‘Oh.’ Deflated, she said, ‘No, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.’
Outside Bath Central police station, the pressmen, impatient to go in, were taking pictures of everyone who entered, regardless of who they were. ‘Can’t you let them in?’ Georgina, the ACC, said, not pleased at being called love and asked if she was Clarion’s mother, in spite of being in uniform.
‘I know what they’re like, ma’am,’ Diamond said. ‘Stuck in the conference room they’ll get even more bolshy.’
‘You’d better think of something. They’ll be smashing windows soon.’
It was eleven thirty. The post mortem should have started at ten. He phoned the mortuary and asked for Halliwell. They said he was still observing.
‘Don’t they ever take a break?’
‘They took one less than twenty minutes ago,’ the mortuary keeper said.
‘And what were they saying when they came out?’
‘That it could take another hour or more.’
‘For crying out loud. You’d think it was brain surgery.’
‘Well, it is.’
He was forced to admit that this was true.
He left a message for Halliwell to update him at the first opportunity.
At least Ingeborg had delivered. He’d listened to the tape. To have it confirmed by Tilda Box that Clarion had been a long-term self-harmer was a breakthrough. Under all the pressure he hadn’t yet worked out the full implications. If Clarion had damaged her own face, why had Denise killed herself and left that suicide note? Get through the press conference, he told himself, and you’ll think more clearly.
‘Is this a good moment, guv?’ Paul Gilbert asked, putting his head around the office door.
‘There’s no such thing.’
‘Sorry.’ The head disappeared.
‘Come back.’
Even more apprehensive, Gilbert obeyed.
‘It had better not be a request for time off.’
‘You asked me to check on Francis Melmot.’
‘Well? Do we have anything on him?’
‘Nothing on record. It never got to court, but there was a complaint of assault that was later withdrawn. It was in connection with his father’s death in 1999.’
Diamond gave a nod. ‘I know the old man shot himself, supposedly while cleaning his gun.’
‘Well, not long after that, a reporter turned up at Melmot Hall and made some remarks Francis didn’t appreciate.’
‘About the shooting?’
‘No, about his father’s private life. The old boy was quite a goer. He’d been screwing a barmaid and Mrs Melmot had got to hear of it. The reporter seemed to be suggesting the old lady told her husband to do the decent thing and shoot himself and wanted to see if he could get a quote from Francis. Instead he got his nose broken.’
‘He’s a big guy to tangle with, is Francis. I suppose the mistress offered her story to the paper.’
‘Whatever, it never got into print.’
‘This tells us he’s capable of violence, but I have some sympathy, especially as it was a poxy pressman. Where did you dig this out?’
‘From an old-stager at Frome nick. He remembered taking the statement.’
‘Nice work, Paul. Get a note of it on the case file.’
Around noon, Ingeborg came in. ‘Is your phone dead, guv?’
‘Could be. I asked the switchboard to give me a break.’
‘Keith was trying to reach you from the mortuary.’
He sat forward. ‘He was? Is it over?’
‘Depends what you mean. You could say it’s just beginning. They’re saying Clarion was suffocated.’
18
‘Convince me,’ Diamond said. Halliwell gave his humour-the-boss grin. He was back from the mortuary and looking drained, not from attendance at the autopsy, but the prospect of explaining the result to his crotchety superior. ‘Dr Sealy wasn’t in any doubt.’
‘I’m no pathologist,’ Diamond said, ‘but even I know they turn purple if they suffocate. I saw the body. She was as pale as your shirt. What is more, they get those little blood marks in the eyes and the skin.’
‘Petechial haemorrhages,’ Halliwell said from his long experience of listening to pathologists.
