The House Sitter

17

Bath was travel-brochure bright as Diamond drove in from Weston the next morning. Innocent, even. Who would be so coarse as to think about crime in surroundings such as these? You couldn’t imagine a mugger on the streets, let alone a serial killer. The tall trees in Queen Square were thick with gently stirring foliage at this time of year, softening the views across the green towards the corner house, number thirteen, where much of Northanger Abbey was written. “My mother hankers after the Square dreadfully,” Jane Austen wrote in 1801. While Diamond was unlikely ever to hanker after Queen Square or any other, he did feel a flutter of unease about his plan to lure the Mariner to the city.

“Back to reality,” he called across to Keith Halliwell when they both happened to park at the same time behind the ugliest building in Bath, the Manvers Street police station. “What’s been happening?”

“Progress, guv.”

They went through the code-operated door and started upstairs towards the incident room.

“Come on, then,” Diamond said after giving Halliwell ample time to say more.

“I think Ingeborg would like to tell you herself. She worked her little butt off yesterday.”

“Keep me in suspense, then.”

Most of the team were already in there clustered around John Leaman, who was telling a joke. At the sight of their burly superior, people sidled back to their desks.

“Did you want to give them the punchline, John?” Diamond offered.

“They can wait, guv.”

He looked to his right. “Well, Ingeborg?”

The new face in CID glanced up and batted the long lashes. “Hi, guv.”

Halliwell said quickly, “Don’t make a meal of it, Inge. I told him to expect something.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “Well, I finally nailed Ken.”

“Tell me more.”

“His name is Bellman-Kenneth Bellman. He works for an IT firm based in Batheaston.”

“A nightie firm? Our suspect? What are we talking here-black lace, see-through, baby doll or plain old winceyette?”

“IT,” Halliwell said through the laughter. “He’s in information technology.”

“Pity. Not much glamour in that. As what?”

“A consultant,” Ingeborg said.

“I’ve met a few of them in my time, borrowing your watch to tell you what the time is.”

Ingeborg smiled. “In the IT business it means anyone who isn’t actually employed by the company, but does a job for them. An outside expert.” She stopped and gave him a wary look. “You’re going to say a window-cleaner, aren’t you, guv? I know it.”

“OK, let’s call an amnesty,” he said. “How did you get onto him-through the credit card slips I suggested?”

“No. It turns out he paid cash. They had his name wrong in the reservations book. I spent ages trying to trace somebody with the name of Cableman. On the phone he must have told them K. Bellman.”

“Easy mistake.” He smiled. “I can overlook it. Cableman wouldn’t be a bad name for a computer nerd, now I think about it. What else do we know?”

“He works for a city firm called Knowhow & Fix. Lives in digs in a house on Bathwick Hill, about halfway up on the left-hand side.”

“Bit of a climb. Does he have wheels?”

“I expect so. I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

“But you know why I asked?”

“Yes, guv. The drive to Wightview Sands.”

He nodded. “So have you spoken to him?”

Halliwell said, “We thought you’d want first crack at him.”

“You thought right.” He showed an upturned thumb to Ingeborg. “Nice work.”

She asked, “Can I bring him in, guv?”-and couldn’t conceal her eagerness.

She’d led with her chin, never a wise tactic with Diamond, but he restrained himself and shook his head. “Not yet. I promised DCI Mallin, our colleague from Bognor, that I’d give her the chance to come in on this. More important than that, I want the SP on this guy before we see him. Keith, see what you can get without alerting him or his employers. Do it discreetly. I don’t want him to know we’re onto him.”

“Now, guv?”

“No time like the present.”

He called Hen and told her the news. She offered to come right away, so he explained about getting some background first, and she agreed it was right to do the job properly. Until this morning, Ken had been just a name, his only known achievement the bedding of Emma Tysoe.

“Probably tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“I wish I could report some success at this end,” Hen went on to say. “I was hoping my lot would have found Mr Laver by now, but he’s vanished into thin air.”

“That figures. They called him Rocket, you know.”

“Who?”

“The tennis player.”

“Give over, Peter. And to make matters worse, Emerson has not been seen on the beach for a couple of days as well. I’ve got visions of chasing Aussies in camper vans all over Europe. Let’s hope your Ken puts his hand up to the murder and saves me the trouble.”

If only it were so simple, Diamond thought. After he’d put the phone down, he said to Ingeborg, “Do you know much about IT?”

“Not a lot, guv.”

“What did they say it stands for?”

“Information technology.”

“It was on the tip of my tongue. Supposed to be the answer to everything, isn’t it? Taking over our lives?”

She said, “Look around you, guv. We depend on it.”

Keeping his eyes resolutely off the hardware on every side, he said, “ I can’t agree with that. They’re tools, nothing more. We always had office machinery. Typewriters. Dictaphones.”

A voice behind him murmured, “The abacus.”

“Did you say something, John?”

“Adding machines, guv.”

“Right. Just because they’re all contained in one machine it doesn’t mean we’re slaves to it.”

“I said we depend on it,” Ingeborg stressed, returning him to the point she’d made. “If this lot crashed, we’d be in trouble.”

“You’re right about that,” he conceded, and added jovially, “We might have to ask the Cableman to fix it. I wouldn’t want his job. It must be tedious, staring at screens all day. Then they go home and watch TV.”

“Sometimes they don’t leave home,” she said. “They work from their own PC.”

“I’m not surprised Emma Tysoe found this fellow boring. What can he know about the real world, sitting in front of his screen? How does he make friends, meet women?”

“There are chatlines.”

“That’s not meeting them.”

“I expect he makes an effort to get out. You’d have to.”

“We don’t know, do we?” he said.

“I could chat up his colleagues if you like,” she offered. “Face to face.”

“Not at this stage. We don’t want him finding out we’re interested. Let’s keep the chatting up in reserve.” He didn’t doubt Ingeborg’s ability there. “Why don’t you check him on the PNC? See if he’s got form.”

If she noted the irony of this suggestion, she had the good sense not to take it up with him.

Later in the morning he took a call from Jimmy Barneston. The shell-shocked Jimmy of yesterday sounded more in control. More deferential, too.

“I thought you’d like to know I slept on your advice and decided it made sense. I’ve called a press conference for this afternoon.”

“Good move. Take the initiative away from the killer.”

“I’m going to tell them just about everything except the third name on the Mariner’s list. You know who I mean?” Clearly he didn’t trust the phone, and he was probably right.

“I’m a detective. I can work it out,” Diamond said. “Speaking of that person, have you told her about Porter-I mean a well-known sports personality-being snatched?”

“Not yet. Oh, fuck, I’ll have to now, won’t I? Don’t want her hearing it first on the telly.”

“Have you moved her?”

“Er… yes. She’s in another-em-place.”

“A safe place?” Diamond spoke the words in a tone of dread.

“I, em…” The voice trailed off.

Diamond waited, and then said, “That’s not a good idea, Jimmy. Have you told her about my offer?”

“Not yet. She doesn’t know anything yet.”

“When you break the bad news about Porter being snatched you can tell her my offer is the good news.”

“All right.”

“You will mention it?”

“I’m still thinking it over.”

“Don’t spend too long thinking. You could regret it. I guess there’s nothing new on the Mariner? Did the house-to-house achieve anything?”

“No. And the treadmarks aren’t sharp enough to help. Forensics are looking at them, but they told me not to expect much. They tested the steering wheel for DNA and they reckon he wore gloves. He’s ultra-careful. We haven’t even found what type of gas he used.”

“Are both of the guards recovering?”

“They were sent home last night. I’ve spoken to them. They added nothing to what we know already.”

“You may get some help from the public after the media get to work on it.”

“I won’t hold my breath.” He asked how the search for Emma Tysoe’s killer was going and Diamond gave him the news about Ken Bellman. They agreed to keep in touch.

After putting the phone down, Diamond was fidgety. He sat back in his chair and fiddled with a stapler, shooting at least a dozen across the desk. Certain things were starting to go his way, but plenty could still go wrong, and probably would. His team was up to the challenge of Ken Bellman. If the man was guilty they’d have him, the mug who lost in love and kicked back. But the Mariner was in a different bracket. No passion there. He was a class act, a cerebral killer, calculating every move. If he came to Bath, he wouldn’t come blindly. He’d estimate the risks and minimise them. How would the likes of Keith and Ingeborg cope with a professional assassin?

Soon they had to be told. He had no hesitation pitting himself against a serial killer, but it was asking a lot of Ingeborg, little more than a rookie, and Keith, dependable as the days of the week, but not the brightest star in the firmament. John Leaman was quicker, but still inexperienced for a sergeant.

For a few indulgent moments he daydreamed about having Julie Hargreaves back on the team, Julie, the sidekick who’d taken one kick too many and asked for a transfer. She was an original thinker, as well as a check on his own lapses and excesses. He was still in touch, and she’d been a tower of strength after Steph was murdered. Still, she’d made her position clear about working with him ever again, and it was no use wanting the impossible. You play the cards you’re dealt with.

Towards midday Ingeborg reported her findings on the PNC: no findings at all. Kenneth Bellman had led a blameless life apparently.

“Bellman, Bellman-why does the name seem familiar?” he said.

“The Hunting of the Snark?” she suggested.

“The what?”

“It’s a poem by Lewis Carroll. A nonsense poem. The Bellman was the main character.”

He gave her a bemused look. “No, it can’t be that. You read poetry, do you, Ingeborg?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you happen to know The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”

“Bits, guv.”

“I don’t mean know it by heart. Have you read it?” With pride in the performance he recited those first two lines: “‘It is an ancient Mariner / And he stoppeth one of three.’”

Innocent of the tightrope she was walking, Ingeborg completed the verse. “‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye / Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?’”

But her boss’s reaction was positive. “Hidden depths. Tell me, what was it about the albatross that made it such a big deal in the poem?”

“It’s a bird of good omen, guv. Should have brought good luck to his ship, but he shot it.”

“With his crossbow. Then everything went pear-shaped?”

“Yes.”

“Right. I can understand that.” He sighed softly and shook his head. Some things he would never understand. “It’s a strange thing, Ingeborg. Since coming to Bath I’ve had to mug up so much English literature.”

“Yes?” She sensed he was unburdening himself of something she ought to know about.

“Famous writers keep cropping up. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and now Coleridge.”

“Are you doing an Open University degree, guv?” she innocently asked.

“Christ, no. Whatever put that idea in your head?”

Keith Halliwell was back by lunchtime and Diamond took him for a bite and a pint at Brown’s, just up the street on the site of the old city police station in Orange Grove, an Italianate Palazzo-style building so much easier on the eye than their present place of work. “So what do we know about Ken Bellman?” he asked, when they were settled in one of the squishy sofas upstairs.

“There’s not a lot to report, guv,” Halliwell told him. “He’s been around for about six months. Gets his paper-the Independent-from a shop on Bathwick Hill, and also buys computer magazines and chocolate. He dresses casually in polo shirts and baggy trousers with lots of pockets.”

“Where’s he from?”

“The north, I was told. He boasts a bit about the life up there being better than anywhere else.”

“Sounds like a Yorkshireman, all mouth and trousers. Why come south, if it’s so much better up there? Anything else, Keith? Is he a driver?”

“Yes, he has an old BMW that he services himself.”

“Useful to know. Colour?”

“He’s white.”

“The car, Keith, the car.”

“Oh, I didn’t discover that. It’s a series 3 model.”

“Description?”

“Thirtyish, about five nine, with a mop of dark hair.”

“You mean curly?” Diamond said, thinking of the man in the black T-shirt.

“It’s what they mean, not me, guv,” Halliwell said, with reason on his side but at the risk of nettling his boss. “And they said a mop.”

“You didn’t catch a glimpse of him, I suppose?”

“He wasn’t about.”

“He hasn’t done a runner?”

“No. He was at the shop for his paper this morning, eight thirtyish. That’s the routine.”

It was decision time. “Wait for tomorrow and then bring him in late morning. I want to give DCI Mallin a chance to get here.”

“When you say ‘bring him in,’ do you mean by invitation?”

“Oh, yes. No coercion, Keith, unless he’s really stroppy. We need cooperation at this point, help with our enquiries, right?”

“Shall I ask Ingeborg to fetch him?”

“Why not? She’s got to get experience. Pick some muscle to go with her, but let her do the talking. Tell them to be there early, keeping watch on his movements, the walk to the paper shop, and so on. We want to make certain where he is. Another thing, Keith.”

“Guv?”

“Some office furniture found its way to the top corridor. It was stored originally in the room we’re using as our incident room. Georgina isn’t happy about it. See if you can shift it somewhere else.”

“Right.”

“Don’t look like that, Keith. It’s priority, OK?”

“OK.”

“Directly we get back?”

“If you say so, guv.”

“And can you get the team together this afternoon, say around three? There’s some news about to break that I want them to hear from me.”

They listened in silence to his prosaic, almost plodding account of the Mariner’s murderous agenda. Officially it was news to them, but their faces didn’t register much shock. Most, if not all, were familiar with the contents of the decrypted files. Only when he started telling them about the gas raid on the safe house did the interest quicken significantly. This was news to them, and it was pretty sensational. Yet no one interrupted. They were deeply curious to know where this was leading, how it affected them personally. Like the best storytellers, he kept them in suspense to the very end. “Yesterday, after the snatching of Matthew Porter, I spent some time with the SIO on the case, DCI Jimmy Barneston. I think I’ve convinced him that the third of the Mariner’s targets, Anna Walpurgis, isn’t safe any more in a so-called safe house. A radical rethink is necessary, to take the initiative away from the Mariner. I suggested bringing Ms Walpurgis to Bath.”

He paused, letting this sink in. There was a nervous cough from someone. A couple of people shifted in their chairs. No one was ready to say that the boss had flipped, but doubt was in the air.

Halliwell was the first to speak. “Do we have a safe house in Bath?”

“No-and that’s the point, Keith, to do something he isn’t expecting. It buys us a little time.”

“Don’t you think he’ll find out and follow her here?”

“I’m sure he will. That’s OK by me. He’ll be on our territory.”

“It’s a hell of a risk, guv.”

He nodded. “That’s why I’m telling you. Any of you could get involved as well. The man is dangerous and single-minded. Stand in his way, and you risk being eliminated.”

“Where will she stay?” Leaman asked.

“Yet to be decided. She’ll have a say in the decision.”

“She’s a fireball, isn’t she?”

“So I’ve heard.”

Ingeborg said, “She could stay with me, if you like.” The first to volunteer again, so keen to make her mark.

“I’ll keep it in mind.” At the back of my mind, he thought. “I brought this to your attention because the main facts of the case are being made public at a press conference as we speak. The papers will be full of it tomorrow.”

“Anna Walpurgis included?” Leaman asked.

“No. For obvious reasons that’s classified information. Don’t discuss it with anyone. But the Mariner will make the headlines, which will please him no end.”

“Give him enough rope.”

“That’s the general idea, John. Any other questions?”

“How does all this link up with Emma Tysoe?” Ingeborg asked.

“You put your finger on it. We don’t know. She was working on a profile of the Mariner, so in a sense she was shoved into the firing line. That was my early assumption. Now I’ve veered in the other direction.”

“Because of Ken?” He was reminded of her sharp questioning in the days when she worked as a freelance journalist. She’d put him through the grinder more than once. Bright and keen as she was, he didn’t want her dominating the case conferences.

“Not specially. We’ll find out more about him tomorrow. No, I’ve come to think of the Mariner as the kind of murderer who plans his crime like an architect, every detail worked out, measured and costed. But the strangling of Emma Tysoe wasn’t planned. Couldn’t have been. She only made up her mind to go to the beach the evening before she visited Jimmy Barneston. And the murderer couldn’t have known in advance which section of the beach she would choose, and if she used a windbreak and how close other people would be sitting. It had to be an opportunist killing. The variables would have horrified the Mariner.”

“So Emma wasn’t killed because of the job she did,” Ingeborg tried to sum up.

“I didn’t say that. I said it was opportunist. She could have been spotted by someone she’d fingered in the past.”

“Pretty unlikely.”

He eyed her sharply. “Why?”

“They’re all inside serving long sentences, aren’t they?”

“That’s something you can check for me.”

She’d walked into that one. There were smiles around the room.

Except from Ingeborg, who wouldn’t shut up. “But she hasn’t been doing the profiling all that long. What is it-four or five years at most?”

“Yes, and some of the sentencing leaves a lot to be desired. See what you can dig up for me.”

“Personally, I think Ken is a better bet.”

“Personally, I think we’ve heard enough from you, constable.

Bramshill gave me a list of all the cases she worked on. You’ll find it on my desk.”

He brought the meeting to a close. Ingeborg, flicking her blond hair in a way that left no doubt as to her annoyance, stepped in the direction of his office. He ambled after her.

“Is this the way you run things?” she asked when he caught up with her. “Anyone with a different opinion gets clobbered?”

“Don’t try me,” he told her. “You know where you went wrong in there. You’ve got a good brain, Ingeborg, or you wouldn’t be on the team. Use it.”

“That’s what I was trying to do.”

“You’re not press any more. You’re a very new member of CID. Have you heard any of them talk to me like you just did?”

She took a breath and hesitated. “No, guv.”

“Getting along with them is just as important as keeping on the right side of me. At present they’re giving you the benefit of the doubt. You’re new and eager to impress, but you must learn to do it with more subtlety. Remember the pesky kids at school who sat at the front and were forever putting up their hands to answer questions?”

A little sigh escaped. “That was me.”

He just about managed to conceal his amusement. “Well, have the good sense to see it from other people’s points of view. Theirs, and mine.”

She nodded. “I’ll try, guv. Thanks.” The blue eyes flashed an appeal. “Do you still want me to check that list?”

“You bet I do.”

After she’d gone, he reached for the phone and called Hen. He’d promised to let her know when Ken Bellman was being brought in for questioning. He didn’t get that far.

“I was just about to call you,” she said. “We’ve all been glued to the TV, watching the news breaking. Haven’t you?”

“Jimmy Barneston’s press conference?”

“That’s what we expected to see. It’s been overtaken. Peters-field police have found the body of a young white male on a golf course.”

“Matthew Porter?”

“Nobody is saying yet, but of course it’s him. They haven’t said what he died of, but they’re treating it as murder.”