Showstopper

26

It was a good thing Keith Halliwell had his nerves under control. He reported a grade-one emergency command to stop and arrest a blonde female suspect riding a Harley-Davidson in the Wellsway area without a crash helmet, possibly pursued by a male rider, also on a Harley and helmetless, who was a police officer in plain clothes.

Still in shock, Diamond faced two of the film crew who had rushed over for an explanation. “I only know what I saw, the same as you,” he told them, “except I saw it too close for comfort.”

All he would say in answer to other questions was that police patrols had been alerted and he’d share any information he got.

By degrees he pulled himself together enough to act more like the senior professional. His concern about Paul Gilbert may have become less obvious, yet hadn’t lessened in the least.

Filming was abandoned for the day and the star of the show had already retired to her mansion on wheels when a short familiar figure in a forensic suit and carrying a large bag hobbled from the direction of the parked vehicles. “Bit bloody late, Wolfgang,” Diamond said, giving vent to his fractured emotions. “Both motorbikes have gone.”

“Both?” came the surprised response. “You didn’t tell me there were two.”

“Sabine’s and the stunt bike.”

“I understand now.” A heavy sigh confirmed Wolfgang’s annoyance with himself. “But you might have told me.”

“I didn’t know for sure when I phoned. I deal in certainties, my friend, not speculation.” This was untrue. A detective gets nowhere without speculating. But Diamond felt better for reminding Wolfgang of a piece of crime scene dogma.

Then he noticed that the man’s forensic suit was torn at the shoulder and a flap hung loose above the right knee. There was a grass stain down one leg. “What happened to you?”

“In point of fact, I wasn’t a ‘bit bloody late,’” Wolfgang said. “I was here fifteen minutes before you and your companions. I saw you arrive. You were in too much of a hurry to notice me, even though I waved. If you check your phone, you’ll find a text from me.”

“Saying what?”

“What I’m telling you now. I found a motorcycle parked beside one of the TV vans.”

“That would be the stunt bike.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that. A Harley-Davidson Sportster. I decided the right thing to do was check the tyres and they turned out to be Michelin, of the right size and index numbers. I inked the surface of one and made a paper pressing and I knew at once that it was the machine that left the imprint at the crime scene in the field.”

“You knew from memory?”

“The memory of many hours examining the cast and recording the wear marks. There were some new marks, from more recent use, but the wear pattern was essentially all there, visible to the naked eye.”

“And...?”

“I was so absorbed in my work that I didn’t notice someone creep up behind, grab my throat and throw me to the ground. It was like a commando attack and it was a young woman, if you can believe that.”

“Oh, I believe it, Wolfgang.”

“Before I could do anything about it, she got on the bike, started up and rode off in this direction. I’ve no idea who she was.”

“Ann Bugg, Sabine’s stunt double. She panicked when she saw you with the stunt bike she uses — the same bike she rode to Combe Hay the night she attacked Greg Deans.”

“She was the masked figure in the dash cam footage? She must be extremely strong.”

“Stunt people are, as a rule.” He didn’t add that she was at least as tall as Wolfgang.

“And so violent.”

“She’s desperate. I just hope we can catch her before she does more harm.”

Wolfgang shook his head. “It never occurred to me that the figure on camera was female.”

“She was wearing dark clothing. You said yourself that the camera was pretty basic. I got no sense of scale from it.”

“Fair comment.”

“However,” Diamond said. “I did eventually notice that the hand holding the knife must have been the left. Our masked figure is left-handed.”

Wolfgang closed his eyes, remembering the images. “Damn it, that’s true and I didn’t spot it. So if she hasn’t crashed and killed herself and you arrest her, it will be interesting to find out which is her dominant hand.”

A shout from Halliwell took over. He had his phone to his ear and was striding towards them. “Guv, there’s something coming through. They seem to have found her.”

“Where?”

“Near Radstock on the A367. A patrol car spotted her. She ran out of petrol. The tank must have been almost empty when she started.”

“They were using that bike yesterday.”

“Wait, they’re talking about someone else.”

“Give it to me.” Heart thumping, he grabbed the phone in time to hear through the static that a second person had been found with the female and identified himself as a police officer. “He’s alive, thank God!”

The voice was saying that the officer had caught up with the suspect and made an arrest.

“Is he okay?” Diamond asked.

But the communication was one-way. No one answered his question. The voice at the scene added that they needed transport for the bikes and as soon as it arrived they would bring the two people in.

He returned the phone to Halliwell and asked him to drive them back to Concorde House.

“Won’t they be taking her to Radstock, guv?”

“Yes, and then to Keynsham for questioning.”

“Don’t you want to be there?”

“All in good time. I need to know what Ingeborg and Jean have found out. There’s a bigger fish to fry than Ann Bugg.”

Halliwell wanted to know more, but Diamond asked him to be patient. He’d shown his hand and regretted it too many times before.

“Good news and bad,” Ingeborg said when he asked what progress she’d made. The incident room was already up to speed with the events at Beechen Cliff and Radstock and everyone was in awe of Paul Gilbert.

“Give me the good bit first.”

“Well, Jean has been exchanging emails all morning with the Romanian embassy and your theory that the missing men were all from Romania is confirmed. The name David Tudor sounds to me as Welsh as a male voice choir, but Tudor is also common in Romania as a given name and the surname.”

It made sense to Diamond.

“And Jake Nicol?”

“He was born Iacob Niculescu. Like Greg Deans, he anglicised his name.”

“How did you work that out?”

“Jean did, looking at typical Romanian surnames. They’re listed on the internet if you persevere. The embassy wouldn’t give much away at the start, but when they knew we were trying to trace these men they gave us their birthdates, names of parents, Romanian addresses and so on. They keep good records.”

“That I can believe.”

“And so do our lot. We got the passport details of all three, including photos, and everything matches up with the Swift and Proud files in Stall Street.”

His confidence soared. “Okay, so what’s the bad news?”

“More of a hiccup, I hope,” Ingeborg said. “The embassy sent us photos and the one of Greg doesn’t look much like him, even allowing that it was taken a long time ago. It’s definitely not his red hair, unless he colours it.”

“Ah,” was all he said, but it was a three-beat “ah,” more triumphant than troubled.

“Some sort of filing error, I expect,” she went on. “The nice woman at the embassy promised to double-check everything at their end. Jean sent them his passport picture as well as the company mugshot.”

He thanked them both and moved to John Leaman’s desk. “Do you have the printouts I asked for?”

Leaman picked up a large sealed envelope. “It could all go on your phone if you want, guv.”

“No, thanks. It’s cluttered up with bumf from headquarters. I’m hoping someone will show me how to unsubscribe.”

Before leaving, he made a call to Wolfgang. “This time,” he said, “I’m confident you won’t have a wasted journey.”

He and Halliwell had lunch in Keynsham. He fended off another invitation to open up about his new theory by saying he needed to marshal his thoughts before questioning Ann Bugg. “She’s been living with secrets for a long time and she won’t disclose them lightly. She gave me sweet FA the last time we met, so I want to get my questions right.”

Fortified, they checked in at the police station and asked for Ms. Bugg to be brought up to the interview room. Difficult to tell what effect the wait would have had on her. She could have used the time to prepare a defence, or the nerves may have taken over, leaving her ready to tell all.

“Come in and take a seat, Ann,” he said affably when she was shown in, pale and watchful, wearing a glittery top and skinny jeans that matched Sabine’s. “Bit of a change from last time we spoke, in the kitchen at Milroy Court. You’re under arrest, so we have to do this right. You remember who I am, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, and this is Chief Inspector Keith Halliwell.” Halliwell switched on the tape and went through the other formalities.

Diamond took over. “You’re quite a problem for me, Ann. In this country you can’t be arrested for resisting arrest unless you assault the officer trying to take you in, which you didn’t. So you’re here because you stole a valuable motorbike and you can argue that you didn’t steal it at all. It’s at my discretion whether you’re charged with something more serious. I’m looking for you to cooperate.” He didn’t tap the side of his nose but he might as well have done. “Understand?”

She gave the nod he was hoping for. Better still, she reached for the glass of water in front of her... with her left hand.

To get her talking, he threw in a simple question. “How is a stunt person paid — by the year, the week or the day?”

She shrugged. “By the day usually.”

“I’m not going to ask how much you earn, but I hope it’s more than when you started with Swift and Proud. You’re a top-class stuntwoman and you’re also Sabine’s, em... what are the words I’m looking for?”

“Body double.”

“Thanks. You should be getting two fees. I bet they pay you a fraction of what she earns, or what the other actors get.”

“I’m not bothered,” she said. “It’s regular work.”

“No complaints, then?”

“None at all.”

He continued in the same disarming tone, but with words that could have been the opening statement of a prosecution. “When you burgled Daisy Summerfield’s house in June it wasn’t because you were jealous of her salary, it was simply that you were short of money. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

He was ready for a passionate denial. Instead, she stared through him, as if the wall behind contained more interest.

She was absorbing the shock of being found out, he decided. “You say it’s regular work, but months can go by between productions and even then you might not be needed much. I expect you pay for insurance and you have an agent who takes a slice of your income. The temptation to get easy money by illegal means must be strong.”

Now he’d started, there was little else he could do but set out the facts as he understood them. “I don’t know a lot about the old lady except she’d been in well-paid TV parts for years and owned some nice pieces of jewellery. The Richmond police quickly decided the burglar couldn’t have been a professional. They found fingerprints, a shoeprint and a number of stolen items abandoned in the garden.” He picked up the envelope Leaman had given him. “The prints and the DNA don’t match anything on the database of known offenders. I had them sent here so we can compare them with yours. You won’t mind, I’m sure.”

Her face drained of the little colour it had. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Not wholly stupid,” he said, elated as anyone who has scored the winning goal and not showing it. “You might have got away with it if Daisy hadn’t returned home early. According to the call sheet, she’d have to return next day to film her last scene. Bad luck that they made a late change. Even worse luck that she suffered the cardiac arrest when she saw you.”

“Is that how you got on to me — the call sheet?”

“I thought it likely it was an inside job — ‘inside’ meaning people involved in the show. We could eliminate a lot of them who were working at Bottle Yard when the burglary happened, cameramen, riggers, production staff and so on. Yes, the call sheet was a help to me, not so much for the cast members listed on it, but those who were not — and they included you. The burglar had to be someone with wheels and you had the use of the stunt bike. You could do the hundred-odd miles on the motorway in a couple of hours, easy.”

“More like a hundred and twenty,” she said.

“As much as that? You must have started with a full tank and filled up again at some stage. I’m mentioning this because the mileage was your undoing, wasn’t it?”

This time she didn’t answer, so he moved on.

“The Swift show is all about burglaries and break-ins and you ought to be quite the expert by now, but the real thing is a whole different challenge, as you discovered, especially when Daisy arrived unexpectedly. You hid in the wardrobe, the crime scene people reported. Nasty shock for the old lady, fatal as it turned out. Nasty for you, too. I can only imagine the thoughts that went through your head. Would it go down as murder, or manslaughter, or what?”

The danger of this approach, giving the facts of the case as he understood them but with a sympathetic spin, was that she would become the silent listener and confirm or correct none of it. She hadn’t contested anything he’d said except the distance between Bristol and Richmond. He was in two minds whether to invite her to tell the rest of the story herself.

“What’s that?” he said suddenly. A buzzing sound had interrupted him.

Halliwell, embarrassed, cleared his throat. “Your phone, guv.”

He tugged it from his pocket. A call from Ingeborg. “I’d better take it outside. Call a break, Keith. I shouldn’t be long.”

Halliwell checked the time and spoke the words that put the interview on hold.

Left alone with Halliwell, Ann asked, “Is the tape switched off?”

He confirmed it with a nod, so she said, “I’m in deep trouble, aren’t I?”

“Seems so,” he said.

“Is he an understanding man? If I tell him everything, will it work in my favour?”

Halliwell didn’t need to think about that. “It’s always a good thing to cooperate.”

“Up to now it hasn’t helped me.” She reached for the glass of water and sipped some. No more was said until Diamond returned and the interview was on record again.

Ann spoke before Diamond started. “I want to make something clear. I didn’t steal the motorcycle. I’m allowed to use it when we aren’t filming to practise moves I need to make in the show. They turn a blind eye if I ride it privately sometimes.”

“Understood,” Diamond said, “but a round trip of two hundred and forty miles was going too far, wasn’t it? Literally too far.”

There was no arguing with that.

“Did someone query the mileage or the petrol consumption?”

“Are you listening? What I’m saying is I didn’t steal the bike, so you can’t hold me here.”

He smiled. “Nice try, Ann, but if I released you I’d rearrest you immediately for the theft of Daisy’s jewellery. Getting back to your trip to Richmond and who found out, you know for a fact it was the producer himself. Greg Deans was known as an efficient organiser with an eye for detail. He looked at that mileage and put two and two together: your two-hundred-and-forty-mile ride and Daisy’s burglary. Did he call you to his office, or was it a more private meeting?”

“He came to my flat.”

“Smart move. Difficult for him. He should have reported you to the police, but he didn’t. He could have sacked you and he didn’t. Where was he going to find another body double who did stunts? You couldn’t be replaced. The show had to go on at all costs. Fair summary?”

“I can’t tell you what was in his mind.”

“Whatever it was, you kept your job.”

“I wish to God I hadn’t.”

At least he was getting responses.

“What did Greg actually say to you?”

“He kept it short. He got me to admit what I’d done. I was bricking it thinking he’d hand me in. He said the whole show could go down the tubes because of my criminal behaviour and he was considering my future.”

“Words only? You got off lightly.”

“I thought so.”

“Did anyone else know?”

“I’m certain he told no one.”

Diamond tried putting himself into Greg’s shoes. “He had enough to deal with already, finding a way to write Daisy out of the show.” He hesitated. “Was there an element of sex? Was he attracted to you?”

Her face creased in disgust. “Thank Christ, no.”

“And you didn’t warm to him after he let you off?”

She shook her head as if she’d just come out of the shower.

“But he didn’t forget what you’d done. He saved it up for later.”

Her look became a caught-in-the-headlights stare. “You know it all, don’t you?”

“He forced you into conspiring with him to fake his death.”

She swallowed hard before her words came in a rush. “He blackmailed me into doing it. He said he’d protected me from prosecution and if I didn’t do what he asked he’d make sure I went to prison. The only reason I agreed is that if it worked I’d be free of him in future. He could never threaten me again because he’d be out of it, dead to the world.”

“He set up the attack in the field with you acting the killer?”

A long sigh before the words tumbled out. “Like you say, he was an organiser and I do stunts, so he planned the whole thing in one take and fitted the dash cam to his car to record it. He knew all there is to know about staging a stunt like that and making it look real. My part was simple. Well, two parts, first standing in the lane, directing him through the gate, and then as the knifeman. The key thing was I had to stay in shot. He’d laid white tape on the ground to make sure I got my moves right.”

“You wore the high-vis jacket in the lane and then discarded it for the stabbing?”

“He’d told me where to throw it out of the camera’s range. Each move was planned and rehearsed like an action scene from the show. He made me practise stabbing a side of lamb, so I knew how to make it realistic, not just waving the knife in the air.”

“But you didn’t cut him. How did the blood get there?”

“In a big plastic bottle. He’d been collecting it from his own arm, like he was a blood donor. He smeared some on his hand and the side of the car and the rest was poured on the ground to make you lot think he’d bled to death.”

“This was after the camera was switched off?”

“Yes. And then we collected the things and I gave him a lift on the bike to the railway station.”

“I don’t suppose he told you where he was going after that?”

She rolled her eyes upwards at such a stupid question.

“You must have wondered why all this was necessary, why he wanted to stage his own death. Was it discussed?”

“I was too scared to ask. He might have killed me.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t. When his full story is made public, you’ll know how close you came. Did you realise you messed up his masterplan by parking the motorcycle in the wrong place? It’s briefly visible on the dash cam footage when he drives into the field. That helped us work out what happened.”

She sighed. “I’m not much good at real crime, am I? What’s going to happen to me now?”

“It will help your case if you tell the truth about what got you into this mess. Why did you need to steal the stuff from Daisy?”

Her eyes slid downwards and she muttered, “That’s another can of worms.”

“Better own up to it, Ann.”

After a long pause while the pain of indecision was written across her face, she said, “I was doing speed. I’d gone through all the money I had and then some.”

“Are you still on it?”

A hesitant nod. “I need to get myself up for the stunts.”

“What you need, Ann, is help. I’ll give you the address of an addiction clinic. We’re going to take a statement from you, a truthful account of it all, what happened in Richmond and how Deans found out and used you. You may be called as a witness later and you’ll earn some credit for assisting us.”

“Are you going to keep me here?”

“Not if you cooperate. After you’ve signed the statement and your prints have been taken, you’re free to leave. In due course the Metropolitan Police will want to interview you and they’ll get a copy of everything you’ve told us. It’s up to them what action they take over the burglary.”

After she’d been taken out, Diamond asked Halliwell to see to the statement.

“What about Deans?” Halliwell asked. “He’s probably out of the country by now with his beard shaved off and his hair a different colour.”

“Immigration enforcement officers are on the lookout for him at all air and sea ports. Personally, I don’t think he’ll leave the country. He’s safer here, probably in London. He knows the ropes here.”

“Won’t he make for Romania?”

“That’s the last place on earth he’ll go.”