‘I don’t have the time to walk.’
‘Get up earlier. Do you live alone?’
‘These days, yes.’
‘Then you won’t disturb anyone by setting the alarm.’
‘Didn’t I make myself clear? I don’t need you to tell me how to run my life.’
‘You need somebody, Mr Diamond. That’s
‘Are you going to sign that certificate?’
‘With misgivings.’ The doctor picked up his pen.
Diamond should have left it there. Instead, he asked, ‘Why didn’t they send the regular man? Hold on, I don’t mean regular in your understanding of the word. The doc we’ve seen for years, about my own age, who I sometimes meet in the Crown & Anchor?’ ‘He died.’
‘Oh.’
‘Heart. He didn’t look after himself.’
Difficult to top that. ‘Well, at least he had warm hands.’
The doctor looked over his half-glasses. ‘Not any more.’
Back with his team, still buttoning his shirt, he said, ‘Passed.’
‘With flying colours?’ Halliwell asked.
‘With misgivings.’
‘Miss who?’
‘He’s not the quack we usually get. Looks fifteen years old, just qualified, out to make an impression.’
‘He didn’t impress you?’
‘That’s putting it mildly. How about you? Have you been in yet?’
‘Next but one.’ An anxious look crossed Halliwell’s features. ‘It’s just pulse and blood pressure, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what I thought, until…’
Halliwell’s eyes were like port-holes. ‘Until what?’
‘He put on the surgical glove.’
‘He’s kidding,’ John Leaman said. ‘Can’t you see the grin?’
Diamond switched to Leaman. ‘So when’s yours?’
‘I’m excused. They gave me a medical at Bramshill when I did the weapons training.’
Diamond rolled his eyes. Typical, somehow, that Leaman should escape. ‘You can hold the fort, then. I need some lunch after what I’ve been through.’
Still nettled by the young doctor, he asked for extra chips with his burger. ‘I just passed my medical,’ he told Cressida in the canteen. ‘While I’m at it, I’ll have an extra spoonful of beans.’
‘Building up your strength?’ she said, smiling.
‘It’s a good principle. In my job, you never know what’s round the next corner.’
‘Could be a nice young lady, Mr D.’
‘I’ll need the strength, then.’
‘If you like I’ll spread the word among the girls that you passed your medical.’
His romantic prospects were fair game. The kitchen girls knew about his friendship with Paloma Kean. What they didn’t know was how much he missed his murdered wife Steph.
He paid, picked up his cutlery and looked for a table, always a tricky decision. If he joined other people, they would be lower ranks and uncomfortable in the presence of a superintendent, but an empty table left him vulnerable to Georgina, the Assistant Chief Constable. Many a burger and chips had been ruined by Georgina arriving with her salad and some sharp questions about the way he was running his department.
A face from the past looked up from a newspaper, not a face to be recalled with much affection, yet not easy to ignore. A Lord Kitchener moustache flecked with silver. Brown, unforgiving eyes. The man had once been Head of CID Operations.
‘John Wigfull, for all that’s wonderful. I thought you’d long since left the madhouse and gone back to Sheffield, or wherever it is.’ Diamond placed his tray on the table.
Chief Inspector Wigfull had been given extended sick leave three or four years ago after receiving a head injury and being left for dead in a cornfield near Stowford. He’d spent almost a week unconscious in Bath’s Royal United Hospital.
Wigfull didn’t move. There was no handshake, let alone a hug. They’d never been that friendly.
‘They brought me back as a civilian,’ he said.
‘You were always good at paperwork,’ Diamond said, and it wasn’t meant as an insult. No one had ever come near to Wigfull in filing and form-filling. ‘What will you be doing?’
‘I’m the new media relations manager.’
‘Are you, indeed? I should have realised when I saw you reading the
‘That’s not the idea at all,’ Wigfull said. ‘In the modern police we encourage openness.’ He’d always had this talent for making Diamond feel he was one of a dying breed.
‘You feed them stories, do you? We’ve had some juicy ones since you were here.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Like the crossbow killer we called the Mariner. And the Secret Hangman. You could have made something of those.’
‘I don’t “make something”, as you put it. I communicate facts.’
‘Too right you do’
‘In the past we haven’t maximised our use of the media,’ Wigfull said, and the phrase could have come straight from his job interview. ‘It’s a two-way process. There’s potential for information-gathering from the public.’
‘Like the old Wanted posters?’
Wigfull looked puzzled, then pained. ‘We’re more sophisticated.’
‘
‘We’re in the twenty-first century. My brief is to make the police more approachable.’
‘You wouldn’t be thinking of giving out my phone number?’
‘Not at all, but I may at some point arrange for you to be interviewed by a magazine or newspaper.’
‘You’re joking. What about?’
‘About you – as a human being. They’ll do a full page profile.’
Diamond frowned. ‘You can stuff that.’
‘You are a member of the human race.’
‘Yes, and I value my privacy.’
‘Don’t look so worried, Peter. You’re not top of my list. Not even halfway up, in fact.’
A putdown calculated to injure Diamond’s pride, and it succeeded. ‘What’s the matter with me? Okay, you don’t have to answer that question.’
‘The interviews are only one of many innovations I’m making.’
Diamond lifted the top from the burger and and poured on some ketchup. He wished he’d sat with someone else.
‘I’m feeding titbits to the media as well,’ Wigfull added. ‘Human interest stories like the missing cavalier.’ He spoke the last two words in a throwaway tone, as if Diamond should have known all about it.
‘What’s that – an oil painting?’
‘Please.’
‘A dog, then?’
‘Dog?’
‘Cavalier King Charles spaniel.’
‘It’s what I said – a missing cavalier. You won’t have heard of this because it hasn’t come to CID. There’s no crime that we know of… yet.’
‘But it could come to pass?’
‘When I release the facts to the press there’s a chance they’ll take up the case and someone will know something.’
‘Go on, then.’