The Secret Hangman

2

A woman’s body was found next morning in Sydney Gardens. It was hanging from the crossbar of a swingset in the children’s play area.

‘Are you up to this?’ Georgina asked Diamond.

‘What do you mean — up to this?’ he said. But he knew exactly what she meant: a woman dead in a park.

He took Keith Halliwell. From the Beckford Road entrance they were able to drive right up to the play area along an asphalt path generally used only by pedestrians. The swings, chute, seesaw, roundabout and sandpit were enclosed by a metal fence, so police tape hadn’t been needed. A uniformed constable manned the gate. Already some gawpers were standing outside as if it was the first day of a sale. Two were young mothers with kids in strollers. People amazed him sometimes. He asked them to move along.

The dead woman was suspended from the yellow swings meant for the older children. Dark-haired, she was dressed in jeans, dark blue sweater and Adidas trainers.

‘Get this screened off now,’ he told the sergeant at the scene.

He went right up to the corpse and looked at the face without shifting the hair that lay over one eye. She had turned a bluish red, as if she’d struggled, he thought. People who choose to hang themselves don’t know what they’re in for. They hardly ever do it right. Mid-thirties, he estimated. The nose had the pressure marks of glasses. He glanced at the hands. No wedding ring. ‘I might know who this is,’ he told Halliwell.

Halliwell gave him a concerned look, recalling the last time he’d recognised the victim.

But he was calm. ‘A woman went missing from Walcot this week, name of Williamson.’

‘Was she-’

‘Dark hair, glasses, in her thirties.’ He looked around, raising his voice for the others. ‘Did anyone find a bag or a suicide note?’

Heads were shaken.

‘Strange choice,’ he said to Halliwell. ‘The hangings I’ve seen have all been in private. If I’m right about the victim, she’s a mother of two. Fancy choosing a play park.’

Halliwell, practical as always, pointed out that a swing had certain advantages for a would-be suicide. The crossbar was a good height and the seat of the swing was well placed for stepping off.

‘What I meant,’ Diamond said, ‘is that a mother might give a thought to being found here by young kids.’

‘We don’t know for certain that she’s a mother, guv.’

‘We don’t know for certain that she hanged herself. Where’s the doc? Did anyone call the police surgeon?’

Dr Hindle had already been by, the constable told Diamond. She’d advised leaving the body in situ. A forensic pathologist was on his way from Bristol.

‘Why? Is there something fishy?’

‘She didn’t say, sir.’

‘Sally Hindle, you said? I’ll give her a bell. And while we’re waiting, chase up those bloody screens, man. Let’s show this poor woman some respect.’

Sally Hindle was a local GP who earned extra for dealing with police-related medical matters. The title of police surgeon meant no special skill in forensic medicine. ‘I simply certified that death had occurred,’ she told Diamond from her surgery. ‘No, I had no reason to doubt that she hanged herself, but I don’t advise moving her until the pathologist gives his consent.’

She was right, and they had to wait. Some canvas screens arrived and were erected. The police photographer took his shots and the crime scene people tried to make sense of footprints in abundance. Now that the swings were enclosed there was a sense of intimacy, as if they were in a room with the corpse.

Diamond stepped outside and phoned Ingeborg and asked her to come to the park and bring a picture of Delia Williamson.

‘Have you found her, guv?’

Always with Inge, the ex-journo, questions he wasn’t able to answer and she needn’t have asked.

‘Just get in your car and drive here.’

‘Try and stop me.’

Her eagerness to please was a pain at times, but he was glad to have her on the team. So were the others. She was a real babe.

He joined Halliwell again. ‘Two young kids, if I’m right. She’d have to be desperate.’

‘Wouldn’t anyone?’ Halliwell said. ‘To top themselves, I mean.’

‘Extra desperate.’

‘True.’

After a long pause Diamond said, ‘You know what I’m thinking, don’t you, Keith?’

Halliwell hesitated. He’d worked with this boss for most of his CID career, but he still wasn’t sure how frank he ought to be. ‘Like, em, you’ve been through a bad patch yourself?’

Diamond frowned. ‘What?’

‘But you were never as desperate as this.’

‘Sometimes I don’t know which world you inhabit, Keith. What I’m thinking is we’d better not assume anything until the pathologist has been by.’

Halliwell backtracked fast. ‘I get you now.’

Ingeborg arrived in ten minutes. She put her head around the screen and said, ‘Oh, poor soul. Haven’t you cut her down yet?’

Another pointless question. The body was rotating in the breeze.

‘Just show us the picture,’ Diamond said.

Ingeborg had brought two photos, a head-and-shoulders shot taken in a booth and an outdoor one of the mother and her two small daughters. Beyond any doubt the dead woman was Delia Williamson. Diamond looked at the smiles of the children and felt his stomach clench. Someone would have to break it to those little girls that their mother was dead. They would ask questions and that same someone would have the choice between merciful lying and the appalling truth.

Ingeborg said, ‘Guv.’

‘Mm?’

‘Do you want me to speak to the family?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not your job.’

She took a closer look at the body. ‘Armani jeans.’

‘Yep, I read the label.’

‘And the sweater is cashmere.’

This he hadn’t spotted. ‘So she wasn’t short of a bob or two.’

The pathologist turned up eventually. This Dr Bertram Sealy was new to Diamond but not new to the game. He’d brought a flask of hot coffee and poured himself a cup before stepping around the screen. The smell was tantalising. ‘Do you have a gofer I can borrow?’ he asked.

There were times when Diamond was hard on his staff, but he didn’t think of them like that. He let the remark pass. People come out with insensitive things in stressful situations. Instead, he beckoned to Ingeborg and introduced her.

‘You’re CID?’ Dr Sealy said to her with approval. ‘I thought you all chewed gum and shaved your heads. Do me a favour, my beauty. The boot of my car is unlocked. Inside you’ll find an essential tool of the trade, my blue plastic milk crate. Would you mind fetching it?’

Ingeborg obeyed, but only after a look that said she didn’t like being patronised.

Dr Sealy winked at Diamond while Ingeborg opened the boot and bent over it for the crate. ‘It’s not a job that appeals to everyone, mine. I make the best of it.’

Diamond stared through him.

Sealy screwed the cup back on his flask. ‘Make yourself useful and hold this for me, would you? Got to put on my surgical gloves.’

Diamond kept his hands behind his back. It was Halliwell who stepped forward for the flask.

The purpose of the crate was made clear. Sealy needed to step up and he wasn’t going to risk standing on the seat of one of the swings. He asked Ingeborg to place the crate upside down on the ground behind the suspended body. With a hand resting on her shoulder he stepped up level with the woman’s neck. He spent some time studying the marks made by the plastic cord. When he’d finished he made sure Ingeborg gave him a hand down. Then he asked her to move the crate to the front, all the while watching as if he’d never seen a woman in his life. Once again, he steadied himself by grasping and squeezing her shoulder. Almost as an afterthought he turned his attention to the corpse and used an electronic thermometer with a digital read-out to measure the temperature in the nostrils. Then he stepped down, smiled at Ingeborg and took out a notebook to record his reading. He invited the photographer to stand on the crate and take some close-ups. While this was going on, he examined the dead woman’s hands.

Finally he stepped away. ‘I’ve done. When you bring her down, I want the cord cut a foot above the head and left in place round the neck.’

‘Any first impressions?’ Diamond asked.

‘Some remarkable features.’ He turned for another look at Ingeborg. ‘And the corpse is not without interest.’

If he’d expected a reaction from Diamond, he got none.

‘I wouldn’t have expected the cyanosis to be so marked.’

‘The purple colour of the face?’

‘And there’s something else. She has two sets of ligature marks, overlapping in places, but diverging at the side of the neck where she is suspended.’

‘Two sets of marks?’

‘Be my guest, Mr Diamond. Step on the crate.’

Diamond wasn’t built for step-ups. Ingeborg said, ‘All right, guv,’ and steadied his arm with a willingness that showed where her loyalty lay.

His face was six inches from the dead woman’s neck.

Sealy said, ‘See the brownish horizontal line below the knot, going right round, like a collar? That’s the one that interests me.’

‘So what does this mean — that she was strangled first, and strung up?’

‘Don’t rush your fences, Inspector.’

‘Superintendent.’

‘Oops,’ said Sealy, and made a mock salute.

‘Someone could have faked the suicide to cover up a murder?’

‘I’d have thought a superintendent would know we men of science like to assemble all the facts before reaching an opinion.’

‘Pompous twit,’ Diamond muttered.

Sealy was making more notes.

Diamond stepped off the crate and waited for him to finish.

Without looking up from the notebook Sealy asked, ‘How do you spell your name?’

‘The usual way.’

‘You’re a bit of a card, then?’

That old joke fell flat.

But Sealy wanted to run with it. ‘The king, the ace or the joker?’

Diamond said nothing. Why encourage him?

‘If it isn’t a card you are,’ Sealy said, ‘you must be a gem. Diamond… gem… Follow me? In which case you might be interested in a little-known service they provide in America. You look reasonably fit to me, Mr Diamond, but of course we all have to make provision for what lies ahead. The one certainty, as they say. You may have decided already what you want done with your mortal remains. Even if you have, I suggest you think about this, a beautiful prospect for a man lucky enough to bear the name you do. There’s a firm in California who will take a cadaver and subject it to intense heat and pressure for eighteen weeks, reducing it to carbon atoms. The end product is a small, but exquisite, one-carat diamond.’

The only one to smile was Sealy.

‘And if you’re quick’ — he looked at his watch — ‘I can do the PM

… p.m.’ He took back his vacuum flask and strutted towards his car as if he’d knocked out the heavyweight champ.

Diamond arranged with Halliwell to oversee the removal of the body to an undertaker’s van already parked nearby. The duty of observing the post-mortem also fell to Halliwell.

Diamond said, ‘Ingeborg.’

‘Guv?’ She was about to pick up the crate and return it to Dr Sealy’s car.

‘Leave that.’

‘But he’s going to forget it.’

‘Yes.’

Ingeborg had recently treated herself to one of those bug-shaped Fords known as a Ka, comfortable once Diamond had persuaded his bulk into the passenger seat and drawn the belt across. He asked her to drive him to the house in Walcot.

‘Tell me about the men in this lady’s life.’

‘The one I met is Ashley Corcoran, her partner. He’s cool.’

Aware that the last word had refinements he hadn’t kept up with, Diamond said, ‘Which is…?

‘In control. No panic. He strikes me as responsible, if a little too laid back,’ she told him. ‘He’s great with the kids. He collects them from school every day. Reads to them at bedtime.’

‘What’s his job?’

‘Composing theme music for television. He’s got a Steinway piano and all kinds of synthesisers and stuff.’

‘Swish place, then?’

‘A converted warehouse close to the river. Made me envious.’

‘But he wasn’t too worried about his partner’s disappearance?’

‘He said she’d be back. She’d always valued her freedom and he respected that, or some such.’

‘Leaving him with her kids?’

‘No problem, apparently.’

‘So was he annoyed with Delia’s mother for reporting her missing?’

‘He just smiled and said she’s a worrier.’

‘With good reason, it turns out. Did you sense anything suggesting this man could be violent?’

‘Absolutely not.’

They were already across Pulteney Bridge. Ingeborg was a nifty driver.

‘And what did you discover about the other guy, the father of the girls?’

‘Not a lot. Only his first name, which is Danny.’

‘Not much to go on.’

‘Ashley Corcoran said he’d never asked. I can believe that’s true.’

‘He is cool. What are the girls called, then? They must have a surname.’

‘Williamson. They use the mother’s name.’ She turned right, off Walcot Street, and drove into the cobbled yard that fronted Ashley Corcoran’s stylish residence.

‘By the way,’ he told her as he got out, ‘leave the questions to me.’

There’s money in television. The Corcoran residence had a varnished oak door with coach-lamps either side. The chime was the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. In the moment before it was answered, Diamond took stock. This was a unique situation that had to be handled right. He’d be breaking the news, but not all the news. He’d be telling Corcoran that his partner had been found dead, hanging from a swing, no more. No suspicion that anyone else was involved. The man’s reaction would be worth noting. Any possible sign of guilt would be subtle, not to be missed. Even a glimmer of relief at this stage would tell Diamond he was speaking to a murderer.

The door was opened by a long-haired man in a black kaftan and white jeans. He was rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken.

Then he recognised Ingeborg. ‘Oh, you.’

Diamond showed his warrant card and asked if they could come in.

A hand through the hair, matted brown hair that looked as if it could do with a wash. ‘Is it about Delia?’

Diamond nodded. ‘So shall we speak inside?’

The interior was open plan, a vast space with toys for all the family: giant teddies, an exercise bike, plasma television, a music system and the grand piano. Corcoran led them across the wood floor to an area with a large Afghan rug surrounded by sofas.

‘This is bad news, I take it. Is it the worst?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Diamond sketched the circumstances. He said he couldn’t say for certain that the woman in the park was Delia Williamson, but she closely resembled the photos.

People given news of sudden death are often reduced to one-word questions — When? Where? How? — and this was how it played with Ashley Corcoran. No hint of foreknowledge. He was cool, as Ingeborg had said, yet anxious to hear precisely what had been discovered.

‘I’ll be asking you to identify her later,’ Diamond said. ‘Probably not today.’

‘Is she still…?’

‘Being driven to Bristol by now.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘The post-mortem.’

‘I see.’ Still cool.

‘There are two daughters, I’m told.’

‘At school until three thirty.’ Corcoran raked a hand through his hair. ‘Oh, God, I’ll have to tell them.’

‘That had better wait until we’re a hundred per cent certain. What about their father. Where’s he?’

‘I said I’ll tell them. They treat me as their dad.’

‘Yes, but he’s got to be informed.’

‘I guess you’re right.’ Corcoran’s thoughts were played out on his face. ‘This changes everything.’

‘Has he been seeing his daughters?’

‘He’s written them off.’

‘I gather you don’t know his surname or present address?’

‘Danny? No idea.’

‘Would Delia have it written down somewhere?’

‘Can’t say. Far as I know, she hasn’t heard from him in years.’ He opened his hands in appeal. ‘Listen, I can keep the girls, can’t I?’

‘They’ll need someone else, at least while things are sorted out. Their grandmother sounds like a caring person. She was the one who notified us that Delia was missing.’

‘Amanda’s OK,’ he said. ‘A worry-guts, that’s all.’

Diamond moved the conversation on. ‘Is it possible Delia left a suicide note somewhere in the house? Nothing was found in the park.’

‘I haven’t seen one.’

‘Have you looked? I understand you weren’t too concerned that she went missing.’

He shifted in his seat. ‘That makes me sound uncaring. I didn’t dream she’d do anything like this.’

‘Was there an argument before she left?’

‘No. We were fine.’

‘But she lives here. Has she gone missing before?’

‘We don’t keep tabs on each other.’ Corcoran sighed. ‘Look, I’m a musician. I’m on a deadline for a new TV drama. I work unsocial hours, right? I find night-time is the most creative. We don’t see so much of each other when I’m working.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t notice she was gone?’

He shrugged. ‘The first I knew was when Amanda called me yesterday afternoon.’

‘Excuse me butting in, guv,’ Ingeborg said, unable to stay silent, ‘but what about the girls? How did they get to school in the morning?’

Corcoran said, ‘We have a Filipino girl who helps out. She comes in at seven and sees them off with a packed lunch. Then she comes back and does some housework until midday.’

Diamond asked, ‘And what’s Delia doing in the morning?’

‘She sleeps in.’

‘Doesn’t she have a job?’

‘Waitress, in Tosi’s, the Italian restaurant just up the street from here.’

Diamond’s spirits took a plunge. A simple case was suddenly complicated by Italian waiters and restaurant customers. ‘Full-time?’

‘Six evenings a week.’

He looked around at the expensive furnishings. ‘Did she need the money?’

‘She didn’t want to be kept, as she put it.’

‘From what you were saying earlier, am I right in thinking she had her own room? If so, could we take a look at it?’

A gallery extended around three sides of the upper level and the bedrooms led off it. Delia had a walk-in dressing room and en-suite bath and shower. The bed was queensize with an empire-style arrangement of drapes on the wall at the head. The quilt had been thrown back and a nightdress tossed across the pillows. Underclothes were scattered on top of a basket inside the door. These signs of occupation made Delia Williamson seem more real than the corpse in the park.

‘I respected her privacy,’ Corcoran said. ‘This is the first time I’ve looked in here since she went missing, except on the afternoon her mother phoned. I put my head round the door in case she was ill, or something.’

‘We all kiss goodbye to privacy when we die.’ Diamond pulled open a drawer of the bedside cupboard and told Ingeborg. ‘See what you can find.’

Almost at once she handed him two birth certificates. The children’s names were Sharon and Sophie. More importantly, the full name of their father was Daniel Geaves.

They traced Geaves to an address in Freshford, a village between Bath and Bradford on Avon best known to Diamond for its pub, named logically enough the Inn at Freshford. He’d been there a couple of times with Steph.

Ingeborg did the driving again. Unfortunately the man they had come to see was not at home. The cottage he rented looked as if it hadn’t been used for some days, and the neighbour said she hadn’t seen him all week. Diamond had a hunch, he told Ingeborg, that someone at the inn might have some information.

What he didn’t tell her was that his hunches rarely amounted to anything. His real purpose in going in was a late lunch of fish and chips. The landlord said Danny came in sometimes, but never stayed long. He’d take his drink and a packet of crisps to an empty table. He usually had a paper with him and did the crossword.

Afterwards they took their drinks outside and sat on the wall of the packhorse bridge listening to the ripple and gurgle of the Avon. Across a green field, the steep side of the Limpley Stoke Valley was covered in lush foliage. ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said. ‘Better than watching your friend Dr Sealy doing a post-mortem.’

‘Give me a break, guv. He’s no friend of mine. He’s pathetic.’

‘I can’t disagree with that.’

Ingeborg took a sip of lager and stared down at the waterweeds rippling in the flow. ‘I don’t know if it’s me, but the blokes who seem to fancy me are the ones I’d rather avoid.’

He was reminded of his secret admirer. For one mad moment he considered taking the letter from his inside pocket and showing it to Ingeborg, but the moment slipped by.

Back in Manvers Street what passed for an incident room was more like the quiet room in a silent order. Halliwell was hand-feeding a pigeon on the window ledge.

‘What progress?’ Diamond said, trying to energise someone.

Halliwell turned and said, ‘What progress?’

One of the civilian computer operators said, ‘There’s something on your desk, Mr Diamond.’

‘Desk work. That’s not progress,’ he said. ‘That’s punishment.’ He went into his office to look.

He’d never had anything so organised as an in-tray. Items for attention were heaped on his desk. On top now was a parcel with THIS WAY UP written in large letters and his name underneath. No address. It was wrapped in brown paper fastened with Sellotape and was about the size and shape of a box file. One end had been unsealed. Nothing suspicious about that: every package was security-checked downstairs. More damned paperwork, he guessed, though why it was done up as a parcel he couldn’t fathom. He picked the thing up and was relieved to find it didn’t weigh too heavily. He put it to one side and looked to see what else had come in.

Three pages of minutes from a meeting he’d managed to miss of the Police and Community Consultative Group. A reminder from Georgina that the overtime figures for last month hadn’t been presented yet. A request from the new boy, Paul Gilbert, for the firearms course. He was riding for a fall, that lad.

The rest of the heap could wait. He reached for the parcel and tore it open. Inside was a cardboard box and when he lifted the lid he found several layers of loosely crumpled red tissue paper. He removed them.

A chocolate cake.

‘What on earth?’

‘Is it your birthday, guv?’

He looked up. Ingeborg, Halliwell, Leaman, Gilbert and the civilian staff had gathered in the doorway.

‘Is this anything to do with you lot? Because I can tell you it isn’t anywhere near my birthday.’

‘We’re being nosy, that’s all,’ Halliwell said.

‘Security tipped you off, is that it?’

‘Someone thinks you deserve a treat, that’s obvious,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Is there a note with it?’

He lifted out the cake — which looked to have a black cherry filling — and went through the tissue paper and the wrappings. No message.

‘It looks yummy,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Do you like chocolate?’

‘I can take it or leave it.’ He added in an afterthought, ‘If I had a knife I’d offer some around.’

‘Got one in my drawer,’ Halliwell said almost too quickly.

‘A cake knife?’

‘A flick-knife confiscated from a nine-year-old. It’ll do.’

‘Get it then.’

‘You don’t have to, guv,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It was meant for you personally. You should take it home.’

‘And eat all of this myself? What kind of guts do you take me for?’

Halliwell did the slicing. Everyone agreed the cake went down a treat. It was rich and light-textured.

‘I don’t know when I last had chocolate cake,’ Diamond said.

‘You’ve obviously got a secret admirer,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Oops, get the boss some water.’

He was choking on the crumbs.