The Secret Hangman

23

A gainst all his expectation, no one asked how his theatre visit had gone. Frustrating. He’d have told them loftily to buy the evening edition of the Chronicle. All he got was the usual ‘Morning, guv’.

Better apply himself to the main job. On the pad on his desk he’d written KNOTS? as a reminder of what he’d heard from Jim Middleton. But he didn’t need reminding. The slip knot employed by Danny Geaves to hang himself was a puzzle. All the evidence suggested that Danny strangled his ex-partner Delia before stringing her up on the swing to give the appearance of a hanging. He’d used a conventional noose for her. So why use a different knot to hang himself?

Danny’s curious behaviour couldn’t be considered in isolation. The Twining couple had employed a noose. Ingeborg was right about the Twinings. There were enough points in common to make it a racing certainty that there was a link with the deaths of Delia and Danny.

‘The obvious explanation for the deaths of the Twinings is a suicide pact,’ he said to Halliwell and Leaman, freshly updated on the mystery of the slip knot. ‘They became convinced that they must die. Let’s leave aside the reason for the moment. The Twinings did it as planned, or nearly so. They hanged themselves in the conventional way except that the man delayed his suicide by a couple of days.’

‘Just like Danny,’ Leaman said.

‘But there’s a difference.’

‘Danny murdered her,’ Halliwell said.

‘Apparently, yes, but I had something else in mind.’

‘They were no longer a couple,’ Leaman said. ‘She’d found a new partner, so they wouldn’t have made a pact.’

‘You’ve got it. Now try this for size. Danny — like the Twinings — has this death wish and for some reason believes Delia should go with him. She agrees to meet him without realising what is being planned. She resists and he strangles her. Quick change of plan. It was supposed to be a hanging, so he fakes it. Three days later — just like John Twining — he hangs himself.’

‘Using a slip knot,’ Halliwell said. ‘Why use a different knot?’

‘He should have used the slip knot on Delia,’ Leaman said. ‘Then we might not have found out she was strangled.’

Diamond was thinking back to the morning he’d led the party up that steep climb in Bathford. ‘When we found the cave where he was sleeping rough there were fragments of a newspaper in the ashes of that fire.’

‘The Mail,’ Halliwell said.

‘For the day before he died.’

Neither of them had twigged.

Diamond said, ‘I gave a press conference the day before that and the nationals all carried the story. That issue of the Mail told Danny we were treating Delia’s death as murder.’

‘Are you thinking he read the report and decided to top himself, guv?’

‘Come off it, Keith. I’m more subtle than that, aren’t I? Danny was a man with a mission, to stage a double suicide, just as Twining did. He already planned to top himself. What really upset him was reading in the paper that we’d worked out that Delia was murdered.’

‘He’d messed up,’ Leaman said.

‘Precisely. And why had he messed up? Because the original ligature mark, the strangling mark, showed on her neck. If he’d used a slip knot to suspend the body from the swing he would very likely have got away with it. So what was his thinking at this point? He was about to hang himself anyway, so why not confuse everyone by using a slip knot? Then we might assume he, too, was killed in the same way as Delia, strangled first and then suspended from the viaduct to make it look like a hanging.’

‘What would that achieve?’ Halliwell said. ‘I thought this was all about making it look like suicide.’

Leaman said, ‘You’ve lost me, guv.’

‘Too subtle,’ Halliwell said with a faint grin.

‘Fair enough,’ Diamond said. He’d begun doubting himself even as he outlined the theory. ‘But there is an explanation. Got to be. OK, let’s deal with what we do know. Danny strangled Delia and there’s some kind of link with the Twining couple. We must put more effort into finding that link. Did they all belong to some weird sect? Did they meet?’

‘The Twinings didn’t have many friends,’ Leaman said. ‘The brother said they were too busy with their careers. What was it? If you want to be a success in life you don’t have much to do with other people unless you’re making money out of them.’

‘That brother’s a cynic,’ Diamond said. ‘John Twining was an architect, so he must have had clients. And his wife Christine had a top job with M amp;S. She would have met plenty of people through her job.’

‘Not the likes of Danny and Delia,’ Halliwell said. ‘He was on the social and she was bringing up two kids.’

‘I went to see Delia’s mother, Amanda,’ Diamond said. ‘She seemed to think Danny worked from home on the computer and got some kind of income. He was interested in wildlife, bats in particular.’

‘A world away from the Twinings,’ Leaman said.

Diamond sighed. ‘Yes, and Amanda told me he didn’t have many friends.’

‘The landlord at Freshford said the same. Danny was a loner.’

‘There must be a link and it’s the key to everything,’ Diamond insisted. ‘We’re going to have to dig back two or three years to when the Twinings were alive and Danny and Delia lived together. That’s the critical time. I’ll talk to Amanda again. I doubt if we’ll get much more out of Harold Twining, but Amanda must remember something.’

With that decided, he turned to the plan to intercept the ram raid on Sunday night. The swoop was still on. The two robbers, Romney and Jacob, were picking up the converted Land Rover from Jackman on Sunday morning. It would be fitted with a bug and monitored right up to the moment of the raid.

‘Do we know the shop?’ he asked.

‘You want it on a plate, guv,’ Halliwell said. ‘No, they’re keeping that to themselves.’

‘But you reckon we can pursue the Land Rover without giving ourselves away?’

‘That’s the object. And we’ll have response cars out on the streets in force.’

‘Good. This man Jackman, the snitch. What have you promised him?’

‘Like we said, leniency.’

‘That can mean anything from a blind eye to a word in the judge’s ear. He does up stolen vehicles as an occupation, right?’

‘Yes, and we figure he could be useful in the future.’

‘Only up to a point. When the word gets around that he’s linked to a number of failed raids, the bad boys will drop him. They may drop him literally.’

‘C’est la vie.’

‘You said DC Gilbert is the handler?’

‘Paul Gilbert, yes. He made the first contact in some pub Jackman uses.’

‘Gilbert is still very new in the job. Is he aware of the risk?’

‘Seems to be.’

‘I’ll have a word with him myself. Can you send him in?’

Gilbert did look worryingly young. Quite how he’d gained Jackman’s confidence in a pub, Diamond couldn’t fathom. Until he spoke. Then he came across with a streetwise manner that explained a lot.

‘Yes, guv,’ he said, ‘I met Gary Jackman in the cellar bar of the Porter. Do you know it? No, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s for twenty-somethings like me. George Street. Live music most nights and the comedy club Sundays. One of my drinking mates knows Gary and told me he was dodgy but great company and we got talking and it moved on from there. A couple more weeks and a lot of lager and he was ready to do the biz.’

‘He knows you’re in CID?’

‘Bit of a shock when I told him, but he soon saw the possibilities.’

‘He does up hot cars, is that right?’

‘Basically, yes. The front is a repair shop out at Winsley and some of the business is legit. He’s good, and the word gets round.’

‘This ram raid on Sunday. You’re convinced it’s going to happen?’

‘Gary’s certain of it.’

‘So why is he shopping these guys?’

‘They’re going to cock up. They’re too ambitious.’

‘Let’s hope he’s right.’ Diamond switched to the real point of this briefing while trying to sound as cool as his young colleague.

‘Look, I happen to know of a car that went missing last night, a blue Nissan Pathfinder, almost new. I reckon it might just find its way into Jackman’s repair shop. You could tip him off that it wouldn’t be wise to work on it. The smart move would be to let us know as soon as he hears of it.’

‘Is there a link?’

‘No. It’s something else I’m taking an interest in.’

Gilbert nodded. ‘’Nuff said, boss.’