The Last Detective

Chapter Two

WHILE THE TWO DETECTIVES STOOD outside, Wigfull took the opportunity to ask, 'What's next?' His superior wasn't much of a communicator.

'This.' Diamond picked up a book and held it at the level of his shoulder as if he were about to swear an oath in court, except that the book had a laminated cover of pink elephants. 'Geraldine's address book.'

'You want to go through the names?'

Diamond confirmed it with a grin. 'With the help of our friend in there, of course. Let's give him some rope, John.'

'And see if he hangs himself?'

'You're out of date, chum.'

Wigfull nodded. Diamond's views on the death penalty were well known. He firmly believed Britain's decline as a world power could be traced back to 1964, the year of abolition. This wasn't the moment to get him on that old hobbyhorse. 'How will he give himself away?'

'By pointing the finger at someone else.'

'To sidetrack us, do you mean?'

'Assist us,' Diamond said, affecting a pained look. 'We don't want to make any premature assumptions about our professor, do we? He is co-operating to the best of his ability. You're a devious bastard.'

'You're a sarcastic one,' said Wigfull.

Diamond beamed.

When they returned to the interview room, they found Jackman buttoning his cuff, looking less self-assured than he had previously appeared. 'Why did you want my blood?' he asked at once.

'You make me sound like a vampire,' said Diamond. 'I told you. It's standard procedure these days. Have you heard of genetic fingerprinting?'

'Yes, but what does it have to do with me?'

'There were traces of blood on the quilt of your wife's bed.'

'I didn't notice any.'

'They weren't very obvious.'

After a pause that was open to several interpretations, Jackman asked, 'Was she attacked in bed, then?'

'That's impossible to say yet. We don't even know if the blood was her own. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation if she scratched herself accidentally, as we all do from time to time. Or it may be significant. Either way, we won't know this side of next week. The forensic science lab isn't noted for quick results. And if your sample happens to match the bloodstains, I'm sure there's an innocent explanation. We can talk about it now if you want.'

Jackman shook his head. 'We'd be wasting our time.'

'As you wish.' Diamond dropped the address book on the table and they began the process of going through names. Whether anyone's address book is an indication of character is debatable, but Geraldine Jackman's was chaotic. For the few full names and addresses that appeared under each letter, many more were entered under forenames alone, often with no address listed, only a phone number. Some were circled or heavily underlined and many were scored through. Additional jottings had been added on most pages, times of trains, appointments, bank balances and densely-patterned doodles strung across the entries like an illustrated guide to cobwebs. A detective of the school of Sherlock Holmes would surely have deduced enough from those elaborate pages to convict the murderer and state exactly how the crime had been committed and when. Diamond's more workaday method was to observe Jackman's demeanour and listen to his comments as together the three men attempted to compile a list of Geraldine's friends.

Painstakingly, in the course of the next hour and a half, the task was completed – or as nearly completed as it was ever likely to be. By concentrating on local addresses and phone numbers, Jackman identified more than thirty of his wife's friends of the past two years. A scattering of names remained mysteries, but his willingness to assist was not in doubt. He went meticulously through the book interpreting the jottings. He could be faulted only in one respect. Inconveniently, he omitted to suggest that any of the names was a potential suspect.

Far from satisfied with the exercise, Diamond started probing with less subtlety. 'When you were telling us about the barbecue, you mentioned an estate agent by the name of Roger, the character who was dancing with your wife.'

'Yes. He's in here somewhere. Roger Plato.' Jackman leafed through the pages. 'Under "R". Two phone numbers, work and home.'

Diamond reached for the book and peered at the entry as if he hadn't noticed it previously. 'His wife isn't mentioned.'

'As far as I know, she didn't go about with the Bristol crowd.'

'She came to the barbecue, you said.'

'Yes. I didn't know of her existence until that evening.'

'But your wife knew, presumably.'

Jackman gave a shrug.

Diamond snapped the book shut and said on a sudden aggressive note, 'Was Plato sleeping with your wife?'

The attempt at a shock-effect was too obviously stage-managed. Jackman showed that he was unimpressed and unruffled. 'Isn't that a matter you should discuss with Roger, rather than me?'

Diamond reverted smoothly to his more civil approach. 'Let me phrase it differently, then. Did you suspect that he was sleeping with her?'

Paradoxically, this caused a flicker of annoyance. 'No, I didn't. She wouldn't have been so obvious about it. She flaunted Roger like a new hat.'

'Was there some other man?'

'I can't say. I simply do not know.'

'Did you care?'

Jackman hesitated. 'Yes.'

'So the openness you talked about in your relationship didn't extend to taking lovers?'

At this stage in the interview the professor made a bid to seize the initiative by demanding, 'Why are these questions necessary, Superintendent?'

Diamond answered candidly, 'Because jealousy may be the motive I'm looking for.'

'Jealousy on whose part?'

Unaccustomed to finding himself on the end of a sharp question, Diamond cast his eyes up to the ceiling and answered, 'A wife who is being cheated, possibly.'

'Or a husband?' said Jackman angrily. 'You've made it plain enough that I'm your principal suspect, so why don't you say it?'

'Principal witness,' Diamond insisted. 'You're my principal witness up to now. I need your help. I'm not going to throw accusations at you when you're helping us.' He reached for the address book again. 'There are several names here that we passed over quickly. Andy. No surname. Bristol phone number. Did you meet a friend of your wife's called Andy?'

'No.'

'Was anyone of that name at the barbecue?'

'I've no idea. I doubt whether I saw everyone who came.'

'You mentioned stepping over someone in the doorway who was using your Coronation biscuit tin as a drum.'

'Silver Jubilee biscuit tin. I didn't discover his name.'

Diamond tried another. 'Chrissie – does that mean anything?'

'No.'

'Fiona?'

'Look, if I'd recognized the names, I would have told you when we were going through the book. I thought I had made it abundantly clear already that we didn't live in each other's pockets. Gerry had a life of her own and I shared a part of it, just a part.'

Diamond gave a tolerant nod and eased back in the chair. 'Let's concentrate on your life, then. Take us through the weeks leading up to your wife's disappearance. How long was it after the barbecue that she went missing?'

'The barbecue was on 5 August. The last time I saw Gerry was Monday, 11 September.'

Diamond glanced at Wigfull, who made a mental calculation and said, 'Just over five weeks.'

'So how did you fill the time?'

Jackman gave an exasperated sigh. 'For Christ's sake! I was working my butt off organizing a bloody exhibition.'

The Jane Austen exhibition didn't interest Diamond. 'What about your personal life? What was going on at home?'

'Nothing much. We were pretty suspicious of each other after what had happened. I think Gerry deliberately kept out of my way as much as possible – to let me get over it, I suppose. And I was getting in late.'

'Did you continue to sleep together?'

'If you mean in the same bedroom, yes.'

Wigfull put in, almost out of curiosity, 'How could you relax, knowing she'd tried to kill you?'

'I felt safer knowing she was in the same room than if she were somewhere else in the house, where God alone knows what she might have got up to.' He made it sound reasonable.

Diamond, too, was making strenuous efforts to sound reasonable. 'So this was the pattern of your life for the five weeks up to her disappearance: long days preparing the exhibition?'

'Correct.'

'It can't have been very relaxing.'

'Sometimes at the end of the day I went for a swim.'

Diamond raised his finger. 'Ah -1 was going to ask about the swimming. You spoke earlier about the boy you rescued. What was his name?'

'Matthew.'

'Yes. You invited him to the university pool.'

'I mentioned it in passing,'Jackman said. 'I don't see why it should interest the police.'

Diamond leaned forward on his elbows, covering his face in an attitude of fatigue or discouragement and ran both hands over his forehead and the bald curve of his head. 'Professor,' he finally said, 'everything interests the police in an inquiry as serious as this. Everything.'

With a slight upward movement of the shoulders, Jackman said, 'Fair enough. Matthew came for his swim. He came a number of times. I would generally meet him outside the sports centre about seven.'

'With his mother?'

'She drove him up to Claverton, but she didn't join us. He and I had the pool to ourselves most evenings. I helped him lose some faults in his overarm style. He'll develop into a useful swimmer if he keeps it up.'

Notwithstanding his recent declaration, Diamond didn't want to know any more about Matthew's progress as a swimmer. What really intrigued him was the pretext that the swimming lessons must have given Jackman for regular contact with Matthew's divorced mother. He had noted how approvingly Jackman had spoken earlier of Mrs Didrikson, even commenting on the beauty in her smile. 'And when the swim was over…?' he ventured.

'Mat went home.'

'In his mother's car?'

'In his mother's 'Most times.'

'Most times.'

'The exception being…?'

'When I drove him home on a couple of occasions.'

'Did you go into the house – for a coffee, or something?' Diamond added as if it scarcely mattered what the answer might be.

His casual air failed to woo Jackman, whose equanimity snapped. 'For pity's sake! What are you driving at now? Do you want me to say the swimming was just a front for secret meetings with Mrs Didrikson? Give me strength! This isn't 1900. If I really wanted to spend time with the woman I wouldn't have to find some fatuous excuse.'

'Perhaps you'll answer my question, Professor.'

'Perhaps you'll tell me what it can possibly have to do with my wife's death.'

'That remains to be seen. Are you tired? Would you care for a break?'

Jackman sighed impatiently and said, 'On two or three occasions I was invited in for a coffee. Is that what you wanted to know? And since you seem bent on pursuing this line of questioning, I took Mat to a cricket match at Trowbridge one afternoon and to a balloon festival at Bristol. I like the boy. I have no son of my own and it pleased me to spend some time with him. His mother was working on both occasions. Are you willing to believe that people sometimes act on innocent motives?'

'My beliefs don't come into it,' said Diamond. 'What about your wife? Did she mind you taking the boy to cricket and so on?'

'Why should she?'

'Perhaps with her suspicious mind she took it that you were making inroads with the boy's mother.'

'Her suspicious mind, or yours?' demanded Jackman. 'Look, Gerry was capable of twisting anything into a conspiracy, but don't forget that she invited Mrs Didrikson to her barbecue in the first place, so she could hardly object if I exchanged a few civil words with the woman next time I happened to meet her. That's all it was. I haven't been to bed with her.'

'How was your wife in those last five weeks of her life?'

'Her behaviour, you mean? I didn't see a great deal of her. She spent the mornings lying in bed talking on the phone to her friends.'

'Anyone in particular?'

'The entire galaxy, so far as I could tell. When we did meet she was pretty insufferable, either too moody to speak or spoiling for a fight – which I didn't give her.'

'Was she like that with everybody?'

'No, she turned on the charm when the phone rang and it was one of her friends. She could be in a towering rage with me and then pick up the phone and say a sexy "Hello, Gerry speaking", before she knew who was on the other end. That's the mark of a good actress, I suppose.'

'What sort of things were you fighting over?'

Jackman clenched his fists and thumped them on the table. 'How do I get this across to you fellows? I didn't fight. The aggro was all on her side. The issues were trivial. Example. The hand-mirror from her dressing table went missing and she accused me of taking it. What would I want with an ebony-handled mirror from a woman's vanity set? I told her one of the women at the barbecue must have taken a fancy to it, but Gerry wouldn't accept that any of her friends was light-fingered. That's the sort of piddling thing she was getting agitated about. In the end, to shut her up, I offered her a shaving-mirror I'd once used. She didn't need it. She had three adjustable mirrors fixed to her dressing table, another in the bathroom and any number of wall-mirrors around the house. But she told me she'd already been to the bathroom cabinet and helped herself to the shaving-mirror. I didn't inquire what made a hand-mirror so indispensable. In the mood she was in she wasn't amenable to logic'

'You're suggesting this was another symptom of the paranoia you mentioned?'

'I'm not suggesting anything. I'm stating what happened. I have neither the expertise nor the energy to go into her mental problems. How much longer do you propose to keep me here?'

Sidestepping the question, Diamond said, 'I want to go over the last couple of days of your wife's life in detail. This is a useful time to take a break while you think about it. I dare say you could do with something to eat by now.

I'll send someone out for sandwiches if you tell them what you'd like. Would you care for a warm drink or a beer?'

'I thought you served bread and water to people like me.'