The House Sitter Read Online Free PDF Page A

and take the money. Thousands of drivers pass through.”
    “Was anyone else directing the cars?”
    “No. There are acres of land, as you see. People park where they want.”
    She went through the motions of organising a line of searchers to scour the taped-off section of beach, now that the tide was on the ebb. Around high-water line they began picking up an extraordinary collection of discarded material: bottletops and ring-pulls, cans, lollysticks, carrier bags, plastic cups, an odd shoe, hairgrips, scrunches and empty cigarette lighters. Everything was bagged up and labelled. She watched with no expectation. There was no telling if a single item had belonged to the victim.
    “Did anyone check the swimsuit?”
    “What for, guv?”
    “Labels. Is it a designer job, or did she get it down the market? Might tell us something about this unfortunate woman. We know sweet Fanny Adams up to now.”
    “The towel she was lying on is top quality, pure Egyptian cotton, really fluffy when it’s dry,” the one other woman on the team, DS Stella Gregson, said.
    “There speaks a pampered lady.”
    “I wish,” Stella said. She was twenty-six and lived alone in a bed-sit in a high-rise block in Bognor.
    “Never mind, Stell. Some day your prince will come. Meanwhile come up to the hut and give me your take on the swimsuit.”
    Stella had a complex role in the CID squad, part apologist for her boss, part minder, and quite often the butt of her wit. She’d learned to take it with good humour. Her calm presence was a big asset at times like this. Together they crunched up the steep bank of pebbles.
    “We can assume she was murdered some time in the afternoon,” Hen said, as much to herself as Stella. “I asked the lifeguard if there was any stiffening of the muscles when they carried the body up the beach, and he didn’t notice any. As a rough estimate, rigor mortis sets in after three hours or so. In warm conditions it works faster. I’d like the opinion of the pathologist—when he finally gets here—but . . .”
    “She was strangled here?” Stella said in disbelief, turning to give her boss a hand up the last of the steep ascent.
    “That’s the supposition.”
    “On a public beach?”
    “I know,” Hen said. She paused to draw a breath at the top of the bank. The smoking wasn’t kind to her lungs. “My first reaction was the same as yours, Stell, but I’m changing my mind. We can assume she was lying down, enjoying the sun, like most people are on a beach, and she had a windbreak around her head and shoulders, as the lifeguard stated. That means the killer was screened on three sides. He could choose his moment when no one was coming up the beach towards them.”
    “Not easy, “ Stella was bold enough to point out. “On a beach as crowded as that, people are going back and forth all the time, for a swim, or just to look at the water. And some of the sunbathers are stretched out with nothing else to do except watching others.”
    “You can’t see much through a windbreak. He could strangle her without anyone realising what he was up to. She’d be relaxed, maybe lying on her side with her eyes shut. Even asleep. If they arrived together, he’s already in position beside her. If not, he flops down as if he’s going to sunbathe with her. They’re lying on sand, so she wouldn’t hear him arrive. When he thinks no one is watching, he pulls the ligature over her head and tightens it before she knows what’s happening. If anyone did get a look, they could easily think they were snogging. Any sound she makes will be muffled. A beach is a place where no one gets excited if a woman screams.”
    “Even so.”
    “Don’t you buy it, Stell?”
    Stella gave a shrug that meant she was dubious, but couldn’t supply a more plausible theory. “There must have been people really close. They’re stretched out in their thousands on a gorgeous day like today.”
    “But they wouldn’t expect to be witnesses to a murder.