Showstopper, page 26
“This was when?” she said. “Tuesday? Let me think.” She bent down and took the partially eaten apple from Bart and pushed a sippy cup against his mouth before he could protest. “God, this is ridiculous. Yes, he was late. I was about to watch The News at Ten when he got in and wanted to eat. He’s always late when they de-rig. They have to load the trucks and return them to Gripmasters up at Cold Ashton. He leaves his motorbike there by day and then rides home.”
“Okay,” Diamond said without sounding okay. She’d reminded him Fergus was a motorcyclist. It complicated the scenario. You can’t transport a body on a motorbike. But there had been a bike in the field where Greg Deans was attacked. “How was his mood? Any different from usual?”
“I didn’t notice anything different. He was ready for his Irish stew when he got in, hungry as always.”
“What was he wearing? His motorcycle gear?”
“Black leathers.”
“He took them off, I expect.”
“Slung them over the back of the chair like he always does.”
“Does he have a spare set?”
“Of leathers? Do you have any idea what they cost? You don’t get much change out of a grand.”
“The answer is no, I take it. He’ll be wearing the same jacket and trousers today at the shoot at Jacob’s Ladder.”
“Is that where he is?” she said. “You know more than I do.”
They didn’t get anything else from Candida. The nasty cop approach might have brought out new details, but the value of them was far from apparent.
Everyone had left the jetty by the time they emerged from Deck the Halls. The forensic tent was gone and so were the divers and their equipment. All that remained, like a rebuke, was the suitcase containing the dead snake.
“She knew all along what was in the case,” Diamond said. “She could have told the divers straight away.”
“You can bet she phoned Fergus,” Ingeborg said. “I expect he told her to play dumb. She has to live with him. She wouldn’t defy him. I’ve always had the feeling he’s a bully, if not an out-and-out wife-beater.”
“He certainly played it cool himself, staying well away.”
“What’s going to happen to the snake?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Doesn’t belong to me.”
“We can’t let Fergus throw it back in the marina.”
“We’ll notify the council. They know what to do. Somerset gets more roadkill than anywhere else in Britain.”
“I don’t suppose they get many pythons.”
ON THE DRIVE back to their base at Concorde House, Ingeborg said, “Candida has been devious in the past, feeding the jinx story to the paper, but I felt she was telling the truth this time. Her personal story rather moved me, actually.”
“I was touched by it as well,” Diamond admitted. “Almost stopped me in my tracks.”
“If she was being truthful, she wasn’t at Combe Hay herself and she provided an alibi for Fergus. She said he got home before ten the night Greg was stabbed. I can’t think of any way he could have done the killing and got back to Saltford. The dash cam showed nine twenty. He’d have needed to hide the body somewhere, clean up, change into his leathers and ride back from Combe Hay in under forty minutes. Theoretically possible for someone like Houdini, but . . . Fergus?” She blew a soft raspberry.
“Like you, I believed her,” Diamond said. “There was the moment I asked what time he got home and it was clear she had to cast her mind back. She hadn’t prepared for the question or she wouldn’t have hesitated. I’ve interviewed enough witnesses in my time to know when an answer is spontaneous and genuine.”
“Two in one day,” Ingeborg said.
“You mean Natalie and Candida?”
“Two honest women.”
“Both can’t be. Who do you prefer to believe?”
She drove on for a while without answering. The next comment came from Diamond, complaining about farmers who didn’t trim their hedges: an indirect way of suggesting she drove more slowly through the narrow lanes.
When Ingeborg spoke again, it was to say, “I can think of only one of our suspects who ticks all the boxes: motive, means and opportunity. He’s already acting as if he is Greg’s replacement, he carries a knife and he was just a short walk from the scene. The killer has to be Will Legat.”
25
THE KING OF the incident room, John Leaman, came straight over as soon as Diamond and Ingeborg returned. He was rubbing his hands, a rare display of emotion. “A batch of test results have come in, guv. The lab beat all records.”
“Thanks to Wolfgang cracking the whip,” Diamond said. “What have we got?”
“The victim was definitely Greg Deans. The bloody handprint on the car was his and so was the blood on the ground, so much, they say, that he couldn’t have lived.”
“We know that. What else?”
“They found no traces of anyone else’s blood or DNA.”
“Really? That surprises me.”
“The perpetrator was wearing gloves.”
“Shoeprints?”
“Nothing conclusive. The ground was too squelchy.”
“Squelchy? Is that the term they used?”
“No, it’s me summing up. Do you want me to read you the exact words?”
“No need. I can read them myself.”
“They did get a tyre print where the ground wasn’t quite so muddy, a good one, and made a cast of it.”
Diamond nodded. “I saw Wolfgang collecting it.”
“It’s a clear tread pattern and the interesting thing is that it’s not from a car.”
“A motorbike?”
“Yes—the tyre was a Michelin Pilot. They give a range of probable serial numbers and there’s enough wear to identify the bike if we can find it.”
“Could be helpful, very helpful. Go on.”
“That’s about it. The fingertip search of the field produced a few items like cigarette butts, but no reason to connect them to the killer.”
“Where were they found? Anywhere near the gate?”
“I didn’t ask. I was thinking some farm worker dropped them. The killer wouldn’t stand around smoking after the stabbing.”
“Before, John, before. He spent some nervous time waiting for the Range Rover to come up the lane. That’s when he would have needed a fag.”
Leaman’s embarrassed features displayed most of the colours of a Turner sunset. “I didn’t think of that.”
“It’s okay. I don’t expect you to cover every angle.”
“I’ll call the lab and find out.”
“Before you do, run the dash cam footage for me one more time on the large screen, would you, just the sequence in the field? There’s a moment when the car is turning and the camera catches a glimpse of something metallic under the hedge.”
“There isn’t much to see. Just a gleam of silver.”
He shouldn’t have been irritated by Leaman’s remark. After all, the man’s pathological attention to detail was often of value. But he was feeling the strain himself. “You’re not telling me anything new, John. I’ve studied it many times over. I want to see it on a bigger scale, understood?”
An injured look settled on Leaman’s features. “Got you.”
Realising he’d caused unintended hurt, Diamond softened the remark by placing some blame elsewhere. “I asked our IT people to check it frame by frame and enhance it if they can, but we’ve heard nothing back yet. I’m thinking it may have been this motorbike.”
Ingeborg tried to assist. “I can guess where you’re going with this, guv. Fergus is a biker. He rides to Combe Hay and parks the bike out of sight in the field, ready to ambush Greg. Candida will have driven there in a van and parked in the field opposite. She was the one who stood in the lane and directed Greg off the road and into the field like a lamb to the slaughter. Am I right?”
“Substantially, yes, but that’s only a scenario. Let’s not get carried away.”
“Like the corpse?” Halliwell said, making his own attempt to lighten the mood.
“What?”
“Carried away in the van.”
“Haha. Are you ready, John?”
Leaman seemed to have got over his angst. “Do you want the blinds down?”
“Good idea. Gather round, people. The more eyes we have on this, the better.”
They watched the sequence from the moment Greg’s headlights picked out the figure in the hi-vis jacket signalling to him to turn off the lane and into the field. The lights were dipped as the car approached the figure and only switched on again to make the turn. The picture gave the illusion of the field moving left as Greg drove in and turned in a tight circle to bring the car to a position facing the lane. It was difficult to see anything clearly because of the bumping over the rutted surface, creating secondary movement up and down as well as sideways.
“Here’s the hedge coming back in view,” Diamond said, “and this is the bit I’m interested in.”
No more than a flash of brightness against the dark band of the hedge, but almost certainly a reflection from a shiny surface—and gone in a fraction of a second. When the car came to a halt, the definition improved, but the object of all the interest was well out of shot.
“Impossible to tell,” Keith Halliwell said.
Leaman stopped the film and ran it a second time. And a third. He froze the frame, and that didn’t help.
Ingeborg said, “I’m thinking the height may be a clue. It’s about the level of a bike. If it was the side of a car, the patch of light would be broader and taller, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re losing me,” Halliwell said.
Diamond told Leaman to run it again in slow motion.
The picture quality was even less clear.
“I give up.”
Halliwell asked Leaman to let the film run on and show the stabbing. They watched the top of Greg’s head close to the dash cam after he’d got out to investigate. They saw the moving shape of his attacker in mid-distance creeping towards the front of the car. Next, Greg’s head in silhouette crossed the screen from right to left when he backed against the bonnet. Then the close-up of the fist gripping the knife.
“Stop it there.”
Diamond’s voice had fresh urgency.
The image froze.
“For crying out loud, why didn’t I see this before? That’s the back of his hand.”
“So . . . ?” Halliwell said.
“The killer is left-handed. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s facing Greg, so his left side is closer to us.”
Silence.
He could almost hear their brains ticking over.
Halliwell was the first to speak. “We should all have spotted it when we first saw the film. We were so caught up in the killing that we didn’t give a toss how the knife was held.”
“One thing is certain now,” Diamond said. “The killer can’t be Will Legat. I’ve watched him hold the rope he uses as a lead for the dog. I saw him this morning in the pottery carry his coffee out of the kitchen. He’s right-handed. He’s got to be innocent.”
“How about Fergus?”
“I’m trying to think whether he’s right-handed as well,” Diamond said. “I haven’t seen as much of him as Legat.”
Jean Sharp spoke up for the first time. “Why don’t you call Paul? He’s got Fergus under observation.”
Paul Gilbert wasn’t high in Diamond’s thoughts. His last order to the young DC had been to stick with the man, whatever happened. “Would you get him for me?”
She got through and handed him the phone. He asked Gilbert where he was.
“Erm, it’s a pub, guv. They finished filming and derigging some time ago and some of them ended up here. I’m keeping watch on Fergus, like you asked. He’s in no hurry to leave.”
“And I know why. He’s got some explaining to do when he gets home. Have you had a few drinks yourself?”
“Just the one, a half, as cover.”
“And he’s still in sight? Tell me something. When he picks up his drink, does he hold it with his left hand or his right?”
There was a pause.
“His right. He’s holding it now.”
“You’re sure? He’s right-handed?”
“Is that what you’re asking? Yes, I’ve watched him using the mallet when he’s laying the track. It’s always in his right hand.”
In a voice drained of animation, Diamond said, “In that case, you can drink up and go home. Your work is done for the day.” A pounding had started in his chest and ears, a sure sign of the hypertension the doctors were always warning him about. He handed the phone back to Jean Sharp and sat on the edge of a desk. When he’d got himself together again, he raised his voice for all to listen. “Did you hear that? Fergus is in the clear. Our two prime suspects are innocent.” Out of ideas, hunched and inert, a beaten man, he added, “Where do we go from here? Don’t ask. You’d better start a whip-round for my retirement present.”
BACK AT HOME the same evening, Paloma said what none of the team had dared say: “Retirement? No, no no. This isn’t like you, beating yourself up.”
“I’m simply facing facts. I’ve had a long career—”
She didn’t allow him to go on. “With any number of successes.”
“Okay, and this time I got the breakthrough that is every investigating officer’s dream: film footage of the crime. But I missed the most obvious thing about the killer.”
“You didn’t. You were the only one who spotted it.”
“Eventually.”
“Listen, Peter, it wasn’t obvious at all. I saw the film myself and it didn’t dawn on me that the person holding the knife was left-handed.”
“That’s not surprising. You watched it only once and said you couldn’t look anymore.”
She traded some straight talk of her own. “No offence, but I’m not a thick-skinned policeman. Your entire team missed it and they must have watched the film over and over. The knife is raised and all the viewer can think of is the violence to come. We’re not looking at the hand.”
“I know what you mean,” he said from the depth of his despair, “but it isn’t just that mistake. Everyone knows I’ve lost the plot. I called out the dive team and convinced myself they’d find something.”
“You ordered a search. That’s what detectives do. It needed to be done.”
“And all it produced was a dead snake. I’m a laughing stock. I had forty officers searching the field for a day and a half and what did they find? A few fag ends that it turns out were nowhere near the crime scene and must have been dropped by some farmworker. When all this gets back to Georgina, as it will, it’s curtains for me. I’d rather resign before I’m sacked, so I’m seeing her tomorrow at eight thirty.”
She widened her eyes. “You’ve already made the appointment?”
“It will make her day.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. She relies on you more than she’ll ever admit. She puts the boot in when she can because you sometimes need kicking, but if you do this she’ll be in schtuck, to put it mildly. There’s another expression about a creek and a paddle that comes to mind.”
“I don’t give a toss about Georgina. This is the best thing for the team.”
“They won’t think so. I can’t understand why you’re doing this. I thought you had a breakthrough. Didn’t the search party find the tyre print of a motorbike?”
“That was Wolfgang and his CSI team. Another chunk out of Georgina’s budget.”
“Have you checked your suspects’ motorbikes?”
“Fergus is the only one who rides a bike and he’s right-handed. He can’t have done the stabbing. Legat goes everywhere on his two legs unless he can bum a lift and he is also right-handed. They were the two who could theoretically have murdered Greg Deans.”
“Only those two out of all the people involved in the show?”
“That was my belief until today when both proved negative.”
After some thought, Paloma said, “Peter, how’s your maths? Don’t two negatives make a positive?”
“How does that help?”
She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. Apparently she didn’t have an answer. “Sorry. It popped into my head and I thought you might make something of it. Just because Fergus didn’t strike the fatal blows, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. I’d get his tyres checked if I were you. Have you thought about Candida as the killer?”
He frowned. “Not up to now.”
“From the film you can’t see what sex the attacker is. You don’t get much idea of their size and you don’t see their face. I wouldn’t rule Candida out. She may already have murdered her own mother.”
“Mary Wroxeter?”
“Lacing her drink with pure alcohol.”
“Did I tell you that? I’ve changed my opinion. It was another of my wild theories, impossible to prove. Today I heard Candida’s version of that evening’s events and what she told me made sense and sounded honest.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“I understand where she’s coming from. She didn’t have an easy upbringing, but I was reassured about her feelings towards Mary. As an adult, she understood that Mary was a caring mother, in spite of all. When she got pregnant herself, she really wanted to share the news with her before anyone else knew of it. She wanted her approval and she got it. If I’m any judge of character, she didn’t cause Mary’s death.”
“Did someone else?”
He shook his head. “The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’m sure it’s a red herring. There’s only one murderer in this case and he—or she—works to a pattern, making a cold-blooded decision to kill, using a knife on the victim and going to some trouble to make sure the body isn’t discovered. None of this fits Mary’s death, which was brought on by an excessive intake of alcohol. As a method of murder, it would be unreliable and unpredictable. I was mistaken even to consider it.”
“No, Peter. It was a sudden death. It was your job to look into it.”
