Cop to Corpse

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘What’s he up to, then?’

  ‘I think I’ve worked it out. I talked some more to this young woman, whose real name is Francesca, and she was telling me how exciting it can be when people get in touch. She never knows from one day to the next what will turn up. The best thing of all is a hoard. That’s when they discover something like a pot of Roman coins, up to fifty thousand of them. She’ll get called out to see them at the site. She arranges for them to be properly excavated by experts and then they’re brought back here in stages before being sent to the British Museum to be washed and evaluated.’

  ‘And is John Smith involved in any of this?’ I asked, already thinking I could see where this was going.

  Vicky flashed a big smile at me. ‘You’ve got it. There’s a huge safe in his office in the museum and he makes sure the finds are locked away securely before being taken to London.’

  ‘Whose job is it to record the finds?’

  ‘The British Museum. They have conservators who wash them and separate them. It’s specialised work. Coins get stuck hard together over time. Some of them can be really rare and worth a lot of money and you probably know what I’m thinking.’

  We did. By now we were all thinking along the same lines. It would be all too easy for a dishonest curator to pick out some special items that never get sent to London. The metal detectorist has no idea how many coins or objects there are in a hoard, and the British Museum staff only get to see what arrives there.

  I was the one who said it. ‘These short trips to European cities could be John Smith selling coins and other finds to foreign collectors. It would explain why he never makes the booking himself and why his wife collects the tickets from city break man. Vicky, you’re brilliant. I think you’ve sussed it.’

  Anita had been listening to this with awe. ‘A profitable little scam. How do we prove it?’

  ‘With help from Francesca,’ Vicky went. ‘She’s very knowledgable and I think she may have her suspicions already. If certain rare Roman coins are starting to be traded in Europe she’ll be alerted. When we tell her about the city breaks Anita has been arranging, she can check the dates Smith is supposed to have spent in Cornwall.’

  ‘Proving he’s on the take is going to be difficult,’ Anita insisted.

  ‘Not at all,’ Vicky went. She’d had longer to think about this than Anita and me. ‘Next time John Smith arranges another city break, we do what you did before, tip off the girls at the check-in and they can speak to the customs men. He’ll be caught with the goods on him. Whatever he says, you can’t export stuff like that without a licence.’

  I was like, ‘Brilliant.’

  Even Anita gave her a hug.

  It’s so nice that we’ve all played a part and Vicky has brought it to fruition.

  The sleuthing sisters will shortly wrap up their first case.

  So what’s next?

  30

  He was so wrapped up in the blog that he didn’t notice Ingeborg enter his office until she spoke.

  ‘Guv.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘A result.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I managed to contact the inspector who investigated the bogus college at Bradford on Avon.’

  ‘You did?’ For a moment he was floundering. Then the bogus college clicked into place, possibly the alma mater of the silent man in the cells. This could be the chance to prove the suspect was an illegal immigrant on a student visa. ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘The case came to trial at the end of last year and there was a successful prosecution. As we expected, the principal had shredded all the enrolment records, but he was still convicted and jailed for six years. They found some of the so-called students and got them to testify. But countless others disappeared off the radar.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘And there’s something else. More than half of them were Iranian. He had some kind of arrangement with Tehran.’

  ‘Iran?’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘That would explain a lot. If you escaped from there you wouldn’t want to be sent back. What do you think they do to defectors?’

  The way Ingeborg scrunched the front of her t-shirt was answer enough.

  Diamond drummed his fingers on the desk-top. ‘What we need now is a Persian-English dictionary.’

  ‘You want to look up the word “consul”?’ she said. ‘We can do it on the internet.’

  He shook his head in awe or despair at the limitless uses of the web while Ingeborg leaned across him and worked the keys. In seconds she had a website that allowed you to type in an English word and get the Persian, or Farsi, equivalent. ‘Consul’ produced some Persian script and the pronunciation ‘Konsul’.

  ‘Spot on,’ Diamond said. ‘Now we can tell Gull which fucking interpreter he needs.’

  Ingeborg blinked. She’d missed the earlier exchange.

  Without more comment Diamond moved on. ‘I finished reading the blogs.’

  She locked in at once. She was staking her reputation on the account of the three sleuths being germane to the case. ‘What do you think?’

  Under her earnest gaze, he couldn’t resist being playful. ‘I think you and I are in the right job. Sleuthing is cool.’

  ‘Do you agree it must be about Bath?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  Her voice was charged with urgency as she told him, ‘It can’t be anywhere else, guv. I picked up any number of local references. She says somewhere that they’re living in the West Country and several times calls the place a city. The department store they met in sounds exactly like Jolly’s — the restaurant on the first floor, the cream teas with miniature scones, even the placing of the loos upstairs next to the hairdressing salon. It could all be coincidence, you may be thinking, but the details add up. When she comes out of the store and follows city break man she goes up the hill, as you would up Milsom Street.’

  ‘To cut this short,’ he said, ‘I think you’ll find that in blog number three she mentions delivering red roses to a lady in the Royal Crescent. There aren’t many West Country cities with that address.’

  She gave a little cry of delight. And now he felt the heat of her enthusiasm. ‘You have read it carefully.’ She hesitated on the brink of the next question. ‘What do you think, guv? Is it a load of hooey?’

  ‘You mean how seriously should we take it? I’m not about to arrest the museum curator, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘You know very well that’s not what I’m asking.’

  ‘Tim, the weird husband?’

  ‘That may not be his real name. Well, I’m sure it can’t be. She says at the beginning she changed the names.’

  ‘Whoever he is, if he’s real, he ticks some of our boxes,’ he said. ‘In the army on active service, so he knows how to use a rifle. Lived in a city twenty miles down the road. Must be Wells. Drove a taxi, so he had wheels. Is held responsible for the teenager’s death.’

  ‘The policeman’s daughter’s death,’ she put in.

  ‘True, which is why he is harassed by the Wells police, or believes he is, so he moves here and starts going out at nights and being secretive and moody. There’s not much doubt that these women think he could be the sniper. Motive, opportunity and possibly the means as well if somehow he managed to hang on to his service rifle after being discharged.’ He leaned back in the chair and linked his hands around the back of his neck. He’d indulged Ingeborg enough. ‘But we arrested the sniper and he’s sitting in the cells. We have the weapon and we have the shoeprint evidence. Is there any point in looking for Tim?’

  Her large, eager eyes were fixed on his. ‘You tell me. You’re the boss.’

  ‘Here’s a question for you, Inge, as a computer buff. All that stuff in the first blog about making it untraceable by bouncing the text around the internet through a series of volunteers — is that true?’

  ‘I’m sure it is. She over-simplifies, but the principle is correct. It’s known as the onion method. The
text is encrypted and goes through a series of proxy handlers. Each one can tell where it comes from and where to send it, but that’s all they know, and all they’ll ever know.’

  ‘Then we’d have an impossible job trying to find out who wrote this thing and who the people are?’

  ‘Through the internet, yes.’

  ‘So the mighty computer does have its limitations?’ He rubbed his hands. ‘We’d have to find these sleuthing ladies through old-fashioned detective work, picking up clues about where they live. I’m almost inclined to start — just to get one over technology.’ He smiled. ‘But I’m not going to. We’d be wasting precious time.’

  Ingeborg stared at him in disbelief, if not defiance. ‘So you think it’s all one big red herring?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  She didn’t get a chance to answer. The phone on Diamond’s desk rang. The desk sergeant was asking for him urgently. A clear note of alarm was in the voice.

  This might have been the interview to duck. There was a definite prospect of a blow-up, if not a punch-up, even within the police station. But avoidance never crossed Diamond’s mind. The case had come to a critical point.

  ‘In room one, sir. He’s in quite a state.’

  Diamond found Soldier Nuttall in combat clothes and desert boots, pacing the small room, speaking agitatedly into his mobile. Seeing that he was no longer alone, he switched off.

  ‘You took your time,’ he told Diamond. ‘I want a straight answer from you. No bullshit. Are you, or are you not, holding my boy?’

  ‘Holding Royston?’ He spread his hands. ‘I am not.’

  ‘Don’t mess with me, Diamond. If it isn’t you, one of your lot has got him. Where is he? I want him released.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘He’s only seventeen, you know. You can’t do this. I know the law. If you detain a juvenile, you must inform the appropriate adult — that’s me — of the reason why you’re holding him and his whereabouts. And I have the right to see him immediately.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Diamond said. ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Some other nick, then.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve heard nothing about an arrest.’

  ‘You’d better check, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I will. What makes you think he’s under arrest?’

  ‘He didn’t come home last night, hasn’t been in touch, hasn’t texted, phoned, whatever.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to think he might have been picked up by the police?’

  A wary look settled on the hawkish features. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because of what you’re saying.’

  ‘I won’t be tricked, you know. I know my rights. You people are going to pay heavily for damaging my property for no good reason. You’ll be hearing from my solicitor. Nothing will alter that.’

  ‘I didn’t mention your property,’ Diamond said, keen to move on. ‘I thought you were here about your son. When did you last see Royston?’

  ‘Yesterday, after your visit. You insisted on speaking to him alone and I don’t know what was said. That was against the law.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me on the law, Mr. Nuttall. He wasn’t under arrest or in detention. I made that clear to you. Let’s cool off a bit and see what can be done. Did you speak to him after I left your house?’

  ‘What do you take me for? I’m his father. I’m responsible for him. Of course I bloody did.’

  ‘And did you accuse him of anything?’

  ‘Everything under the sun.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wanted to know why you lot came calling. Isn’t that the duty of a father? If he’d been caught drinking, or doing drugs, or making a nuisance of himself, I needed to know.’

  A new slant on Soldier Nuttall: the responsible parent.

  ‘Did he admit to anything?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘If he did, would I blab it to a cop? I’m not simple.’

  ‘Let’s put it another way, then. How did he seem to take it?’

  ‘Take what?’

  ‘Being questioned by his father. I need to know what frame of mind he was in. If he’s run away from home, is it because you frightened him?’

  ‘Him? He’s a bloody teenager, spoiling for a fight.’

  ‘That wasn’t the way I saw him, cowering on the back seat of your car.’

  ‘I loosed the dog, didn’t I? You’d be cowering if one of them brutes was trying to rip your throat out. Royston was brought up tough. He can take a bollocking from me.’

  ‘Then I don’t see what the problem is.’

  ‘He’s a missing child, that’s the problem.’

  ‘Big child.’

  ‘Under eighteen.’

  ‘It’s not unusual for a kid his age to take umbrage at something and go off on his own for a night, or a couple of nights.’

  ‘I want him found. That’s your job.’

  ‘One of my jobs. Now that you’ve reported it, I’ll get the word out. Did he take his motorbike?’

  ‘That’s gone, yes.’

  ‘Does he have money?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be armed, would he?’

  A suspicious glare. ‘What with?’

  ‘I was told you possess a number of licensed weapons, and I mean real ones that fire. Have you checked them today? If any are missing, you must certainly let me know.’

  The mention of weapons seemed to take all of the steam out of Nuttall. It was suddenly as if he wanted to be out of there and taking Diamond’s advice. ‘You’ll tell me right away if you see anything of him?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘He may look like a man, but he’s just a kid really.’

  ‘We’ve both been that age,’ Diamond said as if he was a headmaster being merciful to an anxious parent. ‘Leave it to us, Mr. Nuttall.’

  Left alone in the interview room, he asked himself why this bizarre scene had taken place. Why was a little Hitler like Nuttall demanding help from the police? It was obvious he wasn’t really troubled over Royston’s welfare. His own welfare was under threat. But he was unwilling to disclose the reason. First he had believed Royston was in custody. A serious issue, then, a criminal matter, else why did he assume that the boy was being held? Was he alarmed by what his offspring would disclose?

  Learning that Royston wasn’t being held should have come as good news to Nuttall and obviously didn’t. He wanted him rounded up, and quickly. It seemed the lad was a loose cannon, capable of doing real damage. Did it go back to what had been said between father and son? By his own admission Nuttall had laid into Royston and accused him of everything under the sun. One of the charges must have stuck. Under interrogation or at liberty, the errant teenager was a direct threat to his father’s well-defended reputation.

  But in what way?

  He returned upstairs. The statements from yesterday, every word transcribed from Ingeborg’s hidden tape-recorder, were threatening to slip from the top of the tower of paper rising from his in-tray. He plucked them off and read Royston’s answers again and delved lower in the stack and found the report Paul Gilbert had written of the night touring Harry Tasker’s beat — Moles, the Porter, the Bell, Walcot Street and Club XL. The find of the night had been Anderson Jakes, the man who had put them onto Royston.

  Then it became clear.

  After reading precisely what Anderson Jakes had told Paul and Ingeborg, Diamond worked out how, where, when and why the boy would be found.

  But he was in no mood for self-congratulation. There was an urgent need to revisit the crime scene.

  He stepped out of his office. The incident room had gone quiet. Jack Gull, he learned, was trying to get hold of an interpreter who spoke Persian. Ingeborg, still preoccupied with the blog, was putting markers on a map of the city. Polehampton had gone to have a word with the custody sergeant. John Leaman and Keith Halliwell were together at the window, looking down into the street.
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br />   ‘What’s going on?’ he asked them.

  ‘Come and see.’

  He joined them in time to see Polehampton heading purposefully up Manvers Street towards the station. ‘Where’s he off to?’

  ‘The pub on the corner, the Royal, for another quick one. He needs it every two hours. It’s the strain of working with Gull.’

  At any other time, he might have been amused. Today, he had too much on his mind. ‘I’m slipping out for a while myself. I need to go back to the crime scene as a matter of urgency.’

  Paloma wouldn’t approve after the trouble she’d taken to protect him from being shot, but this had to be done. The streets of Bath were thronged as midday approached and he reasoned it would be crazy for anyone to loose off a round of ammunition. No potential killer could have anticipated him leaving the police station at this moment. Mingling with the shoppers and the tourists, he took the most direct route around Orange Grove, and along the High Street past the Guildhall and the Podium, all well-populated places at this hour, then left at St. Michael’s and up the steep rise of Broad Street and right at the top towards Bladud Buildings and the Paragon.

  It was difficult to conceive of anyone planning the shooting of Harry Tasker without prior knowledge of the layout of the Paragon. The terrace of twenty-one houses as elegant as any corporation-built property in Britain stood in a gentle curve that followed the road’s contour rather than being designed as a crescent. All were similar in style, difficult to tell apart except for a few with window boxes on the first floor sills. From the front there was no sense that you were on the edge of a precipitous slope with vaulted basements overlooking Walcot Street.

  He was angry with himself for taking so long to tumble to the obvious. All the pressure of pursuing the man in the woods had stopped him thinking straight. Finally, he’d worked it out. Whoever murdered Harry must have visited the Paragon house before. They had to know the set-up.

  The residents had some explaining to do.

  He eyed the bell-push panel and the handwritten names: S.Willis, MA, Mr. amp; Mrs. D. Murphy and Sherry Meredith. The fourth bell, for the unoccupied basement, had no name against it. After a moment’s thought, he pressed the third. Sherry Meredith worked in the cosmetics department in Jolly’s, only a short walk away, and it was just possible she came home in her lunch break.