Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman Read online

  ‘Actually I can manage a few other dishes. Cooking is less appealing when you live alone.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Were you married?’

  ‘Until he traded me in for the new model,’ she said. ‘Once my self-esteem recovered, it was a huge relief to be shot of him.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘A son, grown up now. Jeremy’s got one of those jobs that didn’t exist until someone thought of it – personal trainer, persuading rich people to use their treadmills. It’s paying well at the moment, but I don’t know if you could call it a career. And you? Do you have any family?’

  He shook his head, not choosing to go into the detail of Steph’s gynaecological problems. ‘There’s just Raffles the cat, who allows me to share the same address.’

  ‘A cat. What sort?’

  ‘More than one sort, you could say. A tabby, a handsome tabby.’

  ‘Who considers you his slave?’

  He grinned. ‘Have you got one? Sounds to me as if you know all about them.’

  ‘No longer. I had a black and white called Fritz, a wicked old character who lived to seventeen, and I miss him dreadfully, but it’s too soon to replace him. The birds can visit the garden in safety now.’

  ‘You have a garden? In the city?’

  ‘On the outskirts. I live in Lyncombe. We still think of it as our village, even though it was swallowed up by the city council about two hundred years ago. And you? Are you a Bathonian?’

  ‘I pay the council tax,’ he said. ‘I live in Weston. Don’t know if I can call myself a Bathonian.’

  ‘If you’re defending us all from villains, I’m sure you can. You’re the first policeman I’ve met on a social basis. That’s the best way to meet one, I suppose. Better than being stopped for speeding.’

  He told her he didn’t work in traffic.

  ‘More of a back-room boy?’

  ‘Back-seat boy.’ He wasn’t going to volunteer that he was CID.

  After the coffee, she said, ‘I’ve enjoyed this, Peter.’

  ‘You took the words out of my mouth.’

  She signalled for the bill. ‘I must get back now and do an hour or so on the internet. My clients expect a quick response.’

  He was relieved. She was drawing a line under this evening. She’d saved them both the awkwardness of the invitation home for another coffee or a drink, or whatever. He certainly wasn’t ready for whatever. She wasn’t pressing for a closer relationship and neither was he.

  They walked back to Green Park and talked about films they’d seen. As if by mutual consent they’d done enough exchanging personal data. When they reached her car she opened her bag and took out a business card. ‘As I was saying, you can look me up if you’re interested in the agency.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m not so well organised as you,’ he said. ‘Don’t carry a card.’

  ‘Now I feel pushy.’

  He shook his head. ‘I know when people are pushy, and you’re not.’

  She got into her car. ‘Where’s yours?’

  He pointed across the car park.

  She said, ‘Watch out when you reverse.’

  He came out with a line that made him cringe as soon as he’d said it. ‘After tonight no carrier bag is safe.’

  She smiled and drove off.

  8

  One thing is worse than an alarm clock going off when you are sleeping, and that’s a phone. Diamond didn’t know where he was. He reached out to the sound and knocked over his glass of water.

  Now he knew. He’d been dreaming. This wasn’t Paloma’s bedroom. This was home.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said when he got the thing to his ear.

  This seemed to confuse the caller. After a long pause came a tentative, ‘Sir?’

  ‘I don’t expect calls in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Is that Mr Diamond?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve got the Assistant Chief Constable for you, sir.’

  ‘On a plate?’

  ‘On the other line.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Six fifteen just gone, sir.’

  ‘Nearly lunchtime,’ he said with sarcasm that was wasted on the switchboard operator.

  ‘I’m about to connect you.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  Georgina greeted him as brightly as if she was suggesting coffee and crumpets in the Pump Room. ‘Peter, are you up and about?’

  He could feel a tide of cold water advancing across the sheet he was lying on. ‘I will be shortly.’

  ‘You’re not an early riser, then? Listen, something has happened overnight. Another hanging, a man this time.’

  He was jolted fully awake. ‘Where?’

  ‘This is it, Peter. It couldn’t be more public. He’s over the Bristol Road near the railway station. Motorists are calling in to report it.’

  He couldn’t picture this. ‘Over the road?’

  ‘Hanging from the viaduct.’

  ‘What viaduct?’

  ‘By the station. You know where the railway crosses the river and the road, that thing that looks like a castle wall, with battlements? Uniform have closed the entire southern approach to the city and they want to cut him down. It’s going to cause horrendous traffic problems, but of course it could be tied in with this case of yours. Get down there, will you, and deal with it?’

  Some people start the day with a fried breakfast, he thought. I get a hanged man.

  Disturbing images crowded his brain. The black, turreted viaduct where trains thundered across. The corpse twisting above the road. Traffic queues. SOCOs. That sarky pathologist. All to be faced. His thigh was getting damp. He rolled out of bed and felt splintered glass under his bare foot. Not a good beginning.

  When Isambard Kingdom Brunel brought the Great Western Railway to Bath in 1840 he had a sharp sense of what the city fathers would tolerate. Starting from the Bristol end he cut a direct route through streets of working-class housing but steered south and east of the Georgian glories of the city. The track had to cross the main road and the River Avon and he did it in style with a handsome viaduct dressed to look as if it was a section of the city wall, grand in concept, with twin turrets, ornamental shields and a crenellated top outlined against the green of Lyncombe Hill. Never mind that the fortifications faced inwards as if the city had to be protected against itself. Never mind that the south side was as plain as a prison. The facade visible from across the river was what mattered. Bathonians compared it to the classic front of a Cambridge college. You would never suspect it was a railway until you saw an inter-city express crossing the battlements.

  No one was thinking of Brunel’s achievement when Diamond arrived. Such was the traffic chaos that he had to leave his car across the river and walk over the Churchill Bridge. The fire brigade were at the scene – a good thought on someone’s part because it would take more than a household ladder to recover the body. They had positioned a cherry picker under the bridge.

  The corpse was dressed in black jeans and a tank top. Worn trainers that must have been white when bought. Dark, close-cropped hair from what could be made out from below.

  ‘Do you want a closer look at him?’ the fire officer asked after Diamond made himself known.

  He’d had more tempting invitations in his time. ‘Has anyone been up already?’

  ‘We were told to wait for you.’

  ‘And I didn’t let you down. Has the pathologist arrived? I left a message for him.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’s the man to go up. He shouldn’t be long. How do you propose to recover the body?’

  ‘We’ll work from the top. Hoist him up.’

  Diamond looked up at the body again. From where he was the ligature looked like plastic again. The top end was attached to one of the battlements. ‘How do I get up there – without getting into that thing, I mean?’

  ‘You’ll need to go up to the station and come back along the tr
ack. The cherry picker is quicker.’

  The phrase conjured up summer afternoons in Kent orchards.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Diamond said, but appreciation didn’t mean assent. This wasn’t his kind of cherry-picking. He looked at his watch. ‘The doctor shouldn’t be long.’ A pious hope. He remembered having to wait for Dr Sealy the morning Delia Williamson was found.

  He walked across to where a uniformed police inspector was talking into his mobile. Someone at the other end was going spare by the sound of things. It was after seven and the traffic was backed right to the top of Widcombe Hill in one direction and Wellsway in the other. ‘Can I use your phone?’

  ‘What?’

  He pointed to the phone.

  ‘I’m speaking to traffic control.’

  ‘Stuff them. Nothing is moving until I make this call.’

  It was handed to him.

  He had to call headquarters first to get Sealy’s mobile number. Then he got through. The pathologist was going nowhere, sitting in his car in the queue on the Lower Bristol Road.

  ‘We’ll get a motorcycle escort for him,’ the inspector said. ‘Good idea of yours.’

  ‘I thought it was obvious.’

  Sealy eventually arrived with his outrider. ‘God help us – am I stuck with you again?’ he said to Diamond.

  All he could think of as a riposte was: ‘Hope you’ve got a head for heights. You’ll need more than your milk crate for this one.’

  ‘I’ll cope.’ And, annoyingly, Sealy did, stepping into the cherry picker as if it was a taxi and rising with arms folded. Up there, he turned the corpse to face him and made his inspection. He was talking into his recorder for at least fifteen minutes. Above, on the rampart, four firemen got ready to lift the body upwards.

  When Sealy had been lowered, he said, ‘What do you want to know apart from the obvious?’

  ‘What’s obvious?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘This isn’t like the woman in the park. This is a proper hanging. Fractured vertebrae. It was a long drop.’

  ‘Unrelated, then?’

  ‘Pathologically speaking, yes. I’ll tell you more when I’ve done the PM. Make sure they handle him with care, would you?’

  ‘What age would he be?’

  ‘Thirty to forty. Nobody looks at their best when they’re dangling on the end of a cord. Why don’t you take a look?’

  ‘They want him off the bridge so the traffic can move.’

  ‘The places people choose,’ Sealy said. ‘What was he after? Maximum disruption? He achieved that all right.’

  After Sealy had gone, Diamond took the short walk to the railway station and emerged along the platform and down the slope to the gravel beside the lines. It didn’t take long. Ahead the firemen were approaching with the corpse in a body bag on a stretcher.

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ he said.

  One of them unzipped the top end. A short length of the noose was still tied with a slip knot round the neck.

  He recognised the victim.

  No question. He’d been circulating pictures of the same face for days. This was the missing man, Danny Geaves, the one-time partner of Delia Williamson.

  His first reaction was guilt. They’d failed to find Danny in time. This could have been prevented. Then he told himself they’d made every reasonable effort to find the man. The police are not guardian angels. They are limited by resources and manpower.

  He zipped the bag, walked on and checked the parapet. He’d get the SOCOs up here to search everything, but this had the look of a suicide. Danny had slung the cord twice round one of the battlements and secured it with a good knot. It was still in place. It was easy to picture him fastening the noose round his neck, sitting between the battlements and choosing his moment to drop.

  9

  ‘You can relax,’ he told Ingeborg when he looked in at the incident room. ‘Your search is over. The hanged man is Danny.’

  ‘Topped himself because of what he’d done?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She tapped a pencil against her chin. ‘So Danny is the killer.’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Murdered Delia and then killed himself?’

  ‘So it appears.’

  ‘What drove him to it – jealousy, I bet. He couldn’t have her, so neither could anyone else. You guys are so possessive.’

  ‘Hang on, Ingeborg,’ he said. ‘Before you slag off the whole of my sex, the story we had from Ashley Corcoran was that Danny had given up on Delia and the children. He took no interest. That doesn’t sound like jealousy.’

  ‘Why would he have killed her, then?’

  ‘Maybe his life wasn’t worth living any more, and he blamed her for all his troubles.’

  ‘So if it’s not jealousy, it’s the blame game. That doesn’t say much for the whole of your sex.’

  ‘Give it a break, Ingeborg,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the go since six this morning. Bloody phone ringing and a wet bed into the bargain.’

  She said no more. Even an enquiring mind like hers didn’t want to know about Diamond’s wet bed.

  From across the room Halliwell said, ‘So what do we do, guv? Dismantle this lot?’

  ‘We wait for the post-mortem report. Meanwhile you and DC Gilbert had better get into his lodgings in Freshford and see if he left any clues. A suicide note is too much to hope for.’

  He went through to his office and shut the door. His thoughts had turned away from Geaves and Delia Williamson to the children they had left behind. Deprived of both parents in horrific circumstances, those two small girls couldn’t have faced a worse shock. He hoped they would find inner strength. He picked up the phone and called their grandmother, Amanda Williamson.

  Her voice was nervous. She’d heard on the local radio that a body had been found. ‘I didn’t like to think who it might be. They haven’t named him, have they?’

  ‘It’s not officially confirmed, but I think you should be prepared to hear that he’s the girls’ father, Daniel Geaves,’ he said, trying to break it gently.

  There was a pause, and then she said, ‘Dreadful.’

  ‘It is, ma’am.’

  ‘You’re certain of this?’

  ‘I’ve seen the body myself.’

  ‘Is he . . . did he kill my daughter?’

  ‘That’s what we have to find out. There will be an inquest. We should all know more after that. I’m calling you now because you may want to think about the children, what they should be told, and whether you want to take them away for a few days. The press are going to want pictures if they can get them.’

  ‘Pictures of the girls?’

  ‘It’s what they call a human-interest story. It will soon blow over. If they aren’t there to be photographed when the story breaks, no one will pester them in a few days.’

  ‘I understand. I’ll see what can be done.’

  She sounded a good woman, calm in a crisis, controlling her own emotions while she was responsible for the children.

  Looking at the phone he’d just cradled he tried to understand why Geaves had chosen to hang himself in such a public place. Almost all suicidal hangings are carried out in familiar surroundings, the home, or garage or workplace. This one had been done covertly, at night, but the location couldn’t have been more public. Perhaps, Diamond mused, the man had felt some remorse for the way he’d strung up his ex-wife in the park. Perhaps he’d condemned himself as he’d condemned her, to be a public spectacle after death. Skewed thinking, but then it needs a skewed mind to top yourself.

  For Diamond personally this was a grinding anticlimax. Until this morning, he’d had an intriguing murder case with suspects and lines of inquiry. The killer had snatched it away from him. There was only paperwork in prospect now, and plenty of that.

  First he’d go downstairs for a late breakfast.

  In the corridor he saw Georgina coming. At this minute he didn’t want to be told he was looking peaky, or peakier, so he opened the first door on
his right and found himself face to face with a large poster of a dog with teeth bared. To his left was a desk and behind it was seated the sergeant in charge of dogs, head cocked, eyes shining.

  ‘Sorry, wrong door.’

  ‘No problem, sir.’

  The good manners were being tested again. ‘But now I’m here I’ve been meaning to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Something canine, if he could think of it. He dredged deep.

  ‘Bloodhounds. Whatever happened to bloodhounds?’

  The sergeant frowned. ‘We don’t use them, sir. They’re not well suited to the work.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘They pick up a scent faster than anything, but they tire easily.’

  ‘Good sniffers but poor athletes?’

  ‘In a nutshell, yes. And their temperament isn’t good. They’re timid by nature. When you’re pursuing a suspect you don’t want a dog that won’t follow through. A German shepherd does the job better.’

  ‘That explains it, then,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  He opened the door and looked along the corridor. Georgina was not in sight. Deciding it was safe, he stepped out.

  As if it were fated, Georgina came out of the room opposite. ‘Peter, there you are.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you all right? You look as if someone just walked over your grave.’

  ‘My temperament,’ he said. ‘Timid by nature.’

  ‘I’d never noticed.’

  He was going to add that he was a good sniffer even so, but it would have been lost on Georgina. She’d think he was snorting coke.

  ‘If you’re really all right, can we talk about the hanging?’

  She was up with the morning’s developments. She just wanted his take on them. In her office upstairs he settled into a leather armchair and confirmed that it looked as if Geaves had killed himself.

  ‘Is there any doubt?’ Georgina said.

  ‘We haven’t had Dr Sealy’s report yet, but at the scene he called it a proper hanging.’

  ‘That’s straight talking from a pathologist. By that he meant there weren’t any signs the man had been strangled first, as Delia Williamson was?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s all about the marks on the neck.’