The House Sitter by Peter Lovesey Read Free Book Online

suspect?” a youngish DC asked.
    “Because he left the scene, you mean?”
    A sergeant across the room said dismissively, “He called the lifeguard. We can rule him out.”
    “Not yet, we can’t,” Hen said. “It’s not unknown for the perpetrator to blow the whistle. Ask any fire investigator. In a high proportion of arson cases the informant is the guy who started the fire. They think it draws suspicion away from them.”
    “Does that hold for murder as well?”
    “I said it’s not unknown, sunshine. Let’s say Smith is our principal witness. I want to talk to all three members of that family and anyone else who was on that stretch of beach. I’m going on the local TV news tonight—by which time we should know for sure if Shiena Wilkinson is our victim.”
    The Smiths lived on a housing estate in Crawley, close to Gatwick Airport where Mike was manager of a bookshop—the terminal bookshop, as he called it in his darker moods. As usual after the weekend mayhem, Monday had been chaotic, with the shop still cluttered with unsold Sunday papers, two staff off sick (hungover, Mike suspected), three mighty boxes of the latest Stephen King to find shelf-room for, a couple of publishers’ reps wanting to show their wares, the phone forever ringing and a problem with one of the tills. He wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind when he finally got home at six thirty.
    For Olga, also, the day had been stressful. She worked on a checkout in the local Safeway, an early shift that freed her in time to collect Haley from school at three thirty. At lunchtime in the staffroom, she had seen the Sun’s headline STRANGLED ON THE BEACH, and was appalled to discover it referred to the dead woman at Wightview Sands.
    “I’ve been waiting all afternoon to talk to you,” she said as soon as Mike came in. “I tried calling the shop, but I couldn’t get through.”
    “Something up?” he said without much interest.
    “This.” She held the paper up to her chest, watching for the headline to make its impact.
    “You think I haven’t seen that? We sell papers—remember?”
    “It’s the woman we found, Mike. It says Wightview Sands. They’re appealing for witnesses.”
    His offhand manner changed abruptly. “You haven’t phoned the police?”
    “Not yet. I thought you’d like to speak to them.”
    “Whatever for?”
    She stared at him. “I told you. They want to hear from witnesses.” She slapped the paper on the table in front of him.
    “That isn’t us. We didn’t see anything.”
    “I spoke to her, for God’s sake. She was sitting right in front of us.”
    “About what? What did you say?”
    “I don’t know. Something about Haley.”
    “What?”
    “Her high spirits, her energy, something like that.”
    “That’s all?”
    “It was just a few friendly words.”
    He tossed the paper across the room onto a chair. “What use is a few friendly words? They want witnesses to a murder, not people making small talk. You’d be done for wasting their time.”
    “That isn’t true, Mike. It says they want anyone who was there to come forward, however little they saw. We can tell them what time she arrived—soon after us—and that she didn’t have anyone with her. No, hold on, there was that guy who tried to chat her up.”
    “I didn’t see anyone.”
    “Black T-shirt. Tall, dark, with curly hair. This was before lunch. You were asleep. She wasn’t amused, and he walked off, not too pleased. It didn’t amount to anything, but . . .”
    “If it didn’t amount to anything, forget it.”
    “They may want to know about him. She seemed to know him.”
    “OK, she recognised someone. Big deal.”
    “He didn’t upset her, or anything. She was in a cheerful state of mind, or she wouldn’t have spoken to me.”
    “We know bugger all about her state of mind,” he said, troubled by her old-fashioned faith in the system. “You can’t read anything into a couple of words exchanged on a beach. Forget it. Other