‘That’s two deaths.’
‘Yes, and Sealy dealt with both. He’s good, you say?’
‘Never heard anything adverse. What’s the problem?’
‘There’s some circumstantial stuff I won’t go into now. There were other suspects. Then this suicide happened and everyone jumps to the conclusion that the man killed the woman and took his own life.’
‘Familiar pattern,’ Jim said. ‘I had a couple of cases like it. You think it’s too obvious, do you, the killer who can’t live with what he’s done?’
‘I’m under pressure to write the report and put the whole thing to bed.’
‘And you want me to second-guess Bertram Sealy’s opinion?’ He vibrated his lips. ‘This is dynamite, Peter. Even the sniff of an error can finish a man’s career.’
‘We’re not talking about a miscarriage of justice,’ Diamond said. ‘It hasn’t gone to court. This is just me wanting to find out what happened.’
‘But he’s a professional colleague. There’s a national shortage of pathologists, did you know that? Hundreds of autopsies and not enough of us to cope. There isn’t much glamour in the job.’
‘I’m not trying to undermine Dr Sealy.’
‘But you wouldn’t invite him round for a drink.’
‘It’s mutual. I’m just one of the plod to him.’
Jim managed a smile. ‘I’ve heard it said that he turned to pathology because he doesn’t have to talk to his patients.’
Diamond smiled too. ‘Maybe I should act dead.’
‘Not when there’s a pathologist about.’
‘But he’d enjoy stitching me up. Look, I’m not trying to get the man struck off. I just want the kinds of pointers I used to get from you. I wouldn’t say where I got my information. I guarantee I wouldn’t bring you into it.’
‘You really believe there’s something iffy in his reports?’
‘I’m in no position to say. Let’s put it the other way. If I could have his findings verified by someone I respect, then I’d go along with my boss and close the case.’
‘You mean that?’
‘I’m a man of my word.’
‘And I’m missing my tea and cake,’ Jim said. He sighed. ‘You’re a pain in the arse, Peter Diamond. Have you got these reports with you?’
‘In the car.’
‘Let’s transfer them to mine, then. I’ll look at them tonight.’
A sudden gleam brightened his eyes. ‘If anyone sees us they’ll think you’re one of my MI5 contacts.’
That night when he was trying to sleep his brain kept replaying the episode at Paloma’s house. He’d been doing his best to wipe the memory, but here it was almost as vivid as the real thing, sharp and painful. There was no denying how ineptly he’d behaved. The stupid speech saying he wasn’t ready for sex when it wasn’t even being offered. The collision of a kiss that he could still feel on his mouth. His rapid exit.
Mortifying.
He’d give two weeks of his annual leave to run the scene again, with changes. No chance. Paloma would have decided he was a witless, gutless oaf.
And it had all started so well, her telling him he knew how to treat a woman. What a let-down.
The pity of it was that she was like no one he’d met since Steph. The way she looked, spoke and moved appealed to him. She was bright and enthusiastic, successful, enterprising, a sympathetic listener, yet didn’t take herself too seriously. She was willing to admit to things other women might try to conceal, like the husband who traded her in for the new model. And she’d given out signals that she quite liked being with him — or so he imagined. Women who felt comfortable with him were not plentiful. Most seemed to treat him as a ‘man’s man’, a polite way of saying he was an ogre or a bore.
‘Or a sad old fart,’ he said aloud.
Self-pity wasn’t the way to go. He reached for the light-switch and rolled out of bed. From the other end of the quilt Raffles raised his head briefly and lowered it again. The man was behaving erratically again. The time was all wrong for a feed.
Downstairs in the kitchen Diamond filled the kettle and tried to put his mind on other things. He looked at the Guardian crossword and decided this wasn’t the time to make a start. Crosswords were Steph’s thing, anyway. He’d thought of cancelling the paper. He didn’t often open it these days.
He wondered if Paloma was a Guardian reader. The Independent was more her style, he decided. Bugger it, he thought. I’m down here because I want to stop thinking about the woman.
He poured the tea and stood looking out of the window at the moonlight on his small patch of lawn. Put your mind on something else, Diamond. Something simple and natural, like the wildlife out there.
Hedgehogs. From this window on one sleepless night he’d seen a family of them crawling among last year’s leaves looking for slugs. He’d gone out with a torch and they hadn’t run off.
His memories of hedgehogs were soon used up. Nature studies had never been a strong enthusiasm. Occasionally on the road at night he’d see foxes, badgers or deer, but he thought of them more as hazards to drivers than native mammals with their own right to existence. What else was there to distract him? His knowledge of nocturnal birds was limited to owls and nightingales and there weren’t many of them in Lower Weston. So much for night creatures, then. He had little else to contemplate except flowers and so — with a sense that the fates would not give him a break — he was round to night-scented stocks.
Night-scented bloody stocks. There had to be a remedy for this or he wouldn’t get any sleep at all.
The solution arrived with something of a jolt. He’d twice been treated to a meal by Paloma and not written a word to thank her. In his distracted state he’d neglected a common courtesy.
A letter now, a full week later, wasn’t the way to go. What then? He really had to do something in the morning.
Flowers.
And with that decided, he returned to bed and had his best sleep for a week.
17
O rders from an assistant chief constable have to be obeyed. The incident room for the Delia Williamson murder had been stripped of computers and display boards and was restored to its former use as a briefing room. CID were back in their cramped quarters on the first floor. A new inquiry was under way into a ram raid in Combe Down in which two hundred state-ofthe-art mobile phones had been taken. Stock lists were being studied, witness statements filed. Just about everyone was involved.
Some less than others.
When Diamond walked past her desk, Ingeborg said, ‘Can you spare a minute, guv?’
‘Come into my office then.’
‘No. Could you pull up a chair?’
‘I beg your pardon.’ No one except Ingeborg had the face to speak to him like that.
‘I’d like to show you something.’
At the back of the room Keith Halliwell got a laugh by saying, ‘Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge. Say no more.’
Ignoring them, Diamond stood with arms folded looking over Ingeborg’s shoulder at the computer screen. He spurned the invitation to sit beside her.
She pressed some keys. ‘I thought I remembered something from a couple of years back, when I was stringing for the News of the World. So much has happened since then and I couldn’t pinpoint what I wanted, so I started putting words into a search engine and up came this website that collects statistics of suicides. Isn’t it fantastic?’
He gave it a glance. ‘You can get this stuff from the Stationery Office.’
