contacting her friends and finding out the details of films she wanted to see.
The machine started all right, but wasn’t receiving e-mail, which meant he couldn’t send it either. He tried various options on the keyboard and then a message appeared suggesting he phoned his server. They must have given him up for dead, or decided he was a deserter. He dialled the number and found himself listening to syrupy music until his ear ached. A voice broke in occasionally to tell him he was in a queue. And paying for it, he thought.
Finally he got through to a living individual.
‘You don’t seem to have used it lately,’ the woman on the line said.
‘But you’re getting my money each month,’ he told her. ‘It’s on direct debit.’
‘No problem,’ she said.
‘What do you mean, “No problem”? I’m telling you there is a problem.’
‘Sir, if you wait a few minutes,’ she told him, ‘you’ll receive whatever has come in since you last opened your mail. There’s quite a lot of it.’
‘All junk, or spam, or whatever you call it,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother.’
‘I have to send it to reactivate the service.’
‘All I want is to send an e-mail myself.’
When the avalanche arrived and the little counter logged up something over six hundred messages, he could tell at a glance that he’d not deprived himself of much. Ignoring the invitations to improve his sex life unimaginably, he clicked create mail and typed in Paloma’s address, copying it from the card she’d handed him. Surprise me with a really unusual request, she’d said.
He kept the message terse.
How about a Muller cut-down?
Didn’t even add his name at the end. She’d see it was from Diamond when she downloaded.
This had to qualify as an unusual fashion item. Franz Muller, he’d learned from the book, had been the first train murderer in Britain. He was a young German tailor. One foggy evening in July, 1864, he’d stepped into a railway compartment and sat opposite an old man wearing a gold watch and chain. The temptation was too great. Muller battered the old man senseless with his own walking stick, relieved him of the watch and his gold-rimmed glasses and pushed him out. The victim was found on the line between Hackney Wick and Bow. He died soon after. But Muller made a critical error when leaving the train. He mistook the old man’s black top hat for his own and left his own hat behind with the victim’s stick and bag.
Within twenty minutes a reply came from Paloma.
Is that Muller or Miller?
She hasn’t heard of it, he thought. She’d also added a PS.
This might be easier if we use a chatline. Are you on one?
Good suggestion, he thought. Steph once used a chatroom to reach her friends. He went back to the desktop, found the icon and opened the page. Now what was her password? He typed in Raffles and it worked. Proud of his new-found computer skills, he put in Paloma’s address and was ready to go.
Muller is correct. Should have an umlaut, but my machine won’t do one.
These days, a hair sample from the killer’s hat would have provided DNA evidence. In 1864, proof of identity was more difficult. Fortunately for the police, the young tailor had remodelled his own hat, cutting it down an inch and a half and sewing it together again. Neatly stitched, of course. But it was not the work of a hatter, who would have used glue. Franz Muller’s altered hat became crucial to the hunt for the killer. His cut-down topper caught the interest of the newspapers. And started a fashion.
Paloma answered. There will now be a short delay.
He smiled and looked at the time. After twelve minutes came back the response.
It’s a style of top hat shortened, circa 1865. Am I right?
She’d done her research by now and probably knew the grim story behind it.
Perfectly. Your reputation is safe. This isn’t a fashion question, but how about a Muller Light?
I’d enjoy that. Where and when?
He smiled. She’d fallen into his trap.
A Muller Light was an idea from the railway company to tempt people back onto trains after all the bad publicity. It was a peep-hole cut between compartments so that passengers would feel safer. It had the reverse effect and put them off.
She wrote back. I’m a fashion person, not a railway expert. My last message stands. Why not come here about seven tomorrow and I’ll get some in?
This time it was his turn to delay. He’d started this. Perhaps subconsciously he’d been pitching for a date, and this hadn’t been about Franz Muller’s hat but Peter Diamond’s suppressed desires.
He stared at her message for another minute before writing: Just checked my diary. I’d be delighted to come He hesitated. Now what? A full stop, or a ‘but’…? Go for it, he told himself, and pressed the full stop key.
11
T wo reports were on his desk next morning. The first, from the Wimbledon scene of crime people, had an immense amount of detail about hairs and fibres found in Dalton Monnington’s car, but nothing to connect the travelling salesman with Delia Williamson. He slapped it on the heap of papers waiting to be filed. Monnington was old news.
Dr Sealy’s report was just as predictable. A Post-it note was attached to the front. ‘Knowing you prefer it simple,’ the sarcastic little doctor had written, ‘the deceased died at the scene, of spinal damage caused by sudden suspension. It was like a judicial hanging except that the drop was longer, so the jerk of the rope was more than enough to dislocate the neck and cause instant death. There were no contrary indications.’
Not liking the assumption that he was ignorant, Diamond glanced through the detailed findings, but the pathological jargon only irritated him more. It was as if Sealy had dressed it up to demonstrate his superiority. The cervical spine was disrupted at the atlanto-occipital joint, rather than the more usual mid-cervical portion. Cleverclogs.
He showed the note to Halliwell.
‘That’s it, then, guv?’
‘You’d better stand down the team,’ he said. ‘The pressure to find the killer is off.’
‘But we still have to report to the coroner, don’t we?’
‘You and I do that.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ Halliwell said. ‘We know sod all about Geaves.’
‘We know he was a callous bastard who walked out on his partner and two little daughters and didn’t bother seeing them again.’
‘According to Corcoran.’
‘Well, yes. It’s all second-hand stuff. We know he ended up in Freshford and had the reputation of a loner. Liked to do the crossword in the pub and speak to no one.’
‘Anyone who appears in a pub can’t be all bad.’
‘I wouldn’t put money on that.’
Halliwell dropped a small photo on the desk. ‘This is what I was telling you about. The creature.’
‘Found in his room?’ He picked it up. He could just about make out the shape. There was no colour to speak of. It could have been a black and white print. Small gleaming eyes, caught perhaps by the camera flash. Large ears, pricked. Some kind of snout. ‘Horrible. What is it?’
‘Don’t ask me, guv.’
‘A bat?’
‘Now that’s a good thought.’
‘I do have them sometimes. Maybe he’s a bat expert. There’s a fancy name for it, I’m sure.’
‘Batman?’
He aimed an imaginary pistol at Halliwell’s head. ‘Did you try running a full trace on him?’
