“Great!”
“I’ve been checking his files all day. It’s why I wasn’t in. You got my message, I hope? I needed to work alone.”
“What have you found, Inge?”
The words came in a torrent. “A file in a place where you wouldn’t go looking for it, among the administrative tools. It’s clearly been put there for a reason. It doesn’t even have a name, just a number, and it’s been stored among about ten others with numbers, but they must be a distraction for this one to hide among. They’re mostly empty or have a jumble of letters and numbers that he’s typed in at random.”
“You’re talking to a computer dummy, Inge.”
“I’m trying to use simple language, guv.”
“Just tell me what’s on the file.”
“I can’t. It’s encrypted.”
“Great.” This time he spoke the word ironically.
“But I can tell it’s nothing like the extraneous stuff. There’s something there for sure. Solid information that he’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide using an encryption tool that employs algorithms.”
“Can you decrypt it—if that’s the word?”
“It’s well beyond my level of competence but the data forensics unit could surely crack it.”
He sighed. “I can’t use police people, Inge. I’d have to explain what it was for and Georgina would be on my back straight away.”
“That’s a pain. Wouldn’t one of them do it unofficially?”
“I don’t know any of them well enough to ask a favour. They’re not my choice of drinking companions. We soon run out of things to talk about. They might respond to you, the blokes, I mean. In fact, I’m certain they would.”
Mistake.
“Don’t start me off,” she warned him. “You ought to know by now I’m not going down that route.”
He felt the sting of her disapproval down the phone line.
Rapid rethink. “Before computers took over the world we used to have a young guy called Alex who dealt with the queries. This would have been before your time. He was red-hot, and he was at least nine parts human.”
“Did he give up?”
“He was transferred to another station and I heard later he couldn’t take any more, so he left.”
“A personality clash?”
“The nature of the work. Not many last long as police geeks these days. They’re forced to spend most of their time trawling through sickening footage of child porn, rape and every kind of extreme sexual behaviour and if they can’t stand that they find themselves doing counter-terrorism—torture and beheadings. Alex jacked it in for some kind of job outside the police. Industrial espionage, I think. But I’m sure I can track him down and see if this interests him. He’s discreet.”
“He’ll want a fee, no doubt.”
“I’ll deal with that. Bring in the box of tricks tomorrow and we can see if we get lucky.”
Paloma had stepped out of the room while the call was going on. She returned wearing her jacket. “Was it a call worth taking?”
“It was. We could be on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“Don’t get carried away,” she said. “Normal life goes on. I just opened a tin for Raffles. He was hungry.”
“He was fooling you. He had his supper two hours ago. He’ll get overweight.”
“Look who’s talking.” She zipped up her jacket.
“Aren’t you staying the night?” he asked.
“With a back patient? You’re joking.”
T oday I’m rather pleased with myself. A situation has arisen giving me the chance to insure my secrets against discovery. It’s the conjuror’s trick of misdirection, simple, but effective. The nice thing is that I am uniquely placed to pull this off. I’ve baited the trap and we’ll see if it works. No worry if it doesn’t.
18
Eight-fifteen next morning found Diamond at the Guildhall in Bath High Street attending something he wouldn’t normally have dreamed of going near, a gathering of geeks called the Techie Brekkie. He was on the trail of Alex, the one-time IT problem-solver for Bath Police. Early morning enquiries through a website called BathSpark had suggested this was where Alex was likely to be.
It was a good thing Ingeborg had come too. Mingling with this lot would be next to impossible for him. Aside from the fact that he was the only man in a suit and their average age was about twenty-five, he wasn’t likely to hold up well in conversation. Plenty was going on, serious networking. This was a quarterly opportunity for computer slaves to emerge from behind their screens for a brief respite with fellow sufferers—the chance to meet real people. They had embraced it in numbers.
“Fancy a bacon butty?” Ingeborg said.
“Better not. I’ll need to shake hands with Alex when I spot him.”
“They won’t do handshakes,” she said. “High fives, more like.”
“Not with a bacon butty.”
“What does he look like?” she asked.
“Average height. Dark, shoulder-length hair in those days. This lot seem to shave their heads.”
“The name badges might help.” Everyone including themselves had a blue ID on a cord. Diamond’s just said Pete. They’d asked if he belonged to an organisation and he thought Bath Police might be off-putting.
“We’d better move in and start looking,” Ingeborg said. “They start their discussion soon.”
“Jesus Christ, I want to be out before then.”
Alex was one of the last to arrive and he spotted Diamond first. He’d changed his image, clipped the hair from the sides of his head and grown a mohawk on top. He was wearing shades. “I had to look twice,” he said.
He had to look twice?
“No disrespect, Mr. Diamond, but I wouldn’t have placed you here in a million years.”
All three slipped away from the brekkie through a door marked the never bored room. There wasn’t much time for catching up on the last ten years or however long it had been. Alex soon understood why they’d come looking for him. He agreed straight away to see if he could help. He gave them a card with his contact details and Ingeborg passed him the “box of tricks,” as Diamond had called it: a USB flash drive containing the encrypted file.
“We can’t pay you anything up front,” Diamond said.
Alex flashed his teeth. “So what’s new?”
The aroma of bacon in the Techie Brekkie had got Diamond’s juices going.
“A lot has happened since yesterday morning,” he told Ingeborg. “We need to touch base.”
The nearest base was Café Retro, on the corner of York Street. He ordered the Big Bath special, she the granola and yoghurt.
“Don’t stand on ceremony,” he said when hers arrived first. “Get stuck in.”
There was plenty to tell. She hadn’t even heard about Pellegrini’s taxi ride to Little Langford on the evening of Cyril’s death.
“That’s the clincher, guv,” she said. “Got to be.”
She understood right away why it was so vital to speak to Jessie the housekeeper. “When she walked in he must have had the shock of his life. Do you think he murdered her as well?”
“No,” he said. “She was there next morning. She found Cyril dead in bed and called the doctor.”
“She’s the only witness, then.”
“Right. And she won’t even know he was murdered.”
“Can we be certain he was?”
“Why else did Pellegrini go there? It’s like the other cases. An old man dies in his own bed and it gets put down as natural. My best guess is that they had a drink and he popped something in Cyril’s glass.”
“Poison?”
“Sleeping tablets of some sort.”
“Would that be enough?”
“Mix them with alcohol and they can be lethal. Cyril would have gone
to bed feeling drowsy and never woken up.”
“But Jessie coming back early wasn’t in the script.” Ingeborg’s hand went to her mouth. “Guv, I have a horrible feeling about this. How long ago was it? Six weeks?”
“More like seven now.”
“Time enough for him to have caught up with her and killed her. Don’t we have any idea where she went after Cyril’s death?”
“Keith spent most of yesterday trying to trace her through the care agencies. Difficult, without a surname. We got nowhere.”
“Maybe she got the job independently.”
“Possibly. We haven’t given up. He’s at Little Langford knocking on doors as we speak.” He paused as the Big Bath special was put in front of him. “This is what I call a breakfast.”
“She’ll have left the village, won’t she?” Ingeborg said.
“I’m sure of that, but someone may be able to tell us more. Her surname or what she was planning to do next.”
“Did she have a phone?”
“I expect so. But she took it with her.”
“I’m thinking Cyril must have stored her number on his own phone.”
“If he did, his niece Hilary slung it out with all the other junk. She was doing a house clearance, a wholesale clearance. Hilary is a force of nature, a whirlwind. The place was bare except for the heaviest furniture when I got there. The only personal item left was a plastic hairbrush we found under Jessie’s bed. And I know what you’re about to ask me.”
“DNA?”
“There were a few blonde hairs caught in the bristles. I already sent the brush to be analysed. It must have been under that bed at least six weeks. I don’t know how long DNA survives.”
Ingeborg was better informed. “The best results come if the follicle is still attached. That’s where the living cells are found. There’s still a chance of getting mitochondrial DNA from the shaft of a hair.”
“Dyed hair?”
“No difference.”
“Anyway, the result isn’t back yet.”
“Let’s be positive,” she said.
“I’d rather have a name to work with. A DNA profile is bugger all use unless we can compare it with another.”
“She could be on the national database.”
“We’re talking about a carer here, Inge. If Jessie had a criminal record she wouldn’t be in the job.”
“Got to be checked, though. It’s vital that we trace her.”
“No argument about that.”
* * *
When Ingeborg drove back to Keynsham to catch up on her CID duties, Diamond remained in Bath. “If Georgina asks for me, tell her I’m having another look at the accident site,” he’d told her.
“Is that what you’re really up to?”
“It’s what you tell Georgina, okay?”
Left alone, he made his way on foot to Green Park Station, a place no longer of interest to railway buffs except for its ironwork architecture. The last train was seen there half a century ago. The Beeching cuts brought quietus and for years the site was a soot-stained, decaying embarrassment. Regeneration came in 1982–4, courtesy of Sainsbury’s, who built their supermarket, cleaned the entire Victorian terminus and installed shops, a car park and a farmers’ market where the locomotives had once steamed in.
Diamond wasn’t there for the railway history but to look up one of Bath’s characters: the watercress man. Garth Ogle sold nothing but watercress and watercress products from a market stall. The cress came fresh in bunches or processed and packaged in a variety of forms, as soup, pesto, oil, sausages, ice-cream, a range of cosmetics and even gin infused with the stuff. Some of the sausages were being cooked on a Primus and smelt good, but even a man of Diamond’s capacity couldn’t face one after the Big Bath special.
Few of Garth’s ritzy customers knew what Diamond knew: that the watercress man had once been a guest of Her Majesty and had drawn up his business plan in Erlestoke Prison while doing time for armed robbery. All credit to him for turning his life around. And even more for remaining loyal. Since going straight he had stayed in touch with his former associates.
Diamond caught Garth’s eye over the head of a little old lady buying soup. There was a swift glance left and right to see if any other police were about. The customer said something about the scarcity of watercress soup in all the other shops and then it was Diamond’s turn.
“Good to see you doing so well, Garth.”
“It’s ticking over, Mr. D.” For brand identity, the watercress man dressed entirely in green, which happened to be no different from his last prison uniform. “What will you have today?”
“I might sample the ice cream, but I’d also like some help.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Your help?”
“The ice cream. You’ll like it.”
“No, that’s new to me. How much?”
“A small tub? To you, one fifty.”
“I’ll take one. And a small tub of help.”
“That’ll cost you more, depending what you want.”
“I want to find Larry Lincoln.”
Garth’s face creased as if he’d been struck. “You surprise me.”
“Why?”
“No one goes looking for Larry. He comes looking for them.”
“Where does he hang out these days?”
Garth indulged in some displacement activity, rearranging the day lotions and face cleansers.
“Larry Lincoln,” Diamond said, to get his attention again.
“Keep your voice down, Mr. D. You never know who might be listening.”
“Would you rather I talked about liver fluke disease and how you get it?”
“Oh Christ.” Garth slid aside the glass lid of his small fridge and took out a tub. “All of mine is cultivated cress, guaranteed clean, not wild. He’s not in trouble, is he? I wouldn’t want him to get the idea I shopped him.”
“It’s a routine enquiry.”
“Like you always say.”
“The main man is someone else,” Diamond said. “Larry is just a bit player. I wouldn’t worry if I were you, but this may ease your mind.” He placed two twenty-pound notes on the counter.
Garth eyed them as if they were liver fluke worms invading his stall.
“And here’s another to pay for the ice cream.”
Garth took it and picked up the others. “If I were you, I’d go for a drink in the Shot Fox about eleven.”
Diamond nodded his thanks. “Do you by any chance have a plastic spoon to go with this?”
He took it to one of the benches in Kingsmead Square and decided he’d made a mistake. The soup would have been a better choice on this raw April morning. The bench was metal and was rapidly lowering his body temperature before he even started on the ice cream. He took out his mobile and pressed a number.
“Me.”
Keith Halliwell’s voice said, “I know it’s you, guv. You came up on the display.”
“Is this a good moment?”
“Good as any. I’m between houses.”
“Anything to report?”
“It’s freezing here.”
“I know that.”
“Some of the neighbours spoke to her occasionally, called her Jess or Jessie without finding out her full name. She’d been there over a year. She was just the latest in a long line of housekeepers. They didn’t last long, most of them. The situation wasn’t what they were used to, being so isolated, and Cyril was always on the scrounge. They liked him at first but it wore off when he asked for money; I suppose to fund his betting. He wasn’t their paymaster, you see. Their wage was paid by the trust.”
“Have you been to the cottage?”
“I had a look through the windows. It’s empty now. Hilary must have finished. There are signs of a b
onfire in the garden, just ashes.”
“Not human, I hope.”
The Shot Fox was a shabby pub in a side street off the Upper Bristol Road, near the river. Diamond had last been in there when it was called something else. To his knowledge it had changed names twice since then. The new identity might not last long. The board outside, with its image of a dead fox hanging from a wire by its rear legs, wasn’t much of an invitation to go in.
Diamond thought at first he was the only living soul inside. He stood for some minutes before a youthful barman rose by stages behind the bar: head, shoulders, then full torso.
“Sorry, mate. I was down the cellar changing a keg. What’ll you have?”
“Actually I’m working.” He showed his warrant card. “Does Larry Lincoln come in at all these days?”
The barman tensed at the name and then said, “I wouldn’t know.”
“You mean you know but you wouldn’t care to say.”
“I do three days a week, that’s all.”
“I wasn’t asking about your employment, but as you’ve brought it up I hope you’re fully taxed and insured. What’s your name?”
“Steve. I don’t know every customer that comes in, that’s all I’m saying.”
“You said a lot more with your body language when I spoke Larry’s name. It’s obvious you know who he is, so stop wriggling and give me a straight answer. He drinks here lunchtimes, right?”
“Not every day,” Steve—if that was his real name—said.
Diamond pulled out a stool and perched on it. “I’ll wait for him. What bitters do you have? Draw me a half of Directors. And then I’ll be watching you, just so you aren’t tempted to use a phone.”
The trail had better not go cold here. Cyril Hardstaff had become central to the crimes under investigation and if he was really being pursued by Larry Lincoln, his situation had been desperate enough to fuel a major crime.
Steve the barman had filled the glass and taken the money and was a picture of unease, biting his thumbnail. When someone else came in, he twitched like a horse under attack from flies.
The newcomer wasn’t Lincoln. He didn’t buy a drink or say anything. He was carrying a metal case the size and shape of a rifle. Without as much as a glance, he crossed the bar, opened a door and was heard mounting a staircase.
Another One Goes Tonight Page 25
