The Tooth Tattoo

30

‘If you mean who I think you do,’ Ingeborg said in a voice that was calm, but challenging, ‘women are not stranglers. It’s not a woman’s crime.’

‘Have you seen her hands?’ Diamond said.

Everyone looked to where Cat was still pressing the strings with strength and mobility, extracting trills from the cello that matched anything the three men were producing. Fleshy they may have been, but they were long-fingered, workmanlike hands. Given a slender neck to grip, they could have ended a life, no question.

‘Both female victims were petite,’ Diamond reminded them.

Ingeborg tried reasoning with him. ‘You don’t want to go down this route, guv. She’s a caring person. She keeps the men from getting quarrelsome. She’s quick, witty, takes the heat out of any argument.’

‘Why on earth would she want to kill anyone?’ Halliwell said, finally finding a common cause with Ingeborg.

‘All will be revealed,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m pulling her in for questioning.’

The Grosse Fuge came to its serene conclusion, a sense that a mountainous journey had been completed and the travellers were safe. The quartet lifted their bows and lowered them. Relieved smiles all round.

‘Terrific,’ the voice of the producer penetrated the studio. ‘I don’t think you’ll better that.’

Ivan gave a nod. ‘Shall we settle for it?’ he asked the others.

‘Even Anthony is satisfied,’ Cat said. ‘Somebody please collect me from cloud nine.’

In the control room, Diamond said, ‘We’ll give them ten minutes.’

It was fully two hours later when a solicitor had been found and Cat was seated beside her in Interview Room One at Manvers Street.

‘What’s all this about, then?’ she said, arms folded defiantly, after the formalities had been gone through and the tape was running. This wasn’t going to be one of those ‘no comment’ sessions.

Diamond had asked Halliwell to sit in with him. Most of the others would be on the other side of the one-way observation window. ‘It’s about what you’ve been up to, and why,’ Diamond said.

‘Recording the Grosse Fuge,’ she said with gusto, ‘and you were there to be blown away by it, lucky man.’

‘It would have blown anyone away. But I want to ask you about Vienna in 2008. Your quartet was equally brilliant then, but with a slightly different combination.’

‘Harry on viola.’

‘Before he went missing.’

‘Before he was kidnapped, poor lamb.’

‘You know about the kidnapping, then? That’s a good start.’

‘Mel filled us in this morning. Harry called at his house yesterday evening. What a horror story it was, too.’

‘You were the originals, you, Harry and Ivan.’

Cat remarked to her solicitor, ‘He wants us to know he’s done his homework.’

‘You’ve always been the mainstay of the Staccati,’ Diamond said. ‘Be they alcoholic, autistic or exiles, you mother them all.’

‘Is that what they told you?’

‘It’s what you repeatedly tell everyone. The first time we spoke at any length, you told me you keep your boys in order.’

She said to the solicitor, ‘He doesn’t miss a trick.’

‘I’m sure they appreciate it,’ Diamond said. ‘In their different ways, they all need mothering, don’t they? They’re your family. You told me how, after Harry went missing, you wandered the streets of Budapest searching for him.’

‘Where are you going with this?’ Cat’s long fingers beat an impatient rhythm on the table.

‘I’m thinking a single woman like yourself found an ideal outlet for her strong maternal instincts.’

‘I thought you were a policeman, not a shrink.’ Her tone was less playful now.

‘We have to understand people’s motives,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about the music, then. You’re one of the best cellists in the world, I’m told. You could have a solo career, but you prefer playing in the quartet.’

‘There’s nothing criminal in that. I’m a team player, an ensemble person through and through.’

‘You’ve said it for me,’ Diamond said. ‘You keep the Staccati going. It’s your personal mission, creative and fulfilling.’

‘I won’t argue with that.’

‘But if anyone threatens its existence, you see red. I was told you’re like a tigress then.’

‘Who said that?’

‘If it’s true, does it matter? There was that evening in Vienna when you were having a drink after the concert in your hotel bar with the others.’

‘Most concerts end like that.’

‘This one was different because Harry wasn’t drinking with you. He was in another part of the bar with a Japanese woman you’d all met.’

‘Harry was like that. Never known to refuse an offer.’

‘You were all discussing the two of them and Douglas remarked that this woman — who knew a lot about music — could be out to persuade Harry to join another quartet.’

‘Douglas said that?’

‘He tells me he did.’

She arched her eyebrows in a show of surprise. ‘I have no recollection at all.’

‘Harry took the woman, whose name was Emi Kojima, to his hotel room.’

‘Tell us something new, sunshine. Stuff like this has been going on since Adam and Eve.’

‘But you were deeply suspicious of her motives. You considered Emi a serious threat to your beloved quartet and, let’s face it, your personal and professional life. You waited on the same hotel floor for her to leave. She was alone and you followed her along the river bank towards the Danube canal. I’m guessing now, but I reckon at some point you caught up with her and challenged her to say what her intentions were. She was terrified of you. She tried to get away, but she was small, no match for you. You may have simply pushed her, or you may have put your hands around her throat. Either way, she ended up dead in the canal. She wouldn’t be found for some weeks. You returned to the hotel shaken by what you’d done, but thinking you’d stopped her from poaching Harry. The tour continued, but unfortunately in the very next city, Budapest, Harry went missing.’

‘The last part is correct,’ Cat said to her solicitor.

The solicitor said, ‘I’m advising you not to comment.’

‘I’m only agreeing that we lost Harry. Of course we did. The rest, about me attacking the woman, is up there with UFOs and little green men.’

Diamond wasn’t put off. Cat had clearly decided to bluff her way through this and he hadn’t expected her to tell all after the first salvo. ‘So in spite of all the risk you took,’ he continued in the same steady manner, ‘the quartet was in trouble. All credit to you and Ivan for trying to keep it going.’

‘Desperate times.’ She took up the narrative as smoothly as if nothing had passed between them. ‘I had Anthony throwing tantrums because he wanted work. You’ve no idea how childish he can be. And Ivan had to be stopped from jumping ship. I kept reminding them both that we had a brand name and a fan base and a backlist of recordings.’

The solicitor touched her arm to silence her, but Cat wasn’t of a mind to underplay her achievement. ‘You’ve no idea how much competition there is among quartets. All these pushy kids coming out of Eastern Europe and the Far East were only too keen to fill the vacuum.’

‘And you didn’t know at the time that Harry had been kidnapped by the Japanese mafia?’

‘We thought he was dead. What else could we think after so long? That’s why we hired Mel to replace him — eventually. Years had gone by. We weren’t even history. We were forgotten. We needed to build our reputation all over again.’

‘So you got the residency here.’

‘Thanks to Doug. He kept the faith. Top man.’

‘And everything was coming up roses until you gave your first concert and a small Japanese woman said she was a fan and started cosying up to the men. To you it must have seemed like a rerun of Vienna in 2008, except that this time Anthony was getting the attention. She talked intelligently to him about the music. She’d played the violin to a high level herself. Do you remember the shock this gave you, Cat?’

White-faced, she was about to say she didn’t, but Diamond added, ‘Anthony does, and he’s selective in his memories. He particularly noted her tooth tattoo.’

Again, the solicitor put a restraining hand over Cat’s forearm.

She wouldn’t be silenced. ‘Anthony wouldn’t stitch me up. He needs me. He can’t function without me.’

‘His mind doesn’t work like that,’ Diamond said. ‘He takes each day as it comes. He didn’t stitch you up, as you put it. You stitched yourself up. You were incensed. You weren’t going to allow Mari Hitomi to threaten the Staccati after the tough times you’d been through. I don’t know what went through your mind, whether you believed she was trying to recruit Anthony for another quartet, or if it was pure jealousy that she was young and pretty and might sleep with him. You weren’t having it. You spoke to her yourself and offered some kind of lure — perhaps a private meeting with the quartet. She was to meet you after dark at Green Park, that remote patch of ground just across the river from where you live.’

‘This is the biggest load of horse hooey I’ve ever heard,’ Cat said.

The solicitor said, ‘Miss Kinsella, in your own best interest-’

‘I’m not giving anything away, darling,’ Cat said with an effort to sound unconcerned. She looked Diamond squarely in the eye. ‘On with the fairy story, matey. We’re dying to hear what the wicked witch did next.’

‘I prefer the image of the tigress,’ Diamond said. ‘You had your cubs to protect.’

‘Oh, give me strength.’

‘Your boys, then. This unfortunate young woman — who simply came to that concert as a fan wanting to meet the musicians she adored — was grabbed and strangled and dragged to the river and dropped in. You’d got away with it in Vienna, you figured, so why not a second time?’

She gave no sign of caving in. ‘You can do better than this,’ she said, trying to bait him. ‘What about the hundreds of other fans I killed because they came on strong with the boys? It’s farcical when you think about it.’

‘There was another victim, and that was Harry.’

‘I knew we’d get around to him,’ she said, rolling her eyes upwards. ‘And how are you going to slot dear old Harry into this catalogue of slaughter? He was one of my boys, a Staccati player and a lovely guy in spite of all his demons.’

‘No longer a Staccati player.’

‘Because of his missing finger? True, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t family.’

‘Yes, I believe you really liked Harry,’ Diamond said, ‘but he made the fatal mistake of trying to find out the truth of what happened in Vienna, and how Emi Kojima’s murder linked up with Mari Hitomi’s. If he could discover who killed Emi he’d have an answer for the yakuza if they caught up with him again. Harry wasn’t behaving as family should. He was poking the tigress with a pointed stick.’

‘God help us,’ Cat said. ‘I’m getting weary of this Jungle Book stuff.’

‘Yesterday evening you and Anthony shared a taxi home and when it stopped outside Anthony’s lodging you saw Harry’s car there with Harry waiting inside. It was obvious what he intended. He reckoned if he spoke to Anthony about what was going on, he’d get honest answers. Anthony might not be capable of putting two and two together and identifying you as the killer, but Harry was. You had to act quickly.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘You live only two or three minutes away. After the taxi dropped you at your house, you returned to Westmoreland Street to speak to Harry yourself. He was still in his car, waiting. You sat beside him in the passenger seat and listened to his story. To show how desperate he was, he showed you the gun. You seized your chance, grabbed it and shot him dead.’

Cat sighed and shook her head. ‘Are you for real?’

‘It was an impulse killing and a big, big mistake. Suddenly you had a corpse sitting beside you and this time there was no easy way of disposing of it. Panic. The best you could think to do on the spur of the moment was rig it up to look like suicide. You wiped the gun, pressed it into Harry’s hand to get his prints on it and let it drop between the seats. Then you walked home and showered and washed all your clothes. Next morning when the call came through from Anthony’s landlady, you made sure you weren’t the first on the scene. Ivan got there first. By the time I arrived, you were inside the house with the others weeping crocodile tears.’

‘Pardon me,’ she said. ‘The tears were genuine. I was heartbroken Harry was dead.’

‘Heartbroken because you couldn’t put the clock back. What a mess you made of it — a so-called suicide on the left side of the head from a right-handed man.’

‘You keep going on about this as if it was me, but you’re wrong,’ she said, but on a shrill, petulant note. ‘You’re way off the mark and I can sue you for false arrest.’

‘No chance,’ Diamond said. ‘Don’t you know about gunshot residue? When a gun is fired the explosive gases and particles escape and cling to the hands, clothing and hair of the person who fired the gun as well as settling on anything else in the vicinity. While you were cutting your disc this afternoon, a forensic team was going through your flat collecting evidence. Yes, you showered and washed everything, but you can’t prevent these tiny particles being scattered over the floor of your bedroom and bathroom. We have enough to prove you fired the fatal shot.’

‘You’re bluffing,’ she said in a fierce, combative voice.

‘Why do you think I let you go ahead with the recording? We needed time to get a warrant and search your house.’ He reached under the table and held up an evidence bag containing the murder weapon. ‘And if you think you wiped this clean, think again. We’ll be taking your prints and DNA presently after I’ve formally charged you with Harry’s murder.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I’ve admitted nothing, nothing at all.’

‘Doesn’t matter when we’ve got the evidence,’ he said with all the authority he could muster, allowing that forensics would take weeks to produce enough for a prosecution. He was banking on this effusive woman talking her way into proof of guilt. ‘You could say nothing at all and still go down with a recommendation that life means life.’

The solicitor was on her feet. ‘That’s enough. You’re trying to elicit a statement by the use of oppression. You’re in flagrant abuse of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Cat said. ‘I need to know the worst that can happen, don’t I?’

It was a seismic moment.

To Diamond, she said, ‘What are the chances of a lighter sentence if I plead guilty to all three?’

‘It wouldn’t be up to me,’ he said evenly, ‘but an admission of guilt is always taken into account.’

‘I’m up for it, then,’ she said with some of her former bounce. ‘Where shall we start? Vienna, 2008?’

The following weekend, Diamond took Paloma for a candle-lit dinner at the Hole in the Wall in George Street. No awkwardness lingered between them. He felt relaxed after bringing the Staccati case to a successful conclusion. And Paloma had landed a contract to be the costume consultant on a new TV series set in the 1940s.

‘So you obtained a confession?’ she said.

‘We did.’

‘Without violence, I hope.’

‘She sang like a blackbird on the first day of spring.’

‘Is that usual?’

‘No. Their brief generally makes sure they don’t, but in this case Cat insisted, and when that woman insists, no one had better stand in her way.’

‘She’ll get a long sentence, I expect.’

‘Life. For three murders, that will be seriously long.’

‘So the Staccati is no more?’

‘Not necessarily. Ivan is looking for another cellist.’

She looked wistful. ‘Pity if they have to break up. What will that poor autistic man do?’

‘Anthony? He’ll join another ensemble. I don’t have any worries over him.’

‘He’ll miss all the mothering from Cat.’

‘I doubt if he will,’ Diamond said. ‘A lot of it was more about Cat’s need to feel wanted. Anthony is such a good musician that people will put up with his strange ways.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ She smiled. ‘Cat will keep the prison entertained. She’ll probably form an all-girl quartet.’

‘I’m sure of it. We’re doing the prison service a favour, sending them someone as chirpy as her.’ He poured more wine into her glass. ‘But let’s talk about your new project. It’s a bit more modern than the shows you’ve been dressing lately, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I may even ask to see some of your old black and white movies.’

‘You know you’re always welcome.’

‘And I was thinking before you get wrapped up in another case that it might be good to fit in another city break.’

‘I’m all for that,’ Diamond said at once.

‘You are?’ She couldn’t hide her surprise.

‘I enjoyed Vienna — probably more than you did.’

She laughed. I had some fun out of it, too. A lovely city. Where shall we go next?’

‘That could be difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know if I’ve seen it in the brochures.’

‘Which city do you have in mind?’

‘Fits in with your new project.’

‘Don’t keep me in suspense.’

‘I was thinking Casablanca.’