admit that you can be rather resistant to technology. The scientific developments of the past few years are mind- boggling, I grant you, but it behoves us all to make an effort to work with them.'
'Up to a point, sir. There's still a lot that native intelligence can achieve. There's a danger in surrendering to technology.'
'Come now. I'm not suggesting any such thing. It's a question of balance, of proportion.'
Diamond closed the report and planted it on Mr Tott's desk. 'So what will happen next time some petty crook objects to the way I question him?'
'I would treat any complaint on its merits,' said Mr Tott, showing in his tone that indulgence can only go so far.
'And I would take exception to any suggestion that I might show prejudice. I see no mud sticking to you, and I hope I don't see a chip on your shoulder, either. Is there anything else you wanted to say to me?'
'In which regard, sir?'
'About your present investigation.'
'No, sir. Nothing else.' In the stress of the moment he had already said more than was politic.
'I appreciate that,' said Mr Tott. 'Wigfull's transfer to your squad was at my insistence. He is not – I stress this -he is not there as some kind of informer. I keep tabs on all my officers without assistance from the likes of John Wigfull. Is that understood?'
'Understood, sir.'
'And accepted?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then I'll tell you about Wigfull.' Looking down at his cup, Mr Tott traced a finger slowly around its rim. 'Knowing as I did that this report was imminent, but not knowing its findings, I had to face the possibility – the worst conceivable scenario – that you might have to be removed at short notice from the murder squad. I wanted a man capable of taking over, and without going into personalities, there was no one in your team I could confidently turn to. Wigfull was my choice. He hasn't, of course, been told the reason, but as a good detective, he may have worked it out for himself. I appreciate that his temperament and yours are not in tune. You, too, are a good detective. You are also a big man, as the report unjustly emphasizes. Be big in the best sense, big enough to get the best out of Wigfull.'
Shordy after 11 a.m., the convoy of cars and police vans streamed into the drive of Jackman's house some distance up one of the secluded roads off Bathwick Hill. The leading car was Diamond's BMW. Beside him sat Jackman. John Wigfull followed in his Toyota with two detective sergeants and a constable. The other vehicles brought a scenes-of-crime officer from headquarters, two forensic scientists arid a team of uniformed officers in support.
Jackman's blue Volvo was at this moment undergoing forensic examination at Manvers Street. Diamond had commented when handing over the keys to the forensic lads, 'Don't disappoint me, will you? They always believe they've removed every trace.'
Brydon House looked suitable for a professor to inhabit, not quite within walking distance of the university, but convenient for it, as the estate agents had no doubt claimed when the Jackmans first took an interest in the property. It was an ivy-clad, four-square structure with a pillared porch and a first-floor balcony. Probably not much over a century old, it was set in spacious grounds behind a low drystone wall. Plots tended to be generous in size on the outskirts of the city and the houses were distinctive in design. The area was too far out from the centre of Bath for the planners to have insisted on uniformity, and quite modern buildings in garish reconstituted stone stood alongside mellowed Georgian and Victorian villas.
Diamond invited Jackman to open the door. Then he gripped the professor's arm, preventing him from entering. 'No, sir, you and I won't step inside just yet.'
Disbelief and bewilderment were combined in Jack-man's look as two men in white overalls stepped forward, sat in the porch, removed their shoes and replaced them with socks made of polythene.
'If you don't mind,' Diamond said in his ear, 'we'll leave the spacemen to their work. How would you like to show me your garden?'
'This is a huge waste of everyone's time,' muttered the beleaguered Professor.
'I've got a brother-in-law in Doncaster,' Diamond volunteered as a way of easing the tension, 'and each time we visit him, I hardly set foot in the house before he draws me away from the ladies and says, 'Come and see the back garden'. Now I'm no gardener. I wouldn't pretend to know when to prune the roses, but I do know enough to see that Reggie's garden is a bloody wilderness. Some of the nettles are chest high. We poke about searching for the path while Reggie points to pathetic plants weighted down with blackfly and bindweed and tells me their names. After an hour of this, there's a shout from my sister that tea is ready, so we beat a route back to the house for a reviving cup. No sooner have I had a bite of cake than Reggie turns to me and says, 'You haven't seen the front garden. Come out and see the front'. I'm supposed to be a detective and I don't know why he does it. Is he afraid to go out there unaccompanied? Or is the house stuffed with stolen goods he doesn't want me to notice? I'm still trying to work it out.'
Jackman seemed unwilling to supply a theory, but he had, at least, consented to walk beside the superintendent. They made an incongruous pair, the broad-shouldered academic moving with sinewy step beside the fat policeman forced by sheer girth to throw out his feet in a ponderous strut. The setting for this spectacle consisted of stretches of lawn separated by clumps of shrubs and a number of well-established trees. There were enough apple trees at the far end to give it the status of an orchard.
Abruptly, Diamond moved from homely matters to the business of the day. 'Your wife. I need to know everything about her. Background, family, friends past and present – and enemies, if any – daily routines, personal finances, state of health, drinking habits, hobbies, places she visited, shops she used.'
'We've only been married two years,'Jackman said in a tone that protested at the length and comprehensiveness of the list.
'Long enough to know all those things, surely?' Diamond pressed. 'We'll take it from the beginning. How did you meet?'
This approach yielded a dividend. Jackman made a sound that was halfway to being a laugh, shook his head wistfully as some memory surfaced and said, 'It was because of a pigeon, or so Gerry always claimed. The pigeon may or may not have existed, but it became part of our private mythology. She was motoring along Great Russell Street in her Renault 5-'
'This was when?' Diamond cut in.
'Just over two years ago. As I was saying, she was driving along when this slow-witted or stubborn London pigeon allegedly stepped across the road and refused to take flight. Unable to bear the prospect of killing a living thing, Gerry swung the wheel and crumpled the nearside wing -of the car, not the pigeon – against a parked van. You must be hearing stories like this all the time.'
'I'm not in the traffic division.'
'Well, this was in the month of May, I think, and I was in my final term at Birkbeck College prior to taking up the professorship here. I'd been working in the British Library that particular morning and I came out for a lunchtime stroll. I didn't see the pigeon, but I heard the bump. I was the first to reach the car, open the door and enquire if she was hurt. I can see her now staring at me, pale with shock, and beautiful, surpassingly beautiful. She was suffering nothing worse than the shakes, so I helped her to move the car into a space, found her a seat in the nearest sandwich bar and ordered strong, sweet tea. Then, not missing a chance to play Galahad, I went to look for the van driver. He turned out to be a Buddhist monk.'
'A monk – in London?'
'Doing research, just as I was. I'd seen him once or twice in the Reading Room. When I told him about the collision he was serenely unconcerned at one extra dent on his van. In fact, he went out of his way to praise Gerry's action in averting an accident to the pigeon. She was moving towards enlightenment, in his estimation. So I nipped back to the sandwich bar and set her mind at rest.'
'Advising her, no doubt, to go to the nearest police station and report the accident,' Diamond said sardonically.
Jackman stayed with his story. 'I found her perched on the high stool, dabbing the edges of her eyes with that amazing red hair. The bump was the first she'd ever had, she told me, and she felt stupid at having caused damage just to avoid a scruffy pigeon. I remember springing to the defence of the pigeon and upholding its rights to
