Killing with Confetti

32

Patience had never been a virtue of Diamond’s. As soon as he got in on Monday he phoned the firm who had carried out the crime scene inspection.

‘It’s far too soon,’ the pitiless voice on the end of the line said. ‘You have no idea how long our procedures take.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ Diamond said. ‘I know from bitter experience and that’s why I’m asking.’

‘You can ask as much as you like, but—’

‘You and I are batting for the same team, you know.’ He was second to none at winkling out information.

The voice underwent a subtle change, from implacable to faintly regretful. ‘We can’t under any circumstances reveal our findings until they’re validated.’

‘My friend, I wouldn’t dream of asking for unvalidated findings. A hint of progress would be good. Have you actually made a start?’

Unwise to ask. There was petulance in the answer. ‘People like you don’t seem to realise calls like this are counter-productive. Of course we’ve started.’

‘And one of the first things you do is examine the firearms for prints and DNA, because they need to be handed on to ballistics for test firing, right?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Excellent. And are there signs someone made an attempt to wipe the handgun?’

Shock, horror. ‘I can’t possibly tell you that. I’ll be in trouble with my supervisor.’

‘He will never know.’

‘She — and she sacked the last guy who messed up.’

‘You’re not the sort to mess up. I can tell from your voice you’re encouraged by what’s been found so far.’ A little applesauce never went unappreciated.

‘You could be right about that.’

‘About you?’

‘About what you said.’

Diamond waited for more. He knew the pressure a pause can bring.

‘About the gun.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ He waited again.

The urge to share good news is a basic human trait.

‘You aren’t mistaken about the gun. There was a clear set of prints, too clear, in fact.’

‘Really? It was wiped? After the shot was fired?’

‘That’s impossible to tell. The victim’s prints were present, as you’d expect...’

‘And?’

‘Very little else.’

‘But something else?’

‘We also found a trace of a second person’s DNA.’

‘Nice work.’ He pressed the phone harder to his ear. ‘Well done.’

‘What I just told you is off the record.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, we never had this conversation. I haven’t even asked your name, have I?’

‘We won’t know whose DNA it is until the samples have been checked at the profiling lab against the national database, and of course there’s no guarantee either sample will match anything.’

‘You’ll have to be content to sit back and wait — like me,’ Diamond said. ‘The story of my life.’

Whilst sitting back and waiting, he used the back of a Home Office circular about rises in crime and falling detection rates to summarise the case for murder.

Joe’s unlikely alibi.

Victim was right-handed. Entrance wound left.

Gun had been wiped.

Trace of different DNA.

Victim was a hitman. Kill or be killed.

Joe’s confident demeanour after the killing.

Then his phone buzzed. He was expecting a call from Halliwell to report on the autopsy, but this was the office downstairs. Someone in Bath had asked to speak to the officer in charge of the suicide investigation.

At first he was thrown. He’d forgotten that the rest of the world wasn’t thinking of the death as murder. He was streets ahead.

‘Put them on, then.’

‘She isn’t there anymore.’

‘Where exactly is “there”?’

‘The One Stop Shop.’

The police’s only public presence in the city ever since dear old Manvers Street police station had been sold off. Diamond’s blood pressure rose whenever the One Stop was mentioned.

‘You took her contact details, I hope?’

‘I didn’t speak to her. I’m just passing on the message. Apparently, she wouldn’t give her name, sir. She said she had some shopping to do and she’d return at noon and she expected to find you there.’

‘At the One Stop?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who does she think she is — the Chief Constable?’

‘I got the impression she was someone rather important.’

‘And did you also get the impression she was playing games, wanting to see a senior policeman jump to her command?’

‘I don’t know about that, sir.’

‘Did she say why she wanted to meet me personally?’

‘I didn’t speak to her myself. I believe she’d been online and seen your press release and the photo.’

‘Had she recognised the dead man?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Has anyone else got in touch yet?’

‘Not that I’ve heard.’

He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better see this Lady Bracknell. Okay, I’m sorry I lost my rag. My fault entirely. Pass on this message, would you? If I’m late, I’ll be on my way.’

Going out, he met Keith Halliwell, fresh from the autopsy.

‘That was quick.’

‘One of the quickest I’ve attended, guv. I’ve had haircuts that lasted longer.’

‘What did Dr. Sealy have to say?’

‘The bullet in the head did the job, as if we didn’t know. The skin around the wound was burned from contact with the gun. He was a fit man in his forties, reasonably well nourished.’

‘No other injuries?’

‘Abrasions to his arm, elbow and hip, consistent with falling on the uneven surface where he was found. Superficial skin damage to his palms and fingers.’

‘From climbing over that wall, we think. Did Sealy come up with anything suspicious about the shooting?’

‘You mean evidence of someone else being involved? Sorry, but no.’

‘Good thing we’ve got some pointers of our own. I’m heading out to the One Stop Shop to meet a woman who may know who the victim is. That’s my hope. She could be an attention-seeker.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Halliwell said.

Every trawl for information brings in a high percentage of dross, most of it from responsible, well-meaning citizens who are genuinely confused. Bath, being the genteel place it is, has more than its share of them. And then there are the time wasters who want to be part of the action. You have to cultivate the patience that Diamond found so elusive. He didn’t have high hopes that this imperious lady would have personal knowledge of a professional hitman.

He parked outside the railway station and marched the few yards up Manvers Street to where Bath and North East Somerset had concentrated its council services and where the police had been allocated a space that to his jaundiced eye was a hole in the wall.

Two officers were visible behind the counter. There wasn’t room for more. One was sharp enough to recognise him.

‘Thanks for coming over, sir. The lady is in the meeting area with the small white dog.’

‘There’s a dog as well?’

She was at one of the round tables staring at her phone, most likely checking how late he was. Dark-haired, maybe forty (as he got older he found it more difficult to tell younger people’s ages), no make-up he could detect, black top with a glittery motif and white jeans.

The dog was a West Highland terrier.

He went over. ‘I believe you asked to see me. I’m Peter Diamond, Bath Police.’

‘Magda Lyle,’ she said. ‘Ex-governor of Bream Prison.’ She handed him a business card that said as much.

His brain played rapid catch-up. Ingeborg had been on about a riot at Bream a few years ago when Joe Irving was detained there. This was more promising than he’d dared to hope.

He offered coffee. ‘Don’t know if it’s any good here. I’m based at an outpost up near the motorway.’

‘Lucky you. I won’t, thanks, but Blanche would appreciate a bowl of water.’

Fetch for the dog? he thought briefly and irritably. I’m not one of your inmates, madam. Then he looked down and happened to notice the woman’s foot and shin and the solid surface of a prosthetic leg.

He fetched the dog’s water.

He had remembered with a stab of self-reproach what he’d heard about the riot — the prison governor crashing her car deliberately to thwart her kidnappers. This woman wasn’t a freeloader. She was a hero.

Humbled, he sat opposite her.

‘Your dead man,’ she said. ‘I know who he is. He was in Bream when I was one of the governors there. I saw the photo you issued and I’m certain I’m right. His name is Jack Peace. He was serving five years for grievous bodily harm. His DNA will be on record. You can check it.’

This was a breakthrough. He wanted to jump on the table and shout, ‘Yes!’ Instead of which, he controlled himself and said with the calm of a Buddhist monk, ‘Do you remember him personally?’

‘Quite well. Not so well as some of the others who were sent to me regularly because of behavioural problems. Peace was no trouble at all. That was my judgement, for what it’s worth.’ She paused and looked away, as if deciding how much she would tell. Clearly there was more to her story than this. ‘There was a serious riot in 2015 that brought my career to a sudden end. I should have been on duty, but I was prevented from going there. I saw none of it. I was involved indirectly, but outside the prison walls, so I’m unable to comment on any of his actions on the day.’

Diamond was careful not to lead her. If he’d realised she was going to be a key witness he’d have asked for a formal statement and made sure one of his team was present. Now she’d started, he’d hear her out and arrange the formalities later.

‘You’ll need to read the report,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a spontaneous incident. There was planning and communication with the criminal community outside. Let’s not pretend our prisons are secure. As everyone knows, offenders and their contacts smuggle in drugs and they improvise weapons if they can’t smuggle them in as well. Our staffers do their best, but it’s out of control in all the prisons I’ve known. We have poorly trained officers trying to deal with sophisticated technology. Phones get smaller and easier to bring in. Drones are used increasingly. I can’t tell you how the riot was plotted and the report doesn’t have much to say about it either. We take it as a given that prisoners are in touch with the underworld. I don’t need to tell you this.’ She stiffened in her chair. ‘Blanche!’

The small white dog had drunk its fill and was showing its gratitude by resting its front paws on Diamond’s thigh and licking the back of his hand with a bright pink tongue cool from the water.

‘She’s no bother,’ he said.

‘Have you got one of your own?’

‘No, but animals seem to like the taste of me.’

‘They know more than we give them credit for,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be without her. On that morning three years ago, I was fearful that they’d shoot her. I shake when I think of it, even now. They tied her in a sack and left her in my garden shed. One of them was slightly more civilised than the other. He exercised restraint.’

‘It looks as if Blanche came off better than you did in the end.’

‘My own fault. I was kidnapped in my own garden and forced at gunpoint to drive to the prison. When we got there, one of the wings was on fire and there were men on the roof. The man beside me told me to drive into the prison after the gates opened to let the fire engine in. They were using their phones and it was clear to me that the riot had been staged to allow an escape.’

‘You crashed your car.’

‘Correction. I braked my car and the crook behind crashed into me, but I won’t quibble over who was responsible. Everything that happened after is the direct result of my own actions. I woke from a coma more than a week later and was told both my legs needed to be amputated.’

‘Both? That’s awful.’ Whatever you say about an event like that will sound crass.

She shrugged. She must have experienced every show of sympathy before. ‘But here I am, alive, unlike my passenger and the man in the car behind. Fortunately, my stumps are strong and I owe my recovery so far to the medical professionals who got me upright and walking again.’ She’d spoken without self-pity. ‘I can move on now, literally. I drive a specially adapted car.’

Diamond had been scrupulous in letting her tell the story as she wished. It seemed to have come to an end. ‘Do you live here?’

‘No. I’m staying at the abbey hotel, one of the few dog-friendly places. I have a nice ground-floor flat in Gloucester.’

‘You’re here for a reason. A connection with the riot?’

‘Indirectly.’ She seemed reluctant to expand on this.

‘With Jack Peace?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know he was here until I saw your appeal for information.’

A promising avenue closed.

There was more to come, he was confident. She was waiting for him to contribute. He dredged deep in his brain and remembered something the cousins had told him. ‘Did you by any chance visit a house in Sion Hill Place on Saturday afternoon?’

She looked startled. ‘Who told you that?’

‘It’s true, then?’

‘Unfinished business. I said something about moving on, but I can’t until this is settled. I came here to track down someone I knew from my time at Bream.’

‘Joe Irving?’

‘You know him?’ Her tone became more relaxed, as if she’d needed some assurance that this was going to be productive. ‘I discovered on the internet that his daughter was getting married here. You must understand that for a long time after the riot I was bed-bound, too much of a basket case to think of anything except my own troubles. Only when I was learning to walk again did I start to wonder what happened inside the prison that day. I read the official report of the inquiry and it didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Understandably it’s more about underlying causes and recommendations than personalities. Gloucestershire police interviewed everyone, including me in my hospital bed, but I couldn’t tell them much. I’m one of four governors who shared responsibility for the prison and I was supposed to be on duty that morning, but I never got there, as you know. I had my suspicion who the ringleaders were and I didn’t hold back when I was asked, but it was only my opinion. They were never charged.’

‘Joe Irving and his friends?’

‘You get no prize for working that out, I’m afraid, except a copy of the official report, if you want it.’ She reached for her bag.

‘Do you have one with you? It would save me some time.’

She handed across a thick Ministry of Justice tome of the sort that would normally have been chucked straight into his waste bin. ‘Every word of every witness statement is in there. You don’t have to wade through it all. There’s a summary of the findings.’

‘And they failed to see that Joe was implicated?’

‘His witness statement reads like Snow White’s CV. He gets one short paragraph in the possible causes bit. Every prison wing has its hierarchy and Joe bossed C wing, no question. They worked that out and decided blaming him was the easy solution, too obvious. They needed to delve deeper. Have you met Big Joe?’

‘Several times.’

‘He’s a much-feared gangland chief outside prison, isn’t he? All my experience of him is inside. The entire community went in fear of him, including some of my staff. Yet he’s a complex personality, extremely well-defended, able to project himself as the soul of innocence to anyone in authority. Clearly it works in the courts, because he wriggles out of the high-tariff offences by admitting to relatively minor crimes.’

‘He can afford the best lawyers,’ Diamond said.

‘That I can believe. My personal belief is that he orchestrated the riot as a distraction. In the ensuing chaos he and perhaps some others were to escape. The two thugs who kidnapped me were going in to spring him. I know from what was said to me that their mission was to get someone out and Joe would surely have been first in the queue. Unhappily I can’t prove a thing.’

‘He must have come under strong suspicion.’

‘But the evidence wasn’t there. The wing was a no-go area for hours. The only witnesses were inmates who still go in fear of him.’

‘Weren’t some prison officers held hostage?’

‘Yes, and locked inside a cell. That was the start of it. They seem to have been ambushed without even knowing who attacked them. It wouldn’t have been Joe Irving dirtying his hands, I guarantee. When the only people who know the truth are offenders, you’re up against lies and distortions. Frightened men will say anything for fear of reprisals. When the evidence was taken, one name came up — from as many as four sources.’

‘Jack Peace?’

‘You know?’

‘I could see where this was going. You think he was set up?’

‘I’m convinced of it,’ Magda Lyle said. ‘He was no angel. He had a history of violence and serious crime but from my perspective he was a model prisoner. He was coming to the end of quite a long term and he had high hopes of early release. His probation officer and I were actively planning his resettlement. Why would he have put that at risk by becoming involved in a riot? He was charged with prison mutiny and causing damage. He was cleared of the mutiny, but given three more years for the damage. I felt so strongly about this injustice that I decided to try and trace Joe Irving and find out the truth.’

‘Big risk.’

She smiled. ‘I don’t have much more to lose. I knew he had been released and was probably back in Bath or Bristol, but I didn’t have an address. I suppose I could have contacted the probation service, but I wanted to deal with this in my own way.’

She must have seen a look of misgiving flit across Diamond’s features. ‘I’m a peaceful woman, Mr. Diamond.’

‘Peaceful,’ he said, ‘and brave. Not a safe combination.’

‘The safe option isn’t always the right one. And then an online newspaper had a short piece about the forthcoming wedding at Bath Abbey. I packed a bag and came here to try and find out more. Irving was paying for the wedding and it was sure to be lavish, so I got his address from the main florists in town.’

‘And went to the house?’

‘On Saturday afternoon. I thought I could count on him being there, getting ready for the reception, but he wasn’t. Some woman came to the door in a dressing gown and was unfriendly, to say the least, as if I was the floozy, not her. He hasn’t long been out of prison. I can’t believe he’s in a relationship already.’

‘She was a cousin of the bride, staying overnight for the wedding.’

‘Ah. You know more about it than I do.’

‘Some of it.’

‘I’ve spoken to him,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. I went to his house a second time and managed to get inside. I won’t bore you with how it happened. I tried everything I know to get a confession, but I was wasting my time. He could stonewall for England.’

He was shaken. ‘You shouldn’t have gone there. He’s dangerous.’

She was unimpressed. She stared at him for a moment in silence. ‘Do you know where I think he was when I first called there and spoke to the woman?’

‘Tell me.’

‘The Roman Baths. I reckon he knew by then that Jack Peace was planning something. He found him there and shot him. I believe the suicide was faked.’

‘I’m not sure if he knew Peace was gunning for him,’ Diamond said, ‘but he knew he was putting his head above the parapet. Major criminals don’t usually break cover. They have too many enemies.’

‘This was exceptional. The biggest occasion in his daughter’s life.’

‘Exactly. But he wasn’t unprepared for an attack. I spoke to him myself after the service and without quite admitting he was armed, he confirmed as much in coded language.’ The ‘coded language’ Joe had used was ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ Magda Lyle must have heard worse than that, but Diamond had an old-fashioned care for language in female company.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Armed — at his daughter’s wedding?’

‘We’re thinking along the same lines as you, but there’s a difficulty. It’s almost impossible to fake a suicide like this.’

‘Can’t you trace his DNA?’

‘We’re looking at that. The gun had been wiped.’

‘Even more suspicious.’

‘But there’s a problem. Peace’s body was found in a place where you couldn’t creep up on him without giving yourself away.’

‘Could Joe have immobilised him first?’

‘How?’

‘With a taser.’

None of the team had thought of that. Crooks, just like the police, used tasers. Anyone could buy them on the dark web. For a short interval, Diamond gave it serious consideration before realizing the catch.

‘The effects of a taser last about five seconds, no more. The person tasered feels intense pain and often falls down, but the recovery is quick. His attacker might just get to him in time to kill him, but the taser gun fires these little barbed electrodes that lodge in the clothes or the skin and deliver the volts. He was wearing a T-shirt and they’d have ripped straight through and left tell-tale marks that would show up at the autopsy.’

‘Not a taser, then?’

‘Nice try, though.’

‘How else could it be done? Hypnosis?’

He smiled. ‘That’s another one I hadn’t considered. Isn’t that a slow process, putting someone into a trance?’

She smiled back. ‘Can’t win, can I? But I agree really. Joe Irving is scary, but he’s no Svengali. What’s your best theory?’

‘We think Joe conned him in some way, maybe with the offer of cash. When he got close, instead of handing over money, he drew the gun, pressed it to the side of Jack Peace’s head and fired. There are obvious flaws in this.’

‘Jack was no mug,’ she said.

He couldn’t argue with that. She’d known the man.

She added, ‘When I saw his picture online, I called the present governor to make quite sure he’d been released, and he had, only a short time ago. I also spoke to his probation officer. They didn’t know what he was planning, but both confirmed how bitter he was when he came out. Three extra years in prison, three long, festering years to brood over the injustice and plan his revenge. I’m as sure as anything he blamed Irving and planned to kill him, but I can’t believe he’d be taken in by the trick you just outlined.’

‘I have to agree,’ Diamond said. ‘I said there were flaws. You asked for our best theory and that was it, unconvincing. Would you do something for me?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Visit the hospital mortuary and identify the body.’

‘Willingly.’

He told her she was right to identify Jack Peace as the gunman planning revenge and about the trouble he must have been to, taking delivery of the assault rifle and picking the ideal vantage point for the killing. ‘If it weren’t for the monsoon weather, Irving would be dead meat by now.’

‘Instead of which he walks free, leaving an unexplained death and a case you can’t solve.’