“You’re joking. I’m dealing with a crisis here.”
“So are we, and you’d better listen up, Jimmy, because it concerns you.”
“What are you on about?”
“Emma Tysoe came to see you the day before she was strangled.”
After a long hesitation, Barneston said, “You know about that?”
“There’s a whole lot more we know.”
Another pause. Then: “I’m at Littlegreen Place, South Harting. That’s near Petersfield. It’s laughingly described as a safe house.”
15
Littlegreen Place was a large, brick-built house standing in chain-fenced grounds on the northern escarpment of the South Downs. There was no other building within sight. When Diamond drove up, with Hen Mallin seated beside him, the electric gates were open and three police minibuses, two patrol cars and a Skoda were parked on the drive
Someone with a tripod over his shoulder and a camera in his free hand came from the open front door, heading for the Skoda, and Diamond asked him if DCI Barneston was about. The man nodded towards the interior.
“Got your pictures already?” Diamond said, just to be civil to someone else in the pay of the government.
“Waste of time,” came the reply, and it set the tone for what was to come.
They went inside, through a sizeable entrance hall, in the direction of voices that turned out to be from the kitchen. Jimmy Barneston, looking like a football manager whose team has just been relegated, was slumped at the table, his head in his hands. Two others in plain clothes, holding mugs, were standing together watching a uniformed inspector speaking urgent orders into a mobile phone.
“Are you supposed to be here?” one of them asked.
Diamond identified himself and Hen and asked what was happening.
“You tell us.”
Hen said, “Jimmy?”
Barneston raised his eyes, but that was the extent of it.
Diamond asked, “Is someone going to let us in on this?”
Barneston gave a groan that was part threat, part protest, as if his sleep had been disturbed.
The inspector using the phone moved out of the kitchen into what was probably a laundry room.
Diamond put a hand on Barneston’s shoulder. “You cocked up, is that it?”
This got a response. He looked up and said with a heavy emphasis, “Not me.”
“The people on duty?”
He nodded, all too ready to shift any blame. “Two hours ago, a call was made to this place, a scheduled call, to the Special Branch officers supposed to be guarding, em, a person under threat.”
“Matthew Porter,” Hen said.
She wasn’t supposed to know the name. Barneston took note with a twitch of the eyebrows. “This was only a routine check. It’s done at regular intervals. There was no response. They kept trying. Still nothing. So an RRV was sent here. They found the front gate wide open. The double doors at the front of the house were also open. No one was inside, except a police dog, shut in the garage. The bulk of the security system was disabled. Two armed officers vanished.”
“And Matthew Porter?”
“Yes. The Range Rover used by one of the officers is also missing. There’s no sign of a struggle, nothing out of place.”
“Like the fucking Mary Celeste,” one of the others, obviously a romantic, summed it up.
“Video cameras?” Diamond enquired.
“All disabled from the control room upstairs. We’re checking the cassettes in case anything was caught earlier.” Barneston scraped his fingers through his thick black hair and then held his hand out, palm upwards. “What can you do? This is the state-of-the-art safe house-allegedly. We moved him here from another address because it was more secure. The Mariner has found it and strolled in and out as if it was a public toilet. Someone’s going to swing for this.”
“Are you certain this is the Mariner?” Hen asked.
“How could it be anyone else?”
“Matthew Porter didn’t like being cooped up in Streatham. What if he didn’t like it here and walked out? Wouldn’t the guards go after him?”
Barneston glared at her. “What do you know about Streatham?”
“We can talk about that at a calmer time.”
“Sod that. We’ve had a major balls-up in security and you people know too fucking much for my liking. Tell me now. It could be relevant.”
Hen flushed bright pink, and not because of the language. She shouldn’t have mentioned Streatham at this stage.
Diamond felt the muscles tighten across his shoulders. Working as a double act had its drawbacks. This wasn’t the moment he would have chosen, and there was no way now of putting it off. He let his eyes meet Barneston’s. “Emma Tysoe- whose death we are investigating-kept some files on computer.”
“I know about Tysoe’s files,” Barneston said with impatience. “They haven’t been decrypted yet.” After a beat, he said lamely, “Have they?”
Hen gave a nod. “She kept a record of her visit to Streatham.”
“And much more besides,” Diamond couldn’t resist adding.
“Oh, shit.”
“I have a copy with me, as decrypted by a lad in my nick.”
It wasn’t Jimmy Barneston’s day. While he was taking that in, Hen tried to divert him, “Coming back to the present emergency, don’t you think it possible Porter simply got brassed off with all the security and made a break for it?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “Come and see this.” Whatever the incentive was, it got him to his feet. He led them out of the kitchen, across the hall and upstairs. He pushed open the first door on the landing. “Porter’s bedroom.”
The interior was in pretty good order, a bed with a quilt doubled back, a couple of books on the bedside table. On the pillow was a sheet of A4 paper with words in newsprint pasted to it.
“Don’t touch it,” Barneston cautioned them.
Diamond took a step closer and bent over to read the message.
“Three under par.”
“You know what that is?” Barneston said.
“A reference to golf, I suppose.”
“Three under par is an albatross. The albatross is the bird the Ancient Mariner killed. Now tell me the bastard wasn’t here.”
They stood in silence, absorbing the force of the words and feeling a chilling contact with the mind of their author, as if they’d been touched by him. This gallows humour was at one with the note left when Summers was murdered. It dashed any hope that Porter would survive.
“Who are we dealing with here-Superman?” Hen said with awe. “How the heck does he find out about this place? How does he get in and overcome two armed guards?”
“And a dog,” Barneston said. “You tell me. No signs of a break-in. No shooting. Nothing out of place.”
“Have you got roadblocks in operation?” Diamond asked.
“Full-scale alert, but it could have happened four hours ago. The last check-in we logged was at noon.”
“Who are these Special Branch guys?”
“Good men, I’ve been told, one with ARV experience, the other a dog handler. Both of them Sergeant rank. They’re not wet behind the ears.”
“And the building has been searched?”
“From top to bottom.”
They returned downstairs. In the kitchen, Barneston seemed to be getting a grip again. “Was anything useful in those files?”
“Depends where you’re coming from,” Diamond told him.
“Explain.”
“We’ve learned a lot more about our murder victim and the job she was on.”
“Do you think the Mariner strangled her?”
Diamond didn’t answer directly. Why confide in a man who had just treated them like plods? “He’s capable of it. He doesn’t lack anything in daring.”
“Because he feared she would finger him?”
“She was the top profiler.”
“Does she say anything in these files that will help me right now?” Barneston asked. “Did she put together a profile I can use?”