“I’m asking one of you to take this on.”
Ingeborg broke the silence. “We don’t know who it is, do we?”
“We should get an idea after we enter the victim’s flat. He lives over the pet shop in Union Passage. If there’s someone sharing it with him, a wife or partner, be ready to break the news sympathetically.”
“And if no one is at home?” Ingeborg said.
“Talk to the neighbours, look at the address book, files, letters or whatever, and get names. It could be his parents in this case. He was in his mid-twenties by the look of him.”
“They will have heard already, won’t they?” John Leaman said. “His name is all over the media this morning.”
“We still speak to his people. Whoever breaks the bad news will then become the family liaison officer.”
“Job like that needs the woman’s touch,” Leaman said.
Ingeborg snapped back: “Sexist. I was waiting for you to say that. What’s wrong with a man supplying the TLC for a change?”
“Enough,” Diamond said. “This is a job for you, Paul.”
Paul Gilbert nearly bit the end off the pen he was chewing. “Me?”
“You can handle it.”
“I’m not even married. Comforting some widow—I wouldn’t know how to start.”
“May not be a widow,” Leaman said. “Think about that.”
“May be his parents, like the boss says,” Ingeborg added. All too obviously she and Leaman were relieved to be spared one of the hardest of all duties a police officer has to perform.
Diamond hadn’t picked Gilbert randomly. The young man had been the junior member of the team for longer than was good for him, yet he was probably the same age as Perry had been, if not older. In more affluent times new recruits would have joined the team. Cuts in police numbers by successive governments produced this strange effect that a DC in his twenties was treated as the permanent new boy.
“So,” Leaman said, sitting taller now there was no need to keep his head down, “who gets to look inside Perry’s flat?”
“Not you,” Diamond said. “We have another operation underway in case any of you are forgetting. I need a senior officer to take charge while I deal with the shooting.”
“The skeleton?” The chance of an executive role had instant appeal for Leaman. “I don’t mind taking over if that’s what you’re saying.”
“It’s exactly what I’m saying, John.”
The unexpected honour brought a glow to Leaman’s cheeks. He’d long considered himself capable of heading a murder investigation. “Thanks, guv.”
“I mean taking over at Twerton.”
“Understood.”
“I’m not sure if you do understand. I’m talking about the dig.”
“Dig?”
“At the scene. I spent yesterday afternoon there. Didn’t Inge tell you?”
Ingeborg shook her head. “It was a busy time.”
“Six PCs with spades are out at Twerton searching for another body, a woman who went missing in the late nineties. They got down four feet in the first trench. Found a few household objects, but no human remains as yet.”
Most of the colour drained from Leaman’s face. “You want me out there?”
Diamond checked his watch. “They’ll be making a start about now. I told them to be there early.”
“It’s raining,” Leaman said looking towards the window. “Bucketing down.”
“That shouldn’t hold them up. They come prepared with wellies. It rained when I was there. Quite a cloudburst at one stage. Some water collected in the trench, but after it drains it’s easier to find things.”
Ingeborg said in an aside to Gilbert, “Suddenly the job of family liaison officer sounds quite appealing, eh, Paul?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Leaman asked. “Oversee the digging?”
“You said you don’t mind taking over. Take wellies with you. Waterproofs. An umbrella might not be such a good idea. The diggers could get stroppy if they see you under cover.”
“How deep are they supposed to go?”
“About another foot, but the going is slow at the level they are.”
“And if there’s nothing down there do I call it off?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You start another trench. Don’t look like that. It’s only a small garden.”
Others in the room were given jobs collecting information online. The autopsy wouldn’t be before next day, when Keith Halliwell would be back. As Diamond’s deputy he would attend. Normal service resumed.
Three of them drove into the city in Ingeborg’s small car. Because Union Passage is in a pedestrianised area, they were forced to park in the Podium and walk some distance through the downpour sharing one small pink umbrella. Things could have been worse. At about the same time John Leaman was squelching through mud at the building site. Nothing was said, but he was in their thoughts.
The narrow thoroughfare, twelve feet across, medieval in origin, appeared in early maps as Cockles Lane and Slaughterhouse Lane, and was rebuilt late in the eighteenth century by the city architect, Thomas Baldwin, who also designed the Pump Room and much else of note until he was sacked for refusing to let the corporation inspect his accounts. Close up—and you are forcibly close up in this congested walkway—the modern shopfronts make it appear much the same as any other twenty-first-century street. This morning its period charms had no appeal to the three detectives.
“Where’s this pet shop? I’m getting soaked,” Diamond said.
“You’re holding the umbrella,” Ingeborg pointed out. “Look at Paul.”
“There’s more of me. Do we know the name?”
“Fur All That’s Wonderful,” Gilbert said.
“Did you say fur?”
“Groan,” Ingeborg said.
They found it halfway along, close to the intersection with Northumberland Place. A poster for the fireworks was still in the window.
“Strange,” Ingeborg said. “I thought pets were upset by fireworks.”
“Let’s get in the dry,” Diamond said, pushing open the door.
The shopkeeper, a large blonde woman with owl-like eyes behind red-framed glasses, must have wondered what this trio had come to buy. They didn’t have the look of customers wanting to buy a kitten. In the state they were in, a sack of dry straw bedding might have been more to the point.
Diamond introduced himself and learned that he was addressing Deirdre Divine, the owner of the shop and the flat upstairs as well.
She’d heard about the shooting. “It’s tragic,” she said with all the sensitivity of someone reading the shipping forecast. “If I wasn’t dealing with life and death all the time, as I am in this line of work, I’d be crying my eyes out. Who would want to shoot Perry? He was a delightful man and a perfect tenant, the best I’ve ever had.”
Alert to his new responsibility as family liaison man, DC Gilbert asked, “Did he live alone?”
“Sadly, yes,” she said. “I offered to let him have a parrot or a budgie for company or even a small reptile. He wasn’t persuaded. Perry always said he was too busy to care for a pet.”
“Didn’t he have anyone else in his life? We need to find his next of kin.”
“Who would that be?”
“Parents? Family?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Visitors, then?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever noticed anyone. He had his own front door, and I don’t believe in prying. Most of his business was done on the phone or the computer as far as I could tell. He was a busy man.”
“Did he ever speak of any worries?” Diamond asked her.
“To me? Lord, no. He kept up with the rent, so I had no complaints.”
They were getting the impression Pe
rry didn’t confide much about his private life to his landlady.
“We need to see inside. Do you have a spare key?”
“It’s a smart lock.”
“Smart in what way?”
Ingeborg murmured, “Digital, guv.”
Miss Divine explained with a cryptic smile, “You have to know the combination for the push buttons.”
“And do you know it?”
“Of course I do. It’s my property. I thought it up.” She may indeed have thought it up, but she wasn’t ready to volunteer it. The smile hadn’t shifted.
“And?”
“There’s no point in having a security code if you give it away the first time you’re asked.”
“We are police officers, ma’am.”
“Hamsters.”
Diamond didn’t take offence. He’d been called worse, a lot worse. She was being playful, he decided. He indulged her with a grin. “We do have a job to do. I’m trying to save you the bother of going out in the rain to let us in.”
She was persuaded. “One ate one, one ate two. There’s no room for sentiment among pet-shop owners. All kinds of animals consume their young, hamsters especially. Do you follow me?”
“I do now.”
Outside in the rain, in front of Perry’s door, they ignored sentiment, thought of cannibal hamsters, and punched in 181182 and it worked. Facing them on the other side of the door was a flight of stairs. All the way up were posters of events Perry must have arranged: pop concerts, more fireworks, a fashion show and a celebrity football match.
The flat was open plan, with a double bed at the end farthest from the street and a separate area for lounging, with twin sofas, plasma TV and sound system. The computer shared a white desk with a printer, some local papers, neatly stacked, and a range of reference books including Who’s Who, The Good Hotel Guide and the Complete Book of the British Charts. The cooking area looked as if it wasn’t much used. In fact, the entire flat was so tidy it was hard to believe anyone lived there.
“You’d better check the computer, Inge. Paul, I suggest you start opening drawers. Letters, notes, addresses, like I said. I’ll see if there are phone messages. This guy shouldn’t be a mystery much longer.”
Having assigned the duties, Diamond started searching for a phone. Not obvious. He’d assumed there would be a landline. Now he supposed it would be a mobile. He tried the bedside table and the desk.
Gilbert was going through a chest of drawers. “He looks after his clothes well. So carefully folded they look new.”
“Maybe they are,” Ingeborg said. “He can afford it.”
“It’s almost obsessive,” Diamond said after looking into cupboards with the contents lined up like little soldiers. “And there isn’t much you can call personal.”
“I need a password,” Ingeborg said. “He’s strong on security.”
“Try Fixer.”
It didn’t work.
“Pyro.”
She used the keyboard again. “No joy. We may have to take the computer back to the office and get an expert working on it.”
Frustration was starting to set in. Diamond’s confident claim that Perry wouldn’t be a mystery much longer was looking threadbare already. “You’d think a man as active as he was would have an address book or a calendar,” the big man said.
“Phone,” Ingeborg said. “He’ll keep that stuff on his phone.” She didn’t add that it was high time Peter Diamond moved into the twenty-first century, but it was implicit in the way she spoke.
“That’s my point,” he said, rattled. “I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to find it.”
“He’ll have had it with him. Wasn’t there a mobile on the body?”
“We made a point of respecting the integrity of the scene. If there was one, it will either have been picked up by the SOCOs or gone to the mortuary.”
“Or taken by the killer.”
“You can trace a stolen phone.”
“If we knew the number, we might be able to.”
“People he was doing business with will know it.”
“Let me do some checking.” Ingeborg took out her own phone.
Diamond was already thinking the crucial facts about Perry wouldn’t be found here in the flat. “And I expect he owned a car and we need to find that,” he said to Gilbert. “He probably drove to the crescent and left it somewhere near. Parking was a nightmare on the night, but he will have got there early enough to go anywhere he wanted.”
“Charlotte Street car park was nearest,” Gilbert said. “Just a short walk away.”
“On second thoughts he may have used a taxi. Living here in the centre of town, where would you keep a private car?”
“I can ask Miss Divine.”
“Do that.”
With his two assistants occupied, Diamond returned to the unpromising job of searching the flat. He was puzzled by the absence of any obvious affluence. Perry had made a name for himself staging major entertainment events. Where there is mass participation there is money. Yet the wardrobe, when he looked in, had only two suits and some casual jackets, none of them with expensive labels. The four pairs of shoes or trainers looked more useful than fashionable.
If the money didn’t go on material luxuries, where was it spent?
He was getting an idea.
Beyond the bedroom was an open door to a shower room. To one side was a hand basin and above it a mirror and a glass shelf with brush and comb, aftershave, deodorant, electric toothbrush and floss sticks. Opposite was a wall-mounted medicine cabinet.
People’s pills and potions are almost always instructive but, once again, Perry seemed to have the basics and little else. Ibuprofen, indigestion pills, antihistamine, throat lozenges, sun oil, nail scissors and Band-aids.
He shut the door, disappointed. Tried a chest that contained bed linen, each item folded and stacked tidily, though not after Diamond had been through it.
Ingeborg was still on the phone.
He started opening the drawers of the desk where she was seated. Pens, Post-its, unused paper, envelopes, a stapler. Not the stuff he was looking for.
Well hidden, he decided. Perry would have realised Miss Divine knew the combination and could look inside the flat at any time.
If you didn’t want your landlady to find something, where would you keep it?
The kitchen area? He’d already concluded that the guy existed mainly on meals he microwaved. There wasn’t a toaster, a blender or a crockpot. The saucepans on the hob looked squeaky clean. The pedal bin was empty. There was little in the cupboard above the microwave except two mugs and several plates of different sizes, a packet of cornflakes, a cut loaf and teabags. The coffee was in a packet inside the fridge—which also contained milk, apple juice and two cartons of spread that Diamond opened, just to be certain.
Perry appeared to have achieved the ultimate in lean cuisine. He didn’t buy pasta, potatoes or eggs. Even Diamond, who lived a low-maintenance life when at home, sometimes cooked himself bacon and eggs. Two slices of back and two extra large ones. Actually with tomatoes. Throw in some mushrooms. And a sausage or two, not forgetting a slice of fried bread.
In fact, you would have wondered if anyone lived here at all were it not for the freezer below the fridge, stuffed with pre-cooked meals from Waitrose. He lifted them out and made sure nothing else was underneath. Then he ripped the packaging off each one and made sure it was what the label claimed before tossing them all back. They’d be no use to Perry now. No use to anyone, for who would want a dead man’s unused food?
He opened the microwave and ran his finger along the side. Definitely used on a regular basis.
A sigh was his private show of disappointment. It seemed his theory was unfounded. He couldn’t think where else to look. Back of the wardrobe, under the bed, behind the curtains? All c
hecked.
Ingeborg finished her call. “Guv.”
“Mm?”
“The SOCOs found a smartphone clipped to his belt. An iPhone 7 plus. Top of the range.”
“Where is it now?”
“With the MDE.”
“Have a heart, Inge.”
“Mobile device examiner. The crime scene team put it in an evidence bag and handed it in.”
“Who is this—anyone I know?”
“A young guy called Hector seconded from Bristol. I doubt whether any of us knows him.”
“He’d better be good. Soon as we get back we’ll look him up. I’m thinking we’ve done all we can in this place.”
“What were you searching for when I was phoning?”
“I had a thought, that’s all. There isn’t much evidence of heavy spending here, but he would have got large payouts for the events he arranged. Crossed my mind that most of it could have gone on drugs.”
“Why not?” Ingeborg said, eyes widening. “Worth checking, for sure. He was living a life on the edge. Setting up these shows had to be stressful. And he didn’t eat much, going by what’s in the fridge and the food cupboard. He was painfully thin and that’s often a sign.”
“Yep, but I made my search and found nothing.”
“What would he have used? Not heroin, surely? He wouldn’t want to get drowsy.”
“Coke, I expect. Supposed to make you alert and confident.”
“Where would he store it?”
“I’m no expert. I think they use plastic bags or containers. The main thing with cocaine is to keep it from getting moist, so it needs airtight storage in a cool place.”
“The freezer?”
“Not in this case. You saw me going through the packs of macaroni cheese and cottage pie. All innocent. My theory had better be put on hold. What’s that?”
Both of them turned at the sound of the door clicking.
“Me,” Gilbert said, freshly returned from downstairs. “I had to wait my turn. Someone had brought in a stray dog.”
“It’s a shop, not a dog pound.”
“Tell that to the lady who found the dog.”
Beau Death Page 21
