Another One Goes Tonight Page 9

  “There’s still something wrong,” Halliwell said.

  “What?”

  “What’s he doing there if he’s on his way home?” Halliwell said. “He lives in Henrietta Road. If he’s sticking to the minor roads you mention he wouldn’t need to go to Beckford Gardens.”

  “It’s not far from his home,” Ingeborg said. She swiped the screen and satisfied herself.

  “It may look all right on your phone—”

  “So?”

  “It’s out of his way. I’ve walked these roads.”

  “We all have,” Diamond said. Halliwell was right, but he didn’t want the sniping to begin again. It was enough of a brain-fag accounting for Pellegrini’s movements. “I could be wrong in saying he was on his way home. Perhaps some special reason made him divert to Beckford Gardens.” He slapped the table. “Got it!”

  A Eureka moment.

  He raised a fist in triumph.

  His companions simply stared.

  “It’s the railway,” he said. “He was there for the railway. He’s an engineer and that’s his hobby. I’ve seen the pictures of trains in his home. If you go to the Hampton Row end of Beckford Gardens, you come to a footbridge. I walked up there and it seems to lead nowhere on the other side. But Pellegrini visited there. He must have parked his trike and climbed the bridge and looked over, along the track.”

  Ingeborg was working her iPhone again. “It isn’t just a bridge, guv. It’s got a history. At one time there was a station there called Hampton Row Halt.”

  Diamond gave her a disbelieving look. Hampton Row Halt—on the main line to London? It didn’t sound likely. Leg-pulling wasn’t unknown in Bath CID and he’d been caught a few times.

  But she was serious. “They closed it in the First World War as an economy measure and it never reopened. Most of it is demolished.” She was quoting now. “‘Originally there were two platforms accessible from the iron footbridge that still exists.’”

  Now he felt like hugging her. “Brilliant. It would be a place of pilgrimage for a railway buff,” Diamond said. “Can I see?”

  She handed over the phone but he gave it straight back. “Bring up the map.”

  “Hampton Row?”

  “Bathampton Lane. This is all about the railway.”

  And there it was on the small screen, just as he’d pictured it. “See how the track runs parallel to the road? That clinches it as far as I’m concerned. He spent his night following the railway line.”

  There was pleasure in getting there. Solid detective work, deduction and fact-finding, the things they did best. They touched glasses, buoyed up by discovering why Pellegrini had been out on the roads at night.

  But after a short interval, reality set in. The information wouldn’t greatly interest Headquarters or the IPCC.

  “We now know he had a purpose,” Ingeborg said. “That’s something. He may be a nerd but he isn’t a total nutcase. It wasn’t about rabbits digging their holes.”

  “Why mention them, then?” Halliwell said.

  “As a distraction. He didn’t want the police knowing what he was really up to.”

  “Why? It’s not illegal looking at railway tracks.”

  “It is if you trespass on railway property.”

  “Is that what he was doing?”

  Diamond was getting another idea, a troubling scenario too way-out to share with the others in this exacting forum. “Thanks, both of you. This has been useful, very useful.”

  “What will you tell Headquarters?” Ingeborg said.

  “The truth.” And he left the intuitive thinking behind and relied on the right half of the brain to summarise their findings. “We’ve interviewed several witnesses and uncovered nothing to suggest a breach of professional standards. Our lads were on an emergency call and driving responsibly. They had their beacon flashing. Cars parked in the narrow road may have temporarily unsighted them. They appear to have met Pellegrini head on and the car projected him and his tricycle out of sight up the bank. There’s one witness account that his riding was unsteady shortly before the collision, but we gather he was a non-drinker so we don’t suspect alcohol was a factor. Old age and fatigue are more likely. The same witness informed us that the lights on the trike were working prior to the collision.”

  “Pretty straightforward, then?”

  “They’ll also have Dessie’s report packed with statistics and graphics.”

  “All done and dusted,” Halliwell said.

  “Unless one of the main players recovers enough to make a fuller statement.”

  Now Halliwell was frowning. “Are you standing us down?”

  A nod. “You can go back to normal duties.”

  The order wasn’t expressed diplomatically, but diplomacy had never been Diamond’s strongest suit.

  “Is that what you’ll be doing, guv—normal duties?” Ingeborg asked in a way that showed she already knew the answer.

  He didn’t reply.

  T rying not to look ahead. One thing leads to another: that’s the beauty of this—and the trap. I don’t see my life any more as a series of objectives. I’m content to go with the flow and see where it leads and only then make the arrangements. Up to now it has worked like a dream. But the danger is to get so confident that I make a mistake. I can’t see how it would happen but I need to be on my guard. So it’s a balancing act, being relaxed and vigilant at all times. The apparently aimless progress will confuse anyone with suspicions about me. They always think of murderers as single-minded, blinkered individuals. Psychopaths. I’m not like that at all, as anyone who has met me will tell you.

  The academics who make a career out of studying serial murder, as it is crudely known, only get to analyse the failed practitioners. Those like me who are successful and leave no trace—and I can’t be the only one—never get into the textbooks. Who’d be a criminologist, making a science out of losers?

  7

  Georgina didn’t thank Diamond for his report. She still appeared to believe he’d made her life more difficult on purpose by discovering Pellegrini at the collision scene. But she grudgingly said she now had enough to keep Headquarters off her back for a day or two. Dessie had put together an extremely impressive video simulation based on the latest science and she would submit Diamond’s findings as an addendum.

  Normally he would have raised a storm at being told his report was only a postscript to a PowerPoint presentation. He and his team had come up with crucial information and deserved better. But in his mind he had already moved on. There was a new possibility he was eager to explore.

  He was almost out of the door when Georgina said, “Where are you going next?”

  “My office. Things have been piling up.”

  “You’re not turning your back on this inquiry?”

  “Would I do that?”

  “I want you to continue to monitor it. The progress of the hospital cases. The witness statements. The gossip in the kitchenettes. Be my eyes and ears.”

  “That could be difficult, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “Am I still an instrument?”

  She had to think for a moment. “Are you speaking about Professional Standards? That duty has been completed.”

  “So I can go back to being unprofessional?”

  “That isn’t what I said at all.”

  “I’m your eyes and ears, you said.”

  “There’s nothing unprofessional in that.”

  “Eavesdropping, spying, informing?”

  She shook her head. “That’s putting it too strongly. I didn’t use the word ‘informing.’”

  “I get it now. The old Yorkshire motto: hear all, see all, say nowt.”

  She hesitated. “That still isn’t right.”

  “I can use my discretion, then? Bend the rules from time to time?�
��

  “You always have.”

  “And now with your blessing. Thanks, ma’am.”

  He was gone.

  In the morning he turned up again at the Royal United Hospital, but not because he was Georgina’s eyes and ears. He didn’t plan to see either of the accident victims and he certainly wouldn’t hear anything from them. Lew Morgan would be heavily sedated after having his leg amputated. Ivor Pellegrini would still be in a coma. Diamond’s purpose in being there was unrelated to what was going on in the hospital. He planned to gain entry to the workshop in Henrietta Road and discover more about its owner, and he’d worked out a way of doing it.

  The nurse he’d met before in the Critical Care unit wasn’t on duty. A pity. He would have to start over with somebody else. The sister who stopped him at the entrance had an implacable look. Everything from the tilt of her head to the folded arms and the penetrating stare over half-glasses told him he was faced with a daunting task.

  “Yes?”

  He showed his ID. “I’m the officer who found Mr. Pellegrini and administered CPR.”

  “Do you want me to congratulate you?”

  “Just telling you who I am, sister. How is he now?”

  “There’s no change.”

  “Still unconscious, then?”

  “In a single room on life support. We’re doing what we can.” Everything about her made clear that she didn’t mean to spend time talking. She started to move away.

  Diamond followed her into the main ward. “I understand you have his possessions here somewhere. When I say ‘possessions’ I mean the things he was wearing when he was brought in.”

  “That’s normal,” she said as she checked the notes at the foot of someone’s bed. “They’re safe with us.”

  “I was told he didn’t have much in his pockets, only some money and his house keys.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. One of my colleagues undressed him.” She moved to another bed.

  “But you’ll know where these things are kept. Locked up, I hope?”

  “Of course.”

  “The thing is, I need his keys.”

  “Well, you’re not having them,” she said. “You’re not even a close relative.”

  “He doesn’t have any family. His wife died.”

  “That doesn’t make you his next of kin.”

  “I’m the senior investigating officer.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the chief constable. Mr. Pellegrini is in my charge and I’m not surrendering the keys of his house to the police. That’s final.” She turned away from him so fast that her heels squeaked on the flooring. Her calf muscles, stiff with resolution inside black tights, powered her towards the sister’s office.

  “I thought you were committed to saving life,” he called after her and instantly felt ashamed for speaking to a nurse like that. The words had come impetuously when he thought he’d lost his chance.

  She stopped and swung about again.

  “Any more of that and I’ll have you escorted off the premises.”

  “It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s . . .” He was floundering. He had to invent something fast.

  Inspiration came. “It’s Hornby.”

  She produced a thin smile, and it wasn’t in friendship. “Mr. Pellegrini’s name happens to be Ivor.”

  “I know that, sister. I’m not speaking about Mr. Pellegrini.”

  “Well, if you think I’m willing to discuss other patients with you, you can think again.”

  “Hornby isn’t a patient. He’s been missing ever since Mr. Pellegrini was admitted here.”

  “Who on earth are you talking about?”

  “His cat. A ginger tom.”

  Her face transformed in a way exceeding his wildest hopes, with lines of concern rippling across her forehead.

  He added, “We believe Hornby could be trapped inside the workshop at the front of the house.”

  “All this time? That’s heart-rending.” She had compassion after all, and she was obviously a cat person.

  “My thought entirely. There’s no other explanation, and there isn’t a cat-flap. One of the neighbours thought she heard scratching from inside but it’s all gone quiet in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh no.” Her lips quivered.

  “They can survive a few days without food or water but Hornby has had his few days already.” He paused. “I’m sure if Mr. Pellegrini could speak he’d be begging us to do something about it.”

  “And this is why you’re here?”

  “I would have forced an entry but I don’t have authority. I can’t get a warrant to rescue a cat. If I can borrow the keys, I’ll return them directly.”

  She went straight into her office and returned shortly with a transparent bag containing several keys on a ring. “You might need the help of a vet, or the RSPCA. Be careful when you open the door in case he runs straight in the road and gets run over.”

  “That would be tragic,” Diamond said, trying to keep up the pretence as he grasped how real the mythical ginger tom had become.

  “I do hope he’s survived,” the sister said. “You must let me know. They’re said to have nine lives but there’s no way of telling how many of Hornby’s are used already.”

  Looking back on the case in the light of what followed, as Diamond would eventually, getting inside that workshop was a pivotal moment. He’d gone to some trouble to achieve it, but his justification had been slight. He was curious about Pellegrini, the well-respected engineer with the unorthodox night life. At this early stage, the man wasn’t suspected of anything worse than some erratic cycling on the night of the crash. He had his dippy side—like the rabbits—but there was nothing truly incriminating, nothing to justify a search of his premises. At worst, Diamond was nosy; at best, driven by a hunch that the place held dark secrets—and he mistrusted hunches. They were invariably unreliable. Those old cliché phrases about feelings in the bones or having a sixth sense or a nose for crime were inimical to his way of doing things.

  Yet he did it.

  He found the key that fitted and let himself in.

  In deference to the hospital sister’s advice, he opened the door just a fraction. Hornby had become rather real in his imagination, too.

  No starving cat ran out.

  First impression: surprisingly tidy. Each item in its designated place. Maybe all engineers are like this, Diamond told himself as he took stock of a vast array of tools in beautiful condition clipped to a board above the work bench, boxes of shiny screws ranged along the base, strips of wood and metal arranged by size in racks. A blue boiler-suit hung from a hook beside the bench. A stack of engineering magazines, all squared off as if for inspection, were ranged behind a slim computer on a desk at one end.

  Along most of one wall was a hinged sheet of chipboard about fifteen feet in length and more than five feet wide. When he unfastened the sides and lowered the thing, trestle legs dropped down. He was looking at a model railway layout, with stations, footbridges, signals, goods sheds, and all in a scenic setting with tiny figures of people, cars, sheep and cattle.

  Nothing remarkable in that. Pellegrini wasn’t the only man in the world who played with toy trains. We all get our kicks some way. Some people might think collecting ex-Scotland Yard men’s memoirs was extreme. Each to his own.

  Above the door and extending a long way beyond was a name-plate in green and gold that had once been attached to a steam locomotive. Suitably enough, it was County of Somerset. Probably cost a small fortune. Such things are prized by collectors.

  Nothing suspicious so far, nothing remotely of interest to the CID. The three plastic urns on a high shelf under the window no longer appeared so sinister. He was starting to doubt whether he’d been right about their original purpose. Someone had decorated them in the distinctive bold, che
erful style of canal-ware. But instead of daffodils and geraniums, each had a brightly coloured locomotive with a white plume of steam. The trains looked lively against the terracotta background. If you have a passion for steam and happen to own some plastic pots, why not?

  He switched on the computer and clicked the icon for emails but the storage files were empty. Probably there was another computer in the house that Pellegrini used for mail. This one was for Internet access. Various sites were bookmarked as favourites and they all had engineering or railway connections. Diamond’s lack of expertise with computers prevented him from investigating more. He switched off.

  Disappointing.

  As an afterthought he curled his fingers under the handle of the desk drawer and slid it open. A few sheets of A4 paper printed from the computer and headed Great Western Railway. He gave them a cursory glance and was about to return them to the drawer when he noticed there was printing on the reverse side. Clearly Pellegrini believed in making full use of every sheet.

  This wasn’t about railways. It seemed to be a printout of an online discussion forum. Someone calling themselves

  Bluebeard had written:

  You only have to check how many murders go unsolved to know plenty of killers get away with it. It’s around fifty a year in the UK, going by official stats over the past ten years. That’s a whole load of dangerous people walking free.

  The next person, “Lady Macbeth,” retorted:

  Tip of the iceberg. Think about it. The really clever ones don’t get found out. People are being stiffed all the time and it never gets known because the doctor signs it off as natural. Then you don’t have to get rid of the body.

  Back came Bluebeard:

  And if we knew how many are missed by the police because they take them to be accidents, we’d be shocked out of our skins.

  Lady Macbeth:

  Accidents or suicide. Nobody guesses there’s some evil-minded person who pushes the victim off the cliff or over the side of the boat.