The Tooth Tattoo

21

‘I won’t be making a habit of it,’ Diamond said of the soirée.

Ingeborg was more positive. ‘It was really good in parts.’

‘The part that matters is that we met the manager,’ Diamond said. ‘We weren’t there for the music.’

‘What did you make of him?’ Keith Halliwell asked.

‘Douglas Christmas?’ Ingeborg said. ‘A smooth operator. I guess you need someone like that fronting a cultural group. He’d make a good impression abroad with his old-world charm.’

‘Rather less with you?’ Halliwell said.

‘Charming people always have a hidden agenda.’

He grinned. ‘If you’re a blonde.’

The CID team were all present and there was a sense of anticipation. Diamond’s case conferences tended to be informal, for whoever happened to be around. This one had been scheduled in advance as not to be missed.

‘Listen up, people,’ he said. ‘Yesterday as you know an international dimension was added to the case. It emerged that another Japanese woman went missing in a city where the Staccati were performing — in this case, Vienna, in 2008 — and was found dead some time after in the Danube canal. We can’t be certain of a link, but it has to be investigated.’

While Diamond was speaking, Ingeborg pinned a new photo to the display board. Posed against a whitewashed wall, a woman’s face making no effort to please stared forward from the centre of the frame. This was no family snap. Everyone in the room knew a mugshot when they saw one.

Diamond continued, ‘Points of similarity. One, her nationality, of course. Two, the body was recovered from a city waterway. Three, she was submerged too long for a cause of death to be determined. Four, no obvious injuries. Five, she was clothed. Six, there was no great alarm when she went missing. And seven, she died at about the time the Staccati were in town.’

He waited for that to take root.

‘And these are the differences. One, this woman, Miss Emi Kojima, was about five years older than Mari Hitomi. Two, she’d been out of touch with her family for rather longer. Three, she was found with a netsuke under her T-shirt. That’s a small antique ornament of a particular design that led the Viennese police to deduce she took her own life.’

‘But it could have been planted by her killer,’ John Leaman said, keen as always to chip in.

‘Goes without saying.’ Diamond folded his arms and lulled everyone into thinking there was little else to report. ‘Nothing we don’t know already, you’re telling yourselves. But I asked Ingeborg to run a search on the Vienna victim and she’s discovered some background that I’m sure you’ll agree is new and significant.’ He turned to Ingeborg. ‘Over to you.’

‘Getting straight to it,’ she said, ‘from an early age Emi Kojima attended one of the famous Tokyo violin schools.’

Murmurs of interest rippled through the room.

‘Music again?’ John Leaman said.

‘She was said to have been an exceptionally gifted player. They take them young and get them up to an amazing standard. But at seventeen she was caught in possession of cocaine and asked to leave the school. After that she seems to have left home and drifted into petty crime and prostitution. She lived in one-room in a notorious Tokyo slum. The picture you see was taken after an arrest, one of many. Her family despaired of getting her back to some kind of normality. A sad story, but far from uncommon.’

Most eyes had returned to the photo on the display board. Emi Kojima’s jaded look seemed to confirm that she had been pulled in and charged so often that it had no meaning for her.

‘So,’ Diamond said, ‘we can add one more point of similarity: an interest in classical music. And one difference: this woman had a police record.’

‘How did she make it to Vienna if she was in poverty?’ Halliwell asked.

‘Three guesses. She wasn’t there on a city break.’

‘Are we talking organised crime?’

‘We could be.’

‘Trafficking?’

‘That’s well possible.’

‘To work as a hooker in Europe?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Excuse me,’ Paul Gilbert said, ‘but how would this link up with the string quartet? None of them are Japanese.’

‘Doesn’t stop one of them paying for sex with her,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Guys on tour for weeks on end.’

‘Classical musicians?’ Gilbert said in disbelief.

‘They need to get their rocks off, same as you, ducky,’ Ingeborg said.

Young Gilbert turned puce and everyone else enjoyed the moment.

‘He’s right to ask the question,’ Diamond said. ‘It comes down to this: did one of the Staccati pick up Miss Kojima in Vienna and kill her, and also Miss Hitomi in Bath?’

‘Someone who fancies Japanese girls?’ Halliwell said.

‘Or hates them.’

Paul Gilbert was still grappling with the concept. ‘Something doesn’t add up. If she was working as a prostitute in Vienna and got picked up and killed by one of the Staccati, the fact that she went to violin school is neither here nor there. That was all in the past.’

Ingeborg looked as if she was in free fall. In her eagerness to join up the dots she’d missed this basic flaw in the logic. ‘Now you put it like that, the music link may be a red herring. It must be what she was doing in Vienna that got her killed.’

‘That makes sense to me,’ Diamond said, moving smoothly on. ‘Let’s stay with it.’

‘If we’re talking about the Staccati in Vienna,’ Halliwell said, ‘this was before Mel Farran joined. There are only two males in the frame, the old guy and the silent one.’

‘ “Old” is a relative term,’ Diamond said. ‘He could be my age.’

No one else spoke a word.

‘Losing some of his hair doesn’t make him decrepit. But as you say, either of these might have gone looking for paid sex. And we shouldn’t ignore the third man.’ Diamond stopped and looked around the room. ‘Do I hear someone whistling?’

A few heads turned towards the source of the Harry Lime Theme.

Caught again.

Paul Gilbert seemed to shrink within himself.

Diamond could have hung the young man out to dry. Instead he gave a disarming comment. ‘It sounds better on a zither.’

Relief all round.

Diamond wasn’t departing from his script. ‘The third man — Harry Cornell — known to go off on missions he discussed with nobody. He’s in the frame with the others. It’s possible he was with this woman and killed her. The next city they visited was Budapest and he went missing there.’

Leaman was encouraged to develop the scenario. ‘He dumped her in the canal in Vienna and he expected the body would be discovered any time soon, so he went into hiding.’

‘Yeah, down the sewers,’ Halliwell said.

‘Don’t try me,’ Diamond said. ‘The joke’s been done.’

Halliwell clearly wasn’t impressed by the third man theory. ‘For this to make any sense, Harry would have stayed in hiding for four years and turned up again in Bath and killed another Japanese woman. For Christ’s sake, why?’

Ingeborg said, ‘We haven’t discussed the motive.’

Leaman agreed. ‘All we have is the vague idea that some nutter has a kink about Japanese women.’

‘Two very different women,’ Ingeborg added.

Gilbert said, ‘Should we be checking all the cities the Staccati have visited for unsolved murders of Japanese women?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ someone murmured.

‘A serial killer?’ Diamond said.

Gilbert hesitated. ‘That’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘Fair point. Do that, would you, Paul? We have a list of all their gigs for sixteen years, thanks to John Leaman.’

Gilbert looked as if he’d just grown older by all of those years. ‘Me? How would I do that?’

‘Interpol. That’s why they exist, for something like this.’

The young man’s face relaxed. ‘Thanks, guv.’

‘Then if they’re unable to confirm anything it’s a matter of trawling through the international press.’

The appeal of teasing Gilbert was that every emotion was as vivid on his face as if he was a silent film actor.

‘Don’t despair. A lot of it’s digitised.’

‘The Japanese papers should be helpful,’ Halliwell said.

Ingeborg said, ‘This is getting mean. You’d better come clean, guv. Are we seriously looking at a serial killer?’

‘Personally, I think it’s unlikely,’ Diamond said. ‘A series of killings would have shown up on the radar before now. The Japanese police are no slouches. So it won’t be necessary to go back all those years, Paul. But it’s not impossible some maniac has just started on a psychopathic career, and I’m serious about checking for a similar case in the past five years. Meanwhile for the rest of us it’s back to the nitty-gritty of probing the secret lives of our musicians. And I’m not ruling out their manager. He flew out to Vienna while they were performing there.’

‘Is Mel still in the frame?’ Ingeborg said. Her tone suggested he ought not to be. Mel had made a favourable impression on her when she interviewed him. ‘He wasn’t around when the first girl was killed in Vienna.’

‘You saw him at the concert,’ Diamond said. ‘Of the four, who looked the most nervous?’

‘He is the new boy, guv.’

‘He’s had several months to settle in. This wasn’t the first concert they’ve played.’

She nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll keep digging.’

Paul Gilbert still hadn’t been silenced by the drubbing he’d received. ‘There could be a reason why Mel was nervous.’

‘Better tell us, then,’ Ingeborg said before any of the others could inflict more punishment.

‘It’s in the copy of the message log I put on the guv’nor’s desk.’

A show-stopping moment followed. Everyone in the room except young Gilbert knew Diamond was a word-of-mouth man who rarely went near his desk.

‘Message about what?’ Diamond asked.

‘The statement I took yesterday evening from a Mrs. Carlyle.’

Diamond drew a sharp, impatient breath. ‘Never heard of her. Is it relevant?’

‘It could be.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘She came in and made this voluntary statement. Only the thing is she happens to be Mel Farran’s landlady and it was all about a hit and run incident outside the house yesterday afternoon. Mel was knocked down.’

The old blood pressure rocketed. ‘And you wait until now to tell us?’

‘It was in the message. I thought you must have seen it by now, guv. If you want to listen to the statement it’s all on tape.’

Diamond managed to contain himself. Strictly speaking, the lad had acted correctly. Not sensibly, with the way things were done in CID, but correctly. ‘We’ll do that. Fetch it in and play it to us.’ While Gilbert went off to retrieve the cassette, Diamond told the rest of the team, ‘This may have nothing to do with our investigation, but we can’t take that chance.’ He frowned. ‘How come Gilbert interviewed this woman? A voluntary statement about a traffic incident ought to be dealt with downstairs.’

No one knew why, so he asked the young DC when he reappeared with the cassette player.

‘When she first came in she wasn’t talking about the car accident, guv. She was on about a sex maniac stalking her daughter. Uniform said it was a CID matter and I happened to be the only one here.’

‘We’d better hear this.’

He switched on.

They listened enthralled to Mrs. Carlyle’s melodramatic account of the stalker and his all-too-obvious lust for the innocent Tippi. They heard how her gallant lodger Mel went to investigate and was almost killed by the escaping car.

Diamond was gracious enough to say at the end of it, ‘Difficult interview. You handled her well, finally got to the real facts.’ He pressed his forefinger against his chin. ‘Why didn’t Mel report this himself, I wonder?’

‘Too busy with the concert, I expect,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Maybe.’

‘Perhaps what actually happened wasn’t as dangerous as the woman described it,’ Leaman said. ‘She sounds hyper on the tape.’

‘Mel did have a plaster on his left hand,’ Ingeborg said. ‘And at the soirée he was looking every which way as if he expected someone to attack him.’

‘But he didn’t report the driver,’ Diamond said, refusing to excuse the omission. ‘I want to know why. And if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed...’

Mel’s lodgings were in Forester Road, north-east of the city centre. Diamond asked Ingeborg to drive him there since she was the member of CID who knew the violist best and had a good rapport with him. In his twitchy state Mel would probably appreciate some female reassurance. Which wouldn’t stop Diamond putting the boot in when required.

It was best to call unannounced, so they’d made no appointment. This was still before mid-day. The quartet rehearsed mainly in the afternoons. Mel shouldn’t have left the house.

‘What was the make of the stalker’s car?’ Diamond asked as they cruised up the road looking at house numbers.

‘A Renault Megane. Black.’

‘Haven’t noticed one along here, have you?’

‘In view of what happened he’d be an idiot to come back the next day,’ Ingeborg said.

They stopped outside a house with a crimson door and gleaming metal fittings.

‘You must be Tippi,’ Diamond said when their knock was answered by a young woman in a bathrobe with her hair colour matching the door.

She gave him a suspicious look. ‘How do you know? And what’s it to you anyway?’

‘Police,’ he said, showing his ID. ‘Your mother reported an incident yesterday and we’re following up on it.’

‘Mum’s out.’

‘Good. We’d like to speak to Mel if he’s in.’

‘He’s out, too.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘He walks in the park sometimes.’ She pointed along the road in the direction of Sydney Gardens.

‘Your mother seems to believe you have a stalker,’ Diamond said. ‘Has he troubled you before?’

‘Who — me?’

‘That’s what I’m asking, Tippi.’

‘A stalker? Give me a break.’

‘What’s that meant to mean? Don’t you believe your own mother?’

‘I wasn’t here, didn’t see him.’

‘And nothing like it has happened before?

‘Dunno, do I? If he’s any good at it, I wouldn’t notice him.’

They drove down to Sydney Gardens, originally an eighteenth century pleasure garden that suffered a major assault soon after its opening when the Kennet and Avon canal was driven through. And forty years later it was sliced through a second time by the track of the Great Western Railway. But thanks to deep cutting and the building of ornamental bridges and a parapet, the worst horrors were averted. Jane Austen walked there often in its heyday and remarked that one of the advantages was that it was wide enough to get away from the music. These days the gardens are a haven of quiet in a busy city. Helpfully for Diamond, it wasn’t the sort of park where you had no chance of finding anyone. There is a central path almost from end to end with views to either side.

They spotted Mel Farran near the Temple of Minerva, the faux Greek structure of Corinthian columns at the centre of the gardens. Clearly he saw them coming and seemed undecided whether to make an about turn, but thought better of it.

‘How are you doing?’ Diamond said when they got close enough. ‘You had a run-in with a Renault Megane yesterday, I was told.’

Mel was quick to dismiss. ‘It was nothing. My landlady got excited, but I’m fine.’

‘Any idea who was driving?’

‘It all happened too fast. As much my fault as his, I reckon. I don’t want to make a complaint.’

‘How was it your fault?’

‘I was dead set on speaking to him and I kept going when he started the car. Walked right into it.’

‘When you say “dead set”—’

‘I thought I recognised the car. Saw one just like it the same day outside the Tippett Centre, some idiot who drove off fast and almost knocked down a student. But I could be mistaken.’

Diamond didn’t let that pass. ‘You think you saw him twice the same day?’

‘I didn’t get the number or anything. I’m not a hundred percent sure.’

‘Can you think of any reason why anyone is tailing you?’

Mel hesitated. ‘No.’

‘Just that you seemed nervous at the concert last night, as if you were looking out for him.’

He pulled a disbelieving face, as if somebody else was being discussed, and then seemed to remember and gave a shrill laugh. ‘That’s nothing to do with the driver of the Megane. I was playing a new instrument in public for the first time and I thought the owner might be in the audience.’

‘Don’t you own your viola?’

‘I couldn’t possibly afford an Amati. They’re worth a fortune. This sometimes happens with professional players — if you get lucky. We get offered top quality instruments by the people who own them. In a few cases they’re gifts, but mostly they’re on extended loan.’

‘I guess that would make anyone nervous.’

‘Especially as I once had my own instrument stolen.’

‘When was this?’

‘Years ago, when I was doing orchestral work.’ Mel related the story of the mugging outside the Royal Festival Hall and it was obvious that the experience had deeply affected him. Even at this distance in time his voice broke up a little in telling it.

‘That’s so cruel,’ Ingeborg cried out suddenly.

‘Mean,’ Diamond said. ‘What would they want with a viola that had very little value?’

‘Maybe they thought it was worth more,’ Mel said. ‘For me, it was valuable.’

‘A young musician, trying to earn a living?’ Ingeborg stressed in sympathy. ‘I should think it was irreplaceable.’

‘So who does your Amati belong to?’ Diamond asked.

Mel vibrated his lips and became cagey again. ‘I’m not allowed to say. The owner likes to remain anonymous. That’s a condition of the loan.’

‘From what you were saying, you only acquired it recently. Can I infer that he lives in Bath?’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘Meaning he doesn’t live here — or I shouldn’t be asking?’

‘No comment.’ Followed by a twitchy grin.

‘We’ve heard those words a few times before, haven’t we?’ Diamond said with a glance at Ingeborg. ‘Let’s walk a bit, Mel.’

They crossed the bridge over the railway and headed through a wooded area towards Sydney House, a large private building at the eastern end of the gardens, but screened by another pseudo-classical folly known as the Loggia, a semicircle of Ionic columns and pilasters fronting a cement wall.

‘Tell us about your background, how you came to join this quartet — or is that another secret?’

‘Not at all.’ Mel seemed to welcome the change of emphasis. ‘It was a phone call from Ivan. They needed a violist and they’d got to know about me and came to some recital to hear me play. I met them by stages, Ivan first, then Cat, and they called me in to do an audition, playing with them. I was in a blue funk but it seemed to go well and I was welcomed in.’

‘Did you have any qualms about joining?’

‘I jumped at the chance.’

‘And now you’re fully signed up.’

‘Yep.’

‘For how long?’

‘Indefinitely.’

‘Foreign tours?’

‘They’re planning one for South America as soon as we finish our stint in Bath.’

‘Up the Amazon?’

He smiled. ‘I hope not.’

‘Have you played abroad before, Mel?’

‘Heaps of times, filling in with orchestras and ensembles.’

‘Europe?’

‘Paris, Warsaw, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam.’

Trying not to reveal that every neuron in his brain was transmitting at peak capacity, Diamond threw in a question that could have passed for small talk. ‘So you’ve been to Vienna? Who was that with?’

‘You name it. I must have played there a dozen times. The first was with the London Symphony Orchestra. Last winter guesting with the Vienna State Ballet.’

‘When you say “guesting”...?’

Mel grinned. ‘I wasn’t dancing. They needed a violist at short notice and one of the orchestra remembered me from a previous visit. In the music business it’s who you know.’

While the two were in conversation, Ingeborg had left them to it. They appeared to have hit it off without any input from her. But she’d noticed something Diamond had not. Her difficulty was finding how to tip him off without Mel knowing. She touched Diamond’s arm. ‘Guv.’

He ignored her, still high on the discovery that Mel had worked in Vienna. ‘So when were you first there?’

Mel was still talking in a relaxed way. ‘With the LSO? That was a shorter trip. Two or three concerts as far as I remember. Mahler, I think. As you approach the stage there’s a bust of the composer staring at you. Slightly unnerving.’

‘Yes, but when?’

‘Two thousand and eight, if my memory is right.’

‘Weren’t the Staccati performing in Vienna in two thousand and eight?’

‘Don’t know. I wasn’t following their progress at the time.’

‘I believe they were.’

‘Coincidence, then. But Vienna is a stop-off on most of the European tours, so it’s no big deal if we overlapped.’

Diamond was like a sniffer dog in a cannabis plantation. His list of strong suspects had increased. ‘Which part of Vienna were you in?’

‘Now you’re asking,’ Mel said. ‘Must have been Karlsplatz. We played at the Musikverein.’

‘The Staccati were at the Konzerthaus. That’s a different location, is it?’

‘I didn’t run into them, if that’s what you’re asking. There are several concert halls.’

Ingeborg caught up with them and gave Diamond a nudge. ‘Guv, can I have a word?’

‘Presently.’ He continued to question Mel. ‘Can you recall what time of year you were there with the LSO?’

‘At this distance in time?’

‘I can check with their management, I expect.’

‘Why do you need to know?’

‘It’s all part of our investigation into the death of the Japanese girl,’ he said, not wanting to give more away at this stage.

They were crossing the white-painted cast-iron bridge over the canal, more than a mile from where Mari’s body had been recovered, but still a reminder of why they were there. Ahead, the path would end at the Loggia in front of Sydney House.

Ingeborg refused to be sidelined any longer. ‘Guv, we’re being watched.’

‘What?’

‘I noticed this hooded guy standing among the trees by the temple where we first met Mel and he’s been trailing us ever since, using the trees as a cover.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Not sure. I just caught glimpses through the bushes.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

She didn’t answer.

‘He’ll have to cross the bridge if he’s coming after us.’

Diamond said. ‘He’ll be out in the open then. Wearing a hoodie, you said. What colour?’

‘Dark blue.’

‘I’ll walk on with Mel. Why don’t you double back and see if you can catch him and find out what his game is.’ For Mel’s benefit he added, ‘Parks are favourite places for weirdos.’

Ingeborg did as she was asked. On the other side of the bridge she left the path and headed into the undergrowth to the right.

‘Will she be all right?’ Mel asked.

‘He’s the one who should be worried,’ Diamond said, glancing back. ‘She’s a black belt.’

They stopped to look. A minute or two went by. They’d lost sight of Ingeborg. The scene was peaceful. People were playing tennis on the courts to the left. A light breeze rustled the leaves.

‘There he is.’

A dark figure broke from cover and sprinted through the trees with Ingeborg in pursuit. At first the hoodie appeared to be heading across the open ground towards Beckford Road. Then Ingeborg cut the angle to intercept him and he veered in their direction again.

‘She’ll trap him,’ Mel said. ‘He won’t get over the canal.’

‘Dead right,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s had it.’