Showstopper

10

Next morning they didn’t literally visit Legat in the cell. That would have been impractical while his dog was taking up three-quarters of the floor.

“This isn’t civilised,” the gentleman of the road complained when he was led into the interview room. “We’ve barely finished breakfast. I hope this won’t be long. Caesar doesn’t take kindly to being left alone.”

Diamond was starting to get the measure of the man. If you weren’t careful, he dominated every exchange by force of personality. “We can get through in no time if you speak the truth. A lot of what you told me yesterday was bollocks.”

“Unkind,” Legat said, unfazed, “not to say distasteful. What exactly is the problem?”

“The problem, Will, is that we sent the belt and your combat trousers to be forensically tested and they tell a different story to yours. I told you yesterday the belt was heavily bloodstained and you told me you didn’t notice any staining.”

“Which is the truth.”

“The latest tests found staining on your trousers as well. The same blood, now verified as that of the missing rigger, Jake Nicol.”

“Whose name, I told you, means nothing to me.”

“We’ll come to that. The point is that if some of the blood ended up on your clothes, it was still damp. You must have been present at the scene when Nicol was attacked. You were selective with the truth.”

Legat said after a pause, “How is your memory, officer? Do you need to write things down, or is it stored in a cloud? I was told about clouds by someone more conversant than I am with the technology. Personally, I prefer to rely on my own grey matter.”

Diamond took that as a crude attempt to divert him. “I thought you wanted to keep this brief.”

“Then let me remind you that I found the belt in the dark when I almost tripped over it. I recall your asking me if it was damp to the touch and I didn’t deny it. I explained that everything was damp because I was standing in a quagmire.”

“Quagmire or bloodbath?”

“I’m willing to bet my house — or would if I owned one — on my confidence that your forensic testers found more mud on my clothes than blood. What am I supposed to have done — killed the rigger because I took a fancy to his belt?”

“You were carrying a jackknife.”

“The knife. Now I see where you’re going with this. Did you test it for blood?”

“We believe you washed it clean.”

“Basic hygiene, isn’t it? In my situation, a knife is a much-used tool. I need it to break up cardboard and make bedding, clean mud and other substances off my boots—”

“We get that.”

He was unstoppable. “—split firewood and remove the splinters from my fingers, cut string to the required length, put wounded gamebirds out of their misery and skin them for supper. And when I eat, I prefer not to use my fingers. I have a fork and I use the knife with it. If you were me, wouldn’t you insist on a clean blade at mealtimes?”

Far from being shaken by the questioning, Legat was enjoying the verbal sparring, giving as good as he got. He carried a knife that could be a murder weapon, yet he’d justified himself with sheer oratory, this harangue about the life of a tramp.

As if he sensed he’d softened the opposition, he went on the offensive. “Was the man attacked with a knife?”

“We don’t know for certain,” Diamond was forced to admit.

“You don’t know?”

“We haven’t found his body. Where is it, Will?”

The voice shrilled in protest. “How would I know? I haven’t seen it.”

“Did you bury him?”

“This is absurd. It’s a jackknife, not a garden spade.”

“How long were you alone at the airfield before Detective Constable Gilbert found you? Several days? Ample time to dispose of a body.”

“More than absurd. Slanderous. I think I shall insist on legal aid. I know what you policemen are like, pinning crimes on innocent men.”

Diamond ignored the slur. He didn’t want a solicitor getting in on the act so he switched to a less contentious line of questioning. “Jake Nicol was living in Fairfield. Do you know that part of Bath?”

“I’m not a local. I was brought up in suburban London.”

“But you come here each summer.”

“The parts of town I know are the backs of supermarkets where they dump their unsold products. Millions of tons of good food in this country goes into crushers and ends up as landfill, but first it’s dumped in bins and skips behind shops and it can be retrieved if you know how. We travellers call it skipping. The hoboes in America have a more colourful expression: dumpster-diving.”

“We don’t need to know this. I’m simply trying to discover if you visit Fairfield.”

“The short answer is no. Can I go now?”

“You had a business in London, you told DC Gilbert. Jake Nicol worked there before he got the job here.”

“‘There,’ as you put it, is a metropolis of nine million residents and countless visitors.”

“Do you go back at all?”

“Not since I quit the place. I’m travelling all the time, but I never head in the London direction. Never will. West country people are far more tolerant towards wayfarers like me.”

“Was Nicol unpleasant to you? Was there an argument?”

“How many times do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with the man? We didn’t speak.”

Gilbert chipped in. “You told me you watched the riggers packing up. Did you see him leave?”

Will Legat pondered the question, drummed his fingertips on the desk and said, “No comment.”

“What?” Diamond doubted his own hearing. He turned to look at Gilbert, who was equally surprised.

“I said, ‘No comment.’”

“You’re not under caution. You can’t incriminate yourself, if that’s what bothers you.”

He got no reply. The switch to non-cooperation was wholly out of character.

“What’s the problem here?” Diamond asked after several more seconds. “You already admitted you watched them leave before you moved in. Did you witness something you don’t wish to speak about?” He realised as he completed the question that he’d laid himself open again.

“No comment.”

“This is getting serious, Will. If you know something and refuse to speak about it, you could force me to get more formal. I may need to caution you after all.”

“And we both know how the caution goes: ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ Comforting words to a man in this situation.” Legat stifled a yawn. “Can I go back to the cell, then?”

Diamond was tempted to answer with a “no comment” of his own. Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood up. “All right. We’ll end it there. I’ll call the custody sergeant.”

Legat looked suspicious, as if he hadn’t really expected the interview to stop so abruptly.

Outside the building, Gilbert, too, expressed surprise. “What are you up to now, guv?”

“Couldn’t you see it was going nowhere?” Diamond said. “He’s working his ticket. He wants more nights in that cell. We could hold him on a minor charge like being in possession, but that would be playing his game.”

“Do you still think he’s our suspect?”

“He’s all we’ve got. The blood on his clothes is serious. We’ve only got his word that he didn’t know Jake Nicol and didn’t go anywhere near him.”

“The blood could have come off the belt.”

“Almost certainly. Even if he didn’t carry out the killing, he knows how it was done and where the body went.”

“Could more than one person be involved?”

“We won’t rule it out.” Even as the words came out, he remembered who was nominally running the case. “Or, rather, you, as investigating officer, won’t want to rule it out. The choice is yours, Paul, but my inclination is to get all the evidence we can, see if the SOCOs find anything and meanwhile question more of the TV people. You may need help. I’m available and so are some of the others.”

“What should we do about Will?”

“Let him stew in uncertainty. He thought he was going to be held and now he isn’t. He’s your witness, but I suggest you turf him out of the cell and see what his next move is.”

“Let him go?” This clearly wasn’t in Gilbert’s plans.

“He won’t get far with the dog and the pram.”

“Was the knife really clean of blood?”

“No. You can’t clean a jackknife with water alone, not enough to pass a forensic test. Bits of muck get lodged inside where the blade folds.”

“So they found some?”

“Blood residue.” He paused. “Unfortunately...” He left Gilbert to complete the line.

“...it wasn’t human?”

“Left over from one of his meals.”