Showstopper, page 25
Some minutes later, general conversation had taken over and Sharp moved to the empty seat beside Diamond. She said she’d been waiting for the right moment to mention something.
“You’re okay?” he asked her.
“It’s not about me, guv. Are you still suspicious about Mary Wroxeter’s death? It doesn’t seem to fit in with the three men who went missing.”
“True, but I haven’t forgotten her. I’m concentrating on the men because we seem to be making real progress with them.”
She blushed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”
How could he help her get over her lack of confidence with him? “It’s as good as any, Jean. I’m listening.”
“Well, you said Candida is in the frame now.”
“I mean it. She’s got to be involved.”
“The other day when you and I went to see her, you let me question her about the evening Mary died.”
“And you did a fine job,” he said, seizing on a chance to show appreciation. “Thanks to you, we now know why Candida offered to drive Mary home after the evening in the pub. She wanted her to be the first to know she was pregnant. Has something else cropped up?”
“Er . . . yes. She told us the truth, but not the whole truth, I think.”
“Oh?”
“I felt there must be a bigger reason why she was so keen to share her news with Mary before she told anyone else.”
“You found it—another reason?”
“I think so. Mary was her mother.”
He slopped ale on the table. “Candida’s mother? How on earth . . . ?”
“I got her date of birth from the film office. They keep records even of staff who have left.”
“And . . . ?”
“I ordered a copy of her birth certificate and it came this morning. You have to supply the date and the names of the parents. I took a chance with both and I was right about Mary.”
“That is a discovery.” He pressed his fingers against his mouth as another mystery presented itself. “Who was the father, then? Wait, I think I know. Candida is mixed race. He must be the guy who played Paul Robeson. The Welsh tenor.”
“Aubrey Jones.”
“Aubrey Jones. Candida Jones. What an idiot I am. Why didn’t I make the connection?”
“There was no reason to,” she said. “We weren’t asking ourselves who Candida’s parents were.”
“So how did you get on to it?”
She lowered her eyes and turned self-conscious again. “By being nosy, more than anything. I wanted to know why it was that Candida had this loyalty to Mary as long as three years after she’d left the job, so I got thinking.”
“To some tune—that’s brilliant, Jean. And now we know, it begs all kinds of questions. Why keep it secret that they were mother and daughter?”
“I guess it could have looked like favouritism while she was working as her production assistant. Other people in the company could complain.”
“And maybe Mary didn’t want it known she had a love child. Racism could have played its part as well, remembering the attitudes of thirty years ago.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But she couldn’t have been all that ashamed. She gave her a theatrical name. Isn’t Candida the title of a play?”
“By George Bernard Shaw.”
“You have done your homework. I’m seeing this differently now.” He paused to take it in more fully. “Surely Candida wouldn’t have plotted to kill her own mother.”
“It’s not unknown,” Sharp said with a detachment Diamond hadn’t seen before. “We don’t know what bad blood there was between them. And we only have Candida’s account of what happened the night Mary died.”
“You’re ahead of me.”
“I’ve had longer to get my head around it.”
Diamond was spurred into speaking his thoughts aloud. “She claimed she didn’t go into Mary’s house after driving her home, but we can’t rely on anything she told us. If she did go in and added pure ethanol to the vodka her mother was drinking, it would have been enough to kill her. It makes your blood run cold.”
He could see he wasn’t telling Jean Sharp anything she hadn’t been through in her mind already. She was able to speak rationally about the probability that they were dealing with matricide, among other crimes. “Until she’s arrested and questioned, we won’t know what happened to make her like that.”
He nodded. “And the fact that everyone else seemed to regard Mary as angelic would only have ramped up Candida’s bitterness.” He heaved a large sigh, confronting the chasm of malice that had just opened up. “You’re right. More will come out, I’m sure. We could go on speculating indefinitely. We’ll pull them both in and get the truth of it. This is a huge help, Jean. You’ve given us enough to crack the case.”
She almost fled from the table, she was so relieved to have got the story off her chest.
Through the window, Diamond saw more vehicles arrive in the car park. Dr. Bertram Sealy got out and started pulling on his pale blue forensic suit. The photographer Diamond remembered from the crime scene in the field at Combe Hay had also driven in.
“Drink up, everyone. We’re going outside.”
He asked Ingeborg to call Paul Gilbert and find out whether Fergus was still at the shoot on Jacob’s Ladder.
“He would have told us, guv.”
“Do it.” The tension was getting to him. “And keep watch on the narrowboat in case Candida appears.”
On the way to the jetty, Ingeborg offered Diamond her phone. “It’s Paul. Do you want to speak to him yourself?”
“Has he got Fergus in sight? That’s all I need to know.”
She nodded.
“Tell him to stick with the jerk whatever happens.”
Wolfgang had already erected a forensic tent not much bigger than the sort boy scouts use. “It’s the width of the jetty,” he explained. “You can’t anchor the sides to air.”
“We won’t squeeze three people in there as well as the suitcase,” Diamond said.
“Take it down if you like,” Wolfgang said, “but if you do, you’ll be all over the papers tomorrow.” He jerked his head in the direction of a cluster of press photographers who had set up their tripods on the opposite bank.
“They get everywhere,” Diamond said.
Wolfgang handed Diamond a forensic suit. He put it on without complaining. He wouldn’t tell anyone he was more excited than a kid on Christmas morning.
Sealy adjusted his face mask, dipped his head and went inside the tent, followed by the forensic photographer. Diamond had to observe from outside with his head between the tent flaps—an undignified pose destined to be picked by several picture editors for next morning’s editions.
The small space already smelt musty.
“So how long has it been out of the water?” Dr. Sealy asked, starting to loosen the straps.
“Three to four hours,” Diamond said.
“Prepare for an interesting fragrance, then.”
“Is it locked?”
“That won’t stop me. Suitcases are easy to force. I always padlock mine when I go on holiday. No, it isn’t locked. Hold your noses.”
Sealy unzipped the case. The clicks of the camera shutter provided a kind of incidental music.
He lifted the lid and the foul smell of rotting flesh filled the tent.
Sealy said, “Ha.”
The lid was masking Diamond’s view. “I can’t see from here.”
Sealy said, “You won’t want to.”
“Why?”
“It’s not what you led me to expect. It’s organic, I’ll give you that. It appears to be dead. But you don’t need me. You want a zoologist. What you’ve got here is a large reptile. I’m no expert, but I would say this is a reticulated python.”
24
HUMILIATION CRUSHED PETER Diamond. The weight of it was overwhelming. At this low point of his career all the experience of a lifetime’s service, the cases he had solved, the killers he had brought to justice over the years, counted for nothing. He’d come here confident of a triumph and was hopelessly, ridiculously wrong.
Dr. Sealy had a grin wider than a body bag. The forensic photographer had turned his back and was shaking with mirth. Diamond, in his undignified position, his bonneted head inside the tent and the rest of him outside, bent over as if inviting someone to kick him, was at a loss.
Sealy said, “Are you going to tell them or shall I?”
He was right. They all had to be told they had been brought here on a fool’s errand—Earnshaw, the divers, Wolfgang, Halliwell, Leaman, Ingeborg and Sharp. There was no ducking who had cocked up.
Still in a state of shock, Diamond removed his head from the tent.
A cloud had covered the sun and a cool breeze blew across the marina, creating ripples he could hear lapping the sides of the moored boats.
“Sorry, people,” he said in his stricken voice. “It’s not what I expected. It’s a dead snake.”
Earnshaw said, “Speak up.”
Wolfgang said, “You can take off the mask now.”
He dragged it below his chin. “A snake.”
“What sort of snake?”
“A python, we think.”
They had to see for themselves. Diamond was practically pushed off the jetty. Only one person hadn’t moved. Keith Halliwell waited on the deck of the Daisy Belle, the boat berthed next to Deck the Halls. “You’d better look in here, guv,” Keith said. “I got a bit ahead of myself and opened up.”
Diamond had prepared himself to think of the second narrowboat as a charnel house, a murderer’s store where bodies were locked away prior to disposal in the water. He crossed the walkway and stepped on deck. The padlock was still in place. Halliwell had forced the hasp away from the wood.
He pushed the door open and went in.
The interior was so dimly lit that he had to wait a second or two for his eyes to adjust. He could hear a faint mechanical humming he took to be a fridge motor.
That much was correct. He could now make out a large cabinet freezer with the fridge beside it and shelving opposite. Above him was a double tube of strip lighting.
“There’s got to be a switch,” he said.
“Found it,” Halliwell said and flicked it on.
The entire length of the boat was revealed, taken up with huge glass tanks two metres high and twice as long, reinforced with steel. Their slatted covers appeared to work on a roller-glide system. Two stood each side of a narrow aisle. Inside each tank was a jungle in miniature, forked logs and branches projecting upwards from a ground cover of stones, ferns and broad-leaved plants.
“I think it’s called a vivarium,” Halliwell said. “He keeps snakes.”
Diamond moved along the row in silence, taking it in. At first he couldn’t see anything alive. There was no movement. In the second tank he noticed a mottled brownish green surface that wasn’t part of the log that lay across the middle.
A coiled unmoving serpent as thick as a man’s thigh.
“Can you tell the difference between a boa constrictor and a python?” Halliwell said. “I can’t, but I reckon he’s got both.”
Diamond said nothing.
“Part of his macho lifestyle, I suppose,” Halliwell went on. “I’ve never wanted to keep exotic reptiles myself. Are you okay, guv?”
Diamond said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Back on deck, he stood facing the open water and not seeing anything. At least his brain was functioning again, seeking to find some understanding of the bizarre things forced on his consciousness.
After some thought, he said, “What do they feed on—chicks and mice, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never asked.”
“He’ll keep them in the fridge.”
“I expect so. I didn’t look inside.”
“In the wild, they can go for weeks without eating and then they want something substantial. Big snakes like those are man-eaters, given a chance.”
“That’s an ugly thought, guv.”
“I’m in an ugly mood.”
Halliwell had his phone out and was googling man-eating snakes. “It’s rare, but not unknown. A fully-grown python will crush you and try to swallow you whole. The jaws are flexible and expand. Swallowing the shoulders is the hard part.”
“If the body was butchered into joints of meat, the python wouldn’t have any difficulty.”
Halliwell screwed up his face in disgust. “Is that what Fergus did?”
“At this stage, Keith, your guess is as good as mine. It would account for the people who disappeared and were never seen again.”
“That’s gross.”
“Keeping large reptiles in captivity is gross. I don’t understand the mentality behind it. I’m going to question Candida again and see how much she knows. I don’t think Fergus will be here any time soon.” With more of an agenda, he might recover from the humbling he’d let himself in for. Peeling off the forensic suit was a start.
WITH INGEBORG AT his side, he stepped aboard Deck the Halls. “I won’t spare her,” he said. “I tried being nice cop and it didn’t work.”
Candida, too, started on a combative note. At the door, she said, “If you’re here to apologise, forget it.”
“Apologise for what, ma’am?” he said.
“Trashing our reputation, that’s what. All of Bath and Bristol knows Fergus and me are the reason for the police divers. I’ve had reporters on at me day and night. Cameramen all over the boat. Next thing we’ll be asked to leave and find another mooring.”
“If you’d been more honest before, none of it would have been necessary,” he told her. “We’re bound to be suspicious when you give us half-truths and lies.”
“Like what?”
“Like the horseshit about Mary Wroxeter. You never once mentioned she was your mother.”
Straight to it. She made a sound like one of the pythons hissing. “Who told you that?”
“We’d better talk inside. It’s time to front up, Candida.”
She turned round and stepped into her main cabin, her shoulders and back rigid with tension. Bart was on the floor chewing on an apple.
Candida faced them and said with fury, “There’s no reason I should tell you or anyone who my parents were.”
“Oh, but there is when Mary’s death is under investigation and you were the last person to see her alive.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re not accusing me of murdering her?”
“Not yet. I want the truth about that night. You said you drove her home from the pub and told her you were pregnant. Why wait? Your own mother? Why not pick up the phone and tell her as soon as you knew about it?”
“I only knew that afternoon, that’s why. I couldn’t call Mary while she was filming. I didn’t lie to you. I gave her my news in the car.”
“You didn’t go in with her? That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s the truth. I had no more to say to her. I knew she’d want to celebrate the only way she knew how and drinking was one thing I shouldn’t do, being pregnant. I left her outside her door and drove straight back here. If you think I encouraged her to drink herself to death, you’re nuts.”
“You kept it quiet—the fact that you were her daughter—even after she died.”
“She would have wanted that. The studio took charge and fixed the funeral. They gave her a lovely send-off as I knew they would. I was there as someone who’d worked with her, that’s all.”
“No regrets about that?”
She clicked her tongue. “We were never that close. In all her life I never called her mum. As a kid I was farmed out to foster parents and packed off to a crap private boarding school. I scarcely ever saw my birth parents. My dad died years ago anyway. The one good thing they gave me was my name. At least, I thought it was until my schoolmates found out it’s also the name of a fungal infection and called me Thrush.”
Ingeborg said, “Mary must have cared. She found you the job at Bottle Yard.”
“Years later. I was on her conscience by then. I left school with nothing to show for all the fees and went through a really bad patch. Hard drugs, sleeping rough, nicking stuff, the lot. She found me a flat and fixed it for me to make a start as a runner on the understanding that we’d tell no one I was her daughter. I loved the job straight away and stayed. End of story.”
“Not quite the end. You met Fergus, got pregnant and moved in here.”
She laughed. A bitter laugh. “Shit-for-brains, me.”
Diamond asked, “How much did you know about Fergus?”
“He fancied me. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Did you know he kept snakes?”
“He only had the one when we met, the one that died of old age and had the suitcase for its coffin. I refused to have it in here while it was alive, so he bought the old tub you see next to us and spent far too much doing it up and turning it into a snake house. I can’t stand them. I never go in there.”
“You say he fancied you,” Ingeborg said. “Was it more than that?”
“I told myself it was. I wouldn’t have got pregnant twice if I didn’t think he loved me. I’m not a total slag. I lost the first one and then Bart was born.”
“And what are your feelings now?”
She flared up again. “What is this—sex therapy? I don’t have to tell you what goes on in my private life.”
Diamond said, “We’re asking because we want to know how deeply you’re involved. People are missing, believed dead. You could be aiding and abetting a serial killer.”
“Give me strength,” she said, eyes blazing, each word charged with outrage. “You think Fergus topped those guys? What for? He may be thick, but he’s not that thick.”
“Two nights ago,” he said, “they finished the filming at Milroy Court. It was late in the day. The de-rigging would have been the last thing to happen and Fergus was in charge so he would have got home late. Do you recall what time it was?”
