The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey Read Free Book Online Page A

water.’
    ‘Horrible.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I had no idea. And this happened at sea?’
    ‘Not in the way you mean,’ Hen Mallin said.
    ‘I don’t follow you.’
    ‘You’re assuming she was attacked on a ship. We don’t think so. Human skin immersed in water for any length of time gets bleached and wrinkled. It used to be called washerwoman’s hand, but these days we don’t use the term. This woman’s skin was in good condition, wet from the waves, and no more. We think the attack happened close to the beach.’
    ‘I can’t believe this.’
    ‘It seems she was in the water with her killer and held under until she stopped breathing. Now do you see why your recall of the scene is so important?’
    She released a large, shaky breath. And nodded.
    Hen Mallin pressed on with her questions. ‘You found the body at the base of the breakwater, right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘As you pointed out, they stand ten or twelve feet high, those breakwaters. On the one side, that is. On the other, the stones are stacked almost to the top, so you don’t see much timber at all. It’s the action of the tide, dragging the stones from under one breakwater and heaping them against the next one.’
    Jo waited for her to get to the point.
    ‘And the sea was quite rough. Had been for some hours. Do you follow me? If the body had been washed up, it wouldn’t have got where you found it.’
    It was as if they were questioning her account. ‘That’s where it was.’
    ‘So it looks as if the tide went out and the body was left there, more or less where she drowned. That would explain why it was on that side of the breakwater.’
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘You didn’t find any clothes nearby?’
    ‘No. Why?’ She knew the question was stupid as soon as it left her mouth, but all this had come as a shock.
    ‘She’s not going to be on a public beach in no more than her knickers.’
    ‘There weren’t any clothes that I could see.’
    ‘You must have wondered where they were, surely, finding a poor dead woman almost naked.’
    ‘I don’t know what I thought. I was very upset when I discovered what it was I’d found.’
    ‘You didn’t look around, then?’ Hen Mallin’s brown eyes regarded her with disbelief, if not disapproval.
    Jo felt annoyed by the question. ‘I’m not an expert like you. I thought she’d been washed up by the tide. I’m only the person who happened to find her.’ She almost added that they were making her feel like a suspect, but she stopped herself in time. ‘Was she . . . ?’
    ‘Raped? Apparently not. The signs weren’t there, but who can say what was in the mind of the killer? Something that starts out as sex play can turn ugly if the woman doesn’t welcome it.’
    These words, ‘raped,’ ‘killer,’ ‘sex play,’ and ‘ugly’ struck Jo with near-physical force. ‘Do you think they knew each other, then? They went to the beach together for a swim?’
    ‘That’s our present assumption.’
    ‘And he held her under and she drowned?’
    ‘He, or she. We consider every option.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why was she attacked?’ Hen Mallin turned up her palms. ‘No one can say yet. The killer could have planned it, expecting she’d be taken for some unfortunate woman who fell overboard. You understand why I’m asking if you remember anything from the scene?’
    ‘Who was she?’
    ‘We don’t know yet. She could be local. Equally she could have come from miles away. Or been brought there by her killer.’
    ‘Poor woman.’
    ‘Yes. Whoever she was, her luck ran out that weekend. Cast your mind back, Jo. Who did you see along the front?’
    ‘Nobody I knew.’
    ‘That isn’t what I’m asking. I don’t expect names. I want your recollection of everyone you noticed.’
    ‘That’s hard.’
    ‘Think for a bit. Take your time.’
    She frowned. The finding of the body had pushed everything before that moment into a hazy, unimportant background. For much of the walk she’d been absorbed in her own