“He’s got several long pieces about it on his computer,” Ingeborg said. “When I put in the word ‘hops’ I had scores of hits. They’re working six nights a week, sinking 16,000 piles between Maidenhead and Swansea. That’s 235 miles and they can do between 1,200 and 1,500 metres in a night.”
“You’re really into this,” Halliwell said.
“They follow up with the masts and portal booms and string the overhead cables as they go. Do you want to know about the HOOB?”
“The what?” Diamond said.
“The High Output Operations Base. It’s a place near Swindon where the HOPS can lie up by day ready to roll into action the next night. Then there’s the Hobbit.”
“What’s that?”
“A little guy with pointy ears.”
Another pause for thought before Halliwell said, “Ha bloody ha.”
“Sergeant Smith,” Diamond said, “you’re in serious danger of losing all the credit you just built up.”
They stood watching the pile-driving for ten minutes more, until the rain forced them back to the car.
Fatigue set in as they drove back to Bath, but Diamond still found the energy to say, “We seriously underestimated this guy, calling him a nutter. He may be helpless in hospital but he’s having a bloody good laugh at us.”
14
Was the case against Pellegrini in any way undermined?
Diamond was in a defiant frame of mind. For days suspicion had mounted inexorably to the point where it was no longer tenable to believe the man was anything else but a serial killer. It had been hell to admit. The sense of loyalty, kinship, almost brotherly love, engendered by the lifesaving episode had set up a conflict that seemed irreconcilable. But he’d passed the tipping point. His responsibility as a detective overrode everything else.
He’d made up his mind, hardened his heart, and then what? The death certificates showed three of the presumed victims died naturally.
Would he go into reverse?
Not now.
There was evidence of theft, of a demonstrable interest in murder methods and there were other suspicious deaths-to which Cyril Hardstaff’s might now be added.
He gave serious thought to the matter over a later-than-usual breakfast next morning. He felt better than expected after not much sleep, so he treated himself to bacon and eggs and a generous assortment of extras. Dr. Mukherjee’s concerns about his health weren’t going to stop him. He needed nourishing. His brain worked better when he ate well.
On the face of it, Cyril had died naturally, in his own bed. No doubts had been raised at the time.
A pathetic old man up to his ears in debt. Who’d want to kill him?
And why?
Pellegrini was a man with a proven interest in killing. He appeared to have found a clever way to take the life of his so-called friend, Massimo Filiput.
Clever and calculated.
He hadn’t done it under pressure, in a hurry or a panic. First he’d committed theft. The three Fortuny gowns had been stolen some time before Filiput died.
Then murder.
And then Filiput’s friend Cyril had died.
Similar situation: at home, in bed, apparently of natural causes.
Both were old men whose wives had died. Both had once worked together. Both met regularly for a game of Scrabble. But their personal fortunes couldn’t have been more different. Filiput had died a millionaire whereas Cyril had gambled away all the money he could lay his hands on.
Puzzling.
Diamond poured himself another coffee.
Think of it in terms of the old trinity every prosecution has to address: motive, means and opportunity.
Finding a motive that fitted both victims would not be easy.
If it wasn’t financial gain, what else could it be? This hadn’t been spur-of-the-moment violence. It was coolly planned and cleverly carried out.
Had it been done to settle old scores? These were elderly men, all three. Had there been issues at some earlier stage of their lives? If so, the truth would take some unravelling, with two dead and the other insensible.
The motive he’d thought up already while watching the boules-players in Queen Square still appealed to him-that the killing had been done out of conceit, just for the ego trip of carrying out a perfect murder. Or a series of perfect murders. He wasn’t ready yet to share this startling theory with Keith and Ingeborg, but the possibility remained.
Motive, means and opportunity.
Means.
You name it, Diamond told himself as he recalled the pages from the online forum. Ingenious poisons, icicles, air in the bloodstream. Umpteen suggestions to work with. Detecting them would be the problem. Both men had been cremated.
“And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said to no other audience than his cat, Raffles, who didn’t even look up from the food dish, “we come to the third element-opportunity.”
Filiput had died at home in Cavendish Crescent, apparently alone. His body had been discovered in the morning by his cleaner. It wasn’t a locked-room mystery because he kept a spare key behind the drainpipe outside the front door. Mrs. Stratford knew about the key and so, in all probability, did others.
Simple.
Cyril, too, had died at home, but his situation was more problematical. He lived an hour’s drive from Bath. Getting there might be difficult. Did Pellegrini drive, or did he only get about on his tricycle? And how would he gain access to the cottage? They weren’t insurmountable questions, but they needed to be asked.
Cyril Hardstaff’s death warranted urgent investigation. His life, too.
At work, he walked straight into an ambush. The IPCC duo were standing beside Keith Halliwell’s desk. What were they called-Grabham and Slice? Keith looked as if he’d already been dragged and stretched, and that aided the memory.
“There you are, Mr. Diamond,” Dragham called across the room. “Was the traffic extra heavy this morning? I thought by now the Bath rush-hour would be over.”
He let the sarcasm roll off. He wouldn’t be telling them about the night excursion and he hoped Keith hadn’t.
Miss Stretch said, “We’re following up on our visit yesterday to Mr. Bellerby, the gentleman who made the emergency call. We weren’t aware that you took two colleagues with you until he informed us.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It was for Mr. Bellerby. He complained about police, in his words, ‘crawling all over’ his bungalow.”
“Ridiculous.”
“DI Halliwell admits to handling a pair of binoculars without the permission of the owner.”
“Is that crawling all over the bungalow? As I recall, he was testing what you could see through them. Isn’t that so, Keith?”
Halliwell nodded. “Absolutely.”
Miss Stretch switched from Keith’s failings to Diamond’s. “Mr. Bellerby didn’t like the tone of your questioning. He called it a Gestapo-style interrogation.”
“For crying out loud, he’s the little Hitler, not me.”
“He hasn’t registered an official complaint yet, but I’d better warn you. If he does, we’ll need to investigate.”
This was becoming farcical. “Couldn’t you see for yourselves what he’s like? The man’s got an agenda. He objects to the restoration of the lido he can see from the back of his bungalow.”
“He didn’t say anything about a lido to us.”
“Did you go into the back bedroom where he keeps his spying equipment?”
They looked blank.
“I thought not. We have the advantage of local knowledge.”
“You’d better tell us,” Miss Stretch said.
He took on a confiding, almost sympathetic role. “The lido is well known, a site of historic interest. Cleveland Pools is the only surviving Georgian lido in Great Britain. It was used from 1815 until the 1980s and then went into disrepair. The people who run the trust have done well. They’ve got lottery funding and they’re putting on events to raise more money. Bellerby doesn’t approve.”