The Order of Things (26 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Because we’ve found our Mr Bentner.’ The smile was glacial. ‘Or rather, he’s found us.’

She said that Alois Bentner was currently occupying Room 115 at the Exeter Arms across the road from police headquarters. He’d booked in late last night under his own name and phoned first thing to offer his services. Just now he was being babysat by a uniformed PC. The last Houghton had heard, he’d declined breakfast and was reading a paperback called
The First Circle.

‘We’re looking for a full account, Jimmy.’ She could hear Nandy out in the corridor. ‘Yours, I think. Take the bloody man to Heavitree.’

The news that
Buzzard
’s elusive prime suspect had chosen to break cover galvanised the MIR. Detectives sat at their desks, their PCs abandoned, trading thoughts about his motivation. The younger ones thought he had balls. Evading capture for more than a week when your face was all over the media was itself close to impossible. To then make your way back to a hotel a stone’s throw from police headquarters – still incognito – was deeply cool. It spoke not of surrender but of something else, something closer to a taunt. The guy had outmanoeuvred them. He’d been streets ahead from the start. And now he was taking the piss. Older heads in the room weren’t so sure. Maybe he was simply knackered. Maybe his time on the run had brought him to the point of confession. Maybe this – at last – was endgame.

Suttle wanted no part of this debate. He read carefully through the notes from the Scenes of Crime team responsible for boshing Bentner’s house, reminding himself of how little forensic evidence they had to go on. There was nothing that directly tied the man in Room 115 to the butchered body in his bedroom. As ever, it would be a question of the timeline and the painstaking assembly of every particle of evidence gathered to date. That, plus whatever leverage he could conjure from establishing the right relationship. Everything he’d learned about Alois Bentner put this man a little further out of reach. Bridging that gap wouldn’t be easy.

He phoned the Custody Sergeant at Heavitree police station and briefed him on the situation. The news that Bentner had kipped across the road from police headquarters drew a soft chuckle.

‘Serious player, eh? Can’t wait to meet the gentleman.’

Bentner had yet to be formally arrested. Suttle would only do that after he’d conferred with Houghton and Nandy. The later they left the arrest, the more time they’d give themselves in the interview room. No way was Bentner leaving the hotel until
Buzzard
was ready.

Twenty-Nine

T
UESDAY, 17
J
UNE 2014, 10.32

Lizzie had been awake since dawn. Since the moment she moved in, The Plantation had been her sanctuary, the key to a new door in her life. Now it felt like a prison cell. Gemma Caton, Lizzie thought, wasn’t a woman who left business unfinished. She knew where Lizzie lived. By now she may have sussed that this nosy journalist had more than a passing interest in Alois Bentner. And so, sooner rather than later, she’d come calling. Before that happened, Lizzie told herself, she had – somehow – to snatch another little piece of Operation
Buzzard
and bring this story to an end.

Downstairs in the kitchen Lizzie studied the photo she’d taken in Michala’s bedroom last night. All she knew for sure was that the woman in the wetsuit must have played a part in Michala’s life. Maybe they had been lovers. Maybe this hunky kitesurfer was yet another courtier in Gemma Caton’s waterside ménage, a splash of rich colour after the pale delights of her Danish waif. Either way, Lizzie had to find out more. She recognised Exmouth beach from her days in the rowing club. The moment the wind blew, the place was thick with kitesurfers. She’d go down there later, make an enquiry or two, see if the face on her mobile drew a nod of recognition.

In the meantime she needed to know a lot more about Gemma Caton. She fetched her laptop from the living room and settled down again at the kitchen table. A couple of keystrokes took her to Amazon. She typed ‘Native Indian Rituals on the Pacific Coast’
into the search box
.
The book was only available from a single supplier in Seattle, and even express international delivery would take three days. She frowned, moving the cursor across the screen. By then, she thought, I may have found the mystery kitesurfer. The cursor settled on Buy.

Done.

Jimmy Suttle drove Alois Bentner to Heavitree police station. To Suttle’s surprise, the pavement outside the nick was swarming with media, TV crews as well as photographers. Bentner was a big man, sturdy, with a tumble of greying curls that lapped the collar of his shirt. He wore glasses and a full beard. According to the PC at the hotel, he’d already admitted to sleeping rough, but eight days of life in the wild appeared to have done him no harm at all. On the contrary, for an alleged recluse he appeared to be getting a kick out of all the attention. As he pushed through the scrum of bodies, a shout came from a reporter at the back.

‘Did you kill her, Mr Bentner?’

The bluntness of the question stopped him in his tracks. He turned towards the reporter and looked him in the eye. He was taking his time. From where Suttle was standing, he seemed to appreciate that his answer would be all over the rolling news channels within minutes.

‘There are life and death issues here we ought to be discussing,’ he growled. ‘Whether I killed my partner isn’t one of them.’

The crowd parted. Suttle shepherded Bentner through the doors of the police station, and led him through to the Custody Suite. This time, arrested on suspicion of murder, he had nothing to say.

Lizzie was in Exmouth by mid-morning. To her relief a brisk wind had brought half a dozen kitesurfers to the crescent of beach that fronted the dunes towards Orcombe Point. Four of them were already on the water, criss-crossing the offshore chop, using the bigger waves to launch themselves into spectacular jumps. One of them soared higher, buoyed aloft by the huge sail. Lizzie caught his wild yelp, pure exaltation, then watched as he got the landing wrong and ended in a tangle of arms and legs.
That’s me
, Lizzie thought,
if I’m not careful
.

The first guy she approached had already been out on the water. Carefully folding his sail, he spared the time to look at Lizzie’s mobile. Then came a shake of the head and the news that he was new to the area. He’d heard about the beach from mates, checked out the forecast and driven down from Bristol that very morning. He was due back at work in the early afternoon. When Lizzie asked what he did for a living he pulled a face.

‘I’m a copper,’ he said. ‘For my sins.’

The other surfer on the beach was a woman. This time it was more promising. She lived locally and thought she recognised the face in the photo from a while back but couldn’t be sure. Best to ask at the kite shop, she said, nodding back towards the marina.

The shop was empty when Lizzie arrived. She looked around then spotted the bell on the counter. A couple of rings brought a youth clattering down the stairs. With his shorts and his tan he might have stepped off the beach.

Lizzie introduced herself. She said she was a freelance journalist working on a story about Exmouth. She wanted to put a name to a photo she’d acquired. She showed him her mobile.

‘That’s Kelly,’ he said at once.

Lizzie heard the door to the street open behind her. She turned to find herself looking at a woman in her forties. She had a sheepdog on a lead. She called the boy Marcus. There was a delivery expected. Had it arrived?

Lizzie looked from one face to the other. There was a definite likeness: the same blue eyes, the same blond curls, the same hint of determination in the strength of the jawline.

‘Where did you get that?’ The woman was staring at the photo.

‘A friend gave it to me.’

‘Like who?’

Lizzie didn’t answer. Instead she asked about Kelly. Was she still kitesurfing? Did she live locally? If so, where might Lizzie find her?

‘
Find
her?’ The woman sounded incredulous. ‘You’re telling me you don’t know what happened?’

A five-minute drive took Lizzie to an area of grassland overlooking the estuary. The water was protected here, and there were more kitesurfers, less accomplished, trying to master their rigs. Lizzie sat behind the wheel of her Audi, wondering whether Michala too had fallen in love with the sport. Was this how she’d come to meet Kelly? And find a space for her on her bedside table?

Lizzie’s iPad was in her bag. She fired it up and tapped in a Google enquiry: ‘Kelly kitesurf Exmouth’
.
Within seconds she found herself looking at a list of entries. One of them took her to the Exmouth
Journal
,
the town’s local paper. The article was headed WINDSURFER TRAGEDY AT SEA
.
Accompanying it was the face on her mobile, another grin for the camera but this time no kiss.

Quickly Lizzie scanned the text. Kelly Willmott, thirty-one, had been posted missing after failing to turn up for a drink with a friend. The friend, unnamed, knew she’d been planning to windsurf earlier. She’d waited and waited, made a few check calls and then dialled 999. A joint police and coastguard search had located Kelly’s car on Exmouth seafront. Her rig and wetsuit were missing. A helicopter was scrambled and joined the local lifeboat for a search but neither found any trace of Kelly. Three days later, in a separate story, a trawler picked up a kitesurf sail identified as Kelly’s. The date on the story was 21 December last year. Kelly’s body, it appeared, was never found.

Never found?
Lizzie looked up for a moment, wishing she knew somebody who could put all this information in context, somebody who understood about wind direction and tidal flows, someone – in short – who could give her some idea how to navigate the no man’s land between a simple accident and something more sinister. Jimmy, she knew, would be useless. He’d never expressed the least interest in anything to do with watersports.

Briefly she toyed with trying to contact some of the people she’d rowed with. A handful had become mates at the time, but her memories of that period of her life were ugly, all the more so because they led to a man called Tom Pendrick. He too had disappeared at sea, only to reappear on her mobile phone months later, texting from a beach in Thailand. Jimmy, she knew, still blamed him for the collapse of their marriage, and God knows he might be right. No way did she want to revisit any of that.

Which left Michala. She’d obviously known Kelly Willmott. And just now, if Lizzie was to find out the truth about Alois Bentner, that relationship might offer crucial evidence. Last night Gemma Caton had seriously frightened her. That she’d played some role in Bentner’s disappearance, maybe even Harriet Reilly’s death, seemed more and more likely. Michala might therefore turn out to be the key to this puzzle. And given the choice between talking to the
Buzzard
squad or to her guest from last night, Lizzie suspected she’d choose the latter.

Michala’s number was still on Lizzie’s directory. She answered on the third ring.

‘It’s me, Lizzie Hodson. I think we ought to meet.’

The first interview session with Alois Bentner began after lunch. He’d conferred with his solicitor, who’d brought sandwiches from the nearby Waitrose, washed down with coffee from the machine in the corridor. Bentner’s solicitor was a partner in an Exeter practice Suttle knew well, a waspish thirty-something single mother with a reputation for plain speaking. Suttle asked Golding to handle disclosure, something of a formality because
Buzzard
had so little in the way of hard evidence. When he returned, minutes later, Golding was looking glum.

‘She’s saying this is a waste of time, skip. Hers and ours.’

‘And Bentner?’

‘I showed him the scene photos. He refused to look at the shots of the victim. He’s not a happy man.’

Golding was right. The formalities over, Suttle opened the interview by asking Bentner to describe the exact nature of his relationship with Harriet Reilly.

‘We were together,’ he said. ‘You’d know that. You’ll have checked. Her place sometimes. Other times mine.’

‘You saw a lot of each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘You described her as your partner outside.’

‘That’s right. She was.’

‘Close, then.’

‘Of course. In every sense.’

He confirmed they went away together whenever the opportunity arose. Brazil. The States. Europe. The odd expedition up to Scotland.

‘Why there? Why Scotland?’

‘Because it’s one of the few wild places left. That’s where you go when you want to turn your back on all this shit.’ He gestured up at the window, at the incessant roar of traffic grinding up the hill from the city centre.

‘As a matter of interest, who tipped the media off?’ This from Golding.

‘I did. Last night. From the hotel. It’s easy. It’s like everything else these days. You phone a number. You give them a name. You tell them you’re giving yourself up next morning, and if there’s money in it they’ll all appear. Everything’s for sale. Including me. And you know what? It’s because I’m the bad guy. You’ve done a great job already. That passport photo you used? Doctor Death? A hundred years ago that would have had me hanging from a lamp post. Life’s all assumptions, because people love the easy life. Except one morning we’re all going to wake up dead.’

Suttle assumed the latter comment was an invitation to discuss global warming. He ignored it.

‘You think we’ve been prejudicial?’

‘I think you’ve made your minds up.’

‘Just as well you’re here then.’

‘Sure. Why else would I have come?’

Touché. Suttle was beginning to warm to this man. Nothing in his manner betrayed a scintilla of anxiety or self-doubt. He didn’t really need the services of his solicitor. He was here to correct a misconception or two. In the first place about Harriet Reilly. And afterwards, if there was the time and the opportunity, about one or two other issues.