Showstopper

19

Diamond waited until ten next morning before phoning Earnshaw, the dive supervisor. The exchange was more civil than the morning before even if the basic message hadn’t changed.

“I didn’t come by last evening. Thought you’d be in touch if you found anything useful.”

“Good decision, sir. Don’t want to waste your time. I’ve hired a skip for all the scrap we fished out. We’ll charge that to your budget. That’s the way it works.”

No point in arguing. The reckoning would come later when Georgina found out the cost.

“You haven’t finished?”

“God, no.”

“How much of the marina have you searched?”

“Nearly all the clear water. We’ll start looking between the moored boats before the end of today — that is, if the boat owners don’t object.”

“You don’t need their permission, do you?”

“Their cooperation would be nice.”

“Are they giving you abuse?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. By now they all know what we’re looking for and some of them aren’t comfortable with it. What’s more, they don’t like press photographers crawling over their homes to get good shots. Have you seen the Bristol Post this morning?”

“I can guess,” Diamond said. “I have better things to do.”

“We’re expecting gawpers today.”

“Can’t you keep them at a distance?”

“We’ll put tapes across and then the residents will complain about a loss of freedom. Can’t win. It’s okay. We’re used to this.”

“I was thinking you’re nicely placed to observe what goes on among the people who live on the boats. You know the couple I’m interested in?”

“Deck the Halls? Woman with the young kid? You were talking to her when you were here.”

“Right. The man has the day job. Uses a motorbike.”

“I saw him when we arrived this morning. He visited Daisy Belle before he left for work.”

“Who’s she?” Diamond asked.

There was a tone of disrespect in Earnshaw’s answer. “It’s a boat. The narrowboat moored next to them. I got the impression it was locked and not in use. He had a key and let himself in like he owns it.”

“Perhaps he does. Like a second home, extra storage or something.”

“But the wife doesn’t go in. She’s here all day and she doesn’t set foot on board. It’s only him. Do you think he’s got another woman installed there?”

Diamond laughed. “Too close to home, I reckon.” But he wrote Daisy Belle on the notepad on his desk, with a question mark beside it. “Mustn’t hold you up. I hope you search under the jetty.”

“I’m standing on it now.”

“I’d be happier if you were underneath.”

“I’m directing operations.”

Hope sprang briefly in Diamond’s breast. “So the diver is underneath?”

“Out in the middle. The final strip of open water. What is it with the jetty?”

“It’s the place I would stow a corpse if I had one to dispose of — out of sight in case it rises to the surface.”

“We’ll see if you’re right, but don’t hold your breath. It may not be today.”

Diving for bodies in cold, muddy water doesn’t bring out the best in people, Diamond decided.

After ending the call, he took out his phone and found the Bristol Post website and the headline POLICE DIVERS SEARCH MARINA. Below was a picture of a black-clad figure jumping into the water in full gear with snorkel cylinders strapped to his back.

He closed the page without reading the main text. He knew what it would say and the publicity would do no harm. The public would be reassured that the police were doing something, or seen to be. He might need to convince Georgina of that.

His self-confidence, usually so robust, was being tested by this case. If nothing was recovered from the marina, his suspicion of Fergus and Candida would have to be reassessed. He might even ask himself whether he’d got it hopelessly wrong and there were no bodies anywhere.

He hadn’t slept well. His brain had been struggling to process all the information he and the team had gathered. Worryingly, he couldn’t remember a piece of conversation he’d believed at the time was significant, or might be.

Bad sleep, memory lapses, loss of confidence. Could Georgina be right about wanting to pension him off?

Perish the thought.

He stepped into the incident room and found Ingeborg working her keyboard. “Your memory is better than mine, Inge. Cast your mind back to when we interviewed Sabine. There was a lot to take in and she was more talkative than you or I expected, right?”

“Quite the charmer.”

“I hear the same note in your voice as when you reminded me she’s an actor. Her charm passed you by. Enough of that. I’ve been trying to recall something you said when we were with her.”

“You did most of the talking, guv.”

“Right, but you chipped in when you felt I was in danger of missing a point, as you do.”

“We were on a steep learning curve,” Ingeborg said. “There was a lot to take in.”

“Plenty. Isn’t it annoying when you’re trying to hook things out from the back of your brain and can’t? Your comment on something Sabine said made an impression on me — not enough of one, it seems.”

“Something I said?”

“And I didn’t follow it up at the time. I told myself you and I could discuss it later.”

“Can you give me a rough idea what it was about?”

“I have a feeling it was when we spoke about the jinx incidents with her.”

“Let’s go through them, then,” she said, spreading her hand to count them off on her fingers. “Trixie pulling out?”

“Not that.”

“The fire in the sound engineers’ van? The injury to the stuntmen?”

“Keep going.”

“Dave Tudor going missing? Mary Wroxeter’s death?”

“Not that.” Does she think I’m losing it? he asked himself.

“Dan Burbage?”

“No.”

“Daisy Summerfield?”

His hand went up. “Something about the old lady. You took over the questioning when Sabine mentioned her. What was it you said?”

“That the way she died was mostly speculation? The break-in was only discovered after she was found dead.”

“Something else. A remark you made.”

“That it was odd the burglar chose that evening to break in?”

“Yes!” A surge of relief. “I can almost hear your exact words: ‘How did the burglar know Daisy was supposed to be away filming?’”

“I said that?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe I was reading too much into it,” Ingeborg said, without fully appreciating the significance. “I suggested the burglar had seen the call sheet. But there was this last-minute change he couldn’t have known about. She came home early after they filmed her scene as an add-on at the end of the day.”

He felt like hugging her. “This is what I’ve been struggling to remember and it has to be followed up.” His brain was in overdrive now. “We’ll call the Met and get the latest on their investigation.”

“‘We,’ meaning me?” she said.

“No. I need your brainwork for this, not your research skills. It’s a job for Jean Sharp.”

He crossed the room. Jean saw him coming and turned as pale as the whiteboard behind her.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m not asking you to drive me anywhere. I have an in-house task for you. Daisy Summerfield, the old dear who played Swift’s mother in the show. Cardiac arrest believed to have been triggered by finding a burglar in her bedroom. We haven’t examined the full facts.”

She was frowning. “It’s not our case, guv.”

“Right. I need an update from Richmond CID. The name of the investigating officer would be a start. Case notes, postmortem report, anything the coroner is willing to let us have. Maybe no more can be said about a sad occurrence, but it’s part of our brief and we should have looked at it before now.”

Confident she’d deliver what he’d asked for, he returned to Ingeborg. “It’s too much to hope they already arrested the burglar.”

“The Met clear-up rate for residential burglary is about five per cent, guv, and that’s better than ours.”

Crime statistics were a sore point for Diamond. He was always being reminded by Georgina that Bath lagged behind everyone else. “But they’re investigating and they may even have their suspicions who it was. Burglars have their MO, whether they favour smashing windows or ringing the doorbell and conning their way in.”

“I can’t see how this helps,” she said.

“Trust me, it could.”

“I thought we decided her death couldn’t have been deliberate.”

“And we may have made a mistake. Your point was a telling one. The burglar broke in believing Daisy was away in Bristol. Her return to Richmond was a last-minute decision that turned out to be fatal.”

“It was a heart attack. They did the postmortem. It can’t have been murder, guv.”

“But it could have killed off the show. Daisy was one of the main players, wasn’t she?”

Ingeborg nodded. “Swift’s villainous old mother, tough and unprincipled and hugely popular with the viewers.”

“And in real life she was a normal old lady and the shock of having her home broken into could easily have made her quit. If she didn’t, she’d have the thought of another break-in each time she came here for filming. Do you see? Someone wanting to wreck the show tips off his thieving friend in London when the house will be empty.”

“It’s a nasty thought, but I don’t buy it, guv, the idea that anyone would go to all that trouble to sabotage the show. Anyhow, that hasn’t happened. Swift is on its seventh season.”

“You really are well up on it.”

She smiled. “Comes in useful sometimes, doesn’t it, having a mole on the team?”

A shout from across the room interrupted them, John Leaman calling them to his workstation.

“What’s he on about now?”

Diamond went over.

Leaman rolled his chair back from his screen. “You must see this, just posted.”

It was a news release headed MISSING TV PRODUCER:

“Deans?” Diamond said. “What the hell?” He grabbed the phone and got through to the control room — and to a sergeant he knew.

“Yes, sir, you might think it’s jumping the gun to be issuing a misper appeal so soon, but we were on to this last night. The guy lives with a disabled woman who called 101. He’s her caretaker.”

“You don’t have to tell me about these people,” Diamond said. “I know Greg Deans. His partner is a potter called Natalie.”

“Well, he phoned her about eight twenty from Milroy Court, where he was filming, and told her he was on his way home. He didn’t arrive. She was pretty distressed when she phoned the call centre at ten forty-seven.”

“Did someone go to see her?”

“Not last night. Obviously you know they live out in the sticks, a few miles west of Combe Hay. A family liaison officer did her best over the phone to assess the situation. She calmed the poor lady down and promised we’d get someone out in the morning if he was still missing. Social services are with her as we speak.”

“And no news of Deans?”

“Still missing. He told the lady he was bringing home fish and chips from a shop in Trowbridge. Doesn’t sound like he was planning to disappear.”

“Do you know the route home he would have taken?”

“That’s anyone’s guess, except he would have needed to go through Combe Hay. We’ve put out an all-cars alert and a team is making a search.”

Diamond’s frustration showed. “We should have been informed last night. Didn’t you know we have an enquiry underway about this TV company?”

“I wasn’t on the shift, sir, but no, I didn’t.”

“We have an incident room here at Concorde House. Two other men went missing from this show, one very recently, with evidence of violence.”

“Christ, no. That puts a different spin on it. There’s obviously a communications breakdown. We’ll keep you in the loop in future.”

“Fuck the future. I’m on the case right now. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Diamond replaced the phone and stood for a moment trying to deal with his anger while processing the news of yet another disappearance. “Greg Deans now, the top man. We need the full story from his partner.” He turned to face Ingeborg.

She knew the drill. “Give me three minutes, guv. See you by the car.”

Finding the place was the first challenge. Natalie’s website should have helped, but the map gave only a general idea. The terrain was featureless except for narrow intersecting lanes in patches of woodland that masked the view. GPS turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. As the passenger, Diamond felt he should take over as navigator. As a result, Ingeborg drove into the wrong farm and when Diamond got out of the car he was treated as the enemy by a territorial goose hissing, honking and flapping its wings. When he turned his back, it chased him and pecked his legs.

“I don’t think that was the pottery, guv,” Ingeborg said as they drove off.

“If it was, I’m sending someone else.”

Finally they got directions from a hiker who seemed to know what he was talking about. An artistically lettered board told them they’d reached the right place, a cluster of buildings around a stone farmhouse with a tiled roof that must have been a recent replacement. Two cars were already in the yard. Neither was a Range Rover Evoque.

Their knock was answered by a woman in a blue healthcare tunic. She put her finger to her lips as soon as Diamond started to explain why they were there. In a death-bed whisper she said, “I hope this isn’t bad news.”

He shook his head and lowered his voice as well, “May we come in?”

“She’s already told everything she knows to the policemen who were here earlier. She’s been given a sedative.”

“Is she asleep, then?”

“No, but she can’t take more of your questioning.”

“We haven’t started, ma’am.”

They were shown into a large kitchen with whitewashed walls and a tiled floor, where a small, dark-haired woman in a wheelchair looked anything but sedated. Large, anxious eyes locked with Diamond’s. “What’s happened? You can tell me.”

He explained that nothing new had happened. The hunt for Greg was underway and she would have to endure more questions.

She gripped the sides of the chair. “Ask away — anything you like.”

The nurse clicked her tongue.

Diamond was treading on eggs here. Anything adding to Natalie’s distress would risk hysterics. He must give no hint of his suspicions about the fate of the other two missing men.

He started with the probable route home Deans had taken. She said she was sure he would have come by the quickest way possible, even if it meant using minor roads. He worked long hours and he didn’t hang about when the day was done.

He promised every yard of the way would be searched and CCTV footage examined if available.

Ingeborg was checking her phone. “The most direct route would take him through Farleigh Hungerford and Wellow.”

“Are there cameras there?” Diamond asked.

The look he got from his sergeant said it was the dumbest question he’d ever asked.

She turned to Natalie. “He was driving the Range Rover registered to him, right? We have the number.”

Diamond said, “I believe he phoned you just before leaving. What time was that?”

“About twenty past eight. He said he would pick up fish and chips from a shop nearby. He expected to be with me in fifty minutes and asked me to warm up the oven. He’s so reliable usually. It was still warming up two and a half hours later when I called the emergency number. I think he must have had an accident.”

“There were none reported in that time span, ma’am. Did he sound under strain?”

“He was tired and a bit down. It had been a long day, he said, and he hoped mine had gone better than his.”

“Yes, they had trouble shooting one scene,” Diamond said. “I was out there on another matter and Greg spoke to me.”

“Really? You were at Milroy Court?” Her eyes widened in surprise. She didn’t seem to know the show was under investigation.

“He’s the boss, isn’t he, the producer? He was treating the extra takes as an annoyance rather than a major setback.”

Ingeborg picked up on Natalie’s reaction. “Doesn’t he discuss his work with you?”

A hint of colour came to the pale face. “Hardly ever. He likes to switch off when he gets home. The household jobs take over. He’s my only caretaker. And there’s usually a meal to cook.”

“I understand.” Ingeborg got the interview back on track. “We have officers checking all the chippies in Trowbridge. With luck they’ll have security cameras.”

Diamond added, “This will give us a time and we’ll know he definitely started for home. Is anything bothering him?”

“He’d have said if it is. We’re very open with each other.” Which sounded like a contradiction. She’d said a moment ago that they didn’t discuss his work.

“How long have you been together?”

“We met in 2012, before I got ill, before he started in television. He did deliveries for me. We were attracted to each other and it became... physical. I suggested Greg moved in. We keep to separate rooms except when...” Her eyes slid sideways and she bit her lip. “But you don’t need to know all this.”

“You’re doing well. Has he stopped driving for you now?”

“He stopped soon after he started with Swift and Proud. One of my clients happened to be the executive producer there and he offered Greg a job. Saltus Steven.”

Diamond remembered the photo montage in the executive room in the office in the Colonnades.

“So Greg took on the new job, but stayed on.”

“Yes, and I’m so lucky he did. Since my MS took hold, he’s become my mainstay. I couldn’t keep going without him. He saw what was needed and went online and found new equipment so I can work from the wheelchair. He does the heavy work, loads and unloads the kiln for me, and I’m still able to throw the pots. I was very traditional and loved my kick wheel, but he talked me into going electric and it’s the obvious solution.”

“You’re brave.”

“Greg is the hero. I can’t manage without him.”

Her dependence on Deans was a tragedy in the making.

“After what you just told us, this will sound churlish, but it’s a question we have to ask when someone goes missing. Have you noticed any change in his behaviour towards you?”

She frowned. “What are you suggesting — that he’s left me? That’s horrible. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”

“I asked, ma’am, because it’s my job. I’m not suggesting anything. You’ve told me what I need to know.”

The nurse was quick to take this as a cue. She’d been a disapproving presence throughout. She took a step forward and said, “In that case, you’d better leave now. Natalie needs to rest.”

“Understood,” Diamond said, “but before we do we’ll take a look at Mr. Deans’s bedroom if we may. Has anyone been up there?”

Natalie said, “No one. It will be just as he left it yesterday morning. The stairs are through the door behind you. His is at the end of the landing on the left.”

A stair lift was installed but there was ample room for them to use the stairs. A second wheelchair was on the landing.

They found the bedroom and there were no surprises. It was nicely furnished in light oak. Apart from the high ceiling and the fireplace, it had a modern look. The duvet had been turned back on the bed and a pair of boxer shorts lay on the pillow. On the bedside table were a newspaper folded back to show a half-finished crossword, a paperback face down and a remote for the plasma TV on the opposite wall. More books were shelved to one side of the bed. Diamond opened the wardrobe and looked in the chest of drawers. Pants and T-shirts folded.

“What do you think?” Diamond asked.

“He expects to return,” Ingeborg said.

“Agreed. He hasn’t taken much with him if he’s done a runner.”

“Why would he, with a fantastic job, free lodging and someone who appreciates him?”

“I can only think he’s reached a crisis point. It’s become all too much — the caring, I mean — and he can’t face telling her. It can only get harder. They’re not in love. It was only ever an arrangement that suited them both, but it doesn’t suit him anymore. People who get stressed to breaking point sometimes take off.”

Ingeborg shook her head. “I can’t see Greg cracking up. He’s got a top job in television. He won’t put that at risk.”

“It’s not a rational decision, Inge. What’s your theory, then?”

“Well, he hasn’t cracked up and he isn’t dead. This is just about him and Natalie. He wants out and he doesn’t have the guts to tell her face to face. I expect he’ll send her a text to say he’s leaving the pottery. He plans to return for his things later, when she’s over the shock.”

“If you’re right, he will have turned up for work this morning.”

“Let’s find out.” She took out her phone. “I wonder if anyone’s thought of this.”

“Who are you calling?”

“His office.”

It became immediately clear from Ingeborg’s end of the conversation that the staff at Swift and Proud hadn’t seen Greg Deans or heard from him.

“But it doesn’t mean you’re right about the breakdown. They aren’t expecting him in,” she told Diamond after ending the call. “Yesterday was the last day of filming at Milroy Court, and some of the crew start setting up at a new location tomorrow. It’s all planned. For most of them it’s a day off. He picked his time to leave her, the shit.” Ingeborg at her most scathing. The phone in her hand pinged. “And now I’ve got a text from John Leaman.” She brought it up on her screen, stared, frowned and shook her head. “Time for a rethink, guv. Deans bought fish and chips for two at a shop in Trowbridge called the Codfather. The owners remember him talking about the show and they may have got him on CCTV.”

“So both of us are wrong. He was on his way here, and he did buy supper for Natalie. Not such a shit after all.”

“What now, then?”

“We step up the search for his car. I’ll get an all-units out. This sounds like bad news, Inge.”