Deep in his gut he knew more work needed to be done before he could charge Pellegrini.
“I finally finished checking the laptop and there was nothing more of importance,” Ingeborg said. “If I never have to read another sentence about old trains, I won’t feel deprived.”
They were having a brainstorming session, as Diamond had put it, at Verona. He’d started on a late breakfast and the other two were watching him eat, Ingeborg over a skinny latte and Halliwell a cappuccino.
“His online diary is as good as a confession,” Halliwell said. “Talk about a smoking gun.”
“Tainted evidence, unfortunately,” Ingeborg said. “We can’t just let ourselves into people’s houses and steal the data from their computers.”
“No problem.”
Diamond stopped his chewing to give a faint smile.
“What do you mean by that?” Ingeborg said.
Halliwell wasn’t smiling. “We can use some guile here and go through the motions of arresting him and applying for a warrant to search his house and workshop.”
“On what evidence?”
Halliwell carried on as if he hadn’t heard. “Then we can take away his hard disk and get the diary decrypted all over again and in the eyes of the law we’ve got him bang to rights.”
“You’re talking as if search warrants are discount vouchers,” Ingeborg said. “They don’t hand them out in shopping malls. There’s a small requirement known as reasonable grounds. All we can offer is strong suspicion.”
“What’s your suggestion, then?”
“Belt up and listen, both of you,” Diamond said, putting down his knife and fork and wiping his lips with the paper tissue that came with the meal. “Something is seriously wrong with our thinking. We’ve been duped.”
Some of what he revealed in the next few minutes was known to them already. His visit the night before to the new thermal bath to surprise Gerry Onslow had been relayed already by Richard Palmer. But they hadn’t heard about Onslow’s startling assertion that Maria had worked as a prostitute in Oldfield Park right up to the time of her death. And they didn’t know about Diamond’s early morning visit to Darwin Road to confirm the truth of the claim. He told them what he’d heard from the neighbour.
“Not possible,” Ingeborg said. “We know she was living in Little Langford.”
“Onslow is lying,” Halliwell said.
The pair of them were united now.
“I thought the same. That’s why I went to the house to check, and everything he told me is true,” Diamond said. He stopped to let the waitress take his plate. “But there’s more. Just as I was about to start the car I looked up at the window of number 22 and someone pushed it open and looked out. I left the car straight away and hurried over and got a torrent of abuse because she thought I was a would-be punter disturbing her sleep.”
“This was the redhead?”
He nodded. “When I said I was police she thought better of it and came down and opened the door.”
“Was she dressed?”
“I’m not going into that. I fussed her up a bit, got invited in, made her a coffee and I had no difficulty getting her version of what really happened to Maria. These two were both on the game and sharing the house, Maria upstairs, Tracy, the redhead, down. On the night Maria died, Tracy was between clients, in the kitchen having a smoke, when a young man came downstairs. He said he’d been with Maria and she’d suddenly had some sort of seizure and passed out. He’d tried to revive her, but he couldn’t.”
“A likely story,” Ingeborg said in her all-men-are-rats tone.
“Tracy dashed upstairs to check and there was no question Maria was dead. They talked about calling a doctor, but it was obvious she was past help. Everything about the young guy’s behaviour convinced Tracy he hadn’t done anything to harm Maria.”
“Sudden death syndrome?” Halliwell said.
“Beating up a whore syndrome, more likely,” Ingeborg said.
“I don’t think so,” Diamond said. “These women are experienced. They know how to spot a violent punter. There were no marks. Tracy was in tears talking about it. Anyway, they both knew calling a doctor would lead to all kinds of complications for them both, so she suggested asking for help from someone she knew. She called Onslow and he came at once and took some swift decisions. He told the young guy to scarper and say nothing to anyone about what happened. The body was naked, of course, but with Tracy’s help he got it into some day clothes, for decency’s sake, as he put it. Meanwhile he’d called for reinforcements. Maria’s body was carried downstairs and driven away in a van. The next morning a woman Tracy knew as Dilly collected all Maria’s clothes and possessions and stuffed them into plastic bin bags and drove off with them.”
“Dilly,” Ingeborg said. “The widow of that old crime boss, Bob Sabin.”
“I expect so.”
“Did you tell Tracy the body was found in the river?”
“Yes, and she was visibly shocked. She’d got along well with Maria and knew she came originally from Sofia. Tracy herself is Romanian. They were both trafficked. She’d heard about Maria’s experiences on the game in Turkey and Italy.”
“Did you ask about Little Langford?”
“Of course. Tracy knows nothing about it. She said it was impossible Maria was leading a double life. She hardly ever left the house.” A smile as broken as a snapped twig appeared on his lips. “The thing is, I believe her.”
Frowns and silence.
Ingeborg was the first to find words. “What are you saying, guv—the forensics lab cocked up?”
“Or we did,” Diamond said. “There were two different women and the hair sample I sent for analysis wasn’t Jessie’s after all. It was Maria’s.”
Halliwell folded his arms defiantly. “That’s not possible. It was Jessie’s hairbrush. You found it under her bed at Little Langford.”
“This is going to be difficult for you to get your heads round, but I’ve had all night to think about it. The killer obtained a brush belonging to Maria and planted it under Jessie’s bed in the expectation someone would find it and send it for DNA analysis and get a false result.”
Ingeborg was shaking her head. “Pellegrini placed it there the evening he went to Little Langford? But Jessie was still alive then.”
“She was out when he arrived,” Halliwell said.
“Oh, come on. How on earth did he get hold of a prostitute’s hairbrush?”
“He must have been one of her clients. They both lived in Bath.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. He’s seventy years old.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s given up sex. At that age, he’d need to pay for it.”
“I don’t believe a word of this,” she said. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“Because it was in the blueprint. You’ve read his diary. Everything he does is thought through like some engineering project. He set out to fool us, and that’s what he achieved.” Halliwell glanced Diamond’s way. “But only up to now. Thanks to the guv’nor’s good work, we aren’t totally suckered.”
Diamond had lit the touchpaper and stepped back in the hope of a flash of insight he hadn’t envisaged. The short spat between his two colleagues hadn’t sparked anything new. They’d repeated the line of reasoning he’d been through in his own mind.
“You’re right to mention the diary,” he said. “There was an entry about misdirection, remember?”
Ingeborg was on to it at once. “The conjuror’s trick. ‘I’ve baited the trap and we’ll see if it works.’”
“Right. Doesn’t this have the feel of a trap?”
“Just what I’m saying,” Halliwell said. “He fooled us.”
Ingeborg spoke the actual words of the diary entry. They’d all been over the text so many times that she knew them by heart. “‘A situation has a
risen 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.’ He must have been in the habit of visiting Maria. He nicked that pink plastic brush with some of her hair attached.”
“Now she believes me,” Halliwell said to Diamond. “She just said Pellegrini paying for sex was ridiculous.”
Ingeborg ignored him. “He took it to Little Langford when he visited Cyril and must have said he was going upstairs to visit the bathroom and instead went into Jessie’s room and planted the brush under her bed. ‘I’ve baited the trap and we’ll see if it works. No worry if it doesn’t.’”
“This was what he meant by misdirection,” Halliwell said. “Making us believe Jessie was doubling up as a tom. ‘Today I’m rather pleased with myself.’ He would be, the tosser.”
“The calculation behind it!” Ingeborg said. “Let’s not forget Cyril and Jessie were both still alive when Pellegrini visited the house.”
“Under sentence of death as far as he was concerned,” Halliwell said.
“What I’m saying is that he did his bit of misdirection with the hairbrush, sneaking it under Jessie’s bed, the same evening he murdered Cyril. It’s chilling. He was already planning to kill her as well.”
“Except,” Diamond said.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“Except what?” Halliwell said.
“There’s a flaw in all this. When is Pellegrini supposed to have nicked the brush from Maria?”
“On one of his visits for sex. It wouldn’t be difficult, finding a brush she used.”
“If that’s true, how did he know in advance that she would die in someone else’s arms and end up in the river?”
25
“Another problem,” Diamond said. “If Jessie wasn’t the woman in the river, what happened to her? We know she reported Cyril’s death the morning after Pellegrini visited, but then she upped sticks and left. No one has seen her since.”
“Dead,” Halliwell said as if it was a well-known fact. “He went back and murdered her.”
“At Little Langford?”
“Obviously.”
“How exactly?”
Halliwell shrugged. “We never discovered his method, did we? We looked at all those suggestions on the printout in his workshop—the air bubble in the bloodstream and the sharpened icicle—and none of them fitted the facts.”
“It’s got to be simpler than any of those,” Ingeborg said. “He says so in the journal. They don’t see it coming and they don’t know anything about it.”
“What does he mean by that?”
“Painless, I should think.”
“Like some powerful drug?”
“Look at the logistics for a moment,” Ingeborg said. “You’re saying he killed Jessie at Little Langford the day after Cyril was murdered, right?”
Halliwell nodded.
“First, he had to get there.”
“Taxi, same as before,” he said. “He went to the rank and took a taxi.”
“What, and asked the driver to wait outside the cottage while he committed a murder? ‘I won’t be long, driver. Just got to total the housekeeper.’”
Her sarcasm went unchallenged.
She tightened the screw. “Well? He had to think about getting home afterwards, didn’t he?”
A smile spread across Halliwell’s face. He had the answer. “No, he didn’t tell the driver to wait. He had alternative transport. Jessie had a car of her own. She used to drive Cyril around in it. It wasn’t left at the cottage, so Pellegrini used it for his getaway. We know he could drive. It’s probably still parked on some street in Bath.”
“With her body inside?”
“Christ, I hadn’t thought of that.” He scratched his head. “No, he wouldn’t bring her back to his own territory. He’s too smart to make that mistake. Far better to leave her at Little Langford.”
“Where? You’ve been there. The boss has been there. Neither of you found another corpse.”
“The garden is a wilderness. She could have been dumped in the bushes.”
“Didn’t you make a search?”
“We weren’t looking for another body at the time.”
Ingeborg switched to Diamond. “You started this, guv, asking what happened to Jessie. She hasn’t been seen or heard of in more than six weeks. Do you think he killed her?”
“It looks that way,” he said. “He went to some trouble to plant the hairbrush in her room so we’d get a false DNA result. Keith is right. It’s worth going to Little Langford and making a search. Find Jessie’s corpse, and we’ll have all the proof we need.”
* * *
Inside ten minutes all three were heading out of Bath in Ingeborg’s tangerine-coloured Ka. Diamond, being the boss, not to say the largest, was in the front passenger seat. Halliwell, wedged in the back, was not alone.
“What the fuck is this?” he said when he found himself next to Nutty, the monstrous squirrel.
“It shouldn’t be there,” Ingeborg said. “Someone I won’t name promised to transfer it to his car last night. Conveniently he forgot.”
The unnamed someone stayed silent.
“Can you move it?” she said. “It’s blocking my rear-view mirror.”
“What do you want me to do—cuddle it?”
“Good idea. And take it with you when you get out.”
Diamond was oblivious to all this. Mentally he was already at Pellegrini’s bedside having the crucial face-to-face that would settle everything.
The crunch.
He fully intended it should happen before the day was out, whatever the nursing staff said. Another night would hand Pellegrini an advantage, a chance to prepare a defence. Much better to catch him off guard.
He took out his phone and called the hospital. The station-announcer must have gone off duty because the voice on the line was the other sister’s, never a pushover, but approachable, given the right prompts.
“Yes,” he was saying presently, “he’s fine, soon to be reunited with his owner, we hope. How’s the recovery progressing?”
“Better than anyone expected. He was moved this morning to a private room in a general ward.”
“That’s Bradford Ward?”
“Yes, it’s adjacent to this one, so I can slip in and see him. He can hold a conversation now, which is a huge step forward.”
“Does he remember much?”
“A lot, but there are some blanks. That’s to be expected. He can’t at the moment recall anything about the accident that put him here. Par for the course in a case of severe concussion. And although he remembers his home and his friends and his late wife, he’s at a loss when I talk to him about Hornby.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’m sure he’ll get that memory back. He looks more alert by the minute. Are you planning to visit him?”
“Later, I hope.”
“We’ve lifted all restrictions. Well, I have, as soon as I came on duty and saw the improvement. Two of his railway-enthusiast buddies are with him as we speak and a lady friend is on her way. She asked if he’s allowed chocolate sponge. We should all have friends like that. When do you hope to get here?”
“Later. I’m on a trip out Salisbury way right now.”
“Shall I tell him to expect you?”
“Please don’t,” he said at once. “He won’t know me from Adam.”
“But you rescued Hornby. He ought to be told about that.”
“If he doesn’t remember who Hornby is, there’s no point. I want my visit to be a surprise. You can keep a secret, sister, I know you can.”
After he’d ended the call he was braced for the inevitable question.
Halliwell voiced it. “Who the hell is Hor
nby?”
“Did you ever see a film called Harvey?”
“Before my time.”
“James Stewart.”
“Black and white, I expect, if the boss rates it,” Ingeborg said.
“It was about this guy who befriends a six-foot-three-inch invisible rabbit,” Diamond said.
“Don’t talk to me about rabbits,” Halliwell said. “I’m sharing a seat with one.”
Ingeborg said with scorn. “Squirrel.”
“Squirrel, then.”
“Are you sure?” Diamond said.
“Sure about what?”
“Sure who’s sitting next to you?”
Ingeborg giggled as they overtook another car.
Halliwell said, “Give me a break.”
Diamond said, “I only mentioned it because Hornby, like Harvey, is real to some people and not others.”
They were zipping along in the small car, way too fast for Diamond’s peace of mind, but he couldn’t really object. Already they were through the Warminster bypass and heading up the Wylye valley.
His stress was partially about what lay ahead. He’d never met Jessie, of course, but having seen where she lived and thought a lot about her, he’d formed an impression of the woman. Maybe the Jessie in his thoughts was no more grounded in reality than Harvey or Hornby, yet he could picture her driving Cyril along this same road on the Scrabble afternoons, trying to persuade the old rogue to cut down on his gambling. Some hope! He could see her getting bored in the little cottage with only a ninety-year-old for company, glad of the chance of an evening off when Pellegrini arranged to visit. His Jessie was a believable personality. The possibility that he and his team would shortly find a body was upsetting.
Had she been a thief? he wondered, not for the first time. Had she actually helped Cyril repay some of his debts by stealing items from the Filiput house? With better opportunities than Cyril himself, she may well have done so.
That episode after the funeral—when coffee was spilt on her purple wool skirt and she left the room with Mrs. Stratford, the actor-cum-cleaner, to change—must have given another opportunity to roam the house, but it wasn’t her doing. Pellegrini himself had caused the spillage. Jake and Simon had used the phrase “tipped coffee over her skirt”—as if he’d done it deliberately.
Another One Goes Tonight Page 33
