Killing with Confetti, page 23
Several were still out. Expenses would take a hit today.
Keith Halliwell was looking pleased with himself, so Diamond went over. “What have you learned, then?”
“May be nothing,” Keith said in a tone suggesting the opposite. “How did you get on, guv?”
“As I expected. Irving playing the innocent. At the critical time between six and seven-thirty, he was in the park talking to trees, rehearsing his father-of-the-bride speech.”
“Couldn’t he come up with anything better than that?”
“It’s so off the wall it might be true. He hasn’t got much imagination. And I’ve just had my ear bent by Georgina. She wants to dumb everything down. Come on, cheer me up.”
An artful gleam came into Halliwell’s eye. “What’s it worth?”
“A kick where it hurts most if you don’t cough up.”
“Well, the word on the street is that a shipment of military weapons was smuggled into the country four weeks ago from Hungary and delivered to an arms dealer in Swindon. They included several cases of ex-army AK-63 assault rifles.”
Diamond whistled in appreciation. “What’s his name?”
A shrug. “You know how it is working with snouts. Everything is guarded with a triple lock. I offered some extra and this Swindon guy is being tapped for more information.”
“As we speak?”
“I made it very clear how urgent this is.”
“It’s likely you’ve found the supplier. These weapons aren’t much used.”
“I’ll give you a shout as soon as.”
This wasn’t the full breakthrough, but it was promising.
“One more thing,” Diamond said. “Where’s Paul Gilbert?”
“I sent him home. He looked knackered.”
“I’ll give him a call. I forgot to ask something.”
He returned to his office and called Paul’s number and got a female voice. The young officer lived with his parents. In the economy of modern Britain he’d be drawing his pension when he finally got his own pad.
“Paul is asleep,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “He was on duty all day yesterday in that dreadful rain and I’m wondering if he caught a cold.”
He caught worse than that, Diamond thought, but the lad can’t have mentioned it to his mother. “Feeling below par, is he?”
“He was a bit out of sorts when he got in last night, insisting on wearing his baseball cap in the house, which he’s never done before. His clothes were wet through and he went to bed almost at once saying he had a headache. I gave him two Ibuprofen tablets but he was up at seven this morning, still in the baseball cap, insisting he would be needed at work. You’d like to speak to him, I’m sure.”
“That’s all right, Mrs. Gilbert. Don’t disturb him now. Ask him to give me a bell when he surfaces.”
“He wouldn’t like that. If you’re calling him here it must be important. He admires you enormously, Mr. Diamond. He’d hate to keep you waiting. Hang on and I’ll get him.”
Very little time passed before the young constable’s voice came through. “Something wrong, guv?”
“Not at all. Relax. It could have waited, but your mum insisted on waking you. There was something I meant to ask you and didn’t. My fault entirely. But first, what is it with the baseball cap?”
“That? It’s to hide the stitches on my head. If my parents saw them, they’d be sure to ask questions. I tried brushing my hair over the patch the nurse shaved, but it still shows.”
“They don’t know what happened?”
“It’s my work, isn’t it?”
Diamond wished Georgina had been on the line to hear that.
“Good man. Now, this may be difficult for you, but I’d like you to cast your mind back to when you were on the roof with the gunman. Try and picture him handing you the water to drink. Was the bottle in his right hand or his left?”
Paul took a few seconds to answer. “His right, guv. He was right-handed, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You’re certain?”
“Positive. I can’t tell you much else about him, but I know that much. I was with him for more than ten hours, on and off.”
Diamond’s grin was wider than the Royal Crescent. He thanked Paul and put down the phone.
All doubt was removed from his mind. This was murder. A right-handed man doesn’t shoot himself in the left temple. Call it an impossible crime as many times as you want. You’d be wrong. There had to be a way the hitman had been shot at point-blank range.
The only conceivable explanation so far had been Ingeborg’s: a cat and mouse set-up in which the cat didn’t realise he was in fact the mouse until too late. He’d allowed his killer to get near under the pretext of a large wad of money changing hands. A bribe to buy him off. A fatal mistake.
The theory hadn’t washed with Diamond when he’d first heard it and still didn’t. A hitman doesn’t fall for a trick like that. He was a well-armed professional who had made an elaborate plan to kill. Through no fault of his own, the shooting from the rooftop hadn’t been possible and he’d been forced to improvise. Down in the hypocaust he was still committed, still armed and still primed for his opportunity.
Okay, he should have fired first. Why didn’t he?
Could it be the Joe Irving factor? Diamond had seen enough of the gang leader to know he was as cunning as any villain he’d encountered, like a large lizard sunning itself, poised to strike while giving the impression it didn’t much care. He’d insisted on this wedding despite the danger of putting himself in the public eye and at risk of being killed by a contract killer hired by a rival. Instead of surrounding himself with bodyguards, he’d allowed George Brace to manage the security. He’d conducted himself throughout with confidence, as if he were in control and not the police.
At the end of the day, Irving had survived and the gunman was dead. How on earth had he engineered that? Could he cynically have used his own daughter’s wedding as a trap?
Presumably, he’d been given a tip-off by someone in the criminal world that a hitman was definitely gunning for him. Yet in the evening he’d behaved with the supreme confidence of a man who knew any danger had been dealt with. He’d lined up boldly at the edge of the Great Bath for the photos and he’d stood for his speech and taken his time making it. It all suggested he knew his would-be killer was already dead.
So going by Irving’s behaviour, the killing had been done in the time slot after the wedding and before the reception. And his alibi for the afternoon was flakier than the confetti that littered his house.
Diamond lingered in the office another hour and a half in the hope of more information coming in from the team’s boozy lunch dates with the CID’s top grasses, but there was little of help. No one in Bristol seemed to have heard anything about Sid Felix for several weeks. He’d done a disappearing act. There was no word about anyone issuing a contract.
He shut up shop for the day.
32
Patience had never been a virtue of Diamond’s. As soon as he got in on Monday he phoned the firm who had carried out the crime scene inspection.
“It’s far too soon,” the pitiless voice on the end of the line said. “You have no idea how long our procedures take.”
“Oh, but I do,” Diamond said. “I know from bitter experience and that’s why I’m asking.”
“You can ask as much as you like, but—”
“You and I are batting for the same team, you know.” He was second to none at winkling out information.
The voice underwent a subtle change, from implacable to faintly regretful. “We can’t under any circumstances reveal our findings until they’re validated.”
“My friend, I wouldn’t dream of asking for unvalidated findings. A hint of progress would be good. Have you actually made a start?”
Unwise to ask. There was petulance in the answer. “People like you don’t seem to realise calls like this are counter-productive. Of course we’ve started.”
“And one of the first things you do is examine the firearms for prints and DNA, because they need to be handed on to ballistics for test firing, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Excellent. And are there signs someone made an attempt to wipe the handgun?”
Shock, horror. “I can’t possibly tell you that. I’ll be in trouble with my supervisor.”
“He will never know.”
“She—and she sacked the last guy who messed up.”
“You’re not the sort to mess up. I can tell from your voice you’re encouraged by what’s been found so far.” A little applesauce never went unappreciated.
“You could be right about that.”
“About you?”
“About what you said.”
Diamond waited for more. He knew the pressure a pause can bring.
“About the gun.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” He waited again.
The urge to share good news is a basic human trait.
“You aren’t mistaken about the gun. There was a clear set of prints, too clear, in fact.”
“Really? It was wiped? After the shot was fired?”
“That’s impossible to tell. The victim’s prints were present, as you’d expect . . .”
“And?”
“Very little else.”
“But something else?”
“We also found a trace of a second person’s DNA.”
“Nice work.” He pressed the phone harder to his ear. “Well done.”
“What I just told you is off the record.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we never had this conversation. I haven’t even asked your name, have I?”
“We won’t know whose DNA it is until the samples have been checked at the profiling lab against the national database, and of course there’s no guarantee either sample will match anything.”
“You’ll have to be content to sit back and wait—like me,” Diamond said. “The story of my life.”
Whilst sitting back and waiting, he used the back of a Home Office circular about rises in crime and falling detection rates to summarise the case for murder.
Joe’s unlikely alibi.
Victim was right-handed. Entrance wound left.
Gun had been wiped.
Trace of different DNA.
Victim was a hitman. Kill or be killed.
Joe’s confident demeanour after the killing.
Then his phone buzzed. He was expecting a call from Halliwell to report on the autopsy, but this was the office downstairs. Someone in Bath had asked to speak to the officer in charge of the suicide investigation.
At first he was thrown. He’d forgotten that the rest of the world wasn’t thinking of the death as murder. He was streets ahead.
“Put them on, then.”
“She isn’t there anymore.”
“Where exactly is ‘there’?”
“The One Stop Shop.”
The police’s only public presence in the city ever since dear old Manvers Street police station had been sold off. Diamond’s blood pressure rose whenever the One Stop was mentioned.
“You took her contact details, I hope?”
“I didn’t speak to her. I’m just passing on the message. Apparently, she wouldn’t give her name, sir. She said she had some shopping to do and she’d return at noon and she expected to find you there.”
“At the One Stop?”
“Yes.”
“Who does she think she is—the Chief Constable?”
“I got the impression she was someone rather important.”
“And did you also get the impression she was playing games, wanting to see a senior policeman jump to her command?”
“I don’t know about that, sir.”
“Did she say why she wanted to meet me personally?”
“I didn’t speak to her myself. I believe she’d been online and seen your press release and the photo.”
“Had she recognised the dead man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has anyone else got in touch yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
He looked at his watch. “I’d better see this Lady Bracknell. Okay, I’m sorry I lost my rag. My fault entirely. Pass on this message, would you? If I’m late, I’ll be on my way.”
Going out, he met Keith Halliwell, fresh from the autopsy.
“That was quick.”
“One of the quickest I’ve attended, guv. I’ve had haircuts that lasted longer.”
“What did Dr. Sealy have to say?”
“The bullet in the head did the job, as if we didn’t know. The skin around the wound was burned from contact with the gun. He was a fit man in his forties, reasonably well nourished.”
“No other injuries?”
“Abrasions to his arm, elbow and hip, consistent with falling on the uneven surface where he was found. Superficial skin damage to his palms and fingers.”
“From climbing over that wall, we think. Did Sealy come up with anything suspicious about the shooting?”
“You mean evidence of someone else being involved? Sorry, but no.”
“Good thing we’ve got some pointers of our own. I’m heading out to the One Stop Shop to meet a woman who may know who the victim is. That’s my hope. She could be an attention-seeker.”
“Good luck with that,” Halliwell said.
Every trawl for information brings in a high percentage of dross, most of it from responsible, well-meaning citizens who are genuinely confused. Bath, being the genteel place it is, has more than its share of them. And then there are the time wasters who want to be part of the action. You have to cultivate the patience that Diamond found so elusive. He didn’t have high hopes that this imperious lady would have personal knowledge of a professional hitman.
He parked outside the railway station and marched the few yards up Manvers Street to where Bath and North East Somerset had concentrated its council services and where the police had been allocated a space that to his jaundiced eye was a hole in the wall.
Two officers were visible behind the counter. There wasn’t room for more. One was sharp enough to recognise him.
“Thanks for coming over, sir. The lady is in the meeting area with the small white dog.”
“There’s a dog as well?”
She was at one of the round tables staring at her phone, most likely checking how late he was. Dark-haired, maybe forty (as he got older he found it more difficult to tell younger people’s ages), no make-up he could detect, black top with a glittery motif and white jeans.
The dog was a West Highland terrier.
He went over. “I believe you asked to see me. I’m Peter Diamond, Bath Police.”
“Magda Lyle,” she said. “Ex-governor of Bream Prison.” She handed him a business card that said as much.
His brain played rapid catch-up. Ingeborg had been on about a riot at Bream a few years ago when Joe Irving was detained there. This was more promising than he’d dared to hope.
He offered coffee. “Don’t know if it’s any good here. I’m based at an outpost up near the motorway.”
“Lucky you. I won’t, thanks, but Blanche would appreciate a bowl of water.”
Fetch for the dog? he thought briefly and irritably. I’m not one of your inmates, madam. Then he looked down and happened to notice the woman’s foot and shin and the solid surface of a prosthetic leg.
He fetched the dog’s water.
He had remembered with a stab of self-reproach what he’d heard about the riot—the prison governor crashing her car deliberately to thwart her kidnappers. This woman wasn’t a freeloader. She was a hero.
Humbled, he sat opposite her.
“Your dead man,” she said. “I know who he is. He was in Bream when I was one of the governors there. I saw the photo you issued and I’m certain I’m right. His name is Jack Peace. He was serving five years for grievous bodily harm. His DNA will be on record. You can check it.”
This was a breakthrough. He wanted to jump on the table and shout, “Yes!” Instead of which, he controlled himself and said with the calm of a Buddhist monk, “Do you remember him personally?”
“Quite well. Not so well as some of the others who were sent to me regularly because of behavioural problems. Peace was no trouble at all. That was my judgement, for what it’s worth.” She paused and looked away, as if deciding how much she would tell. Clearly there was more to her story than this. “There was a serious riot in 2015 that brought my career to a sudden end. I should have been on duty, but I was prevented from going there. I saw none of it. I was involved indirectly, but outside the prison walls, so I’m unable to comment on any of his actions on the day.”
Diamond was careful not to lead her. If he’d realised she was going to be a key witness he’d have asked for a formal statement and made sure one of his team was present. Now she’d started, he’d hear her out and arrange the formalities later.
“You’ll need to read the report,” she said. “It wasn’t a spontaneous incident. There was planning and communication with the criminal community outside. Let’s not pretend our prisons are secure. As everyone knows, offenders and their contacts smuggle in drugs and they improvise weapons if they can’t smuggle them in as well. Our staffers do their best, but it’s out of control in all the prisons I’ve known. We have poorly trained officers trying to deal with sophisticated technology. Phones get smaller and easier to bring in. Drones are used increasingly. I can’t tell you how the riot was plotted and the report doesn’t have much to say about it either. We take it as a given that prisoners are in touch with the underworld. I don’t need to tell you this.” She stiffened in her chair. “Blanche!”
The small white dog had drunk its fill and was showing its gratitude by resting its front paws on Diamond’s thigh and licking the back of his hand with a bright pink tongue cool from the water.
