'Not at first. Being in a twice-weekly soap is very demanding, you know – a treadmill of learning lines, rehearsing and recording. Plus opening church fetes on Saturdays and dodging the gossip writers. She wasn't altogether sorry when she was written out of the script.'
'And that was how long ago?'
'Getting on for two years now.'
'So how long had she been playing the part?'
'She started when she was eighteen and she must have been thirty-one when it came to an end. Poor Gerry. It came out of the blue. The first she heard of it was when they sent her a script in which the character of Candice stepped into a plane that was to crash over the Alps with no survivors. I can remember vividly how angry she was. She fought like a tigress to save her part, but ultimately the director got through to her that they couldn't any longer keep up the fiction that she was an ingenue. She turned her back on London.'
Jackman had related it with sympathy, yet there was a note of detachment in the account, as if he looked back with more regret than he presently felt. This didn't escape Peter Diamond, who had a sharp ear for evasion. The case might not be as complex as he had first supposed. He expected to crack it soon.
Rather than pussyfooting through more of the family history, Diamond took the drawing of the dead woman from his pocket, unfolded it and handed it across. This is the picture that went out on TV. What do you think?'
Jackman gave it a glance, took a deep breath as if to subdue his emotions and said, 'Looks awfully like Gerry to me.'
Within minutes they were sharing the back seat of a police car on the way to the City Mortuary.
'I ought to mention,' Diamond said, 'that the body we're going to look at has been under water for a couple of weeks. The artist's drawing was prettied up to go out on television.'
Thanks for the warning.'
'If there's some means of identifying her by a mark or a scar…'
'I don't know of any,'Jackman said quickly, then added, as if in an afterthought, 'What happens if it turns out to be someone else?'
Diamond made a good show of remaining impassive. 'Now that you've reported your wife's disappearance, it's an inquiry anyway, and we'd take it from there. Someone else would handle it.'
'It's just possible that I was mistaken.'
Diamond didn't trust himself to comment.
They arrived soon after 9 p.m. and it took some time to make the necessary arrangements. Mortuary staff had a different set of priorities from the police. At length the attendant arrived on a pushbike and unlocked the door.
Diamond didn't say a word. He was too interested in watching Jackman.
The body was brought out and the face uncovered.
'It goes without saying that I can rely on your co-operation.'
Diamond's utterance was the first he had made since leaving the mortuary. He deliberately put it as a statement rather than a question.
Professor Jackman was sitting forward in the back seat of the police car, one hand covering his eyes. Vaguely, he said,'What?'
Diamond repeated what he had said, word for word, like a schoolmaster being scrupulously fair.
Without looking up, Jackman answered, 'I'll do whatever I can to help.'
'Splendid.' Diamond waited while the car stopped at traffic lights and said nothing else until it moved off again. 'Tonight, I'll arrange for you to stay at the Beaufort, unless you prefer another hotel.'
This time the professor swung round to face him. 'A hotel isn't necessary. I don't mind going home. I'd prefer it, really I would.'
Diamond shook his head. 'Your house is off limits tonight, sir.'
'Why?'
'I want it examined first thing tomorrow – with your permission. Until then, it's sealed. I'm putting a man on guard tonight.'
'What do you mean – 'examined'?'
'The forensic team. Scenes-of-crime officers. Fingerprints and all that jazz. You know?'
'Scenes-of-crime? You're not suggesting that Gerry was murdered under my own roof?'
'Professor, I'm not in the business of suggesting things,' said Diamond. 'I deal in facts. Fact number one: your wife is dead. Fact two: the last place she was seen alive was in your house. Where else am I going to start?'
After mentally wrestling with that piece of policeman's logic, Jackman said, 'I don't see what difference it makes if I spend one more night in the place considering that I've been there on and off ever since Gerry went missing.'
Diamond let it stand as a protest that didn't merit a response. Instead, he asked, 'When you came to report your wife's disappearance this evening, how did you travel?'
'I took the car.'
'So where is it now?'
'Still in the National Car Park beside the police station, I hope.'
'Have you got the keys?'
'Yes.'Jackman was frowning now.
'May I borrow them?'
'What on earth for? You're not impounding my car?'
A reassuring smile spread across Diamond's face. 'Impounding, no. It's just the boring old business of checking facts. We make a print of the tyres, that sort of thing. Then if we can find another set of tyre-prints – say in front of your house – we can eliminate your own vehicle from our inquiries.' He was pleased with that answer. It sounded eminently reasonable, and he hadn't given an inkling of his real purpose, to examine the boot of the car for traces of the corpse. When he had been handed the keys he asked casually, 'Are you planning to be at the university tomorrow?'
'If my house is being searched, I'm going to be there to see what goes on,'Jackman stated firmly.
Chapter Seven
THE SEARCH OF PROFESSOR JACKMAN'S house was not, after all, begun 'first thing' the next day. The first thing, the first in Peter Diamond's day, was the bleep of the phone beside his bed at 6.30 a.m. A message from the Assistant Chief Constable, no less, relayed by the duty inspector at police headquarters. Diamond was instructed to report to headquarters at 8.30.
He was willing to bet it wasn't for a chief constable's commendation. This, he sensed, was trouble.
He flopped back on the pillow and groaned. Whatever the reason for this sudden summons, it couldn't have come on a more inconvenient morning. The complications! He had somehow to unscramble his arrangements of the previous evening. Vanloads of detectives, uniformed men and forensic scientists were due to converge on Jackman's house at 8.30 – precisely the time of the appointment in Bristol.
Sitting up again, he removed the phone-set from the bedside table and planted it on the duvet between his legs. His wife Stephanie, resigned to their bedroom taking on the function of a police station, wordlessly dragged on a dressing gown and went downstairs to put on the kettle. Diamond picked up the receiver and made the first of several calls, rescheduling the search for 11 a.m. He was unwilling to let anyone go into the house without him. In theory the responsibility could have been delegated to John Wigfull – a theory Diamond preferred to ignore. But he did ask Wigfull to visit Professor Jackman at the hotel and explain the change in arrangements.
On the drive to Bristol, he tried to fathom the thinking at police headquarters. He concluded sourly that Jackman must have got busy on the phone in his hotel room the previous evening. When trouble loomed, people of Jack-man's elevated status didn't go underground like petty crooks. They rose above it by rallying support from the old boy network.
This morning Mr Tott, the Assistant Chief Constable, was sitting behind his desk in white shirt and pink braces, a spectacle so unlikely as to cause any officer of lesser rank to hesitate in the doorway. But he greeted
