body.

We were each given a bow and shown how to zero the sights (i.e. adjust them to the target) and cock the string. Our instructor told us he preferred a kneeling position with the left elbow supported on the knee. So my assumption that the Mariner was belly-down may have been wrong. We tried the position, yours truly showing slightly more thigh than your average archer does.

I’ve fired a rifle before, and I’m certain the trigger was easier to pull than this one, even though the catch and trigger were well greased. Provided you hold the bow steady and squeeze the trigger evenly without shifting your aim, you should succeed. My bolt hit the target, though not the bull. Jimmy’s was about the same. We had two more shots, and definitely improved. But I still think the Mariner must have put in plenty of practice.

My adrenalin level was pretty high after that. As we walked back across the park, I linked my arm through Jimmy’s and asked what other surprises he had in store, and he knew exactly what was on my mind. But he said he had to get back to Horsham, and hadn’t I heard him promise Matthew Porter quick progress? I said something really naff about how he could make even faster progress with me behind a bush, and I meant it at the time. Those hormones were in overdrive. I would have screwed him silly regardless of my posh clothes. But it wasn’t to be. We hailed a taxi and he dropped me at Waterloo, saying he was looking forward to my report. He gave me a peck on the cheek.

Bloody men.

The second file ended there. Diamond closed it and switched off. He sat for a moment, taking it in, reflecting on what he’d learned, and not just about Emma Tysoe, but Matthew Porter and Jimmy Barneston as well. He’d taken to Emma with her Prada shoes and her overactive hormones. Reading the journal, it was difficult to accept that she was dead. It saddened him.

The glimpse of Porter, too, was valuable. Diamond wasn’t a golfer and didn’t follow the sport with any real interest, but everyone had heard of Magic Matt, the kid who rolled them in from anywhere on the green and made it look simple. The clip of him winning the Open with a twenty-five foot putt at the eighteenth was shown over and over on television. Everything about the young man’s demeanour on the golf course suggested he was mature beyond his years, possessed of an extraordinary physical and mental harmony. It was revealing to find that this didn’t extend to his life outside the game. The routine of the safe house was going to be increasingly irksome to him.

As for that dark horse-stallion-Jimmy Barneston, mixing business with pleasure, Diamond thought he wouldn’t care to be in his shoes when the Big White Chief at Bramshill decrypted the files and read them. But he’d modified his own opinion of Barneston. He could understand the man trying to keep his one night stand with Emma off the agenda (maybe more than one night, if file number three was as frank as the first two). But since it was no longer a secret, he’d have to face some questions. It was important to know if Emma had communicated anything that might touch on her murder.

A voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Finished, Mr D?” It was Clive.

“You?” he said, swinging his chair around.

“Something the matter, boss?”

“I’m not best pleased with you any more. There was I, relying on you, thinking you were watertight, and you leaked like a hanging basket.”

“But Ingeborg is on your team, isn’t she?”

Ingeborg. That young woman would go far.

“Doesn’t mean I tell her everything. Haven’t you ever heard of the need-to-know principle? Someone else might be put in a very embarrassing position by these files.”

“That DCI who got his leg over?”

“Heads could roll, Clive, and not just his.”

“You mean…? Jesus, I’m sorry, I really am.”

“Sorry isn’t enough.”

“Believe me, if there’s anything I can do…”

Diamond let him squirm a moment longer. “There could be something, as a matter of fact. Is it possible for me to press a couple of keys and send a copy of these red hot files to someone I know?”

Clive’s eyes widened. “What-in this place?”

“No-another officer, in another county. A DCI Mallin, at Bognor Regis.”

Keith Halliwell had tracked down the registration details of Emma Tysoe’s car. It was a 2000 Lotus Esprit.

“Not a bad motor,” Diamond said. “And lecturers are always grouching about being underpaid.”

“We also found the garage she rents in Pulteney Mews, just like Ingeborg suggested.”

“Surprise me, Keith. Was there anything in there?”

“Not even a bike, guv.”

“What colour was this motor? Dark green, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Put out an all units call on this. London and everywhere south and west. The thing must be somewhere. Where’s Ingeborg?”

“She’s up at Popjoy’s, looking at their reservations book, trying to work out the name of the ex-boyfriend.”

“She’ll be lucky. Restaurants usually make bookings with surnames alone.”

“Yes, but we know which evening it was, so we’ll have the names of everyone who made a reservation. How many would you say-twenty maximum?”

Diamond raised a thumb in tribute. “Good thinking, Keith. I must be blinkered.”

Halliwell smiled wryly.

“Couldn’t think past the name of Ken,” Diamond explained. “Pity she didn’t once call him by his surname in the journal.”

“She wouldn’t, would she?”

“She used full names for everyone else.”

“But she was sleeping with Ken.”

“No, she’d stopped sleeping with Ken. That’s what makes him special.”

He returned to the basement to finish reading Emma Tysoe’s files. The third was dated two days before her death. It turned out to be the shortest.

Can’t get Jimmy Barneston out of my mind. I know he’s working all hours on the case and I can’t expect him to call me and make another date, but I keep wondering if he thinks of me as nothing more than an easy lay. It didn’t seem like that at the time. OK, neither of us made a big emotional deal of it. We fancied each other and went to bed. But the sex was special (I ought to know) and I’ve never felt so good as I did lying beside him afterwards. I’d like to be cool and tell myself he was just another shag, but I can’t. There’s a whole lot more about Jimmy that I find attractive. I want more. I want a real relationship.

Computer, what can I do? Sit here biting my fingernails, or think of something positive? I could ask to meet Anna Walpurgis, I suppose, but even if it could be arranged I really doubt if she can tell me anything useful. I sense I’ll get nothing more from her than I did from Matthew Porter. I’m thinking they were chosen because of their fame, to create more of a sensation when they are killed. I say ‘when’ because in spite of all the security I feel strongly the Mariner knows what he’s doing.

Hold on. I’ve just made a whopping assumption. OK, profiling is all about probabilities rather than certainties, but let’s stand this one on its head. All along I’ve been reminding myself there may be nothing personal in the Mariner’s selection of these people as targets. Could I be mistaken?

From a profiling perspective, I’m conditioned to expect the victims to be randomly picked. Serial killers-the true serial killers-have no personal involvement with the people they kill, no other motive than that they fit a pattern. That’s why they’re so difficult to catch. They choose a class of victim, like prostitutes, or schoolgirls, or young boys, or old women, and prey on them ruthlessly. I’ve taken it for granted that the Mariner fits the mould and has targeted the famous and successful. He gives the impression of being detached, cool, calculating, everything I expect.

But is he a true serial killer after all?

Maybe-just maybe-he does know them personally. I’VE GOT TO EXPLORE THIS. The fact that he has named his second and third ‘victims’ in advance is a departure. It adds another dimension to his agenda as the killer, and makes the whole process more difficult for him. Why take the risk? Is it because he wants to strike fear into these people’s hearts? Is there a personal grudge behind all this?

If so, then Porter and Walpurgis are the key to this case.

I should insist on a meeting with Walpurgis. She may tell me some detail of real importance, maybe linked to what I already know about Summers, or Porter. She’s the one I know least about, simply because bimbo popstars don’t interest me at all. But I’ve looked her up on the Internet, and there’s plenty. She’s better known for the clothes she wears than her talent. She can afford the best. She did very nicely out of the pop singing, first with the Fates, and then her solo career. She topped the charts in Britain and America in her best years and had a huge three-album contract with one of the record companies. And when the first album flopped they paid her off with about twenty million. Twenty million for not singing! She married one of the super-rich kings of industry and came into all his money when he fell off the perch not long after. In one of those lists of Britain’s richest women she’s in the top twenty and has the controlling interest in her old man’s company, so she can’t be a total airhead. Even so, I can’t see her discussing poetry with Axel Summers, but let’s not prejudge.

(Later) Jimmy isn’t sure if he can fix an early meeting with Walpurgis. He says she’s in a panicky state, close to a breakdown, and finding the security hard to take. They think she shouldn’t be disturbed in her present mental state. Ridiculous. I reminded him that I have a Ph.D in psychology, but it cut no ice. ‘Maybe in a couple of days,’ he said. I told him the profile can’t progress until I’ve spoken to her. You have to get tough with Jimmy, as I discovered when I insisted on meeting Matt Porter (my pin-up). This time he didn’t promise to get back to me, or anything.

I asked him if he’d spent any time with Walpurgis, and he said he had about forty minutes with her when they broke the news that she was on the Mariner’s death-list, and he’s visited her in the safe house a couple of times since. This man-eater has seen Jimmy more times than I have. Soon I’ll be getting jealous.

I said if I couldn’t get to see her myself, could I give him a list of questions to put to her? He agreed, so I jumped in with both feet and said it wasn’t quite so simple as making a list. In view of her fragile mental state I’d need to brief him personally about the way it was done, and debrief him afterwards (I have no shame), and how was he fixed this weekend?

He sounded slightly ambushed, but that’s it. Perfecto! He’s agreed to see me tomorrow morning (Saturday), and I’m off (or on) for the weekend, I hope. The weather’s going to be glorious. I shall pack my swimsuit, just in case I can tempt him out of the nick and down to the coast.

Wish me luck, Computer.

Diamond smiled at the last line, then shook his head and sighed, as if it had been addressed to him in person. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Emma’s luck had run out on Wightview Sands.

He closed down the computer and went upstairs.