stepped out.
As if it were fated, Georgina came out of the room opposite. ‘Peter, there you are.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you all right? You look as if someone just walked over your grave.’
‘My temperament,’ he said. ‘Timid by nature.’
‘I’d never noticed.’
He was going to add that he was a good sniffer even so, but it would have been lost on Georgina. She’d think he was snorting coke.
‘If you’re really all right, can we talk about the hanging?’
She was up with the morning’s developments. She just wanted his take on them. In her office upstairs he settled into a leather armchair and confirmed that it looked as if Geaves had killed himself.
‘Is there any doubt?’ Georgina said.
‘We haven’t had Dr Sealy’s report yet, but at the scene he called it a proper hanging.’
‘That’s straight talking from a pathologist. By that he meant there weren’t any signs the man had been strangled first, as Delia Williamson was?’
He nodded. ‘It’s all about the marks on the neck.’
‘So Geaves killed his ex-wife and then took his own life. Why — because he despised himself for what he’d done?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Or because he didn’t want to face the hue and cry? You were on to him.’
‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that, ma’am.’
‘You were actively searching for him. He’d disappeared from his lodging in Freshford and no one had seen him for days.’
‘I can’t argue with that.’
Georgina drummed her fingers on the desk. She wanted closure on this case and she wasn’t getting much help from the man in charge. At some stage she would have to face her fellow chorister, Amanda. ‘Get a grip, Peter. You must have a view of what happened.’
‘I’m puzzled about the choice of location.’
‘The viaduct? What’s wrong with that? I thought a long drop was the best way to do it. The jerk on the rope must have broken his neck immediately. People who do it by stepping off a chair condemn themselves to slow strangulation.’
‘You’re missing my point, ma’am. This was so public. Why didn’t he hang himself in private as most suicides do?’
She drew in a sharp, impatient breath. ‘Well, the place where he strung Delia up was public. He treated himself the way he’d treated her.’
‘Out of conscience?’
‘Presumably. We don’t know what was going on in his mind.’
‘That’s the problem,’ he said.
‘There was no note?’
‘Not at the scene. I’m having his place searched.’
‘Good. You might find evidence linking him to the murder.’
‘That would be a bonus.’
‘Don’t think of it like that,’ Georgina said in a tone of reproof, actually wagging her finger. ‘Just because the killer and his victim are both dead it doesn’t mean we treat the investigation lightly. We must make every effort to prove he murdered the woman.’
‘I intend to,’ he said.
‘Have you got the motive?’
‘Motive?’
‘The reason he killed her.’
‘Not yet.’
‘I suggest you work on that as a priority instead of waiting for evidence to fall into your lap.’
‘Right you are, ma’am,’ he said, and he stood up as if to prove he wasn’t waiting for anything. If he stayed here any longer being treated like a schoolkid he would say something mutinous.
She flapped her hand and he left the room.
The late breakfast was so late it became lunch. Afterwards he called Keith Halliwell, by now inside the Freshford house Geaves had lived in. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Tidy, guv. Horribly tidy. No sign of recent occupation. The stuff in the fridge is past its sell-by.’
‘Nothing so helpful as a suicide note?’
‘No letters at all except junk mail. No bank statements, passport, credit cards, address book. I get the impression he took everything important with him when he left.’
‘Not intending to come back?’
‘There are clothes in the bedroom, but he wouldn’t need a suit if he was planning to top himself.’
‘Wouldn’t need a passport, so far as I know. Have you talked to the neighbours?’
‘They never got much out of him. The one thing that’s certain is that he hasn’t been living here the last few days.’
‘Do you think he had a bolt hole somewhere else?’
‘Looks that way, guv. We did find one thing — a weird photo that had slipped down the back of a chest of drawers, but I wouldn’t read too much into it. Could have been left by some previous tenant.’
‘Weird in what way?’
‘You can’t see much. It’s badly focused or taken in very poor light. Some kind of hairy creature with eyes and teeth, but like nothing I’ve ever seen. Might be a still from a horror movie.’
‘Bring it in. I’ll take a look at it. You’d better come back here, then.’
‘See you shortly.’
‘Probably not,’ Diamond said. He’d been on the go since the crack of dawn and he was knocking off early.
10
T he disappointment was huge. Truly challenging crimes are rare. You might get four or five in a career. Sure, there were questions to be answered, but they were just for the record. All the impetus had gone. He’d fallen prey to wishful thinking.
Back to reality. He stuffed his week’s washing into the machine and switched on. Ten minutes into the cycle he realised there was something amiss with reality. His thoughts weren’t fully on the job and he hadn’t put in any soap powder. He’d made this mistake before. Adding the tablets now was no use. They’d still be sitting in the dispenser when the wash finished. And if he opened the door — as he had a couple of times — he got water all over his kitchen floor. He’d just have to wait until this soap-less wash was through.
He left it running and went to his overladen bookshelves in the front room, where the biographies of Scotland Yard’s finest, men like Fred Cherrill and Bob Fabian, kept company with his eighty-three-volume set of Notable British Trials, the most valuable possession he had. Reading about old murders could be therapeutic when he was hard pressed on his own investigations, reminding him that sometimes good sleuthing brought a result.
Some of those shelves dipped dangerously in the middle. He kept telling himself he would thin the books out, but he hated throwing them away. There was a whole row of Agatha Christies that Steph had collected. He hoped to find someone who would appreciate them.
He picked a book that had him absorbed until the wash was ready for its second try. The case was an old one, dating back to 1864, and so intriguing that he almost forgot the tablets again. And when he reached one footnote, he recalled a recent conversation, and smiled. His thoughts had turned to someone else who would be interested.
Later, he went to the computer that he still thought of as Steph’s, because she’d made the most use of it,
