Showstopper

21

Diamond reran the sequence repeatedly. Paloma had been sickened by it after one look, so he took over the mouse while she went to the kitchen to make tea. He needed to check each detail. The attack seemed to end after five thrusts. The picture reverted to the view of the field and the hedge caught in an eerie stillness like a freeze frame except that the film was running. After a few seconds more, the footage ended, as if the camera was switched off. The time at the foot of the screen when Deans got out of the car was 9:20 P.M. The assault began fifteen seconds later and ended before the minute was up. The attacker merged with the shadows for much of the action, but was definitely masked, gloved and hooded. The knife was a dagger with a pointed end, purpose-built for stabbing. Hatred lay behind this attack.

The images were still with him when he went to bed. Lying there, not ready for sleep, he tried putting this attack in the context of the wider investigation, the fact that this was a third disappearance linked to the same TV show, but his brain wasn’t ready to go into analytical mode. The dark shape moving in for the kill kept butting into his thoughts.

Next day, he had a better perspective. His first duty was to bring his team up to speed. He arrived in the incident room at what for him was a savagely early hour. They watched the dash cam footage on the large screen. The contrast between the frenzied stabbing and the stillness of the scene that followed seemed to stun everyone.

There was a respectful silence.

Eventually, Keith Halliwell said, “Vicious.”

Paul Gilbert said, “I’ve heard of road rage, but that was excessive. Where did he come from?”

John Leaman, working the controls, said, “Shall I rerun the last part?”

“You’d better,” Ingeborg said. “It was all so sudden.”

They watched a second time, and a third, from the moment the car’s lights picked up the figure in the high-visibility jacket.

“Are there two people involved, the one in the lane and the knifeman,” Halliwell said, “or is it the same guy?”

“This is something I’ve been asking myself,” Diamond said. “There’s time to have taken off the jacket, entered the field and launched the attack.”

“You don’t see much of the one standing in the lane even when the headlights are on him,” Gilbert said. “The jacket is clear enough, but the rest of him isn’t.”

“What do you expect?” Ingeborg said. “A name plate hanging from his neck?”

“There’s nothing to give an idea of scale. He could be six three or five three, male or female, and the same goes for the one with the knife.”

“Fair point,” Ingeborg said. “I think Keith is right. It’s likely to be one individual. It’s not like this was a robbery where two people might work together. It’s murder — one person out to kill another. He wouldn’t risk having a sidekick.”

“There may be ways of enhancing the image,” Diamond said. “We’ll get it analysed by the IT experts.”

“And they’ll take a week and say it’s definitely male or female between five three and six three.”

Gilbert was frowning. “You’re saying the killer planned it all, the ambush in the deserted lane, the hi-vis jacket, the car diverted into the field and the surprise attack?”

“Exactly that,” Ingeborg said. “No one else would want to get involved. What’s in it for them? Nothing.”

“How many sets of shoeprints were found?” Gilbert asked.

“I saw two at least,” Diamond said.

“The killer and his victim,” Ingeborg said, as if that settled the matter.

“We’ve got a very tenacious crime scene investigator on the case. Wolfgang has been there for hours. He may have found more. There’s one thing no one has mentioned yet. If only one person was involved, how did he remove the body from the scene?”

This silenced everyone.

“He must have come with a van,” Halliwell said eventually. “And he’d probably need help to load it inside.”

Ingeborg sighed. “Back to the drawing board. It was a two-man job after all.”

“Whatever happened, it was well planned,” Gilbert said, “and it worked.”

“If it was so brilliant,” Ingeborg said, “why did they leave Deans’s car at the scene? If the Range Rover hadn’t been found it would be a near-perfect crime.”

“The logistics must have defeated them,” Diamond said.

“But if one drove the van, the other was free to drive the Range Rover.”

“I’m pretty certain one got there on a motorbike. You get a glimpse of it in the film.”

“I saw that,” Gilbert said.

“Leaving the bike there would have been a real giveaway,” Halliwell said in support. “Did they find tread marks?”

“They did,” Diamond said. “When the lab results are in, I’m backing Wolfgang to give us enough for a prosecution.”

Ingeborg remained sceptical. “Tell me something else. Why did the killer remove the body? It was obvious a violent crime had happened with so much blood at the scene.”

“This is the killer’s MO,” Halliwell said. “Think back to Tudor and Nicol. Not one of the bodies has been found. Some people still believe you can’t be convicted in the absence of a body. He’s got some place he disposes of them.”

“Like Saltford Marina, you mean?” she said with scorn. “We’ve had divers out there for three days and all they’ve found so far is a skip-load of scrap.”

Halliwell said, “Look on the bright side. This film is a gift from the gods. The one thing he didn’t factor in was a camera recording it all.”

“There’s a nice irony about someone from a TV show being caught on camera,” Ingeborg said.

Diamond was too fired up to appreciate the remark. “Keith is right. I can’t recall ever having a film of the crime under investigation. And we also have hard evidence: the victim’s own car with stains on the bodywork and a pool of blood. Samples were taken to the lab last night. The car will be collected this morning for more forensic testing and there’s a search of the field underway.”

“As always, we have to be patient,” Halliwell said.

“We also have CCTV footage of Deans in the shop buying the fish and chips. It’s part of the chain of evidence proving he was driving his own car and on his way home with the supper, as he promised Natalie.”

“Did the fish and chips go to the lab as well?” Paul Gilbert asked, and got some smiles he hadn’t intended.

“Hoping for a share-out?” Ingeborg said.

Gilbert rolled his eyes. Those two were always feuding.

John Leaman had been mostly silent up to now. With his tunnel vision he could be relied on to make a contribution no one else had considered. “We should collect DNA samples from everyone involved in the show.”

“Hold on,” Ingeborg said. “We don’t have the killer’s DNA yet and even if we get it, there are human rights issues here. It would have to be on a voluntary basis.”

“So we ask them to volunteer and anyone who refuses comes under suspicion.” As always with Leaman, the logic was impeccable and the implementation came second by a long distance.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Diamond said. “I don’t have long. I must get out to Combe Hay. Has anyone dug up anything new since I was last in?”

Jean Sharp raised a hand as if she was in school.

And Diamond felt uncomfortably like the headmaster. “Yes, Jean?”

“You asked me to look into Daisy Summerfield’s cardiac arrest. I’ve got some papers for you to look at: the inquest report with various depositions, the postmortem and so on.”

Daisy Summerfield, the elderly actress who had died at home in Richmond. He retrieved her from the back of his thoughts. “Have you read them? What was the verdict?”

“Unusual. The jury couldn’t decide between misadventure and natural causes.”

“I don’t blame them. It was neither.”

“So the coroner provided something I hadn’t heard of called a narrative verdict.”

“That’s been around a few years now.”

“He stated that the fatal heart attack was almost certainly caused by the shock of finding the burglar.”

“Makes sense. Did the Met send you their case notes?”

“Yes, and there’s nothing much we didn’t know. The burglar seems to have had almost as big a shock as Daisy did. He left by way of the back door, through the garden, shedding things as he went. The police found a Guy Fawkes mask, a bracelet and the box the old lady’s jewels were kept in.”

“He got away with some good stuff, I seem to remember.”

“That seems certain, but Daisy didn’t live to say what was missing, so none of it can be traced. The good news is that DNA was recovered from the box lid and the mask.”

“And the bad?”

“It didn’t match anything on the national database, not even unidentified DNA. This wasn’t a known criminal.”

“Huh.” He couldn’t hide his disappointment. He’d been nursing the theory that someone from the TV show had given a tip-off to a professional burglar in London that the house was unoccupied. Even the best professionals leave traces. “Did you ask them to send the DNA profile for our records?”

“I did. It’s in the form of an STR graph.”

“Okay,” he said, doing his best to sound as if he could tell an STR graph from a banana.

“They also sent Daisy’s graph for comparison, and you can see the difference at once.”

“Get it all on file and see that Wolfgang has access, in case he has some ideas on this. Is there anything else I should know about, people? In that case, I’ll get on the road.” He hesitated and looked around the room.

“Need a lift, guv?” Ingeborg asked, grinning.

The Ka wasn’t so roomy or well-padded as Jean Sharp’s husband’s Volvo, but Diamond valued Ingeborg’s experience on a delicate mission like this. “Straight to the pottery, if you would,” he said. “I must break the news to Natalie that we fear the worst.”

“Hasn’t she heard by now?”

“Of course.”

“A shock like this, a sudden bereavement, is overwhelming, I know from experience, and being disabled she’s got the added problem of being dependent on him.”

“Poor soul. She’s finished. She won’t be able to carry on with her business.”

“There’s that, but the first hammer blow is emotional. Theirs wasn’t a love match, not on his part for sure, and probably not hers either. There’s still a bond. She’s going to feel so alone.”

“You want me to come in with you?”

“Please. She’s met you. She won’t get much sisterly support from the nurse I met.”

“Let’s see.”

They passed through Combe Hay and started along the single-track lane with passing places they hoped they wouldn’t need to use. Driving along a Somerset lane adds tension to any journey. This one took them past the field where the Range Rover had been found. A police officer at the gate waved them past. They couldn’t see much of what was going on, but there were two rows of vehicles parked in the field opposite.

“Will they know what they’re looking for?”

“The murder weapon if it’s there. Traces of blood. Shoeprints. Anything, really. Look out, Inge. There are people up ahead.”

She sighed. She’d driven Diamond enough times to know he was on pins all the way, primed for an accident. There was a bend in the lane, so perhaps he really had spotted something she hadn’t. “People” sounded real enough. She slowed. And saw that he was right.

A woman, a man and a dog coming their way, the woman on a mobility scooter, the man, tall and bearded, striding beside, and the dog running loose.

The dog was huge.

“I know who they are,” Diamond said. “What in the name of sanity is Natalie doing with that waste of space?”