This scored a laugh and cries of ‘cop-out’ from several of the press corps.
He wanted an out and he couldn’t find one without arousing universal suspicion that he hadn’t been honest with them.
She wasn’t going to leave it. she said, ‘If it was murder, have you considered the possibility that Ms Henkel was killed by mistake because she resembled Rose, the other woman, and they lived at the same address? If so, you must be extremely concerned, about the safety of Rose.’
The opening was there, and he took it. ‘Of course we’re concerned, regardless of this hypothesis of yours. That’s why I called this conference. We’re grateful for any information about Rose. The co-operation of all of you in publicising the case is appreciated.’ He nodded across the room, avoiding the wide blue eyes of his inquisitor, and then quit the room fast.
‘Who was she?’ he asked the press sergeant.
‘Ingeborg Smith. She’s a freelance, doing a piece on missing women for one of the colour supplements, she says.’
‘If she ever wants a job on the murder squad, she can have it.’
He sought out Julie, and found her in the incident room. ‘When you spoke to Ada yesterday, did she say anything about the press?’
‘She may have done. She did go on a bit.’
‘She went on a bit to a newshound who goes under the name of Ingeborg Smith, unless I’m mistaken.’
‘What about?’
‘The possibility that Hilde was killed in error by someone who confused her with Rose.’
Julie said, ‘It sounds like Ada talking, I agree.’ She picked up the phone-pad. ‘There’s a large package waiting for you in reception.’
‘That’ll be my two-box. I’ll leave it there for the present.’
‘Your what?’
‘Two-box.’
‘It sounds slightly indelicate.’
‘Wait till you see it in action. Has anything else of interest come in?’
She made the mistake of saying, ‘It’s early days.’
‘What?’ His face had changed.
‘I mean all this was only set up a couple of hours ago.’
‘All this?’ He flapped his arm in the general direction of the computers. ‘You think this is going to work some miracle? We’ve got a corpse that was rotting at the scene for a week and you tell me it’s early days. The only conceivable suspect has vanished without trace. Forensic have gone silent. Julie, a roomful of screens and phones isn’t going to trap an old man’s killer.’
‘It can help.’
He turned and looked at the blow-up of Rose’s face pinned to the corkboard. ‘What I need above all else is to get a hair of her head. One hair.’
Julie said nothing. They both knew that the best chance had gone when Rose’s room at the hostel was cleared for another inmate. Dunkley-Brown’s car had been a long shot that had missed.
He wouldn’t leave it. ‘Let’s go over her movements. She’s driven to the Hinton Clinic in the Bentley, but we know that’s a dead pigeon. The people at the Clinic put her to bed.’
‘Three weeks ago,’ said Julie. ‘They’ll have changed and laundered the bedding since then – or it’s not the kind of private hospital I’d want to stay in.’
‘Two dead pigeons. They send her to Harmer House, and that’s another one.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Julie. ‘How did she get there?’
‘To Harmer House? That social worker – Imogen – collected her.’
‘In a car?’
‘Well, they wouldn’t have sent a taxi. Funds are scarce.’ His brown eyes held hers for a moment. ‘Julie, I’m trying not to raise my hopes. I think we should contact Imogen right now.’
Imogen was not optimistic. ‘I don’t recall Rose combing her hair in the car, or anything. I doubt if you’ll find a hair.’
‘People are shedding hair all the time,’ Diamond informed her. ‘She wouldn’t have to comb it to leave one or two in your car.’
‘In that case, you’re up against it. I’ve given lifts to dozens of people since then. I’m always ferrying clients around the city.’
‘We’d still like to have the car examined.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘How long does it take? I wouldn’t want to be without wheels.’
‘We’ll send a man now. Collecting the material doesn’t take long. It’s the work in the lab that takes the time.’
‘I don’t like to contemplate what he’ll find in my old Citroen. Some of my passengers – you should see the state of them.’
‘Just as long as you haven’t vacuumed the interior recently.’
‘You’re joking. I have more important things to do.’
He asked Julie to drive him out to the farm to check the mobile operational office, or so he claimed. She suspected he wanted to try out his new toy.
The van was parked in the yard and manned by DS Miller and DC Hodge, the only woman of her rank on the squad. They were discovered diligently studying a large-scale Ordnance Survey map, no doubt after being tipped off by Manvers Street that Diamond was imminent. What were telecommunications for, if not to keep track of the boss?
When asked what they were doing they said checking the locations of nearby farms. Someone had already called at the immediate neighbour and spoken to a farmhand called Bickerstaff who was the only person present. He had confirmed that the owners were a company known as Hollandia Holdings, based in Bristol. Bickerstaff and his ‘gaffer’, a man from Marshfield, the next village, worked the land for the owners. It was a low-maintenance farm, with a flock of sheep, some fields rented out to the ‘horsiculture’- the riding fraternity – and some set-aside. Bickerstaff had heard about old Gladstone’s death and was sorry his body had lain undiscovered for so long, but expressed the view that local people couldn’t be blamed. Gladstone had long been known as an ‘awkward old cuss’ who didn’t welcome visitors.
‘Have you got a fire going in the house?’ Diamond asked Miller.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. I’m going in there to put on my wellies.’
Julie and the sergeant exchanged glances and said nothing. He was back in a short time shod in green gumboots and carrying a T-shaped metal detector with what looked like a pair of vanity cases mounted at either end of the metre-length crosspiece. ‘You’ll want a spade, Sergeant.’
‘Will I, sir?’
‘To dig up the finds.’
‘Old coins and stuff?’
‘No, this super-charged gizmo is too powerful for coins unless they’re in a pot, a mass of them together. It ignores small objects. I’m after bigger things. It works at quite some depth, which is why you need the spade. Julie, there’s a ball of string in the car with some skewers. You and the constable can line and pin the search area. We don’t want to go over the same bit twice. Follow me.’ He clamped a pair of headphones over his ears and strode towards the edge of the field. Clearly he had spent some time studying the handbook that came with the two-box.
‘What does he expect to find?’ Cathy Hodge asked Julie. ‘Treasure, I think,’ said Julie, ‘if there’s any left.’
‘Has someone else been by?’
‘Get with it, Cathy. You must have seen the evidence of recent digging. We don’t know how thorough they were, or how much of the ground they covered.’
Diamond was already probing the field with the detector, treading an unerring line towards the far side. Julie sank a skewer into the turf, attached some string and started after him. ‘Put more skewers in at two-foot intervals,’ she called back to Hodge.
