*
He was in Ocean View Walk, the double line of houses—you couldn’t exactly call it a street—between Ocean View Rise and the water. The other floaters’ heads popped out of gaps in walls as we passed, like curious animals’. Marlboro Man waved to us from a second-floor window.
The house had got as far as walls and roof, gray blocks heavy with tangled green creepers. The front garden was chest-high weeds and gorse, crowding up the drive and in at the empty doorway. We had to climb the rusted scaffolding, shaking creepers off our feet, and swing ourselves through a window-hole.
Marlboro Man said, “I wasn’t sure whether to . . . I mean, I know you were busy, sir, but you said to call you if we found anything that could be interesting. And this . . .”
Someone had, carefully and over plenty of time, turned the top floor of the house into his own private lair. A sleeping bag, one of the serious ones meant for semi-professional wilderness expeditions, weighted down at the bottom with a rough lump of concrete. Thick plastic sheeting tacked over the window-holes, to keep out the wind. Three two-liter bottles of water, neatly lined up against a wall. A clear plastic storage tub just big enough for a stick of Right Guard, a bar of soap, a washcloth, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. A dustpan and brush in one clean corner: no spiderwebs here. A supermarket bag holding another chunk of concrete, a couple of empty Lucozade bottles, a crumple of chocolate wrappers and a sandwich crust sticking out of squashed tinfoil. One of those plastic rain hoods that old women wear, hung on a nail in a beam. And a pair of black binoculars, lying on top of the sleeping bag next to their battered case.
They didn’t look particularly high-end, but then they hadn’t needed to be. The back window-holes looked straight down into Patrick and Jenny Spain’s lovely glass kitchen, just thirty or forty feet away. Larry and his gang were discussing something to do with one of the beanbags.
“Sweet Jaysus,” Richie said softly.
I didn’t say a word. I was so angry that all that would have come out was a roar. Everything I knew about this case had lifted itself high, heaved itself upside down and come slamming down on top of me. This wasn’t the lookout post for some hitman hired to get back money or drugs—a professional would have cleaned up before he did the job, we would never have known he had been there. This was Richie’s mentaller, bringing all his own trouble with him.
Patrick Spain was the one in a hundred, after all. He had done everything right. He had married his childhood sweetheart, they had made two healthy kids, he had bought a nice house and worked his arse off paying for it and packing it full and sparkling with all the stuff that would make it into the perfect home. He had done every single fucking thing he was supposed to do. Then this little piece of shit had strolled up with his cheap binoculars and nuked every atom of that to ashes, and left Patrick with nothing but the blame.
Marlboro Man was eyeing me anxiously, worried he had screwed up again. “Well well well,” I said coolly. “Looks like some of the heat’s off Patrick.”
Richie said, “It’s like a sniper’s nest.”
“It’s exactly like a sniper’s nest. All right: everybody out. Detective, ring your mates and tell them to pull back to the crime scene. Tell them to go casually, not like anything big’s happened, but go now.”
Richie raised his eyebrows; Marlboro Man opened his mouth, but something in my face made him shut it again. I said, “This guy could be watching us right now. That’s the one thing we know about him, isn’t it? He likes watching. I guarantee you he’s been hanging around all morning, waiting to see how we liked his handiwork.”
Rows of half-formed houses, right and left and straight ahead, crowding to gawp at us. The beach at our backs, all sand dunes and great clumps of hissing grass; the hills at either end, with the jagged lines of rocks at their feet. He could have gone to ground anywhere. Every way I turned felt like crosshairs on my forehead.
I said, “All the activity may have scared him into backing off for a while—if we’re lucky, he’s missed us finding this. But he’ll be back. And when he shows, we want him thinking his little hidey-hole is still safe. Because the first chance he gets, he’ll need to come up here. For that.” I nodded downwards at Larry and his team, moving around the bright kitchen. “I’d bet every cent I’ve got: he won’t be able to stay away.”