Diamond came up with the required compliment. “You’ve done a fine job here, Keith.” And immediately added, “Can we get more on the other two?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Doing what?”
“There’s a website listing every issue of the magazine and all the articles and their authors.”
“These two wrote for the magazine?”
“No. But there are letters in each issue. I’m hoping their names crop up there.”
“Okay. And now will you answer my first question?”
“What was that?”
“What did they die of?”
“Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.”
“What’s stopping you?” Diamond’s charitable phases never lasted long.
“There’s a standard wording they use in the paper. He or she passed away peacefully.”
“So what? It’s a cliché.”
“Or sadly or after a long illness or a short illness. That’s all you’re told in at least ninety percent of the notices. Marshall-Tomkin went peacefully, Edmund Seaton the same and Roger Carnforth after a short illness.”
Diamond took a sharp, impatient breath. “No help at all.”
Halliwell shrugged. “The newspaper isn’t going to say they were murdered, even if they were.”
It was a telling point. Diamond had to grin. “Is something wrong with us, looking for evil at every turn?”
“Somebody needs to, guv.”
“Thanks for that. Massimo Filiput is said to have died in his sleep, which would be what…?”
“Peaceful.”
“Yes, peaceful. And we can’t exclude murder. A peaceful death of an old man means there wouldn’t be any call for an autopsy. If there was poison in his system it wouldn’t be found. The doctor had no reason to be suspicious.”
“Poison isn’t used much these days.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s easy to detect, isn’t it?” Halliwell said. “In the past, they used arsenic or cyanide or something similar and sometimes got away with it, but with all the science these days they wouldn’t. And, anyway, the classic poisons aren’t available any more as flypapers or what have you. You aren’t even allowed to buy two packs of aspirin at one time.”
“True, but there are drugs prescribed every day that could kill someone. The average house is stocked with pills and potions I’d think twice about taking, and that’s not to mention rat bait and weedkiller in the garden shed. The stuff is still out there.”
“But would it be a peaceful death?”
Diamond laughed. “Depends. Personally, I’d rather not swallow weedkiller, but some of the other things might do the job painlessly.”
Halliwell still looked unconvinced. “Do you mind if I ask something?”
“Go ahead. It’s your job.”
“You fought hard to save Pellegrini’s life. How will you feel if he turns out to have been a serial killer?”
Deep breath. No one was better than Halliwell at putting the boss on the spot.
“Not great.” He took a moment to frame a better answer. “Look at it this way, Keith. I found him and did what anyone would. No choice.” He shook his head. “It’s pulling me apart. My job as the senior detective is to step back from the detail and take a broad view. I want him to be blameless, but each day that passes brings more evidence. He may have carried out one murder or several or none at all. I can’t rule out anything. To ignore our suspicions would be dangerous, sloppy and wrong.”
“That’s tough.”
“I’d rather not say any more.”
“So what’s the strategy?”
“Same as always. Gather the evidence. Follow up every lead. Miss nothing.”
“Still off the record?”
“Has to be. We don’t have enough to trigger a full-scale enquiry. Georgina would do her nut if she knew I was taking so much of your time and Ingeborg’s. But she did tell me to stay in touch with the fallout of the crash.”
“She’s worried about the IPCC investigation.”
“You bet she is.”
“Are they setting one up?”
“It’s mandatory. This is classed as a death or serious-injury matter.”
“Has someone complained?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Georgina is bricking it that they’ll discover our guys were at fault.”
Mrs. Stratford, the cleaner to the Filiputs, was easy to trace through the electoral register, but difficult to pin down. Her neighbour in the terrace where she lived in Oldfield Park said she was out all day and often didn’t get home until after ten. It sounded as if she was a workaholic.
Diamond needed an insider’s account of the Filiput household. He couldn’t rely only on Dr. Mukherjee. Normally he would have sent one of his DCs to catch up with the cleaner, but this wasn’t a normal enquiry. Truth to tell, he was finding an escape from his personal conflict by taking on the dogsbody jobs of the sort he’d done long ago as a probationer in the Met.
Late in the afternoon he cornered Mrs. Stratford in a printworks in Beacon Hill, off Lansdown Road. She was bending over a bin-bag, filling it with the screwed-up waste paper that littered the floor, and she was a surprise, not much over twenty, with the figure of a gymnast and thick copper-coloured hair tied back with a scarf. And she was speaking to herself, which wasn’t a good sign. Speaking, not singing. No headset. He couldn’t make out the words except that there seemed to be strong emotion in them, her shoulders flexing with the stress of whatever she was dealing with.
He made a noise deep in his throat and she straightened up and did an about turn as sharply as a sentry.
“Don’t you dare come any closer.”
“Sorry to startle you,” he said.
“I ought to kick you where it hurts most, creeping up on me like that.” They were angry, shaming eyes.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.
“You shouldn’t be here. This is closed for business now.”
He introduced himself and without giving much away about his real suspicions let her know he was interested in the Filiputs.
She didn’t react the way most people do when a police officer speaks to them.
“You can take a running jump.”
He ignored this. “I was told you worked for them.”
“They’re entitled to their privacy.”
“They’re dead,” he said. He was about to add, “They don’t care any more,” but he stopped himself. This young woman had known the old couple and it seemed she still felt defensive towards them. To him they were only names. “Look, whatever you tell me stays private. I’m police, not press. I need information about their daily routine and I believe you know more than anyone else.”
“So?”
Still defiant. He had to reveal more.
“It’s possible someone was stealing from them-or at least from Mr. Filiput in the last months of his life.”
“And you think I-” She took a threatening step towards him.
“God, no. That isn’t what I’m saying.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“What was taken?” she asked-the first sign of interest and maybe the first crack in the stone wall.
“Certain items of his wife’s, in particular three valuable gowns.”
“She had some nice things.”
He sensed she might be ready to open up. “Do you recall Mr. Filiput saying anything of his wife’s had gone missing?”
“To me, his cleaner? He had better manners than that.”
This was verbal karate, and Diamond wasn’t winning. “I was told he couldn’t keep track of things and felt inadequate.”
“You were told? You already talked to someone else?”
“His doctor.”
“She knows more than I do, then.”
“I got the impression from her that you were more than just the cleaner.”
Her eyes blazed like chip pans. “You bastard. He was old enough to be my grandfather.”
The best he could think of to calm her down was, “Hold on, you’re not reading me right. All I’m suggesting is you went to some trouble to look after the old couple, shopping for them, and so on.”