Another One Goes Tonight

13

The drive back was a blur. He made a short stop at work to bag up the hairbrush for forensics and then went straight home, needing to get horizontal. The pain in his lower back wasn’t going to go away quickly. He let himself in, swallowed some painkillers and dropped like wet washing on the sofa in the front room.

He hardly stirred until he felt something soft nudging his face.

Raffles, wanting to be fed.

He checked the time. Four hours had gone by.

Four hours?

Without thinking why he was there he swung his legs off the sofa and was sharply reminded by his lumbar region. He swore so loudly that Raffles shot upstairs.

After more groaning, mainly at his own folly as he recalled what had happened, Diamond eased himself up, shuffled to the kitchen and opened a tin of cat food. Raffles reappeared as quickly as he had gone.

In CID they would be wondering where the boss was. Better let them know.

He called Halliwell.

“Keith, it’s me.”

“Okay.”

The slightly bored response wasn’t the fanfare of relief he’d been expecting. “What do you mean-okay? I’ve been out of the office since midday. Didn’t anyone notice?”

“You were going to the Langfords. We didn’t expect you back in a hurry.”

“Nearly seven hours?”

“Was it as long as that?”

“Forget it. What’s been happening?”

“Some progress. A bit of a breakthrough, in fact. Hold on. I’ll pass the phone to Inge.”

“Guv,” Ingeborg’s voice took over. “Did you meet Cyril?”

“No. He died.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Another one?”

“My reaction, too, but I can’t see how his death could have been caused by you-know-who. He went peacefully at home in his own bed.”

“So did the others. The men, at any rate. And was he rich, like Filiput?”

“He may have been at one time. By the end he was up to his ears in debt. I met his niece who is the sole heir and she’s come into nothing except a load of trouble.”

“So was it recent, his death?”

“Six weeks.” He told her about Cyril’s gambling addiction and the special provisions of his wife Winnie’s will. “She made sure her life’s savings didn’t all go to the loan sharks and bookies.”

“I’m warming to this woman,” Ingeborg said. “She must have cared about him to arrange the annuity.”

“He still managed to get through a lot, including the profit from selling their house in London. The cottage is just a two-up, two-down place unlikely to cover the debts. Even the Scrabble sessions at Cavendish Crescent seem to have been for money.”

“How do you play Scrabble for money?”

“Like any other game. There’s a winner, isn’t there? Or it could be a pound a point. Two people playing will score more than five hundred points between them, easily.”

“Are you a player, guv?”

“I used to have the occasional game with Steph, but not for money.” He went silent for a moment, remembering. Then he snapped out of it and told her about the necklace he’d found.

“What was he doing with a gold necklace?” she said.

“An antique gold necklace. I’m wondering if it belonged originally to Olga Filiput. She had some valuable things, I was told by Dr. Mukherjee, antiques and jewellery as well as those Fortuny gowns. Max inherited them and got worried because he couldn’t keep track of them all. He suspected some went missing-and we know where the gowns ended up.”

“Cyril nicked the necklace?”

“There was quite a free-for-all at the funeral.”

“I thought that was about Filiput’s railway collection.”

“Right, but railway items didn’t interest Cyril. He was the Scrabble partner, nothing to do with the GWR lot. He was under pressure from people he’d borrowed from. I’m wondering if he took his chance to look for something really worth taking while the others were fighting over the photographs and posters.”

“Wow. It’s possible.”

“What’s your news?” he asked her. “Keith said something about a breakthrough.”

She laughed. “That’s putting it strongly. I may have solved a small mystery. How would you like a midnight adventure with Keith and me?”

“Tonight?”

“That’s what we have in mind.”

“Doing what?”

“What Ivor Pellegrini does-a jaunt in the country to see if we can find them digging their holes.”

“The rabbits? Oh, for Christ’s sake, Inge.”

She laughed again. “I can pick you up from your house about eleven-thirty if you’re game.”

He was game but he wasn’t sure if his back was. “Are you sure this won’t be a waste of time?”

“Trust me. I’ve done my research. It’s going to be a revelation. Come on, guv. You’ll miss a few hours’ sleep but so what?”

Loss of sleep wasn’t the problem. He’d just had four hours. “All right. I’m on board.” He ended the call and went off to look for more painkillers.

He’d had a bath by the time they arrived but he couldn’t pretend he was fit.

Before they even got to the car, Halliwell asked, “What happened, boss? You look terrible.”

“It’ll pass.”

“You’re not walking right.”

“If you really want to know, I was helping a lady with a bed.”

Ingeborg was quick to warn Halliwell, “Don’t go there.” She opened the car door. “Are you able to get in, guv?”

“In, yes. I might need help to get out.”

The roads were almost empty but Ingeborg still observed the limit, mindful that at this hour any vehicle would be obvious to a police patrol. “We’ll go past Pellegrini’s house and follow the route he took the night of the crash,” she said.

“Do we know it?” Diamond asked.

“We do now.”

“How did you work this out?”

“What he was really up to? From his computer data. I spent hours searching for the download of the stuff he’d printed out-those murder notes-until steam was coming out of my ears. Then I had the idea of making a different search trying some of the crazy stuff he said when he was stopped by our guys. I used the search function, working with the most recent documents, which all seemed to be just boring railway stuff, and suddenly there it was staring back at me from the screen.”

“The crazy talk?”

“The meaning of it all.”

“Get away.”

“I’m serious.”

“Which word did it-rabbits?”

“No. If you look at the notes you made after your second visit to Lew Morgan, he was careful to point out to you that Pellegrini didn’t actually mention rabbits. That was Lew, trying to make sense of it.”

“As anyone would. As we did, in fact.”

“Pellegrini said he heard them digging their holes, right?”

“Supposedly. And heading for Bath.”

“Using hops.”

“Are we dealing with some other creatures, then?”

“You’ll see. It was the word ‘hops’ that cracked it for me.” She left that to sink in. “Henrietta Road is coming up shortly. Ideally we should be switching to tricycles to reconstruct his journey properly. We’ll have to imagine him packing his supplies in the saddlebag and pedalling off on his nightly jaunt.”

“A right bunch of idiots we’d look on trikes,” Halliwell said.

“There’s Pellegrini’s workshop, anyway,” Diamond said, looking left at the white building in front of the large house. “From now on we’re following in his tyre tracks.” He didn’t trouble Ingeborg any more for explanations. She’d made it plain that the whole purpose of the trip was to show, not tell.

They turned right at Henrietta Road and, shortly after, crossed the canal by way of Sydney Road.

“I’m going to cheat a bit now,” Ingeborg said. “He used the back roads but it’s simpler for us to nip along the A36. We’ll rejoin him at Bathampton.”

“Is that rain I see on the windscreen?” Diamond said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Are they just as active in the wet, then?”

“It won’t stop them.” She steered the conversation away from the rabbits-or whatever she was saving for later. “With Cyril dead, that makes two men and two women in a year and a half: Olga and Max Filiput, Trixie Pellegrini and Cyril. Pellegrini is dangerous to know.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Plus three others from the railway club, Seaton, Carnforth and Marshall-Tomkin,” she went on. “Okay, they passed away a year or so earlier, but it’s a frightening tally.”

Diamond tried to turn in the seat and speak to Halliwell. A stab of pain in his back made him yell so suddenly that Ingeborg’s steering wobbled. He apologised before saying, “Keith, you were going to find out how they died.”

There was a long silence from behind him.

Finally Halliwell said, “I don’t know if you want to hear this. Copies of the death certificates arrived this morning.”

“And?”

“If you remember, Carnforth was the one who died after a short illness, according to the paper. It was the flu.”

Another silence followed, this time of Diamond’s making. He’d just lost one of the potential serial-murder victims. He ought not to complain. “That’s certain?”

“It’s given as the cause of death.”

He gritted his teeth. “Can’t argue with that, then. How about the other two?”

“Edmund Seaton had bronchial pneumonia and Jeremy Marshall-Tomkin an aneurysm.”

“Is that peaceful?”

“It’s quick. Doctors certified these deaths and they sound like genuine medical conditions you wouldn’t confuse with murder.”

Two more gone.

“I don’t think we can blame Pellegrini,” Halliwell continued. “My reading of it is that none of those three was murdered. They agreed among themselves that they wanted their ashes scattered on the railway when their time came and whoever survived the others would perform this last duty for his fellow members. It had to be done secretly at night because Network Rail wouldn’t permit it.”

“Sounds right to me,” Ingeborg said. “He kept the urns as a kind of memorial.”

“We can all agree on that, then,” Diamond said with no pleasure at all. Poleaxed wasn’t enough to describe his state. “Instead of seven possible victims, we’re down to four, maximum. And I can’t honestly see why he would have wanted to murder Cyril.”

“Which brings the tally down to three,” Halliwell said. “Trixie, Olga and Max.”

“So whose ashes was he carrying on the night of the collision?” Ingeborg said.

“The urn was empty,” Halliwell said.

“When it was found, it was. By then he’d scattered them somewhere along the track. He was on his way back when the patrol car hit him.”

“Had to be Max,” Halliwell said. “He was the last of the railway club to die.”

“Last summer. Quite some time ago.”

“Yes, but you can keep ashes indefinitely. There’s no urgency.”

They were fast approaching the Bathampton Lane turn. Diamond was silent, still wrestling with the news that three of the deaths had not been caused by Pellegrini.

“How are we doing?” Halliwell asked.

“We’re good,” Ingeborg said. “The track is somewhere on our left. We’ll go on a bit and then do what Pellegrini is supposed to have done.”

“Except we don’t have any ashes to scatter,” Halliwell said.

“I’m talking about his cover story.”

“The rabbits?” Diamond said, making a huge effort to pay attention.

“The hops.”

“You’re calling it a cover story. Are you sure?”

“I am now. His real objective was dealing with the ashes.”

“And he had this other story ready in case anyone stopped him and asked what he was doing? He’d say he was studying wildlife?”

“He didn’t say that. This is where we got him wrong. He’s an engineer used to dealing in facts, not fantasy. He picked something real as his cover. Anyone could verify that it was true, as I will demonstrate shortly.”

“And it’s on his computer?”

“That’s how I know it happens each night while we’re sleeping.”

They bridged the canal, the railway, the A4 and the Avon at Bathampton and followed London Road East to link up with the A4.

“For an old guy he’s a strong cyclist if he came this far,” Halliwell said.

“Come on,” Ingeborg said. “The bike was motorised.”

“He didn’t need to,” Diamond said. He’d got the sense of what Ingeborg had said earlier. “This was only his cover story.”

“The railway is now on our right,” Ingeborg said.

“All the way to Box,” Halliwell said. “Are we going as far as that?”

“We may not need to. If I’ve got it right, they’ll be this side of the tunnel.”

Box Tunnel was dug through Box Hill at the start of the Victorian era to bring the railway to Bath and Bristol. Almost two miles in length, it was one of the great engineering projects undertaken by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

“We’ll stop in the next layby,” Ingeborg said. “Don’t want to drive straight past them without realising.”

“God, no. They’re good movers, not easy to catch,” Halliwell said in amusement. “They cover up to a mile a night.”

“We’re not trying to catch anything.”

Ingeborg pulled over at the top of the next rise, switched off the engine and got out. She told Diamond, “You don’t have to move yet, guv. I’m checking how close we are, that’s all.”

After midnight not much else was on the road. There were intervals between the sets of headlights. The light rain hadn’t gone away.

Still in the car, Diamond asked Halliwell, seated in the back. “Can you see anything?”

“I don’t know what we’re looking for any more.”

Ingeborg had walked a short distance from the car and was standing with arms folded, apparently alert to something.

“She can’t see a bloody thing,” Halliwell said. “She’s having us on.”

“I’ll have her guts for garters if she is.”

She returned. “We’re in luck,” she said as she got in. “They’re not far off.”

“Did you hear them digging their holes?” Halliwell said with sarcasm.

“Actually, I did, but you can’t see them from here.”

The silence from the back seat said it all.

They started up and turned right at a side road a short way on. Ingeborg explained that they would get a better view this way. Neither of her passengers commented.

“I’m stopping again,” she said presently. “A lot of this is guesswork now.”

Halliwell couldn’t resist saying, “Can’t you pick them up on your satnav?”

She opened her door and stepped out. “Listen. Open your window and listen.”

Diamond opened his door.

No argument: there was definitely a rhythmic sound coming from not far off, but it was more mechanical than natural.

“Is that them?”

“We can get closer,” she said. And they were off again.

After two more turns they had a view across the fields to the railway and an extraordinary floodlit spectacle, a stationary train made up of at least a dozen units in bright yellow.

A train?

Diamond was so confused that he got out of the car unaided and felt no pain. He stood with hands on hips taking it all in.

The sound they had heard was coming from a carriage that was, in effect, a piling rig driving a huge tubular pile into the ground attended by a team of workmen in hard hats and high-visibility jackets. Other rolling stock was made up of excavators, flat-bed wagons loaded with more of the piles, tanks that presumably held cement and water and a concrete mixer.

“It’s a bloody factory on wheels,” Halliwell said.

“Officially known as the High Output Plant System,” Ingeborg said, and waited a moment to deliver her punchline. “HOPS.”

A pause followed.

“HOPS, right,” Halliwell eventually said, grinning sheepishly. “Digging their holes. Pellegrini isn’t such a dumbo as we thought.”

Diamond was shaking his head. “Speaking of dumbos, I should have thought of this. The electrification of the Great Western main line. The booking clerk at the station talked to me about this and I didn’t cotton on that it was the thing Pellegrini was on about.”

“He’s got several long pieces about it on his computer,” Ingeborg said. “When I put in the word ‘hops’ I had scores of hits. They’re working six nights a week, sinking 16,000 piles between Maidenhead and Swansea. That’s 235 miles and they can do between 1,200 and 1,500 metres in a night.”

“You’re really into this,” Halliwell said.

“They follow up with the masts and portal booms and string the overhead cables as they go. Do you want to know about the HOOB?”

“The what?” Diamond said.

“The High Output Operations Base. It’s a place near Swindon where the HOPS can lie up by day ready to roll into action the next night. Then there’s the Hobbit.”

“What’s that?”

“A little guy with pointy ears.”

Another pause for thought before Halliwell said, “Ha bloody ha.”

“Sergeant Smith,” Diamond said, “you’re in serious danger of losing all the credit you just built up.”

They stood watching the pile-driving for ten minutes more, until the rain forced them back to the car.

Fatigue set in as they drove back to Bath, but Diamond still found the energy to say, “We seriously underestimated this guy, calling him a nutter. He may be helpless in hospital but he’s having a bloody good laugh at us.”