Ingeborg said, ‘Closer than you think, guv. Giovanni is John in Italian.’
On the walk back to the nick he told Ingeborg, ‘Tosi remembered them. I’d bet my house on that. They came to the restaurant often enough for him to know their first names.’
‘The first real link we have,’ she said.
‘“Link” is putting it strongly.’
‘OK, let’s say their paths may have crossed.’
‘More like it. The Twinings were customers and Delia could have been their waitress.’
‘Which was when?’
‘They died two years ago, didn’t they?’
‘Two to three years ago, then?’
‘Maybe before then, if Luigi had no memory of them.’
‘But can we believe Luigi?’
Diamond nodded. ‘Shifty character, isn’t he? The first time we interviewed him, I had him down as a suspect. He was on duty the night Delia was murdered, the last one to see her alive. The others had gone home. There were just the two of them. He said he locked up the restaurant and they went their different ways.’
‘If he came on to Delia and was cold-shouldered he could have turned nasty. He’s used to getting his way with women.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Trust me, guv. I can tell.’
‘You think he strangled her and rigged it up as a hanging?’
‘It does sound a bit far-fetched, put like that,’ she said. ‘Particularly as he’d need to move her and he only has the bike.’
‘He has a Honda at home in Twerton. I asked him.’
‘Do you still rate him?’
‘What interests me more,’ Diamond said, ‘is what we were talking about — this blank spot about the Twinings.’
‘When you pressed him, he said he started at Tosi’s four years ago. He must have met the Twinings if they were regulars.’
‘That was my thought, too.’
‘He’s not the sort to have a blank spot, guv. He’s sharper than broken glass.’
‘You don’t like him?’
‘I wouldn’t believe a word he told me.’
They reached the bottom of Milsom Street before Diamond spoke again. ‘My problem with Luigi is that there’s more to this case than a man trying it on and getting the frost. We’re pretty certain there’s a link with the Twinings.’
‘Which he’s in denial about,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Could it be that he murdered Christine Twining and strung her up the same way and nobody at the time suspected it was murder?’
‘And the husband hanged himself because he couldn’t bear to live without her?’
‘No, guv. Luigi killed the husband as well.’
‘Why?’
‘To cover up the first crime.’
He said with disbelief, ‘And it wasn’t picked up at autopsy?’
Ingeborg seized on that. Her journalistic training was in play. Her words came in a burst. ‘The same pathologist carried out both autopsies.’
‘So?’
‘I sent for the reports, if you remember.’
‘And I was impressed by them. Unlike our friend Dr Sealy, he set out his findings in a way I could follow.’
‘Shinwari,’ she said as the name came back to her. ‘Dr Manzoor Shinwari.’
‘Correct, and he isn’t available to speak to us. He returned to Pakistan and the Medical Council have lost contact with him.’
Her eyes were saucer-wide. ‘Why? Was there a scandal?’
‘None that I heard of.’
‘Maybe he got out in time. There were all these high-profile cases involving mistakes by pathologists. What if Dr Shinwari saw the writing on the wall and did a runner?’
‘You’re speculating, Inge.’
‘I’m going to check.’
‘You’ll find that difficult. The medical profession is notorious for looking after its own.’
‘We’ve got copies of the autopsy reports. Can we get a second opinion?’
‘Like I said, they stick together. This isn’t a second opinion on someone’s medical condition. This is asking one doctor to pick holes in another’s work.’ As he spoke, he was thinking of Jim Middleton, the ballroom king, the obvious man to ask. The prospect of approaching Jim once again didn’t appeal.
‘Suppose Dr Shinwari got it wrong,’ Ingeborg pressed him. ‘Suppose both Twinings were murdered. We could be dealing with a serial killer. We can’t take the risk, guv.’
27
P olice headquarters was twenty miles off, at Portishead, ridiculously inconvenient whenever Diamond was summoned there, ideally placed whenever Georgina attended and was gone for the day. But she could still use a phone and did this afternoon after Diamond forgot to call about Operation Fleece. She gave his ear a blasting for ten minutes, after which he decided she’d had her say. It was a fine judgement when to cut Georgina off. He reckoned at four fifteen in the afternoon she would be thinking about the tailbacks on the approach to Bristol and not wanting to dial the CID room a second time.
She would have no luck if she did, because he was making another call. He reached Jim Middleton at home, and knew from the tone of voice that Jim’s home was Jim’s castle. The retired pathologist had pulled up the drawbridge and was ready on the battlements with boiling oil. Appealing to his better nature wasn’t going to work this time.
Diamond went for the weakest point. He said this was going to sound like a bad joke, but someone had lodged an official complaint about the Melksham tea dances. It seemed they were against the law, or at least against a by-law governing the use of the Melksham assembly hall, a carry-over from Victorian times, when public dances were thought to encourage immorality and maybe did. All was not yet lost, however. Fortunately he knew one of the Wiltshire magistrates and she had the power to issue a special licence making the dances into private functions.
Jim was relieved to hear this. He was quite disarmed. Diamond said there was no need for Jim to do anything or speak to anyone about the threat. But as a quid pro quo, would he give an opinion on two more autopsy reports? Jim swore at him and called him a conman, but there was just enough in the story to cause him doubt. He was hooked.
Diamond arranged to have them delivered to Jim within the hour.
After that, an early getaway beckoned. The big man emerged from his office into the open-plan area.
‘Are you leaving, guv?’ Paul Gilbert said. The lad had so much to learn.
‘What if I am?’
‘No problem. It can wait till tomorrow.’
This time it was Diamond who was hooked. ‘What can wait?’
‘Probably nothing. A burnt-out vehicle up at the racecourse. Kids, I expect.’
‘Who is this from?’
‘Uniform checked it out this afternoon. Call from someone out walking his dog. It’s all right, there was no corpse inside. I just thought you might be interested because we know the ram-raiders burn cars, and this was a
