Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman (19 page)

30

‘W
here are the media?’ he asked Gledhill.

‘Who do you mean – the
Chronicle
?’

‘Radio, TV, press. They should be here by now.’

‘That’s up to them. Press relations aren’t my concern.’

Diamond turned to his ever-reliable second-in-command. ‘Keith, this has got to have publicity. We need to know the identity of this woman as soon as possible. Make some calls.’

Gledhill stopped being indifferent. ‘Is that necessary? I don’t want television crews tramping all over the scene. They’ll find us soon enough.’

‘Did you look at the left hand?’

‘Of the deceased? Not specially.’

‘There’s the mark of a ring there.’

‘A wedding ring?’

Diamond gave him a how-would-I-know look. ‘It’s just the mark, but it’s the third finger of the left hand. The chance is high that she was married. If this follows the pattern of the other hangings, the husband is due to die next, and soon. As of now I don’t have a clue who he is.’

Gledhill leaned closer, as if he hadn’t heard right. ‘Do you think somebody is murdering couples?’

‘I’d put it more strongly. I’d use the word “executing”.’

‘But why?’

‘If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here.’

The crime scene people improvised some screening as Diamond had suggested, using plastic sheeting draped over lengths of cord.

Bertram Sealy arrived and said with a stupid grin to Diamond that they couldn’t go on meeting like this. The usual banter between pathologists and police didn’t sit well, not when Sealy was making the quips.

‘Where’s the gorgeous Ingeborg this morning?’ Sealy went on. ‘I could do with her support on the steps.’

‘Get a life, Doctor.’

Gledhill produced another paper suit and Sealy went to work without assistance, speaking into his tape-recorder.

Halliwell was through to the BBC news room in Bristol.

‘Tell them I’m briefing the press as soon as they get here and it’s a big story,’ Diamond said. ‘The same to ITN and the papers.’

He stepped outside the plastic sheeting and was pleased to find that most of the onlookers had gone. He tried picturing what had happened, the killer arriving with his victim, by car almost certainly. If the MO was the same as before, she was dead already. The object was to arrange a fake hanging. Anyone would think she died on the end of a rope. Not so. She was on show, dangling there, because this was how the killer wanted it to appear.

In the small hours of the morning this part of the city, set back from Marlborough Lane, well north of the main artery, the Upper Bristol Road, would have been quiet. The killer had thought this through. He’d backed his vehicle right up to the arch on the broad pavement without fear of being seen. Even if the occasional car passed, he wasn’t conspicuous and the tyres hadn’t left a mark on the stone surface. He’d slung the end of his plastic washing-line over the crossbeam and made it secure. Did he stand on the roof of his vehicle to do it? If that were the case, did he have a van, or a four-by-four or a saloon? A man in the business of rigging up gallows would surely have worked out the most convenient transport.

Then came the more risky part of removing the corpse from the interior and tying the cord round the neck. He’d judged how high the noose had to be. He must have. It was calculated so that the body would swing. He’d positioned her on the roof, or the boot, or the bonnet, and then driven away and left her suspended.

This all required planning. It was likely he’d done a dummy run to assess the task. But why go to all that trouble? Why take the risk of discovery? Most murderers go to great lengths to conceal their victims. They don’t seek to display them.

Pondering these questions, Diamond returned inside the enclosure. Dr Sealy had stepped down – unaided – and was ready to report the preliminary findings.

‘A woman under forty, I’d say, but not much under. Slimly built, about five six in height. No shoes, otherwise dressed casually. Manicured hands and feet. Nothing in the state of the nails to indicate a struggle. The undersides of the feet are clean, suggesting she was transported here. No obvious wounds.’

‘Did you take the temperature?’ Diamond asked.

‘Nasally, yes. And before you ask, the temperature doesn’t tell us much. There are too many variables. My first impression is that she was dead before she was brought here. I’m assuming she was brought here. If this were suicide we’d have a chair or something at the scene, something she’d stepped off. It’s true that the pillars have a base with a ledge of sorts, but too low down to have supported the feet. The noose is interesting, tight round the neck and tied with a slip knot.’

‘Which we saw up at the viaduct,’ Diamond said.

‘Yes,’ Sealy said in the surprised tone of a schoolmaster getting the right answer out of the class idiot, ‘but I’m trying to consider this incident in isolation. As I say, a slip knot, so tight that it would probably have throttled her if she had been alive. Before she was suspended, I mean. Quite what it conceals, if anything, I won’t know until after autopsy.’

‘You’ll do that today?’

‘That’s my firm intention.’

‘I’d like more photos of the face, for recognition. Can we draw the hair aside?’

‘If the man with the clipboard allows.’

Gledhill nodded, and Diamond called for the photographer.

The victim’s eyes were closed, the mouth open a little, but not sagging. There’s a question of taste about showing the faces of murder victims in the press and on television. Some picture editors are reluctant to challenge old taboos. It was essential that this woman was recognised as soon as possible. If the ligature was cropped from the picture there was nothing repulsive in her appearance.

The photographer took about twenty shots with the hair drawn back from the face. ‘Good-looking woman . . . considering,’ he said.

‘Is that digital?’ Diamond asked. ‘Can we go on line with it immediately?’

‘As soon as you like. Do you want some with the eyes open?’

‘No.’ He’d seen what Delia Williamson’s eyes were like after being strangled. It wouldn’t assist recognition. ‘The press will be here shortly.’

‘You can pick out the shot you want. Scan through them now.’

They were not offensive. The best were taken at an angle, eliminating the skewed effect of the head against the cord. He chose two, full-face and half-profile.

Halliwell informed him that the first reporter had arrived. ‘Are you going to link this to the other hangings, guv?’

‘That’s the plan. Do you have a problem with it?’

‘They’ll go to town on it. A serial killer at large.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

‘I was wondering if you need to clear it with headquarters, the ACC, or someone.’

‘I’m running this inquiry, Keith. Georgina wanted it shelved.

She’s more interested in protecting shop windows.’

‘Yes, but I thought I’d mention it.’

‘And you have. Where’s the best place to meet the press? Across the road by the other arch?’

Halliwell was right. Georgina would go ballistic when she saw on television that a serial hangman was at work in Bath and she hadn’t been informed. Press relations are a minefield for the police. Elaborate procedures are laid down. Every statement is supposed to be rubber-stamped.

Diamond didn’t give a toss. Another life was at stake and there wasn’t time for consultation. He wanted headlines tonight.

Bertram Sealy approached him again. ‘So who wants a front seat at the autopsy?’

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.