The Secret Hangman

31

T he entire murder squad stayed late that evening in hope that someone would call and say they recognised the dead woman. The Bath Chronicle was on the streets by mid-afternoon and, as Diamond had predicted, the hanging in the park was the headline story. The regional TV news would go out at six.

About four thirty, when nothing had come in except calls from attention seekers, Leaman said, ‘Could mean she isn’t local. The killer could have brought the body in from miles away.’

‘Thanks for that, John,’ Diamond said. ‘I can always rely on you to cheer us up.’

‘The others were local,’ Ingeborg said.

‘But is there a local connection?’ Leaman said. ‘We haven’t found one yet.’

‘Keep going,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m hurting.’

‘Anyway, the nationals will carry the picture tomorrow,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It’s big news.’

Leaman said, ‘So if we don’t hear anything in the next hour, do we all go home and wait for tomorrow’s papers?’

Next time, cleverclogs, Diamond thought, you can sit in on the autopsy instead of Keith Halliwell, who always does it. Some blood and guts might take the smile off your face.

His personal phone buzzed, but it was only Georgina’s PA. The ACC wanted to see him as a matter of urgency.

He said, ‘That’s all I need. Would you inform the ACC I’ve got a matter of urgency down here?’

‘I think she knows all about that, Mr Diamond.’

‘I’m for the high jump, am I?’

‘The pole vault, I would say.’

‘Better show my face, then?’

‘I strongly advise it.’

He told Leaman where he was going. ‘But I’m not doing fifteen rounds with Georgina. Give me ten minutes, max, and then call her office and say it’s all happening and you need me, right?

Don’t let me down.’

On the way upstairs he rehearsed his explanation. He would say — and it was true — that time was running out. He needed to identify the latest victim and his only chance had been to break the story without delay. He would add — and it was less true — that he’d fully intended to report what was happening at the first opportunity.

Georgina didn’t give him the chance. She’d rehearsed her piece, too, and came at him with all guns blazing. He’d heard most of it after previous insubordinations, so he fixed his gaze on the wall behind her and thought about other things. Finally the tirade stopped. Georgina said, ‘Have you been listening? Have you heard one word of what I was saying?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You have this bumptious look on your face as if your mind is on higher things. Why don’t you look me in the eye when I’m talking to you? What is it you find so riveting on the wall behind me?’

‘The picture of Her Majesty the Queen, ma’am.’

The phone went. It needed to be Leaman.

She snatched it up. ‘What is it?’

He waited.

Georgina eyed him like a caged lioness. ‘You’d better return to your team. They seem to think there’s been a development.’

The only development was that DC Gilbert had arrived with a tray of tea.

‘I can do with that,’ Diamond said.

‘No chance of cake, guv?’ Leaman said.

‘What?’

‘We were thinking the ACC might have baked you another chocolate cake.’

‘Another? That wasn’t from upstairs. Get real, John.’

‘Did you ever find out who sent it?’

‘Not Georgina.’

‘She’s a cracking good cook, whoever she is.’

Ingeborg said, ‘Leave it, John.’ She’d seen the danger signals. Leaman had touched a raw nerve. Paloma’s cake wasn’t the delicious memory for Diamond that it was for everyone else. Maybe he should have been flattered that she had gone to so much trouble to get him interested, but it unsettled him instead. He’d been happier thinking he’d made the main moves in their coming together. It shouldn’t matter. He still fancied her like mad. She was witty and intelligent and she seemed to think he was good in bed, which any man likes to be told. Go with the flow, he told himself. At your age you don’t expect to have women running after you.

A call from the mortuary jerked him back to the world of work. Keith Halliwell was reporting on the autopsy. ‘Dr Sealy reckons she was strangled with a ligature, the same as Delia Williamson. It wasn’t so obvious this time, and the slip knot masked it, but the signs are there, he says.’

‘She was dead when she was strung up? The same MO?’

‘He’s sure of it.’

‘Did she put up a fight?’

‘There were no indications. Maybe he got her drunk, or drugged. The blood tests will take a while.’

‘Anything else I should know about?’

‘She was sexually experienced, but you’d expect that at her age.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Round about forty. She’d had a pregnancy at some stage. She also had an appendix scar.’

‘Good man. How’s your stomach?’

‘Fine.’ He added with a hint that ‘fine’ didn’t mean he did this duty willingly, ‘This wasn’t my first time.’

Diamond was unrepentant. ‘See you shortly, then.’

‘There was one other thing,’ Halliwell said. ‘It was rather peculiar. Dr Sealy noticed some particles that fell out of her hair. He said they were grains of sugar.’

‘What — household sugar?’

‘Yes. He was so sure of it that he tasted one.’

‘Rather him than me. Why would she have sugar in her hair? Some kind of shampoo?’

‘He doesn’t think so. Sugar would dissolve, wouldn’t it? His theory is that there may have been some spilt in the vehicle used to move the body and her head came into contact with it.’

‘So we’re looking for a Tate and Lyle driver?’

‘My feeling is that we could waste time on this, guv.’

‘You’re probably right. This is going to be a long evening anyway.’

The phones took over. Local television had just screened the picture of the dead woman and given the police number. The first few calls were duds. One of the hazards of releasing a picture is that you hear from people who want to be helpful and aren’t. They convince themselves it’s someone they saw yesterday, or once knew.

Then Ingeborg waved to Diamond from across the room. She’d taken details from a woman in Midford. ‘I think you should speak to this one, guv.’

He took the phone. ‘Would you mind repeating what you just told my colleague?’

The caller had the local accent and the slow delivery that sometimes goes with it. ‘Well, it’s about the poor soul who was found hanging in Bath, isn’t it? They just showed her picture on the television and I’m certain I know her. I’ve seen her often. She’s got a big house called Brookview Lodge, off the Midford Road, north of the village. She rides her horse around the lanes. That’s where I’ve seen her. Always nicely dressed in her riding things.’

‘Would you know her name?’

‘That’s it, my dear. I don’t. I’ve never spoken to her. But I don’t make mistakes about faces. She’s the poor lady they showed on the television, I promise you.’

‘Is she married?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that. She always rides out alone. The horse is chestnut, with a black mane. He’s big and handsome.’

Another woman phoned in not long after. She, too, believed the victim was the horsewoman seen around Midford almost every day.

Diamond called across to Ingeborg. ‘Get someone else to take over. You and I are going to check on a possible sighting.’

Brookview Lodge took its name from Midford Brook, a misnomer for something more like a full-blown river that channels water into the Avon from its southern source in the Mendip hills. They approached by way of a narrow road through the north-facing Midford Woods where oak, beech and larch grow and nightingales were heard in recent memory. As the Ka descended, the tall-banked lane opened to a panorama of the Limpley Stoke Valley. Ingeborg spotted the sign for the lodge and swung right. A winding drive brought them to a handsome gabled building in well-weathered local stone. They drove onto a paved area at the front. A horse neighed from the outbuildings.

‘Poor thing could be hungry,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Shall I check?’

‘Later. We’re not the RSPCA. Let’s see if anyone’s in.’

He got out and tried the doorbell. Lifted the letter-flap and saw mail inside. Tried the bell again. Walked round the side of the building. The flowerbeds were well maintained. At the rear was a large oval swimming pool. Recliners and small tables were set on the tiled surround, but there wasn’t a sense of anyone in residence today.

He turned towards the conservatory extension that seemed to be used as an anteroom to the pool. Inside were towels on a clothes rack, more garden furniture, a rowing machine, a treadmill and a whirlpool.

The door was unlocked. ‘I bet the inner door is locked,’ he said as they went in.

He was right.

‘And I bet there’s an alarm system,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Let’s find out.’ He picked up a sandbox used to support a sunshade. It was good and heavy. He swung it at the door. The door stayed firm, but the alarm went off. ‘You’re right.’

He tried again.

Ingeborg said, ‘Guv, should we be doing this?’

At the third attempt the box ripped through the bolt mechanism.

He stepped inside, through a living room and across a large entrance hall. ‘Find the control panel and switch that bloody thing off.’

The place had the feel of somewhere that hadn’t seen anyone for most of the week. He felt inside the wire basket containing the mail.

The names on the envelopes told him what he’d feared. More than one person lived here. Martin and Jocelyn Steel. The man had letters from the Law Society and other legal organisations. Probably a solicitor.

Ingeborg silenced the alarm and came from the back of the house to join him. He showed her the letters.

‘A man as well? That’s not what we wanted to find, guv.’

‘What’s through there?’

‘The kitchen, I think.’

They went through. The smell was not nice. Ingeborg found two trout on the work surface wrapped in tinfoil. They reeked. ‘Their supper, I suppose. Look, there are potatoes waiting to boil in the saucepan.’

‘It doesn’t suggest to me that Jocelyn Steel was planning to hang herself.’

A door from the laundry room connected to the double garage. Two cars were in there, the ‘his’ and ‘hers’ it seemed, a silver Porsche Cayenne Turbo and a red Mini Cooper.

He checked the answerphone. Nine messages, the first on Sunday morning. Four from the same person, who called herself Mummy. By the fourth, she was getting frantic and said so. ‘Are you all right? I keep trying. You didn’t say you were going away or anything. Darling, please call me, however late you get in.’

Diamond sighed. ‘Someone had better break it to Mummy.’ He would do it himself. He didn’t wish every unpleasant duty on his subordinates.

Of the other calls, one was from someone called Agnes, who sounded like Jocelyn’s friend and addressed her as Joss. Two were from Dawn, a younger-sounding voice with the soft West Country accent. At the second try she said she was bothered about Prince and she wouldn’t mind getting him out and riding him.

‘The horse,’ Ingeborg said.

‘There was I thinking Prince Harry.’

The other calls were from South-West Gas, to arrange a service of the central heating; and the library, because a book Mr Steel had ordered had come in.

He used the phone to arrange with Leaman for a forensic team to come out. ‘I’m ninety-nine per cent sure we’ve found the right place. Is Keith back from the autopsy yet?’

‘He just got in.’

‘Tell him he’s needed here.’

‘Do you want me as well, guv?’ Leaman asked.

‘No. Someone has to keep taking the calls.’ To Ingeborg he said, ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

She said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘Ingeborg.’

‘Guv?’

‘I do the jokes.’

The Steels shared a bedroom and it was clearly important in their lives, with a kingsize bed fitted into a wall unit with an array of soft toys, books, CDs and ornaments. A plasma TV and sound system were on the opposite wall. The white quilt on the bed was doubled back. There were wine glasses on the bedside tables, each with a tidemark of red wine.

‘Doesn’t look to me as if they were fighting,’ Diamond said.

‘Guv.’

Ingeborg had found a framed wedding photo. Beyond doubt the bride was the woman found hanging in Royal Victoria Park.