Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

1

A slight, worried woman in a leather jacket walked into Bath police station.

The desk sergeant eyed her through the protective glass. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Can I speak to someone?”

“You’re speaking to me, ma’am.”

“Someone senior.”

The sergeant had been dealing with the public across this desk for twelve years. “I’m the best on offer.”

Unamused, the woman waited. Her hair was dark and short, shaped to her head. She wore no make-up.

The sergeant coaxed her, “Why don’t you give me some idea what it’s about?”

“I just killed my husband.”

The sergeant bent closer to the glass. “You what?”

“I came in to confess.”

“Hang about, ma’am. Where did this happen?”

“At home. 32, Collinson Road.”

“He’s there now?”

“His body is.”

“Collinson Road. I ought to know it.”

“Twerton.”

The sergeant gestured to a woman police officer behind him and told her to get a response car out to Twerton. Then he asked the woman, “What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Trish Noble.”

“Trish for Patricia?”

“Yes”

“And your husband’s name?”

“Glenn.”

“What happened, Mrs Noble?”

“He was in a drunken stupor at four in the afternoon when I came in from work, so I was that mad that I threw a teapot at him. Cracked him on the head. It killed him. Is that murder? Will I go to prison?”

“A china teapot?”

“Half full of tea. I’ve always had this wicked temper.”

“Are you sure he’s dead? Maybe you only stunned him.”

She shook her head. “He’s gone all right. I’m a ward sister, and I know.”

“A nurse?”

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

“You’d better come in and sit down,” said the sergeant. “Go to the door on your right. Someone will see you right away.”

The someone was Superintendent Peter Diamond, the senior detective on duty that afternoon. Diamond was head of the murder squad and this looked like a domestic incident, but as homicide had apparently occurred, he was in duty bound to take an interest. He made quite a courtesy of pulling forward a low, upholstered chair for the woman, then spoilt the effect by seating himself in another with a bump as his knees refused his buttocks a dignified descent. He had a low centre of gravity. A rugby forward in years past, he was better built now for anchorman in a tug-of-war team. “You’re a nurse, I understand, Mrs Noble?”

“Sister on one of the orthopaedic wards.”

“Locally?”

“The Royal United.”

“So...?”

“I came off duty and when I got home Glenn — that’s my husband — was the worse for liquor.”

“You mean drunk?”

“Whatever you want to call it.” She closed her eyes, as if that might shut out the memory.

Mild as milk, Diamond said, “You came in from work and saw him where?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Did you have words?”

“He wasn’t capable of words. I saw red. That’s the way I am. I picked up the teapot—”

“You’d made tea?”

“No. I’d only just come in.”

“So he’d made tea?”

“No, it was still on the table from breakfast, half-full, really heavy. It’s a family sized pot. I picked it up and swung it at him. Hit him smack on the forehead. The pot smashed. There was tea all over his face and chest. He collapsed. First, I thought it was the drink. I couldn’t believe I’d hit him that hard. He’d stopped breathing. I could get nothing from his pulse. I lay him out on the floor and tried mouth-to-mouth, but it was no good.”

She conveyed a vivid picture, the more spectacular considering what a scrap she was. She spoke calmly, her pale blue eyes scarcely blinking. I wouldn’t mind mouth-to-mouth from you, sister, Diamond incorrectly thought.

The door behind him opened and someone looked in, a sergeant. “A word in your ear, sir.”

Diamond wasn’t getting out of that chair. He put a thumb and forefinger to the lobe of his right ear.

The sergeant bent over and muttered, “Report just in from the house, sir. Body in the kitchen confirmed.”

Diamond nodded and asked Mrs Noble, “You said this happened at four in the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“It’s twenty to six now.”

“Is it?”

“Quite a long time since it happened.”

“I’ve been walking the streets, getting a grip on myself.”

“You’re doing OK,” Diamond told her, and meant it. She was a nurse and used to containing her feelings, but this was a stern test. He admired her self-control and he was inclined to believe her story, even if it had strange features. “You didn’t think of phoning us?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Earlier, I mean. When it happened.”

“No point. He was beyond help.”

He offered her a hot drink for the shock — and just stopped short of mentioning tea.

She declined.

“You said you saw red at finding him drunk,” he recapped.

Her face tensed. “I disapprove of drink.”

“Was he in work?”

She shook her head. “He was one of those printers laid off from Regency Press a year ago.”

“Was he still unemployed?”

“Yes.”

“Depressed?”

“Certainly not.”

“It must have been difficult managing after he lost his job,” Diamond said, giving her the chance to say something in favour of her dead husband.

“Not at all. He got good redundancy terms. And I’m earning as well.”

“I meant perhaps he was drowning his sorrows?”

“What sorrows?”

“This afternoon bout was exceptional?”

“Very.”

“Which was what upset you?”

She gave a nod. “It’s against my religion.”

Diamond treated the statement as if she were one of those earnest people in suits who knock on doors and ask whether you agree that God’s message has relevance in today’s world. He ignored it. “You’re a nurse, Mrs Noble, and I imagine you’re trained to spot the symptoms of heavy drinking, so I don’t want you to be insulted by this question. What made you decide that your husband was drunk?”

“The state of him. He was slumped in a chair, his eyes were glazed, he couldn’t put two words together. And the brandy bottle was on the table in front of him. The brandy he was given as a leaving present. He promised me he’d got rid of it.”

“Didn’t he like brandy?”

“It’s of the devil.”

“Had he drunk from the bottle?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Had he ever used drugs in any form?”

She frowned. “Alcohol is a drug.”

“You know what I mean, Mrs Noble.”

“And I’ve seen plenty of drug-users,” she riposted. “I know what to look for.”

“No question of drugs?”

“No question.”

“Did he look for another position after the printing came to a stop?”

“There wasn’t much point. All the local firms were laying people off.”

“So how did he spend the days?”

“Don’t ask me. Walks in the park. Television. Have you ever been out of work?”

He nodded. “And my wife couldn’t find a job either.”

“Then you ought to know.”

“Unemployment hits people in different ways. I’m trying to understand how it affected your husband.”

“You’re not,” she said bluntly. “You’re trying to find out if I murdered him. That’s your job.”

Diamond didn’t deny it.

“It wasn’t deliberate.” She raised her chin defiantly. “I wouldn’t dream of killing him. Glenn and I were married eleven years. We had fights. Of course we had fights, with my temper. That’s my personal demon — my temper. I threw things. Mostly I missed. He could duck when he was sober.” Her lips twitched into a sad smile. “We always made up. Some of the best times we had were making up after a fight.”

Trish Noble’s candour was touching. Diamond sympathised with her. There was little more he could achieve. “We’ll need a statement, Mrs Noble, a written one, I mean. Then you can go. Do you have someone you can stay with? Family, a friend?”

“Can’t I go home?”

“Our people are going to be in the house for some time. You’d be better off somewhere else.”

She told him she had a sister in Trowbridge. Diamond offered to make the call, but Trish Noble said she’d rather break the news herself.

2

To most of the staff at Manvers Street Police Station this room on the top floor was known as the eagle’s nest. John Farr-Jones, the Chief Constable, greeted Diamond, who had arrived for a meeting of the high fliers. “You’re looking fit, Peter.”

“I used the lift.”

“What’s it like to be back in harness?”

The big detective gave him a pained look and said, “I gave up wearing harness when I was two years old.” He took his place in a leather armchair and nodded to a chief inspector he scarcely knew.

The wholesale changes of personnel in the couple of years he had been away had to be symptomatic of something.

“Mr Diamond’s problem is that we haven’t had a juicy murder since he was reinstated,” Farr-Jones told the rest of the room. Since it was thanks to Farr-Jones’s recommendation that Diamond had got his job back, he may have felt entitled to rib the man a little. But really the recommendation had been little more than a rubber stamp. In October 1994, a dire emergency had poleaxed Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The daughter of the Assistant Chief Constable had been taken hostage and her captor had insisted on dealing only with Diamond. The old rogue elephant, boisterous as ever, was now back among the herd.

“What about this teapot killing?” Farr-Jones persisted. “Can’t you get anything out of that?”

There were smiles all round.

John Wigfull unwisely joked, “A teabag?” There was a history of bad feeling between Wigfull and Diamond. Many a time Diamond had seriously contemplated grabbing the two ends of Wigfull’s ridiculously overgrown moustache and seeing if he could knot them under his chin. Now that Diamond was back, Wigfull had been ousted as head of the murder squad and handed a less glamorous portfolio as head of CID operations. He would use every chance to point to Diamond’s failings.

Tom Ray, the Chief Constable’s staff officer, hadn’t heard about the teapot killing, so Diamond, wholly against his inclination, was obliged to give a summary of the incident.

When he had finished, it was rather like being in a staff college seminar. Someone had to suggest how the law should deal with it.

“Manslaughter?” Ray ventured, more in politeness than anything else.

“No chance,” growled Diamond.

Wigfull, who knew Butterworth’s Police Law like some people know the Bible, seized the moment to shine. “Hold on. As I remember, there are four elements necessary to secure a manslaughter conviction. First, there must be an unlawful act. That’s beyond doubt.”

“Assault with a teapot,” contributed Ray.

“Right. A half-full teapot. Second, the act has to be dangerous, in that any sober and reasonable person would recognize it could do harm.”

“Clocking a fellow with a teapot is dangerous,” Ray agreed, filling a role as chorus to Wigfull.

“Third, the act must be a cause of the death.”

“Well, he didn’t die of old age.”

“And finally, it must be intentional. There’s no question she meant to strike him.”

“No question,” Ray echoed him.

Diamond said flatly, “It was a sudden death.”

“We can’t argue with that, Peter,” said Wigfull, and got a laugh.

“I’m reporting it to the coroner. It’s going in as an occurrence report.”

Wigfull said, “I think you should do a process report to the CPS.”

“Bollocks.”

“It would be up to them whether to prosecute,” Wigfull pointed out.

Diamond’s patience was short at the best of times and it was even shorter when he was on shaky ground. He stabbed a finger at Wigfull. “Don’t you lecture me on the CPS. I refuse to dump on this woman. She’s a nurse, for pity’s sake. She walked all the way here from Twerton and reported what she’d done. If the coroner wants to refer it, so be it. He won’t have my support.”

Ray asked, “Have you been out to Twerton yourself?”

“I haven’t had a chance, have I?” said Diamond. “I’m attending a meeting, in case anyone hadn’t noticed. Julie is out there.”

“Inspector Hargreaves?” said Farr-Jones. “Is that wise? She isn’t so experienced as some of your other people.”

“She was my choice for this, sir.” He didn’t want to get into an argument over Julie’s capability, or his right to delegate duties, but if necessary he would.

He was first out of the meeting, muttering sulphurous things about John Wigfull, Farr-Jones and the whole boiling lot of them. He stomped downstairs to his office to collect his raincoat and trilby. He’d had more than enough of the job for that day.

Someone got up as he entered the room, a stocky, middle-aged man with black-framed bifocals. Dr Jack Merlin, the forensic pathologist. “What’s up?” Merlin said. “You’re looking even more stroppy than usual.”

“Don’t ask.”

“Have you got a few minutes?”

“I was about to leave,” said Diamond.

“Before you do, old friend, I’d like a quiet word. Why don’t you shut that door?”

The “old friend” alerted Diamond like nothing else. His dealings with Merlin — over upwards of a dozen corpses in various states of decomposition — were based on mutual respect. Jack was the best reader of human remains in Britain. But he rarely, if ever, expressed much in the way of sentiment. Diamond grabbed the door-handle and pulled it shut.

“This one at Collinson Road, Twerton,” said Merlin.

“The man hit with a teapot.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t mind me asking, I hope. Did you visit the scene yourself?”

Diamond shrugged. “I was tied up here. I sent one of my younger inspectors out.”

“Good,” said Merlin. “I didn’t think you had.”

“Something wrong?”

“You interviewed the wife, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“She claimed to have topped him with a teapot?”

He nodded. “She’s a ward sister at the RUH. Bit uptight, got religion rather badly, I think, which makes it harder for her.”

Merlin fingered the lobe of his left ear. “The thing is, matey, I thought I should have a quiet word with you at this stage. Shan’t know the cause of death until I’ve done the PM, of course, but...”

“Give it to me, Jack.”

“...a first inspection suggests that the victim suffered a couple of deep stab wounds.”

“Stab wounds?”

“In the back.”

Diamond swore.

“Not a lot of blood about,” the pathologist added, “and he was lying face up, so I wouldn’t be too critical of that young inspector, but it does have the signs of a suspicious death.”

3

Collinson Road, Twerton, backs on to Brunel’s Great Western Railway a mile or so west of the centre of Bath. Diamond drove into a narrow street of Victorian terraced housing, the brickwork blackened by all those locomotives steaming by in years past. Several of the facades had since been cleaned up and gentrified with plastic guttering, picture windows and varnished oak front doors with brass fittings, but Number 32 was resolutely unaltered, sooty and unobtrusive behind an overgrown privet hedge and a small, neglected strip of garden. The door stood open. The Scenes of Crime Officers had received Diamond’s urgent instruction to step up the scale of their work and were still inside. Most of them knew him from years back and as he went in he had to put up with some good-natured chaffing over his intentions. It was well known that he’d been moodily waiting for a murder to fall in his lap.

The team had finished its work downstairs, so he went through the hallway with the senior man, Derek Bignal, and looked inside the kitchen. Almost everything portable had been removed for inspection by the lab. Strips of adhesive tape marked the positions of the table and chairs and the outline of the body.

Diamond asked if the murder weapon had been found.

“Who knows?” said Bignal with a shrug, practically causing paranoia in Peter Diamond so soon after his conversation with Merlin, the laid-back pathologist. “We made a collection of kitchen knives. See the magnetic strip attached to the wall over the draining-board? They were all lined up there, ready to grab. Some of them had blades that could have done the business.”

“No other knife in the sink, or lying on the floor?”

“With blood and prints all over it? You want it easy, Mr Diamond.”

He tried visualising the scene, which was no simple task with the furniture missing. According to her story, Trish Noble had returned from the hospital at four in the afternoon. If she was speaking the truth she must have let herself in at the front door, stepped through the hallway and found her husband seated facing her at the small table against the wall to her left as she entered the kitchen. In a fit of anger, believing him to be drunk, rather than mortally injured, she would have taken a couple of steps towards the table, where the teapot was, snatched it up and hit him with it. He had fallen off to the right of the chair — her right — and lay on his back on the floor, where she had tried resuscitation. That, anyway, was her version. The taped outline of the body didn’t conflict with what she had stated.

To Diamond’s left was a fridge-freezer. The doors were decorated with postcards and photos. The shiny surfaces bore traces of powder, where they had been dusted for prints. Holiday snaps of Glenn Noble, deeply tanned, in shorts and sandals, his arms around the shoulders of his pretty, bikini-clad wife. More of Trish Noble in her nurse’s uniform, giggling with friends. A sneaky shot of her taken in a bathroom, eyes wide in surprise, holding a towel against her breasts, evidently unaware that her right nipple wasn’t covered. Surprising that a woman who claimed to be religious kept such a picture on her fridge door, Diamond mused, then decided that nurses must have a different perception of embarrassment. Another that took his attention was clearly taken on some seaside promenade. Glenn and an older, stocky man were giving piggyback rides to two women in swimsuits, one of them Trish — but it wasn’t Glenn’s back she was riding.

Diamond sighed. To study people’s private snaps systematically like this was an invasion of privacy, an odious but necessary part of the job. He wasn’t in the house to look for evidence. Others had already been through for that. He was getting a sense of how the couple had lived and what their relationship had been. Having thought what a liberty it was, he stripped every photo off the fridge door.

“What’s a wayzgoose when it’s at home?” he asked Bignal.

“Come again.”

“A wayzgoose. This picture of the two couples horsing about on the seafront has a note on the back. Wayzgoose, 1993, Minehead.”

“Is it a place?”

“Minehead is.”

“Could it be the name of some game, do you think?”

“I doubt it.”

He looked into the other rooms downstairs. One was clearly the living room, with two armchairs, a TV and video, a music centre and a low table stacked with newspapers. The Nobles read the Daily Mirror and possessed just about every recording Freddie Mercury had made. On the wall were a bullfight poster and an antique map of Somerset. He picked an expensive-looking art book from a shelf otherwise stacked with nursing magazines. “Who’s Eugene Delacroix?”

“A French romantic painter,” Bignal informed him.

Diamond flicked the pages over. “Doesn’t seem to go with Freddie Mercury and the Mirror.”

“There were also two coffee mugs on the table,” Bignal told him. “By the look of them, they were left over from last night. They’re going to the lab.”

It was not vastly different from his own living room. He moved on. The front room was used as a workroom by the couple, for sewing, typing and storing household bills and bank statements. They had a joint account and seemed to be steadily in credit, which was better than the Diamonds managed.

In another ten minutes the team finished upstairs. No signs of violence there, they informed Diamond. The aggro seemed to have been confined to the kitchen.

He went to see for himself.

The Nobles favoured a rather lurid pink for their bedroom, slept in a standard size double bed and had a portable TV on the chest of drawers Glenn used for most of his clothes. Trish Noble had a wardrobe and a dressing table to herself. She was reading Catherine Cookson and the Bible and Glenn had been into one of the Flashman books. If the quantity and variety of condoms in Glenn’s bedside cabinet was any guide, their sex life hadn’t been subdued by Trish’s religion.

The second bedroom contained a folding bed, an ironing board and various items the couple must have acquired and been unwilling to throw away, ranging from an old record-player to a dartboard with the wire half detached.

He glanced into the bathroom. Nothing caught his attention.

“What’s in the back garden?” he asked Bignal.

“Plants, mostly.”

“Don’t push me, Derek. Have you been out there?”

“Personally, no.”

“Has anyone thought of looking for a murder weapon, footprints, a means of escape?”

“Not systematically,” Bignal admitted. “It was already dark when we got here.”

“Not systematically,” muttered Diamond with heavy sarcasm. “It backs onto the railway, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow, early, I want a proper search made. In particular, I want to know if there are signs that anyone got in or out by way of the railway embankment.”

Bignal’s eyebrows peaked in surprise. “You think someone else is involved, as well as the wife?”

“That’s the way they would have escaped.”

“They?”

“He, she, they or nobody at all. Let’s keep an open mind, shall we?”

4

Julie Hargreaves may have expected a roasting for having failed to notice the stab wounds, but she need not have troubled. Diamond was more interested in roasting Trish Noble. “She had the kid-glove treatment from me yesterday,” he summed up as they drove out to Trowbridge. “Today she’s got to be given a workover.”

“Do you see her as the killer?”

“Do you?”

She paused for thought. “It would be unusual, a woman using a knife as a weapon. The teapot, I can believe — but why would she hit him with the teapot if she’d already stuck a knife in his back?”

“To finish him off.”

“Ah.”

“However, there could be a second person involved.” Diamond casually tossed in some information he’d received that morning from the SOCOs combing the back garden at Twerton. “There’s evidence that someone climbed over the fence to the railway embankment. Two slats are freshly splintered at the top.”

“An intruder? Nothing was stolen.”

“Yes, but if she had an admirer, for instance...”

Julie didn’t buy the idea. “That’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?”

“You mean with her religious convictions? I said ‘admirer,’ not ‘lover’.”

“No, I mean he wouldn’t need to climb over the fence. She’d let him in. And they would have to be real thickos to stab the husband and then go down to the nick and report it.”

He responded huffily, “I didn’t say it was a conspiracy. Unrequited love, Julie. The admirer is obsessed with Trish. She’s unattainable while her husband is alive, so this nutter breaks into the house and knifes him. Trish comes home and finds Glenn dying, but mistakenly thinks he’s drunk.”

“And bashes him with the teapot?”

“Exactly. I think she told the truth yesterday. By now she may have something else to tell us.”

“I wonder,” said Julie. “I find it difficult to believe in this crazy admirer.”

Diamond said loftily, “You may understand better when you meet Trish Noble. She’s on the side of the angels and bloody attractive. Dangerous combination.”

“That would explain everything,” murmured Julie in a bland tone. “Shall I organize house-to-house to find out if anyone was spotted on the railway embankment yesterday afternoon?”

“It’s under way,” he told her. “Two teams.”

Trish Noble’s sister lived in a semi-detached on a council estate north of Trowbridge. But it was the bloody attractive young widow herself who answered their knock. In jeans and a white tee-shirt, with the height and figure of a pre-teen schoolgirl, she looked too frail to use a knife on a chocolate cake, let alone a man. The hours since the killing had taken a toll. Her big eyes were red-lidded and they seemed to have sunk deeper into her skull. Julie must have wondered at Diamond’s ideas of attractiveness.

He introduced her and said there were things he needed to ask. Trish calmly invited them in, explaining that she had the house to herself because her sister was at work. In a narrow sitting room, watched by two unwelcoming spaniels, Diamond took the best armchair and launched straight into the workover. “You didn’t kill your husband with the teapot, Mrs Noble. He was stabbed in the back.”

She frowned and stared.

Julie said, “Why don’t you sit down?” She stood behind the second armchair until Trish Noble acted on the advice.

“Did you stab him?” Diamond asked.

Trish seemed to have difficulty taking in what she had just been told — or she was making a convincing show of being stunned by the news. She shook her head.

Diamond said, “If you’d like to explain how it happened, we’re ready to listen.”

She said, “Stabbed?”

“Twice, in the back.”

“That’s impossible. He was sitting in the kitchen.”

“Your story.”

“It’s true! He was at the table when I got in. I’ve told you this.”

“You didn’t stab him yourself?”

“That’s insulting.”

“We’d like a clear answer, Mrs Noble.”

She said vehemently, “No, I did not stab my own husband.”

“That’s clear, then.” Diamond glanced across at Julie, who had found an upright chair by the sideboard. “Got that? She denies it.”

Julie opened her notebook.

“If you didn’t stab him yourself,” Diamond plunged in again, “we’ve obviously got to look for someone who did. Was there anyone else in the house when you got home from the hospital?”

The tired eyes widened. “No one.”

“You’re sure? You can’t be sure, can you? Let’s take this in stages. Did you see anyone?”

“No. This is unbelievable.”

“Or hear them?”

“No.”

“Is there anyone else living in the house?”

“What do you mean — a lodger? No.”

“Does anyone have a key?”

“What?”

“Some friend, perhaps?”

“We don’t give keys to our friends.”

“I’ll tell you what I have in mind,” Diamond offered. “If someone let himself into the house unknown to your husband, he could have taken him by surprise and stabbed him shortly before you came in.”

“Who would do that?” she said, and there was a note of scorn in the voice. She was getting over the shock.

“Do you have a lover?”

She reddened, but that wasn’t necessarily an admission. Almost anyone would have blushed at the question. She told him with a glare, “You should wash out your mouth.”

“Would you like it rephrased?” Diamond said. “A boyfriend? A fancy man? A bit on the side? Come on, Mrs Noble, you work in a hospital. Life in the raw. I don’t have to pick my words with you, do I?”

“I am a married woman — or was,” she answered primly. “I took vows before the Lord.”

“No need for a boyfriend?”

The look she gave him was her response and he was convinced by it. Moreover, he’d seen inside her husband’s bedside drawer.

“In that case, we have to consider what used to be called unrequited love. To put it crudely, some nutter who fancies you. You see what I’m driving at, don’t you? This man obsessed by you murders your husband to have you to himself.”

She sighed like a scythe and said, “I can’t listen to these serpent-words.”

“No secret admirer you’re aware of? Let’s look at another possibility. Did your husband have any enemies?”

The change of tack brought a more measured response. “Glenn didn’t have enemies.”

“Then did he have friends? Encouraging him in bad habits, perhaps?”

She said, “I can do without your sarcasm.”

“These are friends, presumably?” He took from his pocket the photo taken at Minehead, the piggyback picture. “Were these people in the printing trade?”

She snatched it possessively. “You were the one who stole them, then. My photos are personal.”

“Who are the people?”

The resentment remained in her voice. “The Porterfields. Friends of ours. We had a day out with them.”

“Is Mr Porterfield a printer?”

“No. Basil is a businessman. He sells car-parts.”

“And the lady?”

“His wife Serena. She’s an art teacher.”

“That’s Serena mounted on your husband’s back?”

She gave him a cold stare. “That was for a silly photograph.”

“At Minehead?”

“Yes.”

“For a wayzgoose?”

She frowned. “I beg your pardon.”

“Look on the back. My dictionary says that a wayzgoose is a works outing for those in a printing house. A silly photo at a wayzgoose makes sense to me.”

She glanced at the words on the back of the photo and shrugged. “It doesn’t make any to me. Basil and Serena had nothing to do with Glenn’s job. Besides, he was already redundant when we went to Minehead. He’d been out of work for over a year.”

“I noticed an art book in your living room. French painter.”

“Delacroix?”

“Yes. Was that a gift from Mrs Porterfield?”

“No. Glenn bought it himself.”

“So he was interested in art?”

“Only in Delacroix.”

“Are the Porterfields local?”

“They live up by the golf course.”

“What’s the address?”

“I don’t want them troubled. They’ve got nothing to do with this. They’re decent people.”

“In that case, they’ll want to help me find your husband’s killer.”

She said openly, “I can’t believe this is happening. I thought I killed him. I was sure of it.”

If she is playing the innocent, Diamond thought, she’s doing it with style. He tried to resist making up his mind. First impressions were so misleading. In his time he’d made more mistakes over women than King Henry the Eighth. And this one with her martyred eyes was taking the steam out of his workover.

“After you hit him with the teapot and he fell off the chair, what did you do? Tell me precisely.”

“I went to him at once. I could tell from the way he fell that he was out cold when he hit the floor. I found he’d stopped breathing, so I tried to revive him. Tilted back his head and drew the chin upwards. I don’t have to go through the drill, do I?”

“Mouth to mouth?”

“Of course.”

“Think carefully. While you were doing it, did you hear any extraneous sounds?”

“What do you mean?”

“If anyone else was in the house, in that kitchen, even, they may have picked this moment to run out.” It was a wily suggestion. He couldn’t have handed her a better opportunity of shifting the suspicion to some mythical intruder.

She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t notice a thing.”

Innocent, or refusing to be drawn? He couldn’t tell.

“After the resuscitation had no result, what did you do?”

She bit her lip. “It’s difficult to remember. It’s just a blur. I was deeply shocked.”

“Did you stay in the kitchen?”

“For a bit, I think.”

“You didn’t go upstairs, or in the other rooms?”

“I don’t think so. I was horrified by what I’d done. I got the shakes. I think I ran out of the front door and wandered up the street asking the Lord to forgive me. It took Him a long time to calm my troubled spirit. In the end I walked all the way to Bath to confess to you.”

“Did you speak to anyone between leaving the house and coming to us?”

“No.”

“See anyone you knew?”

“I wasn’t noticing other people.” She made it all sound plausible.

“If there was anyone,” said Diamond, becoming reasonable in spite of his best efforts to be tough, “it would help us to account for your movements.”

“I’ve told you my movements.”

“And we only have your word for them.”

“That was after he died. Why do you want to know what I was doing after he died?”

He declined to answer. “Is there anyone you can think of who ever threatened your husband?”

“No.”

Julie looked up from her notes and said unexpectedly, “Was he seeing a woman?”

Trish Noble blinked twice and flicked nervously at her hair. “If he was...” she started to say, then stopped. “If he was, I’d be very surprised.”

“The wife usually is,” Diamond added, privately wishing he’d remembered to ask. Smart thinking on Julie’s part. “Anyone you can think of who may have fancied him?”

“How would I know? Look, you’re talking about the man I loved and married. He isn’t in his grave yet. Do you have to be so cruel?”

Julie said, “You want us to find the person who stabbed him, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“There is someone, isn’t there?” said Julie.

“I don’t know.”

“But you had your suspicions?”

She looked down and fingered her wedding ring. Speaking in a low, scarcely audible voice, she said, “Sometimes he came home really late. I mean about two in the morning, or later. He was exhausted. Too tired for anything.”

“Drunk?”

“No. I would have noticed.”

“How long was this going on?”

“When it started, it was once every two months or so. Lately, it was about every ten days.”

“Did you question him about it?”

“He snapped my head off when I did. Really told me to mind my own business. It made me think there might be someone, but I had no way of finding out. He didn’t smell of scent, or anything.”

Diamond told her to collect her coat.

She looked seriously worried. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home. Julie will take you home. I want you to look at the scene and tell Julie everything you remember.”

“Aren’t you going to be there?” A question that might have conveyed disappointment was actually spoken on a rising note of relief.

“I may come later.” He turned to Julie. “On the way, you can drop me off at the hospital.”

Trish’s anxiety flooded in again. “The hospital? Do you mean the RUH? You don’t have to talk to them. They can’t tell you anything.”

“It isn’t about you,” said Diamond. “It’s another matter.” And it wasn’t about his weight problem either.

5

“Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to admire your sewing,” Diamond told Jack Merlin.

There was no reaction from the pathologist.

“May I see the other side?”

“Not my sewing. My assistant Rodney does the stitchwork.” In the post-mortem room at the Royal United Hospital, Merlin had the advantage of familiar territory. No visitor was entirely comfortable in the mortuary. Attendance at autopsies is routinely expected of detectives on murder cases. Diamond ducked out whenever he could think up a plausible excuse. On this visit he arrived late. The gory stuff had already been got over. With only a sewn-up corpse to view, he was putting on a good show of self-composure, but it didn’t run to treating these places like a second home.

The assistant Rodney stepped forward and helped Merlin turn the body of Glenn Noble. Two eye-shaped stab wounds were revealed.

Diamond’s hands tightened behind his back. “Not much doubt about those.”

Merlin watched him and said nothing.

“They don’t look superficial, either.”

Still nothing.

“I reckon they tell a story.”

There was a long interval of silence before Diamond spoke again. “You’re a helpful bugger, aren’t you? You know I’m pig-ignorant, yet you’re not going to help me out.”

Merlin shot an amused look across the corpse and then relented. “This one to the right of the spine did the main damage. Penetrated the lung two inches above its basal margin.”

Diamond bent closer to the body to examine the wounds. “Obviously you’ve cleaned him up.”

“You don’t get much external bleeding from stab wounds. There was a pint or so in the right pleural cavity.”

“So was that what killed him?”

“It was a potentially fatal injury.”

“The cause of death, in other words.”

“The potential cause of death.”

Diamond straightened up, frowning. “Am I missing something here?”

“I can’t be specific as to the cause.”

“With a couple of stab-wounds like this and massive internal bleeding? Come on, Jack. Give me a break.”

Merlin said, “As I understand it, the wife admitted to you that she cracked him on the head with a teapot.”

“I believe her. Somebody certainly smashed a teapot. His shirt-front was stained with tea, as I’m sure forensic will tell us in their own good time. Probably tell us if it was Brooke Bond or Tetley’s and whether she warmed the pot.”

“There’s bruising here on the head, just above the hairline,” Merlin confirmed.

“Look, what is this about the teapot? The man has two deep stab wounds.”

“And a bruised cranium.”

Diamond screwed his face into an anguished expression. “Are you telling me it’s possible that the teapot actually finished him off?”

“It’s an interesting question. I can’t exclude the possibility of a fatal brain injury. Of course I’ll examine the brain.”

“Haven’t you done that?”

“It has to be fixed and cut in sections for microscopic examination.”

“How long will that take?”

“Three to four weeks.”

“God help us.” He complained because of his own frustration. He knew Merlin would give him all the information he could as soon as it was available. He was the best.

“And even after I examine the brain, I may not have the answer.”

“Oh, come on, Jack!”

“I mean it. I’ve examined people who died after blows to the head and I could find no perceptible damage to the brain. We don’t know why it happens. Maybe the shock wave passing through the brain stem was sufficient to kill them.”

“So even after four weeks, you may not have the answer?”

“I’m a pathologist, not an ace detective.”

There was an interval of silence.

“Let me get one thing clear in my mind,” said Diamond. “Is it possible that what Mrs Noble told me is true that he was still alive when she clobbered him?”

“Certainly.”

“With stab wounds like this?”

“A victim of stabbing may survive for some time.”

“How long?”

“How long is a piece of string?”

“Your middle name wouldn’t be Prudence by any chance?”

Merlin smiled.

“A few seconds? A few minutes?”

“I couldn’t possibly say.”

“And how would he have appeared? Unsteady, like a drunk?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“A distressed drunk?”

“Distressed is probably right.”

“Unable to speak?”

“That’s possible. The knife cut through some of the blood vessels and airways in the lung, so there was bleeding not only into the chest cavity but into the air passages. That would have affected his power of speech.”

“You see what I’m getting at?” said Diamond.

Merlin grinned. “You’re testing the woman’s story. I was at the scene before you, remember,” he rubbed it in. “I saw the brandy bottle on the table. But I’m not given to speculation, as you know.”

“Jack, I could be making an arrest very soon. Someone entered that house and stabbed him. Not the wife. I’m convinced she’s telling the truth.”

“Do you have a suspect?”

“I’m getting close.”

“I wouldn’t get too close. If you nab them for murder at this stage, you could be torn to shreds by a good defence counsel. Mrs Noble admits that she clobbered her husband with the teapot. She may have killed him, stabbing or no stabbing.”

6

It was a five-minute drive, no more, from the hospital to the murder house in Collinson Road. Frustrated by his session with Jack Merlin, Diamond looked to Julie Hargreaves for some progress in the investigation. He had left her there with Trish Noble, ostensibly checking the contents to see if anything had been stolen. More importantly, she would have been working on drawing Trish out, putting her at her ease and gaining her confidence in the way that she did with women suspects almost without seeming to try. If there were secrets in the lives of the Nobles, Julie was best placed to unlock them.

When he looked in, the two women were waiting in that chintzy living room with the bullfight poster and the map of Somerset. The television was on and coffee and biscuits were on the table. There must be something wrong with my methods, Diamond thought. While I look at a dead body, my sidekick puts her feet up and watches the box.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked.

Julie looked up. “We were waiting for you.”

“What are you watching — a kids’ programme?”

“Actually we were looking out of the window at the SOCOs in the back garden.” She reached for the remote control and switched off. “They look as if they’re about to pack up. Would you like coffee?”

“Had a hospital one, thanks.” In a paper cup from a machine and tasting of tomato soup, he might have added. He wouldn’t want another drink for some time. He reached for the packet of chocolate digestives and helped himself. “What’s the report, then? Anything missing?”

“Most of the furniture from my kitchen,” Trish Noble said accusingly.

“That’ll be the scenes of crime team,” Diamond told her. “They must have left you a check-list somewhere. You’ll get everything back eventually.”

“They weren’t the ones who pinched the photos from my fridge door.”

He said smoothly, “You’ll get them back.” He reached for the art book he’d remarked on before and leafed through the pages. “Is anything of value missing? Money? Jewellery?”

Julie answered for her. “We checked. Everything seems to be there.”

“Speaking of money,” Diamond said to Trish as if she had brought up the subject herself, “we’ll need to look at the bank account and your credit card statements. You do have a credit card? How are you placed financially? I’m not being nosy. We need to know.” He knew, but he wanted to question her on the details.

“We’re solvent,” she answered without looking up.

He hadn’t Julie’s talent for easing out the information. “Your husband must have been given a lump sum when he was made redundant.”

She only nodded, so he talked on.

“It seems generous at the time, but it soon goes, I dare say. Where do you keep the statements?”

“They should still be in the front room if your people haven’t taken them away.”

“Would you mind?” he asked her.

In the short interval when Trish was out of the room, Diamond asked Julie what she had learned of importance.

“Glenn was up to something that she didn’t care for,” said Julie. “I think we touched a raw nerve asking if he had been two-timing her with some other woman.”

“You touched the nerve,” he said. “That was your contribution.”

Julie flushed slightly. She wasn’t used to credit from Peter Diamond. “Anyway, she’s suspicious, but she isn’t sure.”

“She wouldn’t have stuck a knife in his back unless she was damned sure.”

Trish returned and handed across the statements. He studied them. “High standard of living. Shopping at the best boutiques. Meals out at Clos du Roy and the Priory. A holiday in the south of France.”

“That’s the way we chose to spend our money.”

“But it doesn’t seem to have hit your bank balance.”

“Glenn had his redundancy cheque.”

“What’s this restaurant in Exeter that you visited twice in August?”

“The Lemon Tree? We often eat there after visiting his brother. Alec’s home is a working paper mill, a lovely old place in the country near Torquay, but he forgets that people need to eat.”

“I can take a hint. We’ll get you back to your sister’s,” said Diamond.

Seated in the front, whilst Julie drove, he tried drawing out Trish by talking about the pressures that nurses had to work under. “My own health is pretty good, thank God, but in this line of work you get to see the insides of hospitals all too often. The RUH is one of the better ones. I still wouldn’t care to be a nurse.”

She didn’t comment. Perhaps she found it hard to imagine the big policeman nursing anyone.

“How long have you worked there, Mrs Noble?”

“Three years.”

“And before that?”

“Frenchay.”

Another local hospital, in Bristol.

“It’s a vocation, isn’t it?” Diamond rambled on. “Nursing isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. So is doctoring. Better paid, but still a vocation. I’m less sure about some of the others who work in hospitals. The administrators. It’s out of proportion. All those managers.”

She didn’t take his pause as an invitation to join in.

“They tell me the Health Service managers are the only lot who are on the increase,” he said. “Oh, and counsellors. Counselling is the biggest growth industry of all. We need it for everything these days. Child care, education, careers, marriage, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism, bereavement. I don’t know how we managed before. If there’s a major disaster — a train crash or a flood — the first thing they announce after the number of deaths is that counsellors are with the families. We even have counsellors for the police. Some-thing ugly comes our way, like a serial murder case, or child abuse, and half the murder squad are reckoned to need counselling. Watch out for the counsellors, Mrs Noble. If they haven’t found you yet, you may be sure they’re about to make a case study of you.”

She didn’t respond. She was looking out of the window.

“Me, too, probably,” said Diamond.

7

“Give me the dope on the Porterfields,” Diamond asked as Julie steered the car out of the police station yard and headed for Widcombe Hill. On his instruction, she’d spent the last hour checking.

“They’ve lived in Bath for the last five years. Moved out of a terraced house in Bear Flat at the end of 1993 and into this mansion by the golf course. There must be good profits in car parts.”

He grunted his assent. “You’re talking to a man who just had to buy a set of new tyres.”

“She drives a Porsche and he has a Mercedes.”

“And people like me paid for them.”

“Oh, and her name isn’t really Serena. It’s plain Ann.”

“What’s wrong with Ann?” he demanded. “I once had a girl-friend called Ann. The last word in sophistication. Stilettos and hot pants. Don’t suppose you know what hot pants are.”

“Were,” murmured Julie.

“Well, we can’t arrest her for changing her name.” Diamond wrenched his thoughts back from his steamy past.

“Who’s your money on, Julie? Do you still think Glenn Noble had a mistress?”

“Yes — and Trish believes it, too.”

“So who’s the killer — an angry husband?”

“Or boyfriend.”

He didn’t mention Jack Merlin’s bombshell — that Trish might, after all, have struck the fatal blow. “Any idea who? Basil Porterfield?”

She said, “I’ll have a better idea when I meet him.”

“You can spot a skirt-chaser at fifty paces, can you?”

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Julie commented, “that’s a rather outdated expression.”

“Un-hip?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he went on, unabashed, “I have to agree with you that it was some visitor to the house.”

“But who?”

He spread his hands. “Could be anyone. Could be the Bishop of Bath and Wells for all we know.”

“The Porterfields were friends, close friends,” Julie pointed out. “How many of your women friends would you hoist on your back for a photo?”

“All at once?”

She said on a note of exasperation, “Mr Diamond, sir, I’m trying to make a serious point. We know that Glenn was often out until the small hours. If we could confirm that he was sleeping with Serena...”

“Hold on, Julie. That’s a large assumption, isn’t it? Trish Noble doesn’t seem to think he needed to go elsewhere for sex.”

“She had her suspicions, believe me. You have to understand a woman’s thinking. She may have said the opposite, but he was getting home so late that something was obviously going on. She’s too proud or too puritanical to admit it to you and me.”

“He could have been up to something entirely different.”

“Such as?”

“A poker school. He wouldn’t tell her if he was playing cards into the small hours. God and gambling don’t mix.”

Julie wasn’t impressed by that suggestion. “She said he was tired when he got in.”

“Well, it was late.”

“Too tired for anything.”

After a pause, he said, “Was that what she meant? This God-fearing woman who keeps a Bible by her bed?”

“That doesn’t mean she’s under-sexed.”

“Fair point,” said Diamond after a moment’s reflection. “There’s more bonking in the Bible than there is in Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins together. So she interprets his reduced libido as evidence of infidelity? It’s speculation, Julie, whether it’s her speculation or yours.”

She was resolute. “Maybe it is, but if she’s right, Serena Porterfield is in real danger — if she isn’t already murdered. We can’t ignore the possibility, speculation or not.”

The Porterfields’ mock-Tudor mansion was on the slopes of Bathampton Down, with all of the city as a gleaming backdrop of pale cream stone and blue slate roofs. The house stood among lawns as well trimmed as the greens of the Bath Golf Club nearby. A gardener was on a ladder pruning the Albertine rose that covered much of one side of the house. A white Mercedes was on the drive. The chances of anyone from here being involved in a stabbing in a small terraced house in Twerton seemed remote.

Basil Porterfield opened the front door before they knocked. There was no question that he was the man in the Minehead photo — a sturdy, smiling, sandy-haired embodiment of confidence, even after Diamond told him they were police officers.

“Perhaps you heard that Glenn Noble is dead, sir?”

“Saw it in the paper. Devastating.” Porterfield didn’t look devastated, but out of respect he shook his head. “It’s a long time since I saw Glenn.”

“But you were friends?”

“He was the sort you couldn’t help liking. Look, why don’t you come in?”

The welcome was unstinting. In a room big enough for the golf club AGM, they were shown to leather armchairs and offered sherry.

Diamond glanced at the teak wall units laden with pottery and art books. “This is a far cry from Bear Flat.”

“We worked hard to move up in the world,” said Porterfield evenly.

“You’re in the motor trade, I understand.”

“Curiously enough, we prospered in the recession. I don’t sell new cars, I sell parts, and people were doing up their old vehicles rather than replacing them. The business really took off. We have outlets in France and Spain now.”

“You visit these countries?”

“Regularly.”

“And your business is based in Bath?”

“You must have passed it often enough, down the hill on the Warminster Road.”

“Glenn Noble — was he a business contact?”

“Purely social. Through my wife, actually. She took a school project to the printers he worked for. Serena teaches art, print-making, that sort of thing. You can see her influence all around you.”

“Is Mrs Porterfield at home today?”

“No. She’s, em, out of the country.”

Julie’s eyes sought Diamond’s and held them for a moment.

He remarked to Porterfield, “She must be devastated, too.”

“She doesn’t know anything about it.”

Diamond played a wild card. “You said you haven’t seen the Nobles for a long time. Perhaps your wife saw them more recently.”

Porterfield asked smoothly, “Why do you say that?”

Julie, equally smoothly, invented an answer. “Someone answering your wife’s description was seen recently in the company of Glenn Noble.”

“Is that so? Funny she didn’t mention it.” He was unfazed.

“Just for the record,” said Diamond, “would you mind telling me where you were on Monday afternoon between three and five?”

“Monday between three and five.” Porterfield frowned, as if he hadn’t remotely considered that he might be asked. “I would have been at the office. I’m sure my staff will confirm that, if you care to ask them.”

“And your wife?”

“She’s in France, like I said, on a school trip.” He smiled. “She left last week. Last Friday.”

“Where did you say she teaches?”

8

Cavendish College was a girls’ public school on Lyncombe Hill. The Head informed Diamond that Mrs Porterfield was indeed on a sixth form trip to the south of France. She frequently led school parties to places of artistic interest in Europe. She was a loyal, talented teacher, and an asset to the school.

Diamond used a mobile phone to get this information. He and Julie were parked in North Road, with a good view of the Porterfield residence.

“Are you relieved?” he asked Julie. “Serena survives, apparently.”

“I still say he murdered Glenn Noble.”

“And I say you’re right.”

Her eyes widened. “Am I?”

“But he had the decency to do it while his wife was away. We’ll arrest her when she returns.”

“Whatever for?”

“Hold on a little and I’ll show you, if my theory is right. Serena’s talent may be an asset to the school, but it’s a bigger asset to Basil Porterfield. What time is it?”

“Ten past six.”

“After our visit he’s not stopping here much longer.”

Twenty minutes, as it turned out. The Mercedes glided into North Road and down the hill with Julie and Diamond in discreet pursuit. Porterfield turned right at the junction with the busy Warminster Road. Three-quarters of a mile on, he slowed and pulled in to the forecourt of a building with Porterfield Car Spares in large letters across the front.

“Drive past and park as near as you can.”

Julie found a layby a short walk away.

When they approached on foot the only cover available was the side wall of Porterfield’s building. From it they had a view of the empty Mercedes parked on the forecourt. “I should have called for some back-up, but we can handle this, can’t we?” said Diamond.

Julie lifted one eyebrow and said nothing.

Diamond issued an order. “When he comes out, you go across and nick him.”

She lifted the other eyebrow.

He told her, “I’m the back-up.”

Five minutes passed. The traffic on the Warminster Road zoomed by steadily.

“He’s coming.”

Julie tensed.

Porterfield emerged from the building trundling a hand trolley stacked with white cartons. He set the trolley upright, took some keys from his pocket, opened the boot of the car and leaned in.

Diamond pressed a hand against the small of Julie’s back. She started forward.

Sending in Julie first may have looked like cowardice, but it was not. While her sudden arrival on the scene caught Porterfield’s attention, Diamond ducked around the other side of the Mercedes. Just in time, because Porterfield produced a knife from the car boot and swung it at Julie.

She swayed out of range and narrowly escaped another lunge. Then Diamond charged in and grabbed Porterfield from behind and thrust him sideways against the car, pinioning his arms. Julie prised the knife from his fist. Diamond produced a set of handcuffs and between them they forced him over the boot and manacled him.

“Want to see what’s in the cartons?” Diamond suggested to Julie over the groaning prisoner. “Why don’t you use the knife?”

She cut along the adhesive seal of the top carton and parted the flaps. Neatly stacked inside were wads of French one-hundred franc banknotes.

“Money?”

“Funny money,” said Diamond. “We’ll find the offset litho machine and the plates hidden deep inside the building. What with Serena’s artwork, Glenn Noble’s printing expertise and these premises to work in, making counterfeit notes was a profitable scam. But just like you said, Trish got suspicious of all the late nights. Glenn hadn’t dared tell her what he was up to, even though it helped their bank balance no end. She was too high principled to be in on the secret.”

“Why French money?” Julie asked.

“Easier to make. No metal strip. I don’t know how good these forgeries are, but Glenn would have got his brother in Devon to make the paper with a passable watermark.” He picked one up and held it to the light. “Not bad. A portrait of Glenn’s favourite painter, Eugene Delacroix. This has a nice feel to it. They coat the printed notes with glycerine. He’ll have handpressed the serial numbers.”

“And why was he killed?”

“Because of Trish. Unwisely he told Porterfield that she was asking about the late nights. She would have seen it as her moral duty to shop them all, and Porterfield couldn’t risk her wheedling the truth out of Glenn.” He hauled Porterfield upright. “You thought you could get rid of Glenn and do the printing yourself, didn’t you, ratbag? Last Monday afternoon you called unexpectedly at the house. Glenn let you in, offered you a drink, and when his back was turned you drove a knife into him. You escaped through the back garden just as Trish was coming in through the front. Right?”

“How the hell did you get on to me?” Porterfield asked.

“Through something Glenn Noble wrote on a photograph. Someone took a picture of your day out in Minehead in 1993. Glenn wrote ‘wayzgoose’ on the back.”

“What’s that?”

“A word for a printers’ outing. When I looked at it first, I couldn’t understand why he called it that, since he was the only printer in the picture. Then it dawned that you and possibly your wife were involved in some printing activity. When I saw how well you were doing, and how large his bank balance was, I reckoned you were printing money. Julie, would you call headquarters and ask them to send a car?”

Porterfield asked, “What was that word?”

“‘Wayzgoose’,” said Diamond. “Funny old word. Worth remembering. It’ll get you a large score in Scrabble. Where you’re going, you may get the odd chance to play. You’ll certainly have the time.”