The Stone Wife

19

While Halliwell was negotiating the series of roundabouts at Chippenham, Diamond checked his phone yet again for a text from Ingeborg.

‘Did it beep?’ Halliwell asked.

‘I’m wondering if the damn thing is broken,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s turned on, but nothing has come through all day.’

‘There won’t be a problem. She’ll be in touch when she’s ready.’

‘She’s a compulsive texter. It’s been a couple of days.’

Halliwell smiled.

‘What’s amusing you?’ Diamond asked.

‘Just a thought. When it finally comes through, will you understand it? Texting is like another language.’

‘She knows my limitations. She’ll keep it simple. I just wish she’d send something, so we know she’s okay.’

‘Infiltrating the enemy takes time. Shouldn’t be rushed. What’s she going to text, anyway? “I’m all right, guv. Don’t fret.” ’

‘Sarcastic bugger.’

But he understood the point. Ingeborg herself had told him he sometimes sounded like her father. The responsibility for sending her undercover was hard to live with. He’d pressured her into doing this because she seemed the right choice at the time, and now her initial reluctance kept coming back to torment him. But he had to keep reminding himself that she’d said she might not be in contact for some time. He’d taken that to mean twenty-four hours maximum. She must have meant longer.

She was no babe in arms. She’d worked as an investigative journalist, taking on tough assignments. Treating her as a raw recruit did her no favours, but deep down he had an old-fashioned instinct that women needed protecting.

He said to Halliwell when they were on the long stretch to Corsham, ‘Am I out of touch?’

‘How do you mean, guv?’

‘In that field, if you remember, we were talking about endangered species.’

‘The dormouse.’

‘Right.’

‘No way are you a dormouse,’ Halliwell said.

He seemed to have missed the point and Diamond wasn’t going to labour it, so he went back to staring out of the window.

They had almost reached Batheaston when Halliwell picked up the conversation as if it was continuous. ‘There’s the great-crested newt, but I wouldn’t compare you to that.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And then there are butterflies. When I was growing up I was into butterflies in a big way. Some of them are protected. Do you know what the rarest butterfly in Great Britain is called?’

‘No idea.’

‘It’s so rare, it may be extinct.’

‘Tell me. I can’t stand the suspense.’

‘The large copper.’

His phone finally beeped when they reached Bath and were parking in the reserved area in Manvers Street police station. He snatched it from his pocket.

‘It’s a text.’

‘There you go,’ Halliwell said.

‘But not from her. It’s Paul Gilbert.’ He’d almost forgotten sending his eager DC to check on Ingeborg’s parked car.

The message raised more questions than it answered:

He handed the phone to Halliwell. ‘Impress me. Make sense of that.’

‘Tricky. “GB” must mean the Great Britain.’

‘But he says he was on it for a night video shoot. He couldn’t have been. He only went this morning.’

Halliwell frowned. ‘Then the “I” must stand for Ingeborg.’

‘She was at a video shoot?’

‘Look, the second “I” makes it clear. “Blonde, maybe I.” If so, it seems she got into a fight. Doesn’t sound like undercover work.’

‘What’s “G2G?” ’

‘Got to go,’ Halliwell said. ‘Our Paul is on his way to Clifton right now to meet this Marcus Tone.’

‘Idiot. I only gave him instructions to check the car.’

‘He’s always wanted a piece of the action.’

‘Tell me about it! I had him volunteering to go undercover.’ Diamond swung the car door open. ‘Tone sounds bloody dangerous, whoever he is. Let’s see if we’ve got anything on him.’

In the CID room, they asked John Leaman to check criminal records for Marcus Tone. Nothing. He had more success when he Googled the name. The man was well known in the pop music industry as a producer of videos. He had his own website and an office in Clifton.

‘What time is it?’ Diamond said. ‘Will his office be open as late as this?’

They obtained Tone’s home address — also in Clifton — from the electoral register. Diamond was on the point of sending a response car when another text came through.

Paul Gilbert again:

‘Following up? Is he out of his mind?’ Diamond said, handing the phone to Halliwell.

‘You can text him, guv.’

‘Do it for me, and fast. Tell him he’s to get back here now. On no account is he to go to Leigh Woods and mess with Hazael.’

Halliwell’s thumb pressed out Diamond’s instructions. ‘This may be too late. He’ll be well on his way, if not there already. “G2R” is “Got to run.” From Clifton he only has to drive over the suspension bridge. Under ten minutes, easy.’

Diamond clasped both hands to his head. ‘He’s going to foul up this whole operation and put Ingeborg in more danger than she is already.’

Halliwell sent the message and looked up. ‘Does he know Hazael is a crime baron?’

‘He must know, but he won’t know Inge is undercover.’ Diamond hesitated, weighing the new information. Plenty had been conveyed in Gilbert’s two messages. On reflection the emergency wasn’t quite as desperate as first appeared. He said in a more controlled tone, ‘On the face of it, she could be doing precisely what she planned, infiltrating the main arms supplier in Bristol. It’s starting to make sense: a video shoot on the Great Britain of some pop singer who lives with Hazael. If Inge has linked up with her and tricked a way into his house, she’s succeeding.’

‘What about the fracas?’

‘Could be the Trojan horse.’

Halliwell looked as if the logic had passed him by.

‘A way of conning Hazael into taking her in,’ Diamond explained. ‘Ingeborg stages a street incident involving this singer. What’s her name?’

‘Lee Li.’

‘And comes to her rescue and is invited back to the Hazael mansion. Mission successful. If that’s where she is, I’m not in the least surprised she hasn’t been texting me.’

‘Let’s hope Paul opens our message, then. Do you want to drive over there?’

Diamond shook his head. ‘Mustn’t put Ingeborg at more risk.’

‘Surely he’ll have the sense to know he can’t do anything alone. If “following up” means putting the house under observation, he can’t cause too much of a problem.’

‘We just have to mark time and stay calm, Keith,’ said the man who a few minutes before had practically torn out his hair — what there was of it.

They drank coffee and updated Leaman on the Marlborough trip. He kept his usual poker face and said, ‘Do I gather from all this that Bernie Wefers is no longer the prime suspect?’

‘Put it this way,’ Diamond said. ‘He had a powerful motive for killing the man who stole his wife, and he didn’t deny threatening him outside the divorce court, but it became obvious his anger was directed mainly at Monica.’

Keith Halliwell added his own observation. ‘And the pilot’s log in the helicopter suggests Bernie wasn’t in Bath on the day of the auction. He’ll have needed to arrange a contract killing.’

Leaman nodded. ‘But that’s what happened. Someone hired a set of gunmen.’

‘Which raises the question whether Bernie would murder by proxy,’ Diamond said. ‘I could be wrong, but my impression is that he’d want to be there to witness the killing. He’s not the sort to take revenge at arm’s length.’

Leaman got up and crossed the room to the whiteboard where the faces of the principal witnesses and suspects were displayed. As the architect and manager of the incident room, he never missed an opportunity to demonstrate its usefulness. ‘So Bernie moves down in the pecking order and Dr. Poke moves up.’

‘Certainly. Until today we had Poke down as a suspect because of professional rivalry, but we didn’t know he’d slept with Monica,’ Diamond said. ‘Neither of the pair said a word to us about the Diphthongs.’

‘They wouldn’t volunteer it,’ Halliwell said. ‘Doesn’t do either of them much credit.’

‘I haven’t met Poke,’ Leaman said, ‘but isn’t he just the sort of creepy guy who would think up an underhand way of removing the professor from the scene?’

‘No question,’ Diamond said, ‘and there would be extra satisfaction from having him killed just at the moment he was bidding for the big prize — the Wife of Bath. We need another session with Poke.’

‘And Monica?’ Halliwell said.

‘Monica, too.’ Diamond’s thoughts returned to the conversation he’d had with Paloma, the wacky theory that Monica had hired the gunmen herself to prevent her husband from acquiring the Wife of Bath and the plot had literally misfired and resulted in Gildersleeve’s death. Too way out to mention to colleagues? He still thought so. ‘She has some explaining to do as well.’

Allowing that it had been a long, stressful afternoon, Halliwell was sharp this evening. ‘How about this? Secretly, Monica was still attracted to Dr. Poke. She discovered she’d made a terrible mistake marrying Gildersleeve. He was boring and locked into fourteenth century poetry. The sex was a disappointment — if it happened at all. We know she has an appetite for sex.’

‘I can see where this is going,’ Diamond said.

‘Doesn’t the auction present an opportunity to get rid of him and also reward Poke with the professorship? She could have hatched the plot on her own or in collaboration with him.’

‘Not bad,’ Diamond said. ‘They were cool about each other under interview and that’s what you’d expect from two killers working together.’

Leaman nodded. ‘I like it. But they’d still need to find the gunmen to stage the hold-up.’

‘She’ll have met all sorts in her time with Bernie,’ Halliwell said. ‘She’d know who to contact.’

Leaman picked up a marker pen and drew a line on the whiteboard linking Monica’s name to Poke’s and adding a question mark. Then he pointed to another name. ‘Shouldn’t we also look at Sturgess, the British Museum man? He was the rival bidder.’

‘When you say “British Museum man,” he was only acting as an agent for the museum,’ Diamond said. ‘His firm is independent. They must get some kind of commission or fee.’

‘They’d be under pressure to acquire the carving for as little as possible,’ Leaman said. ‘When the bidding went way past the valuation, Sturgess must have been worried. It could have gone higher. The gunmen put a stop to that.’

‘You’re not suggesting Sturgess is behind the hold-up?’

‘We haven’t looked into his background. There could be other stuff we don’t know about.’

‘Do it, then,’ Diamond said.

Leaman continued to study his board. ‘Is there anyone else from the auction we might be overlooking?’

‘The glass lady,’ Diamond said.

‘Who’s she?’ Halliwell asked.

‘Miss Topham, from Brighton. The only witness able to give us anything useful on the gunmen, a scar like a moon crater on the back of the neck of the one who stopped the auction. She’s known as the glass lady because she specialises in glass objects.’

‘We don’t have a picture of her, unfortunately,’ Leaman said, ever the perfectionist.

‘I’m not losing any sleep over that,’ Diamond said. ‘I can’t see Miss Topham having anything to do with the shooting.’

‘The auctioneer?’ Halliwell suggested.

‘I got his picture from the internet,’ Leaman said, pointing to the beaming apple-cheeked face above a pink cravat. ‘Denis Doggart. He’s well known.’

‘And in the clear,’ Diamond said. ‘I can’t think of any reason why he would sabotage his own auction, can you?’

‘Who’s left?’ Halliwell asked.

Apart from the victim, the only other individual displayed on the board was the Wife of Bath.

Two hours on, they remained in the CID room. Diamond had sent out for beer and sandwiches. He didn’t want to leave without hearing from Ingeborg. But he was in a better frame of mind now, satisfied that she must have got inside the Hazael mansion. Her silence was understandable.

Finally, about nine thirty, his phone went.

It wasn’t a text this time. He was grateful for a real, old-fashioned call. But not so thrilled to see on the display that it was from Paul Gilbert.

‘Yes?’

The voice was little more than a rustle.

‘Is that you, Paul? Speak up. Where are you?’

‘Leigh Woods.’ He was still barely audible.

‘At Hazael’s place?’

‘I told you I was going there.’ The voice trailed away.

Diamond turned to Halliwell. ‘It’s no use. I can barely hear him.’

Halliwell took the phone and worked the keys.

The volume improved by a few microdecibels. Gilbert was saying, ‘… up a tree.’

‘I missed some of that,’ Diamond said. ‘You did what?’

‘Climbed over the wall.’

‘You said something about a tree.’

‘I’m up the tree now. There’s a guard dog.’

‘And now a dog has got you trapped?’

‘For the time being. It’s getting dark here. I’m hoping it will lose interest and I can make a run for it.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it. Didn’t you get my text?’

‘Yes, but too late. I was already inside. I thought I was doing the right thing, guv. Ingeborg is with this singer, Lee Li, who was being filmed on the ship. They all think Inge is a journalist.’

‘You didn’t let on that she isn’t?’

‘To Marcus the director? No. But there was an ugly scene on the horned bridge at the quayside. The thing is, Lee Li wants out. She’s been trying to escape from Hazael. Marcus was roughed up and both women were driven away by Hazael and his minders. It’s likely they’re being held here. I came to check, but the place is a fortress.’

‘No one told you to go there.’

‘I used my initiative, guv. Sorry.’

‘You’d better use it to get out, you pillock. And without anyone knowing. I can’t send a rescue party and risk a major alert. Keep us informed.’

With a sigh and shake of his head, Diamond pocketed the phone. He liked young Gilbert, but this was a near disaster. He told the others to leave. He’d stay on for a while and see this through. They knew better than to argue.

He would use the time catching up on emails and paperwork in his office. There was sure to be masses of stuff to be got through. He stepped inside and sank into his comfortable leather chair and eyed the in tray without disturbing it. He reached out to touch the spacebar on the keyboard and watched his screensaver light up, an old film poster of the Margaret Lockwood and James Mason classic from 1945, The Wicked Lady. After today, the title had extra resonance. He continued to gaze at it and thought about Monica and her talent for picking up unsuitable men, a brute of a builder, a one-track professor and a diphthong. With better judgement, she might have had a long, fulfilling marriage. Too lusty for her own good, she’d made terrible choices. But was she a wicked lady? He couldn’t see it — yet.

A sense of unease with his surroundings was keeping him from opening the emails. Something wasn’t right. Subconsciously he’d noticed an abnormality, but subconscious it remained. He scratched his head, rotated his chair and looked at the ceiling for inspiration. His eyes returned to the screen and the film title.

Then he knew.

The Wife of Bath was missing from the room.