The House Sitter

2

Isn’t this a job for the police?” Mike Smith said.

The lifeguard gave him the look he used for people who “ drift out to sea in inflatables. “By the time they get here, sport, she’ll be three feet under water.”

“Have you called them?”

“Sure.”

Three of the lads who had been drinking lager came over to see what was happening and got asked to help move the body. One walked away, saying he wasn’t touching a dead person, but the others stayed, and so did Mike. Ankle deep, they lifted the corpse and carried it up the shingle and past the lifeguard post to the turf above the beach, watched by a sizeable, silent crowd. The lifeguard asked them to lay the body down for a moment. Evidently he didn’t want it in his hut. He went inside and came out with a key and opened a nearby beach hut.

“We’ll take her in there.”

Once the dead woman was deposited on the floor of the narrow wooden building, the lager lads walked away, and Mike started to go with them, but the lifeguard said, “Hold on, mate. You can’t leave. You found the body.”

“What do you mean, ‘found the body’? I was on the beach like everyone else. Anyone could see she wasn’t moving when the tide came in.”

“The police’ll want to talk to you.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to them,” Mike said. “I don’t know who she is. We just happened to be sitting behind her.”

“Was she with anyone?”

“Not that I noticed. Look, my wife and kid are waiting in the car. We’ve got a long drive home.”

“The police should be along shortly.”

“I’ll tell my wife, then.”

“You’re coming back?”

“Sure.”

Mike marched to the car park, got in the car and started the engine.

“Is that it?” Olga asked.

“Yup.”

“We don’t have to talk to the police?”

“We’ve had enough hassle for one day. We’re leaving.” He put the car in gear and drove across the turf to the road leading to the exit.

He had to make way for a police car coming at speed with siren sounding and blue light flashing. It stopped a short distance ahead, opposite the lifeguards’ hut and two policemen got out.

“Are you sure this is right?” Olga asked.

“We can’t tell them anything. We know bugger all. We don’t know who she was or why she snuffed it. All they’ll do is keep us here for hours asking idiot questions.”

Inside five minutes they were in a long line of traffic heading away from the coast.

Police officers Shanahan and Vigne stood in shirt-sleeve order outside the open door of the beach hut where the woman’s body lay. They hadn’t gone right in. The lifeguard offered them each a can of Sprite and they accepted. Somehow it made a morbid duty more tolerable.

“Are we one hundred per cent certain she’s dead?” PC Shanahan asked. He seemed to be in charge, young as he appeared with his innocent blue eyes and smooth skin.

“You’ve only got to look at her,” the lifeguard said.

This they were in no hurry to do. In the doorway they could see the undersides of her feet, bluish-white and wrinkled by the water. That was enough for now.

“It’s not up to us. A doctor has to certify she’s dead.” Shanahan turned to PC Vigne, who looked at least five years his senior. “Haven’t you sent for the police surgeon, lamebrain?”

Vigne used his personal radio.

“What happened to her things?” Shanahan asked.

“Things?”

“Bag? Clothes?”

“Couldn’t tell you. We just lifted her up and brought her here.”

“She must have had some things with her.”

“She was lying on a blue towel. I can tell you that.”

“There you go, then. Handbag?”

“Didn’t notice one.”

“We’d better go and search. We won’t know who she is until we find her bag.”

The lifeguard said, “How do you know she had one?”

“Keys, purse, money. Where did she keep them?”

“A pocket?”

“Was she wearing something with pockets?”

The lifeguard shook his head. “Two-piece swimsuit.”

“So let’s look for a bag. Where exactly was she lying?”

They closed and padlocked the door of the hut and stepped at a businesslike pace along the path above the beach. The waves were rattling the pebbles and the exact spot where the woman had been found was two feet under water already. Most people had quit the stretch of beach, except for an elderly couple just above the waterline in deckchairs. Shanahan asked if they had noticed anyone pick up a beachbag or anything else belonging to the person who was taken from the water. The woman said she must have been asleep. The old man was obviously gaga.

“Is that the towel?”

“Where?”

Shanahan pointed. He had spotted something blue shifting in the foam at the margin of the tide. “Would you mind?” he asked the lifeguard. “We’re not dressed for the water.”

So the towel was recovered, a large, plain bath towel. A search of the bank of shingle above the sea produced nothing else. There should have been a windbreak, the lifeguard announced. When they’d first seen the woman, a windbreak had been set up around her. Someone must have seen it abandoned and decided it was worth acquiring. “They’ll take anything that isn’t nailed down.”

“They can keep it as far as I’m concerned,” said Shanahan.

“We’re looking for a bag.”

“That’ll be gone, too. Something I’ve noticed about beaches,” the lifeguard said from the rich store of his experience. “None of the usual rules apply. People find stuff and think it’s fair game to take it if no one is around. Well, we’ve all heard of beachcombing. The bastards pick up things they wouldn’t dream of keeping if they found them in a street.”

“Great,” Shanahan said. “To sum up, we’re supposed to identify this woman from one blue towel and the costume she was wearing.”

The lifeguard was more upbeat. “At the end of the day you’ll find her car standing all alone in the car park. That’s your best bet. Most people come by car. This beach isn’t the sort you walk to.”

“Unless someone nicked the car as well.”

“Or she was driven here by a friend,” said Vigne. A few years in the police and you expect no favours from fate.

They radioed back to say they were unable to identify the dead woman and some of her property was missing. They were ordered to remain at the scene and wait for the doctor.

So they sat in the sun on the canvas seats outside the hut, with the wind off the sea tugging at their shirts.

“What age is she, this woman?” Shanahan asked.

“Don’t know. Thirties?”

“As young as that? Makes you think, someone dying like that.”

“Heart, I suppose.”

“Do you reckon?”

“Is sunstroke fatal?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“My money’s on heart. Could happen to anyone.”

Vigne said, “There’s something I heard of called sudden death syndrome.”

“Come again, lamebrain.”

“Sudden death syndrome. You can be perfectly fit and go to bed one night and never wake up.”

“I’ve heard of that,” the lifeguard said.

“But she wasn’t in bed,” Shanahan said. “She was stretched out on the beach.”

“There are worse places to die than a beach on a nice afternoon.”

“That’s priceless,” Shanahan said, “coming from a lifeguard. You should write that on a board and fix it to your hut.”

A dark-haired woman in a suit and carrying a bag stopped in front of the three of them reclining in the sun, and said, “Nice work, if you can get it.” This was Dr Keithly, the police surgeon.

They all stood up.

“You’ve got a corpse for me, I was told.”

“In that beach hut,” Shanahan said.

The lifeguard added, “A woman.”

“She came to you feeling ill?”

“No.” He explained how the body was found. “Do you want me to open up, Doc?”

“Well, I hate to spoil the fun, but… please.”

Presently Dr Keithly stood in the entrance to the hut beside the feet of the deceased. “I could do with some light in here.”

“I’ll fetch a torch.”

“That will help.”

Torch in hand, she stepped around the outstretched legs. She was silent for some time, crouching beside the body.

Shanahan stood in the doorway, watching until the examination was complete. It seemed to take an age. “What’s the verdict, doc? Definitely dead?”

“We can agree on that.” Dr Keithly stood up and stepped out, removing her plastic gloves. She sounded less friendly now. “Did you take a proper look at her?”

“We were waiting for you.”

She turned to the lifeguard. “But you recovered the body.”

“With a bit of help.”

“You got a good look at her, then. Didn’t you notice anything unusual about her appearance?”

“Such as?”

“The mark around her neck.”

“What mark?”

“I’d say it was made by a ligature. She seems to have been strangled.”

“Christ almighty!” the lifeguard said.

“Come and see for yourselves.”

This had to be faced. All three men squeezed into the hut and watched as the doctor pointed the torch at the neck of the dead woman, lifting the reddish hair. A broad line extended right around the throat.

“Is that definite?” asked Shanahan. “Couldn’t it have been made by some kind of necklace?”

“Unlikely. If you look here,” said Dr Keithly, pointing to the nape of the neck. “See the crossover? And there’s some scratching on this side where she tried to tug the ligature away from her throat.”

“Christ. Didn’t you notice this when you were carrying her?”Shanahan said accusingly to the lifeguard.

“Don’t turn on me, sport. I wasn’t looking at her neck. There was nothing tied around it.”

Shanahan sounded increasingly panicky. He could foresee awkward questions from CID. “How could this have happened on a beach in front of hundreds of people? Wouldn’t she have screamed?”

“Not if it was quick and unexpected,” the doctor said. “She might have made some choking sounds, but I doubt if she’d have been heard. What surprises me is that no one saw the killer actually doing it.”

“She was behind a windbreak.”

“Even so.”

“She was probably stretched out, sunbathing. It would have been done close to the ground, by someone kneeling beside her.”

Vigne said, “Hadn’t we better report this? It’s out of our hands if it’s murder.”

“Hey, that’s right,” Shanahan said, much relieved. “You’re not so thick as you look.”