The Secret Hangman pd-9 Read online

  The Secret Hangman

  ( Peter Diamond - 9 )

  Peter Lovesey

  Peter Lovesey

  The Secret Hangman

  1

  To Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond

  Dear Mr Diamond,

  This is so difficult. Several tries have ended in the bin already.

  Please be kind and read to the end before making up your mind.

  I’m a woman of — let’s say a few years younger than you. Like you, I was married for a time but now I’m back to the single life and I can’t say I enjoy it even though I’m left with my own house and enough to live on. What else? I went through university in the days when it was difficult to get in. I like a lot of the things you enjoy, like old black-and-white films, rock music and the occasional glass of beer. I’m lucky enough to be in good health. People tell me I’m good company. Figure-wise, I could still get into some of the clothes I had as a student if I’d kept them, but I keep up with fashion, so I’m always buying new things. You don’t have to be a detective to see where this is leading, so I’m going to stop wittering on about myself.

  I just wanted you to know I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West.

  You’ll be wondering how I know so much about you and I’d better come clean and say I read about you in the paper a couple of years ago and cut the piece out because I liked your picture and the things you were saying. It was a feature article with a photo. I just loved the way you talked about your life in the police. You give it to them straight whether they’re chief constables or cub reporters from the Daily Grind. Since then I’ve followed you through several cases and it’s obvious you’re in the top bracket as a detective.

  What do I want now I’ve plucked up the courage to write? I just wonder if you’d like to meet some time for a drink and a chat? My generation of women isn’t used to making the first move, not face to face, and even writing it down like this is a big effort — which is why I’m hiding behind a made-up name and no address.

  I’ll be in the Saracen’s Head this Thursday between seven and eight. If you come in, I’ll introduce myself.

  In anticipation — and thanks, anyway, for reading this far, Your secret admirer

  Lady, if you knew anything about me you wouldn’t bother, Peter Diamond thought. He sighed and shook his head.

  He dropped the letter into the bin with the other junk mail. The envelope was about to follow, but didn’t. He’d noticed it was the self-seal kind and the seal wasn’t too good because the flap had come apart easily without tearing anything. He tried sealing the thing again and it wouldn’t hold — just as if someone had opened it already.

  No stamp. No address. Just his name on the envelope and By hand written where the stamp should have been. She must have delivered it to the front desk, and that gave him an uncomfortable thought. Suppose the entire nick knew he’d got a secret admirer.

  Now he picked the letter out of the bin, replaced it in the envelope and put it in his jacket pocket. Later, he’d put it through the office shredder.

  A worse thought: some joker on his own team had done this as a hoax. They were waiting to see his reaction.

  Well, he wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. Bugger it, he’d check their reactions. He got up and took his usual route between the desks towards the door at the far end, appearing nonchalant while alert to any suggestion of a snigger. At one point he stopped and swung round as if he’d forgotten a file and needed to go back.

  No one was paying him any attention.

  Two, at least, had their eyes on Ingeborg, the novice detective, as she bent over a filing cabinet. Keith Halliwell, the longest-serving DI — and well capable of practical joking — was on the phone. The civilian staff were fingering their keyboards.

  Yet he doubted if Halliwell would stoop to this. Halliwell had been with him that ill-fated morning when he attended a crime scene in Royal Victoria Park and made the worst of all discoveries. Keith of all people knew better than to trespass on his personal life.

  The hoax theory withered and died.

  He moved on and kept going through the building as far as the canteen. Picked up a mug of tea and a sticky bun and parked himself at a table at the quiet end. He was used to being alone.

  Not for long. Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, the closest thing he had to a boss, appeared from nowhere carrying a glass of water and sat opposite him.

  ‘Peter, you look peaky.’

  Peaky. That was a word from the past. He’d last heard it used by one of his aunts forty years ago to explain why she wouldn’t sample his mother’s Victoria sponge.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said to Georgina.

  ‘Overwork?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Something personal?’

  ‘I said I’m OK.’

  The boss gave him a sympathetic look. She’d given him looks like that ever since Steph was murdered, as if she expected him at any moment to bury his face in her bosom and sob uncontrollably. She said, ‘An MP report has come in.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ he said, rolling his eyes upwards.

  She frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Politicians, that’s what’s wrong. We don’t want them breathing down our necks.’

  ‘Not members of parliament,’ she said in the despairing tone of a schoolmistress to the kid who never listened. Diamond had an inbuilt resistance to abbreviations. ‘Missing person.’

  He thought about that for a while before saying, ‘Got you.’

  ‘A woman in Walcot with a partner and two small daughters was out on Tuesday night and hasn’t been home since.’

  ‘Tuesday? That’s only yesterday.’

  ‘It’s very unlike her,’ Georgina went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘She’s in the habit of speaking to her mother on the phone every day at the same time.’

  ‘The mother reported it. Not the partner?’

  ‘He’s relaxed about it. Says she must have needed space and she’ll come back when she’s ready.’

  ‘He’s probably right. And you want it checked?’

  ‘Please, Peter.’

  ‘Isn’t it rather quick? One night away isn’t much. She’s not a fourteen-year-old.’

  Georgina’s chest expanded, an ominous sign well known in Manvers Street nick. ‘I happen to have spoken to her mother. She’s in my choir. A level-headed woman. She wouldn’t fuss without reason.’

  He understood now. Georgina was a devoted singer. How good her voice was, he didn’t know. She had joined, and left, several of Bath’s many choirs over the past four years. Even so, there is a fellowship among singers, a kind of freemasonry as Diamond viewed it, that meant they helped each other when they could. She was going to insist on a routine check.

  ‘Who’s looking after the kids?’ he asked.

  ‘The partner.’

  ‘Are they his?’

  ‘I believe not.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Corcoran. Ashley Corcoran. More importantly, hers is Delia Williamson.’ She handed him a scrap of paper with some details she’d got from her friend in the choir.

  Missing persons are a constant of police work. Over four thousand join the list every week in Britain. Rebellious teenagers, runaway spouses, middle-aged dropouts, feeble-minded old people. The index grows steadily, but a good proportion return. Some give cause for real concern. A few are never heard of again.

  He returned upstairs and told DC Ingeborg Smith to find out what she could about Delia Williamson.

  ‘Are you thinking this is a domestic, guv?’ Ingeborg asked, mustard-keen as usual. She had everything on computer at the speed of a texting teenager. As a former investigative journalist, she was used to meeting
deadlines.

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind. When you visit the partner — this Corcoran — make sure a man is with you.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘With a bloke at your side, Inge. I don’t want two female detectives knocking on his door.’

  She drew a sharp breath, and then bit back what she was going to say and settled for less. ‘It says here Corcoran is cooperating.’

  ‘They do at the beginning. That’s an order.’

  He looked at the printout she’d given him. Delia Williamson was thirty-three, dark-haired and wore glasses. The two daughters, aged eight and six, were from a previous relationship. ‘Get the name of the father,’ he told her. ‘Everything you can on him.’

  At home in Weston that evening, he felt in his pocket for a pen and discovered that letter from the secret admirer. He’d forgotten to shred it. No need. He’d tear it into small pieces and dispose of them with the rubbish.

  But he didn’t.

  Here in the black hole that was his private life, with only domestic chores and television to keep self-pity at bay, he thought about the effort it must have taken to write that letter and deliver it to the nick. He unfolded it and read it again. The woman hadn’t said if she was bereaved or divorced. I’m back to the single life and I can’t say I enjoy it.

  ‘You and me both,’ he said.

  Even so, he wasn’t going to be suckered into walking into a pub to meet a stranger who’d read about him in the paper. It would be worse than a date set up by one of those agencies that make money out of lonely people. At least they show you a video-clip to help you decide.

  Three years had gone by since he’d found Steph gunned down in Royal Victoria Park. He’d loved her with a passion no one else would understand. She had been warm, amusing, honest, wise, sexy, brave and, in his eyes, beautiful. She’d made him the luckiest man in the world — until that February morning. He’d repeatedly told himself he would find his own way through the grief. For Steph’s sake he wouldn’t let the sadness show. She would have expected him to hold up, and he had, so far as anyone could tell. Finding her killer had helped fill the gap in those early months. Work, work, work had been the therapy since. Slack times were black times.

  He could just about remember the newspaper interview this woman must have seen. It had been in the Bath Chronicle six months after the murder, when the investigation seemed to be going nowhere. He hadn’t kept a copy. His mind had been on other things. They must have printed that trivia about the black-and-white films and the rock music, or where would she have got it from? But what was he doing, talking to the press about music and movies six months after Steph had died?

  He could check in the newspaper files, but he’d be wasting his time. The letter was of no importance. He wouldn’t be meeting the woman.

  He glanced down the page and smiled at that sentence: I just wanted you to know I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West. She had a sense of humour, whoever she was. He stuffed it back into his pocket. Then he sorted through the heap of dusty videos on the floor and picked out The Postman Always Rings Twice. The original version, with John Garfield and Lana Turner. It would see him through until bedtime.

  2

  A woman’s body was found next morning in Sydney Gardens. It was hanging from the crossbar of a swingset in the children’s play area.

  ‘Are you up to this?’ Georgina asked Diamond.

  ‘What do you mean — up to this?’ he said. But he knew exactly what she meant: a woman dead in a park.

  He took Keith Halliwell. From the Beckford Road entrance they were able to drive right up to the play area along an asphalt path generally used only by pedestrians. The swings, chute, seesaw, roundabout and sandpit were enclosed by a metal fence, so police tape hadn’t been needed. A uniformed constable manned the gate. Already some gawpers were standing outside as if it was the first day of a sale. Two were young mothers with kids in strollers. People amazed him sometimes. He asked them to move along.

  The dead woman was suspended from the yellow swings meant for the older children. Dark-haired, she was dressed in jeans, dark blue sweater and Adidas trainers.

  ‘Get this screened off now,’ he told the sergeant at the scene.

  He went right up to the corpse and looked at the face without shifting the hair that lay over one eye. She had turned a bluish red, as if she’d struggled, he thought. People who choose to hang themselves don’t know what they’re in for. They hardly ever do it right. Mid-thirties, he estimated. The nose had the pressure marks of glasses. He glanced at the hands. No wedding ring. ‘I might know who this is,’ he told Halliwell.

  Halliwell gave him a concerned look, recalling the last time he’d recognised the victim.

  But he was calm. ‘A woman went missing from Walcot this week, name of Williamson.’

  ‘Was she-’

  ‘Dark hair, glasses, in her thirties.’ He looked around, raising his voice for the others. ‘Did anyone find a bag or a suicide note?’

  Heads were shaken.

  ‘Strange choice,’ he said to Halliwell. ‘The hangings I’ve seen have all been in private. If I’m right about the victim, she’s a mother of two. Fancy choosing a play park.’

  Halliwell, practical as always, pointed out that a swing had certain advantages for a would-be suicide. The crossbar was a good height and the seat of the swing was well placed for stepping off.

  ‘What I meant,’ Diamond said, ‘is that a mother might give a thought to being found here by young kids.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that she’s a mother, guv.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that she hanged herself. Where’s the doc? Did anyone call the police surgeon?’

  Dr Hindle had already been by, the constable told Diamond. She’d advised leaving the body in situ. A forensic pathologist was on his way from Bristol.

  ‘Why? Is there something fishy?’

  ‘She didn’t say, sir.’

  ‘Sally Hindle, you said? I’ll give her a bell. And while we’re waiting, chase up those bloody screens, man. Let’s show this poor woman some respect.’

  Sally Hindle was a local GP who earned extra for dealing with police-related medical matters. The title of police surgeon meant no special skill in forensic medicine. ‘I simply certified that death had occurred,’ she told Diamond from her surgery. ‘No, I had no reason to doubt that she hanged herself, but I don’t advise moving her until the pathologist gives his consent.’

  She was right, and they had to wait. Some canvas screens arrived and were erected. The police photographer took his shots and the crime scene people tried to make sense of footprints in abundance. Now that the swings were enclosed there was a sense of intimacy, as if they were in a room with the corpse.

  Diamond stepped outside and phoned Ingeborg and asked her to come to the park and bring a picture of Delia Williamson.

  ‘Have you found her, guv?’

  Always with Inge, the ex-journo, questions he wasn’t able to answer and she needn’t have asked.

  ‘Just get in your car and drive here.’

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  Her eagerness to please was a pain at times, but he was glad to have her on the team. So were the others. She was a real babe.

  He joined Halliwell again. ‘Two young kids, if I’m right. She’d have to be desperate.’

  ‘Wouldn’t anyone?’ Halliwell said. ‘To top themselves, I mean.’

  ‘Extra desperate.’

  ‘True.’

  After a long pause Diamond said, ‘You know what I’m thinking, don’t you, Keith?’

  Halliwell hesitated. He’d worked with this boss for most of his CID career, but he still wasn’t sure how frank he ought to be. ‘Like, em, you’ve been through a bad patch yourself?’

  Diamond frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘But you were never as desperate as this.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know which world you inhabit, Keith. What I’m thinking is we’d better not assume
anything until the pathologist has been by.’

  Halliwell backtracked fast. ‘I get you now.’

  Ingeborg arrived in ten minutes. She put her head around the screen and said, ‘Oh, poor soul. Haven’t you cut her down yet?’

  Another pointless question. The body was rotating in the breeze.

  ‘Just show us the picture,’ Diamond said.

  Ingeborg had brought two photos, a head-and-shoulders shot taken in a booth and an outdoor one of the mother and her two small daughters. Beyond any doubt the dead woman was Delia Williamson. Diamond looked at the smiles of the children and felt his stomach clench. Someone would have to break it to those little girls that their mother was dead. They would ask questions and that same someone would have the choice between merciful lying and the appalling truth.

  Ingeborg said, ‘Guv.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Do you want me to speak to the family?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not your job.’

  She took a closer look at the body. ‘Armani jeans.’

  ‘Yep, I read the label.’

  ‘And the sweater is cashmere.’

  This he hadn’t spotted. ‘So she wasn’t short of a bob or two.’

  The pathologist turned up eventually. This Dr Bertram Sealy was new to Diamond but not new to the game. He’d brought a flask of hot coffee and poured himself a cup before stepping around the screen. The smell was tantalising. ‘Do you have a gofer I can borrow?’ he asked.

  There were times when Diamond was hard on his staff, but he didn’t think of them like that. He let the remark pass. People come out with insensitive things in stressful situations. Instead, he beckoned to Ingeborg and introduced her.

  ‘You’re CID?’ Dr Sealy said to her with approval. ‘I thought you all chewed gum and shaved your heads. Do me a favour, my beauty. The boot of my car is unlocked. Inside you’ll find an essential tool of the trade, my blue plastic milk crate. Would you mind fetching it?’

  Ingeborg obeyed, but only after a look that said she didn’t like being patronised.