Showstopper

20

Greg Deans’s Range Rover was found at 4:15 P.M. the same day in a field only two miles from the pottery and under a mile from Combe Hay. Because it was off the road, it hadn’t been sighted in earlier searches. It was unlocked and there was staining on the bodywork that looked worryingly like blood. On the passenger seat was a partly opened pack of cold fish and chips.

Diamond arrived forty minutes later with Ingeborg and Keith Halliwell. They had to park in a field opposite to avoid blocking the lane.

The missing vehicle was inside a gate and facing the lane in an area already cordoned with police tape. A tall hedge meant it had been almost hidden from anyone driving by, so the searchers had done well. The uniformed sergeant who had made the find admitted he’d passed the gate twice before taking a closer look. “When we had enough of us, we divided the lane into sections and got a result.”

“Was it you who put the tape in place?” Diamond asked.

“Yes, sir, and the crime scene guys are on their way.”

“Fingers crossed they can tell us the full story, then. Has anyone phoned his partner at the pottery?”

“No. Should we have done?”

“You did the right thing. I’d rather not break the news until we know more. Obviously, you approached the car to check what was inside.”

“Me and my mate, sir.”

“Opened the door, did you? I’m not knocking you, just noting that the CSI team will need your prints, fingers and shoes, to eliminate them from any others they find. Don’t leave before they get here, got it?”

He was eager to get a closer look, but held himself in check.

A short hiatus before the crime scene experts arrived allowed his jangled emotions to process the fast developing tragedy. His overriding concern was for that poor disabled woman waiting for news. Greg Deans wasn’t a man it was easy to like or respect, but he seemed to have treated Natalie with affection. It must have taken major efforts to manage his TV work and care for her as well, never off duty. And she was remarkably brave to have kept the pottery business going this far into her progressive illness.

The CSI van stopped in the lane outside for someone to get out, already in his protective suit. Short and spry, he marched over as if he meant business from the word go. “Do we have a senior investigating officer?”

“Guilty,” Diamond said and got a sharp look back.

Names were exchanged. The man was Wolfgang, and he spoke his name the English way, with a W. “Good to see the tape in place, but we will need to extend the cordon another three metres in each direction. First we need an officer at the gate to make sure some idiot doesn’t drive into the field and override the tyre marks. Will you arrange that?”

“Consider it done.” Diamond beckoned to one of the uniformed bobbies and issued the instruction.

“I heard there’s blood,” Wolfgang said. “Is there a body?”

“If there is, I need to go to Specsavers.”

No smile. “In that case another vehicle may have removed it from the scene and there should be tracks.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted at the back of the gatekeeper, “Careful where you tread, particularly in the muddy area.” And then he raised his voice still more. “Have any of you people brought forensic suits and overshoes? If you have, put them on, please. If not, we have a supply.”

Scene of crime officers were always bossy. Everyone else was a menace in their eyes, liable to corrupt the scene and add to their workload, an opinion probably borne out of experience.

Diamond and his colleagues dragged the polyethylene suits over their clothes and watched the first moves from a safe distance. A photographer in the same approved kit started taking overview pictures of the scene from multiple angles on the safe side of the tape. A discussion was held before the next step, after which Wolfgang strutted over to Diamond’s group.

“You probably want a closer look.”

“It would help.”

“Can we agree on the common approach path, then? I propose making it over there where my team are standing, in a straight line to the offside of the vehicle. I need to conduct a fingertip search of the strip of ground before anyone else uses it.”

“Suits me.” You didn’t argue with Wolfgang.

Two SOCOs shoulder to shoulder and on hands and knees inched into the sealed-off area. Behind them, a note taker stood ready to log any finds.

It was no use getting impatient, Diamond knew from long experience at crime scenes. This one was about as fresh as it got. The problem with the disappearances of Tudor and Nicol had been the delay in getting there. In the case of Tudor it was four years. Nicol’s absence was more recent but hadn’t been treated as serious for four days until his bloodstained belt was found — four days in which the scene was churned up by vehicles. Shocking as it was, this new incident was an opportunity. A fresh crime scene would surely yield valuable information.

“How long before it gets dark?” Halliwell said. “Three hours maximum? At this rate we’ll all be back tomorrow.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ingeborg said. “I’m not on duty tomorrow.”

“They may bring in arc lamps and work through the night.”

“Oh heck, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Were you planning an evening out, by any chance?”

Diamond got on the phone to Georgina and asked her to authorise a wider search next morning. The SOCOs had staked out their territory. It was up to the police to go over the rest of the field. If there wasn’t a body to be found, there might be other evidence, even a discarded murder weapon.

Georgina had already heard about the find and was eager to know what had happened. Diamond couldn’t tell her much. To be fair, she didn’t need any convincing of the need for more bobbies. She asked if the press had arrived at the scene and was relieved to be told they hadn’t. “Heaven only knows what they’ll make of this, following on from everything else.”

Diamond was summoned to the approach path, now marked and ready for use. Stepping plates had been laid over the turf. After Wolfgang’s elaborate preparation, the walk out to the Range Rover would feel like the first steps on the moon.

“Don’t touch a thing,” he was warned by the pocket-sized CSI supremo. “Don’t even think about touching anything.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Wolfgang.”

“You’d be amazed how some senior officers behave.”

“And some, like me, always do as we are told.”

Wolfgang was carrying a holdall that looked like a beach bag. He came to a halt about six feet back from the Range Rover. The driver’s door had been left partly open. Someone had wiped a space on the window and left a smear. “Did your people do this?” He was sounding increasingly like a headmaster.

“They’re not my people. They’re the patrol officers who got here first. I told them you’ll need their prints.”

“Also a statement detailing everything they did. I need to know how much of the scene is compromised.” Wolfgang put his left foot forward as if he was testing the thickness of ice. He produced a ruler from the bag and used it to ease the door fully open without using his latex-gloved hands. Then he handed Diamond a torch and stood back. “You first.” He had his procedures and he was sticking to them. Protocol decrees that the senior investigating officer is the first to examine the scene.

Diamond stepped up.

The cloud cover meant that at this time of day the torch was needed for inspecting the inside of the car. The beam of light showed him the banal but instructive sight of fish and chips on the passenger seat, the packet partially open as if the victim had got hungry and started eating. Deans had kept his word to Natalie.

The seats and safety belts appeared to be unmarked. He backed away and moved the circle of light along the bodywork. There was the dried mud you’d expect from a vehicle splashing through country lanes and there were also marks that overlaid the mud and were darker. They had spattered the side from a different angle.

Blood.

He found a smear that he took to be a bloody handprint that had slid down the slippery surface.

“That’s a hand mark by the look of it,” he told Wolfgang. “Looks to me as if he stepped out and was attacked and fell back against the side. Can you get fingerprints?”

“Hard to say,” Wolfgang told him. “They’re not sharp. The blood itself may be a better identifier. There’s a large patch on the ground to your right. He was bleeding heavily. Do you know who he was?”

“The owner of the car is a man called Greg Deans, a TV executive who was reported missing last night. You should be able to get a DNA sample from his home. He lived under a mile from here. If he was badly wounded, I wonder if he tried to get home.”

“He wouldn’t have got far, going by the blood loss,” Wolfgang said. “It’s more likely he fell right here and didn’t get up. Look at the scuff marks made by his shoes as he slid down. Look at the amount of blood on the turf.”

Diamond moved the torch over the dark patch and didn’t need any more convincing.

“Are there specks of blood on the fish and chips?”

Diamond leaned right in for a better view and his head touched something. Wolfgang won’t thank me for this, he thought. He supposed he’d nudged the rear-view mirror. He hadn’t. When he saw what it was he felt an uprush of excitement. He pulled his head and shoulders out of the car. “Have I gone to heaven, or is that a dashboard camera?”

The stone-faced SOCO changed places with Diamond. “You’re correct,” he said after some time and without a trace of emotion. “It’s not all that modern, but it seems to be hard-wired. We can play it back and see what’s on it if you like.”

“Now?”

“Later. We must test it for residues, like everything else.” He backed out and straightened up. “Don’t build up your hopes. It may not have been activated.”

“Dash cams are powered by the ignition, aren’t they?”

“Usually. Even if it was working — which isn’t certain — it won’t have carried on recording after he switched off. The modern cameras have a motion detector that operates even when the vehicle is parked, but this is very basic. And of course you won’t see anything outside the camera’s range.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Diamond said, riled by so much downbeat comment.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It could still give us vital evidence.”

Wolfgang remained unmoved. “Have you finished your inspection?”

“I’d like to know if there’s anything on the back seat.”

“Couldn’t you see from the front?”

Diamond leaned in again, careful not to touch anything. “The head restraints are in the way.”

“Don’t touch them.”

“I don’t intend to. Can you see anything through the back window?”

“Not without wiping it clean,” Wolfgang said. “It’s far too dirty.”

“We could open the rear door and have a look.”

The suggestion was met with a sound like the dregs of a drink sucked through a straw. “Nothing must be touched. Photography next and then we’ll go over the exterior.”

No short cuts, then. Wolfgang went by the rules and another twenty minutes passed before he allowed one of the rear doors to be opened.

Diamond approached the car again.

A carrier bag was on the back seat.

“Is it too much to hope we can see what’s inside?” Diamond asked.

Wolfgang eyed him with scorn. “Haven’t you ever done the explosive devices course?”

Leaving Halliwell at the scene, Diamond and Ingeborg removed their forensic suits and drove the short distance to the pottery to break the bad news to Natalie. With them came one of the SOCOs on a different mission: to collect DNA samples from Deans’s room. She was still in the full protective whites and holding a handful of evidence bags.

“Better not show yourself at the start,” Diamond said, thinking of the shock she would give dressed like that. “Sit in the car for a few minutes and we’ll come out and get you.”

The no-nonsense nurse came to the door and told them Natalie was in bed and sleeping. “She stopped struggling against the sedation and now she can rest.”

“She’ll be out to the world for some time, then?”

“Until tomorrow, for sure.”

“Best thing,” he said, thinking more of himself than Natalie, if truth were told. Giving bad news was a duty every police officer dreaded. It could wait until the morning. “Are you staying the night?”

“Yes. I’ll be here when she wakes up.”

“Excellent. I’ll be back tomorrow myself to speak to Natalie after she’s rested.” He’d decided not to say anything to the nurse about what had been found in the field. Natalie needed to hear it first-hand from him. “But as we’re here, we’ll take a look around the outbuildings. And a colleague of ours will need access to Mr. Deans’s room.”

The scale of the pottery business was an eye-opener when they visited the buildings grouped around the yard. One barn was stacked with finished mugs, ready for sale, flatpacks of cardboard boxes and rolls of bubble wrap. Another, where a huge kiln was housed, had more filled racks against the wall. The mugs here had been given the bisque firing and awaited the glaze. And in another, they found the potter’s wheel adapted for use by a disabled person. A tray on a bench beside it was filled with freshly made mugs.

“Sad sight.” Diamond spoke his thoughts aloud. “I doubt whether any of this will get finished. She really depended on Deans.”

When they returned to the field, Wolfgang had decided to close down for the day. His team had completed their immediate work and would be back at nine next morning. Two hapless constables would stand by the entrance all night, as Wolfgang put it, “to safeguard the integrity of the site.”

“What was in the Sainsbury’s bag on the back seat?” Diamond asked.

“More Sainsbury’s bags,” Wolfgang told him.

“That was all?”

“We found reddish hairs inside the car and on the grass quite close to the large bloodstain. They could be informative.”

“His own, by the sound of it.” Diamond said.

“I will personally deliver all the samples tonight. We use a lab not far from where I live in Midsomer Norton. I believe in keeping the chain of evidence as short as possible.”

“Your colleague found some hairs on a brush and comb in Greg Deans’s room.”

“Excellent. They will serve as the control samples.”

“This may be an impossible question, Wolfgang, but how soon can we expect some results?”

“I will ask the head scientist to treat them as a priority. They know me there. They don’t usually keep me waiting.”

“I can believe it.”

“One more thing. We removed the memory card from the dash cam. I’ll send the footage later today to your computer — if any of it is worth sending.”

“You’re a star. Do you want my contact details?”

Wolfgang smiled at the naivety of the question. “I have you on my phone already. Look for an email at ten this evening, that is if you work outside normal hours.”

On the way back, he listened to Bristol Radio. There was nothing yet about Greg Deans on the regional news. “We’re ahead of the pack this time,” he said. “I thought someone was sure to have tipped them off.”

“Isn’t that your job?” Paloma said.

He smiled. “All in good time. We may issue a statement tomorrow if we have anything definite for them. Right now I’m not looking for more publicity. Fingers crossed, I’ll learn something from the dash cam footage.”

As you would expect from the punctilious Wolfgang, the video arrived in Diamond’s inbox shortly before ten the same evening. The covering email was typically chastening. “This will be meat and drink to you people, no doubt. The limitations of the camera are obvious, as you will discover. The best dash cams have night vision. However, I’m sending the footage for what it’s worth.”

Paloma offered the use of her all-singing, all-dancing computer to get a generous-sized image. “Ready?” she said and clicked on the download.

Up came a driver’s view of a main road in daylight with other vehicles ahead.

“Early in the day on his way to work, by the look of it,” Diamond said. “Can we fast-forward?” He was leaving Paloma to manage the technology.

“Should be able to,” she said. Figures along the bottom of the screen displayed the time and date as well as the car’s speed. “What time of day are we looking for?”

“He phoned home at eight twenty and said he was leaving Trowbridge, so if we can pick it up round about then, we’ll get to the action, I hope.”

The images after dark were more grainy than the earlier ones, but once the car’s headlights had been switched on, the picture quality wasn’t bad.

“It’s a weird experience watching this,” Paloma said. “Like I’m in the car and driving it.”

“I know. I feel the same. Have to keep reminding myself it’s Greg at the wheel.”

“That’s even more spooky, being driven by a dead man. Shall I let it run now? Shout if you want to rewind.”

“Will do. Those are the gates of Milroy Court coming up. He’s turning left and he’s on his way home. The street lighting helps.”

Not more than five minutes into the trip, the car pulled over into a space in a row of vehicles lining the kerb.

“This must be the chippy,” Diamond said. “Damn!”

The screen had suddenly gone blank.

“It’s okay, he switched off,” Paloma said. “He’ll be going in to buy his fish and chips. We don’t have to wait ten minutes while they’re cooking it. The action should jump forward.”

She was right. The picture was live again and they were moving off.

“What time are we showing now? Eight forty-five. He will have put the packet on the passenger seat and is making for home.”

“If this was a film, we’d get an establishing shot of the fish and chips,” Paloma said. “I’m still not adjusted to this way of seeing things.”

“Mustn’t complain,” he said. “At least we have something. I wouldn’t have believed a drive through Trowbridge can be so full of interest. Nothing happens now until he’s almost home, but we’d better not fast-forward. I need to know the route he takes.”

“Took,” Paloma said. “This was yesterday.”

They came to a roundabout. “Wingfield Road, as I expected. This will take us out to Farleigh Hungerford and across the A36 to Hinton Charterhouse. If you don’t mind narrow lanes it’s the quick way.”

“It looks all the same without streetlights.”

“Well, it is between the villages.”

The headlights switched to full beam and showed the cat’s eyes for some distance ahead and little else except the occasional road sign until they crossed the A36, the main artery into Bath, swarming with traffic, and started up an even more narrow country lane.

“This is like watching paint dry,” Paloma said after some minutes. “I might leave you with the mouse and make the tea.”

“Don’t,” he said. “That was Wellow we came through and we’re almost at Combe Hay where the incident happened, or just after.”

“He’s driving too fast for my liking.”

Diamond had to agree. “The width exaggerates the speed, but I’m uncomfortable with it. He wants to get home now. He can smell those chips.”

The lights picked out a drystone wall and some buildings fronting the lane.

“We must be approaching Combe Hay. Something soon causes him to turn off into the field.”

“Too many turns. I’m losing all sense of direction. Even if you live here you could get lost in the dark.”

Diamond had stopped speaking. This was crunch time. The car was through the village and picking up speed again.

“What’s that ahead?”

The headlight had picked out a small patch of bright yellow. Someone in a high-visibility jacket was standing in the lane gesturing to the driver to make a right turn. The speed slowed from forty-five to below twenty. The identity of the figure was impossible to make out. And suddenly the light dimmed from full beam to dipped headlights.

“Why did he do that? So as not to dazzle the guy, I suppose.”

The car slowed as it approached the figure directing them through a gateway and into a field. The dipped lights caught the reflective tape on the jacket and sleeves, but wouldn’t show more than a vague impression of the person wearing them.

“Can we stop it and replay that bit in slow motion?”

“Now you’re asking,” Paloma said. She succeeded in stopping the video and placing them back about fifty yards.

“Infuriating,” Diamond said when it started up again. “So indistinct.”

“The image is only as good as the equipment. My computer isn’t the problem, but the dash cam can’t be all that good. They work on a continuous loop as far as I know. I suppose it degrades as time goes on, like the rest of us.”

“You’re talking like Wolfgang now.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She tried showing it frame by frame and that didn’t help much.

“He must be masked and hooded,” Diamond said. “You can just about see the whites of the eyes. There’s no lighter area where the face should be. It’s hard to see anything except the jacket. Any driver is going to do as ordered by an official-looking figure like that. Let’s look at the next sequence.”

So the narrative resumed again. The Range Rover turned right and entered the field, making the picture jig up and down as it moved over the uneven ground. It turned in a full circle and came to a stop at a slightly oblique angle facing the gateway.

“Can we go back?” Diamond asked.

“How far?”

“To when we came through the gate.”

Paloma judged it well.

“As he was turning I thought I saw something metallic in the shadow of the hedge,” Diamond said. “Could have been a small vehicle.”

“You’re too close to the screen to see anything properly,” Paloma said. “Move your chair back a bit.”

He watched the slow-motion judder of the image. “There!”

She froze the picture and caught, unmistakably, the sheen of metal.

“Not big enough for a car,” he said. “I think it could be a motorbike.”

“If it isn’t farm machinery,” Paloma said. “No, I think you’re right.”

“If I am, we know how one of them got here. This was a planned ambush. Can the video run on now?”

The journey was over, the Range Rover at a standstill, and for two or three minutes it looked and felt as if the show was at an end. The available light had dimmed even more, bringing a dishwater murk to the pixels that formed the image. Slight luminosity at either side suggested that the car’s sidelights had been left on.

“He hasn’t switched off the engine,” Diamond said. “He’s uncertain what to do next. At some point soon, he’ll step out.”

“We won’t see that,” Paloma said. “It happens this side of the camera.”

“That’s so infuriating. Hold on. Something is going on here.”

At the bottom right of the screen a domed shadow bobbed up briefly and went out of shot just as suddenly.

“The top of his head. He’s out of the car,” Diamond said. “This is him wanting to find out why he was taken off the road.”

And now some movement from higher up the screen, indistinct, but not for long. A dark shape emerged from the darkness and came into better focus, becoming recognisable as a human figure. It crept close enough to the car’s sidelight for the hooded head, shoulders and upper arms to be apparent. And there was something else — the flash of a blade.

Paloma caught her breath.

A scene of violence was enacted at the lower edge of the camera’s range. First, the top of a head, shifting left and off camera, as if Deans had backed or been shoved against the bonnet of the car. Then — with shocking clarity — the second figure close up, knife raised above shoulder height. For a moment the gloved fist gripping the knife took up the whole of the screen, the back of the hand and knuckles sharply defined. Then it thrust downwards.

Again and again.

“Dear God,” Paloma said, “we’re watching the murder.”