He hardly stirred until he felt something soft nudging his face.
Raffles, wanting to be fed.
He checked the time. Four hours had gone by.
Four hours?
Without thinking why he was there he swung his legs off the sofa and was sharply reminded by his lumbar region. He swore so loudly that Raffles shot upstairs.
After more groaning, mainly at his own folly as he recalled what had happened, Diamond eased himself up, shuffled to the kitchen and opened a tin of cat food. Raffles reappeared as quickly as he had gone.
In CID they would be wondering where the boss was. Better let them know.
He called Halliwell.
“Keith, it’s me.”
“Okay.”
The slightly bored response wasn’t the fanfare of relief he’d been expecting. “What do you mean-okay? I’ve been out of the office since midday. Didn’t anyone notice?”
“You were going to the Langfords. We didn’t expect you back in a hurry.”
“Nearly seven hours?”
“Was it as long as that?”
“Forget it. What’s been happening?”
“Some progress. A bit of a breakthrough, in fact. Hold on. I’ll pass the phone to Inge.”
“Guv,” Ingeborg’s voice took over. “Did you meet Cyril?”
“No. He died.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Another one?”
“My reaction, too, but I can’t see how his death could have been caused by you-know-who. He went peacefully at home in his own bed.”
“So did the others. The men, at any rate. And was he rich, like Filiput?”
“He may have been at one time. By the end he was up to his ears in debt. I met his niece who is the sole heir and she’s come into nothing except a load of trouble.”
“So was it recent, his death?”
“Six weeks.” He told her about Cyril’s gambling addiction and the special provisions of his wife Winnie’s will. “She made sure her life’s savings didn’t all go to the loan sharks and bookies.”
“I’m warming to this woman,” Ingeborg said. “She must have cared about him to arrange the annuity.”
“He still managed to get through a lot, including the profit from selling their house in London. The cottage is just a two-up, two-down place unlikely to cover the debts. Even the Scrabble sessions at Cavendish Crescent seem to have been for money.”
“How do you play Scrabble for money?”
“Like any other game. There’s a winner, isn’t there? Or it could be a pound a point. Two people playing will score more than five hundred points between them, easily.”
“Are you a player, guv?”
“I used to have the occasional game with Steph, but not for money.” He went silent for a moment, remembering. Then he snapped out of it and told her about the necklace he’d found.
“What was he doing with a gold necklace?” she said.
“An antique gold necklace. I’m wondering if it belonged originally to Olga Filiput. She had some valuable things, I was told by Dr. Mukherjee, antiques and jewellery as well as those Fortuny gowns. Max inherited them and got worried because he couldn’t keep track of them all. He suspected some went missing-and we know where the gowns ended up.”
“Cyril nicked the necklace?”
“There was quite a free-for-all at the funeral.”
“I thought that was about Filiput’s railway collection.”
“Right, but railway items didn’t interest Cyril. He was the Scrabble partner, nothing to do with the GWR lot. He was under pressure from people he’d borrowed from. I’m wondering if he took his chance to look for something really worth taking while the others were fighting over the photographs and posters.”
“Wow. It’s possible.”
“What’s your news?” he asked her. “Keith said something about a breakthrough.”
She laughed. “That’s putting it strongly. I may have solved a small mystery. How would you like a midnight adventure with Keith and me?”
“Tonight?”
“That’s what we have in mind.”
“Doing what?”
“What Ivor Pellegrini does-a jaunt in the country to see if we can find them digging their holes.”
“The rabbits? Oh, for Christ’s sake, Inge.”
She laughed again. “I can pick you up from your house about eleven-thirty if you’re game.”
He was game but he wasn’t sure if his back was. “Are you sure this won’t be a waste of time?”
“Trust me. I’ve done my research. It’s going to be a revelation. Come on, guv. You’ll miss a few hours’ sleep but so what?”
Loss of sleep wasn’t the problem. He’d just had four hours. “All right. I’m on board.” He ended the call and went off to look for more painkillers.
He’d had a bath by the time they arrived but he couldn’t pretend he was fit.
Before they even got to the car, Halliwell asked, “What happened, boss? You look terrible.”
“It’ll pass.”
“You’re not walking right.”
“If you really want to know, I was helping a lady with a bed.”
Ingeborg was quick to warn Halliwell, “Don’t go there.” She opened the car door. “Are you able to get in, guv?”
“In, yes. I might need help to get out.”
The roads were almost empty but Ingeborg still observed the limit, mindful that at this hour any vehicle would be obvious to a police patrol. “We’ll go past Pellegrini’s house and follow the route he took the night of the crash,” she said.
“Do we know it?” Diamond asked.
“We do now.”
“How did you work this out?”
“What he was really up to? From his computer data. I spent hours searching for the download of the stuff he’d printed out-those murder notes-until steam was coming out of my ears. Then I had the idea of making a different search trying some of the crazy stuff he said when he was stopped by our guys. I used the search function, working with the most recent documents, which all seemed to be just boring railway stuff, and suddenly there it was staring back at me from the screen.”
“The crazy talk?”
“The meaning of it all.”
“Get away.”
“I’m serious.”
“Which word did it-rabbits?”
“No. If you look at the notes you made after your second visit to Lew Morgan, he was careful to point out to you that Pellegrini didn’t actually mention rabbits. That was Lew, trying to make sense of it.”
“As anyone would. As we did, in fact.”
“Pellegrini said he heard them digging their holes, right?”
“Supposedly. And heading for Bath.”
“Using hops.”
“Are we dealing with some other creatures, then?”
“You’ll see. It was the word ‘hops’ that cracked it for me.” She left that to sink in. “Henrietta Road is coming up shortly. Ideally we should be switching to tricycles to reconstruct his journey properly. We’ll have to imagine him packing his supplies in the saddlebag and pedalling off on his nightly jaunt.”
“A right bunch of idiots we’d look on trikes,” Halliwell said.
“There’s Pellegrini’s workshop, anyway,” Diamond said, looking left at the white building in front of the large house. “From now on we’re following in his tyre tracks.” He didn’t trouble Ingeborg any more for explanations. She’d made it plain that the whole purpose of the trip was to show, not tell.
They turned right at Henrietta Road and, shortly after, crossed the canal by way of Sydney Road.
“I’m going to cheat a bit now,” Ingeborg said. “He used the back roads but it’s simpler for us to nip along the A36. We’ll rejoin him at Bathampton.”
“Is that rain I see on the windscreen?” Diamond said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Are they just as active in the wet, then?”
“It won’t stop them.” She steered the conversation away from the rabbits-or whatever she was saving for later. “With Cyril dead, that makes two men and two women in a year and a half: Olga and Max Filiput, Trixie Pellegrini and Cyril. Pellegrini is dangerous to know.”