The Tooth Tattoo (14 page)

That evening he got home to a string of messages on the answerphone. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered to play them before supper. Most would be junk calls. He was tired of being told by some fruity voice sounding as if doing him a huge favour, ‘This is a free message.’ But after all this time he still had hopes of a call from Paloma. Nothing.

He opened a pouch for the cat and a beer for himself.
Put two large potatoes in the microwave. ‘What shall I have with it this time, Raffles? Beans, egg or cheese, or all three?’

Paloma had been encouraging him to cut down on the calories and take more exercise. There was a reward system. To earn a pie, he’d had to take a two-mile walk, and she’d come along to make sure. Lately, he’d let himself go again. His ideal had been to look like Orson Welles in
The Third Man
, but he was in danger of ending up like the Welles of the sherry commercials. Did it matter? In his present mood, not a lot.

Baked beans, scrambled egg and grated Cheddar joined the potatoes on his plate. One of those obsessive Swedish detectives was on the TV. He reached for his DVD of
Casablanca
.

More sensational news greeted him at the office next morning. The forensic lab had got through with an early finding. A hair Duckett’s team had picked up at the Green Park river bank site matched the DNA of the drowned woman. All doubt was removed that this was where she had entered the water.

A turning point.

‘We can forget about suicide or accident now, guv,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The heel marks prove she was dragged there and dropped in. You were so right to get us up and running.’

Keith Halliwell said, ‘What are we suggesting here – that she was killed before she entered the water and this was the murderer’s way of disposing of the body?’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Ingeborg said.

‘Then wouldn’t the body have floated, rather than sinking? A person who drowns takes water into their lungs. That’s why they go down. A corpse still has some air inside.’

John Leaman joined in with one of his erudite contributions. ‘It’s not as straightforward as that. Other factors come into it. For one thing, it depends how the body enters the water. Face down, any air in the lungs and airways is trapped and will take time to disperse. But if it gets submerged on its back, the weight of the head bears down and there’s more chance of water entering the nose and mouth. And anyway
after a corpse has been several hours in the water the airways get filled passively and it will sink. Fresh water is less buoyant than the sea, so the process is quicker in a river.’

Diamond said, ‘Where do you learn this stuff?’

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Let’s deal with what we know for certain. The body was rotting, so it must have been underwater for weeks. We now have a crime scene. With any luck, forensics will give us more information. But we know enough already to get headlines with the press release.’

‘Are we going to use the computer image?’ Halliwell asked.

‘You sound doubtful.’

‘I’m not convinced by the science.’

Leaman said at once, ‘It’s based on a scan.’

‘Did you say scam?’

Diamond said, ‘Silence in the ranks. The answer, Keith, is yes, I’m going to issue it to the media. A picture is worth a thousand words.’

‘And if the picture is nothing like her?’

‘There must be some resemblance.’

‘May be.’

Ingeborg said, ‘People don’t expect a computer image to be perfect. There’s news value in the fact that we’re using this method. And when we finally do get a photo of the victim they’ll want to compare it. So we get more publicity, a second bite at the cherry.’

‘So speaks our ex-journo,’ Diamond said.

Halliwell shrugged and was silent.

The Avon & Somerset sub-aqua team was sent to Green Park.

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they found her handbag?’ Ingeborg said.

‘You’re joking,’ Halliwell said. ‘If the killer takes the trouble to dump the body in the river, he’s not going to dump her bag in the same place.’

‘I was trying to be positive. You’re getting as grouchy as the boss. Is it catching?’

Diamond’s 11
A.M
. press conference was well attended. The Manvers Street media relations manager, John Wigfull, presided. He and Diamond – old adversaries from way back – sat in front of a large projected image of the computerised face. Diamond read his prepared statement and invited questions. It all went well until someone asked about the music on the victim’s iPod.

‘Classical music, you said, superintendent. The murdered woman liked listening to string quartets, is that right?’

‘You’ll find a note of it in the release we handed out.’

‘Would that be Haydn or Mozart?’

He hesitated. These smart-arse reporters were always trying to put the boot in. ‘Beethoven, actually.’

‘So you’ve listened to it. Are you a Beethoven expert, Mr. Diamond?’

‘I wouldn’t claim that, but I’m not a complete duffer.’

‘So was it the Amadeus?’

‘Trying to catch me with a trick question?’ he said. ‘That’s Mozart.’ He didn’t add that he’d seen the film.

‘The Amadeus Quartet. I thought every music-loving policeman would have heard of them.’

CID press conferences aren’t renowned for laughs, so when they come they are appreciated.

Diamond still wasn’t sure if he was being tricked. ‘I was
stringing
you along,’ he said, and got a satisfying groan for the pun. ‘And that’s a good
note
on which to finish.’

He asked Paul Gilbert to drive him back to Green Park. Already the cameramen were there in force, lined up behind the tape getting shots of the underwater team in their scuba suits. From now on the press would be tracking every development.

Duckett, arms folded, watched him arrive. Neither needed to treat the other with much deference, and neither did. But to their credit Duckett’s firm of crime scene
investigators had been prompt this time in reporting the significance of the hair found at the scene.

‘Any more discoveries?’ Diamond asked after dipping under the ‘do not pass’ tape.

‘Haven’t they put you out to grass yet?’ Duckett said.

‘I was going to ask the same question, but come to think of it you look more at home up to your knees in mud.’

‘It may look like mud to you, my friend, but it could be the piece of evidence that gets you off the hook.’

‘So what else have you found, apart from the hair and the fibres?’

‘We won’t know until we get it cleaned up.’

‘Have you worked out what happened?’

‘You want it in a plate, don’t you?’ Duckett said. ‘What do you do all day in that police station – watch the racing on TV? It’s a pig of a scene, this one.’

‘Always is.’

‘Too many coppers have tramped through in their big boots. It’s a wonder we found the hair.’

‘Where was it?’

‘Caught on a bramble, quite low down. If you really want to know what happened, I reckon she was dead or out to the world before she got here. There’s no evidence of a struggle except dragging her to the bank and heaving her in. Have you seen the heel-marks?’

Diamond nodded. ‘If she was dead already, would she have floated?’

‘Not for long in the current. You see what it’s like. She’d have got waterlogged.’

‘And after she sank, wouldn’t the flow of the river continue to move her along the bottom?’

‘In this case it didn’t. My opinion is that the body lodged against something deep down. You want to speak to your frogmen. All kinds of stuff gets tipped into the river over time. We’re only a few hundred yards from Sainsbury’s here. Nothing pleases the yobbos more than heaving trolleys in.’

‘It’s true the body didn’t travel very far,’ Diamond said. ‘It was spotted at Lower Weston, three or four hundred yards away. But it had been submerged some weeks from the state of it.’

‘It will have inflated, as they do, and the pressure finally lifted it clear. The absence of the corpse at the scene is a real pain for me. We’re reduced to looking for traces. It’s not good for my back.’

‘Any traces of the killer?’

‘You’re an optimist. What do you expect – another hair? We’ll examine everything we’ve got under the microscope and let you know, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Ninety percent of it is going to be rubbish blown across the park.’

‘When do you reckon to finish?’

‘In a couple of hours if people stop asking damn-fool questions.’

Diamond left him to it. To Paul Gilbert, he said, ‘You wouldn’t think we’re his paymasters, would you, cocky bastard? He’s not going to get work from anyone else.’

‘He seems to know what he’s talking about,’ Gilbert said.

‘He could say it in a more civil way. Now, I’d like your opinion. Come with me.’ They left the crime scene and moved some distance from the press people. ‘It’s a park, right? You can’t drive straight through it.’

‘You might with a four-by-four.’

‘The tyre tracks would be a giveaway. I haven’t seen any. And you wouldn’t get any kind of four-wheeled vehicle along the towpath. If you wanted to drop a body into the Avon, how would you get it here?’

‘Carry it, I suppose.’

‘Where from?’

‘Your transport.’

He tried picturing someone burdened with a corpse, stumbling the hundred yards or more from where the road ended. ‘You’d need to be strong.’

‘She was quite small, guv.’

‘True. But it would be easier with some kind of barrow.’

‘A supermarket trolley?’

‘Maybe, if there was one handy. And this would be done by night, I imagine. Anyway, the killer got her to the bank and dragged her down the last bit, leaving the heels trailing.’

‘You’d need to, just to make sure of your footing,’ Gilbert said. ‘It can’t be easy pitching a body into the river.’

‘But still a good method of disposal. People are going to assume she fell in, or jumped. It’s unlikely any of the killer’s DNA will be recovered, even if some was transferred. And he’s buying time. Worth the extra effort, wouldn’t you say?’

They checked with the sub-aqua team before leaving. Nothing of interest had yet been found. Visibility was a problem and so was the force of the current. A few days of rain had brought extra water off the hills and may well have contributed to the freeing of the corpse from whatever had trapped it. Several days of searching beckoned and the team didn’t hold out much hope of more discoveries.

‘We got a few unfriendly looks, I thought,’ Diamond said as Gilbert drove them back along Green Park Road. ‘They volunteer for this work. It gets them out of the office. What do they expect? Diving for pennies in the hot baths?’

His mood improved in the incident room. The excitement was obvious.

‘What’s happened?’

‘We’ve got a name. That’s what’s happened, guv,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Already? Someone recognised the computer image?’

‘No,’ said Halliwell. ‘That’s just confusing everyone. The embassy delivered.’

‘H
ave you ever done the towpath walk, Mel?’ Mrs. Carlyle asked while cooking his breakfast.

‘The what?’ He was never in the mood for small talk at this time of day and certainly not with his prying landlady.

‘The towpath, by the river. You can go for miles. When I was younger, it was the romantic thing to do – if you had someone with you, of course. Mind you, the scenery loses its charm as you go on. Too many factories.’

‘I expect so.’

‘These eggs are ready now. I’ll pop them on the plate with the bacon and tomato. You did say no to fried bread? It’s a pity Tippi isn’t down yet or I could have cooked hers at the same time. She used to be an early riser. Ever since you arrived she’s taken to lying in bed of a morning.’

He didn’t want to talk about Tippi’s sleep pattern, especially with her mother. He leaned back and allowed Mrs. Carlyle to put the plate in front of him.

She didn’t go away. ‘I think she doesn’t want you to see her before she gets her face on.’

He shrugged. ‘Thanks for this.’

And still she hovered over him. ‘The reason I mentioned the towpath is because of something in the paper this morning. A poor young girl was pulled out of the river a few days ago and they seem to think she was murdered. They’re appealing for witnesses who saw anything suspicious down at Green Park in the past eight weeks. She was Japanese.’

‘Yes?’ Spoken in a monotone, to emphasise his lack of interest.

‘They know she was put in the river at Green Park because
they found her iPod. And this is the part that will interest you. All the music on it was classical, like you play.’

‘Classical can mean all sorts.’

‘String quartets?’

Now his interest did quicken a little. ‘Is that what it says she had on her iPod?’

‘You can read it if you like.’

‘It’s not so remarkable,’ he said. ‘A lot of people like listening to chamber music. Could I have my coffee topped up?’

‘Need your caffeine, do you? Bad night?’ She shuffled towards the kitchen area. ‘Or heavy day coming up?

‘They’re all heavy. I’m learning a difficult piece.’

She returned far too quickly for Mel’s liking with the cafetière and the
Daily Mail
. ‘You might like to see it. Bath gets in the papers quite often, but unpleasant things like this are rare, thank the Lord.’