“So what’s the tip?”
“Don’t use your own bathroom. Use the one at work.”
Hen shook her head. “There’s always someone in there.”
End of exchange, thanks be. He’d been told more than once not to bottle up the grief, but it wasn’t in his nature to discuss it with anyone. The process had been drawn out over many months, still without closure. The shooting, the funeral, the investigation, the arrest, the trial and, yet to come, an appeal. The open wound remained and the pain didn’t go away. Let no one underestimate the effect of murder on the surviving spouse.
The music had switched to “Staying Alive.” They finished their food as fast as possible and left on foot for the police station, a ten-minute walk through the park that would do them good after fish and chips, Hen assured him.
He asked how the Wightview Sands end of the investigation had been going, and she told him she hadn’t yet traced the second lifeguard, but she had a name and a mobile phone number- which had not helped, as they couldn’t make contact with it. The assumption was that the phone needed recharging.
“What’s his name?” Diamond asked.
“Laver.”
“Straight up?”
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Just that the first lifeguard-the one we met-is called Emerson, or claimed to be. Laver and Emerson were two of the biggest names in Australian tennis in the sixties. They won God knows how many Grand Slam titles between them. They played doubles together as well.”
“You think they were having us on?”
“Having someone on for sure. It could be about casual labour and work permits, rather than what happened on the beach that day. They’d have thought up more original identities if they knew it was a murder enquiry. Is Emerson still working there?”
“The last I heard, he was,” Hen answered. “I’ll follow this up.”
They reached the north end of Horsham Park, where the three main emergency services are sited. At the police station, they were asked to wait in an office, because DCI Barneston was still not back.
“What time is it?” Diamond asked the sergeant. “He has a good lunch break.”
You could generally count on the lower ranks enjoying a poke at the high-ups, but this sergeant didn’t rise to it. Was Barneston an example of that rare breed, a chief inspector popular with the lower ranks?
They had an upstairs room to themselves. It was typically barren of anything of interest. There were three plastic chairs and a table stained with tea. On the wall facing the door were two notices about foot-and-mouth regulations and a map of West Sussex.
“A bloody ashtray would help,” Hen said as she lit up.
Diamond was looking at the map. “How far are we from Bognor, then?”
“About twenty-five. You take the A29.”
“And Wightview Sands?”
“Probably another ten miles on top. Why?”
“If Emma Tysoe was here with JB the night before she was murdered, she had a drive of thirty-five miles to Wightview Sands. From what I can see, Worthing or Brighton would have been nearer.”
“Or Bognor.”
“Or Bognor,” he echoed. “But why Wightview Sands?”
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Hen said. “All those places are seaside towns. Wightview is only a beach-well, there’s a small village set back from the shore, and some posh houses. There’s almost nothing along the front except one beach café and a long row of beach huts. You haven’t got piers and pubs and amusement machines by the hundred. It’s quiet.”
“Unspoilt.”
She wagged a finger. “Hold your horses, squire. You won’t get me to say Bognor is spoilt.”
“It sounds as if she went to Wightview because she knows the place. It was what she wanted. Somewhere to relax.”
“Presumably. Unless she’d agreed to meet someone.”
“Doesn’t appear so. She arrived on the beach late morning, after the Smiths, put up her windbreak, lay on her towel and that’s about all we know until she was found dead. We have about two thousand suspects.”
“A shortlist of four,” Hen said.
“Four? Let me try. The ex-lover, Ken. The two lifeguards under false names. And the Mariner.”
“Check.”
“But you left out Jimmy Barneston.”
She creased her features. “You don’t really rate him?”
“I want to hear his story. Where is the guy?”
Hen, unable to supply an answer, took the question as rhetorical. She was still brooding over the suspects. “There are problems with each of them. We don’t know how Ken or the Mariner knew she was on that beach on that particular morning.”
“But both are single-minded characters,” he said. “They could have followed her. What about the guy in the black T-shirt who tried to chat her up and got nowhere? He could have been Ken. Apparently they recognised each other. She wouldn’t have been too happy if he turned up unexpectedly. He got the brush-off, but he could have come back in the afternoon.”
“The two suspects we know for certain were on that beach are the two Australian guys,” Hen said, doggedly working through the possibilities, “but we don’t have a motive for them. There’s no suggestion that this was part of a sexual assault.”
“Theft? Her beachbag was missing.”
“But we agreed it’s dead simple to steal a bag on a beach. You don’t have to strangle someone if you’re only after cash and credit cards.”
He yawned, and checked the time again. “True.”
“However, we haven’t found her car yet.”
“Good point, Hen.” He snapped his fingers. “Now that raises the stakes. A Lotus Esprit might be a prize worth having for a young guy living on a shoestring without a work permit. He steals the bag-her bag and no other-because it contains her car key. He’s seen her park this beautiful car-”
“People have been killed for less.”
“A lot less. I rather like it, Hen. I’m not sure if I like it more than the Mariner, or Ken, or the man in the black T-shirt, but it’s persuasive, very persuasive. There’s only one problem with it.”
“Yes?”
“Any one of our other two thousand suspects could have done it.”
At this point the smoke alarm went off.
Order was restored after an embarrassing few minutes explaining to the safety officer that, as visitors, they hadn’t taken note of the no smoking signs all over the building. The only places you could light up were the canteen and the interview rooms, provided that the interviewee wished to smoke as well.
“You want to try patches,” Diamond told Hen when she took out her lighter again. They were standing outside the front entrance of the police station.
“You know where you can put your patches, chummy.”
The placid street life of Horsham continued in front of them while that cigar was reduced rather quickly to a tiny butt.
“It’s bloody near four o’clock. I’ll go inside and see if they can get a message to him,” Diamond said.
The desk sergeant had changed. This one didn’t appear to know that they were waiting outside. Diamond had to identify himself.
The sergeant apologised. “You’re waiting for DCI Barneston, sir? He won’t be coming back this afternoon. He’s dealing with an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“I wasn’t informed, sir-except that he’s tied up for the rest of the day and probably tomorrow as well.”
“Well, I’m going to need his mobile number. I’ve come from Bath to see him, and another officer outside has come up from the coast.”
Not so simple. Getting Barneston’s number was like trying to steal meat from a pride of lions. By sheer force of personality he eventually obtained it on the say-so of a CID inspector.
When he got through, he found Barneston incensed at being troubled. “Who the fuck put you onto me? Didn’t anyone tell you there’s a fucking emergency here?”
Diamond gritted his teeth. “We’re coming to see you.”