He should have been treating them with more respect, he realised. Normally printouts were insignificant, easily replaceable. But these, it had become clear, weren’t saved as files in Pellegrini’s computer. They were the only record of the man’s interest in ingenious ways of killing. They ought to be kept in an evidence bag.
Some of the so-called methods were pretty absurd. The icicle through the heart. The poisoned toothpaste. The air bubble in the bloodstream. They might impress in an old-fashioned detective story, but putting them into practice in reality would be so difficult and risky that no intelligent killer would bother with them.
And yet Diamond knew of real crimes that were scarcely less ingenious. Who would have thought of an umbrella as a murder weapon? In 1978 a Bulgarian defector called Georgi Markov was queuing for a bus on Waterloo Bridge when he felt a sharp pain in his thigh and turned to see a man picking up an umbrella. Three days later Markov died, poisoned by a small platinum pellet containing the deadly poison ricin, apparently fired from the umbrella. Of course, this theory relied on Markov’s memory of the shooting. It might have been dismissed as fanciful were it not for the discovery of the pellet when the muscle tissue was forensically examined. It then emerged that only ten days earlier another Bulgarian called Kostov waiting at a station in the Paris Metro had been shot with a pellet fired from a shopping bag.
Pellegrini, an inventive man, an engineer, was not incapable of devising a method all his own. He’d researched other original murders, as he would, being methodical. But he aspired to perfection, the undetectable crime.
Poison?
The victims had died at home, in bed, apparently of natural causes. Had he found some substance that acted efficiently and left no trace? Poisoners had long looked for the colourless, odourless deadly dose. Even if he’d found such a thing, how was it administered? He was known to go out at night. Had he visited the old men and made sure they took their toxic nightcaps? It didn’t seem likely. The risks were too high.
And Pellegrini was an engineer, not a chemist. Poisons unknown to science weren’t his stock-in-trade.
The answer had to be different, clever and foolproof.
Well, Diamond told himself, I’m no fool.
Even so, he tucked the printouts into an evidence bag.
Keith Halliwell had been on the phone some time, trying to find whether Pellegrini had an account with a local taxi company.
“Any joy?” Diamond asked.
Joy wasn’t in the look he got back. “Got it straight away. He’s used Abbey Taxis for years.”
“And…?”
“They’ve never taken him to Little Langford. Even as I was speaking to them I was thinking how bloody silly it was,” Halliwell said. “An intelligent killer wouldn’t do this. He’d go to a different firm.”
“You tried them all?”
“All the ones in Yellow Pages. And I thought of something else.” Halliwell was frayed at the edges this morning, proving he, too, was tired from last night.
“Tell me, then.”
“He wouldn’t use his own name.”
“Ah, but he’d still have to give them the address.”
“Come on, guv, get real. He could ask them to pick him up outside the nearest pub if he wanted. Anywhere, really.”
Diamond was forced to agree. His long-term deputy was ahead of him over this task. “Should have thought of it before I asked you.”
And now Halliwell looked down and rearranged the pens on his desk as if he was uncomfortable about what he was going to say. “You’re just as confident as ever, are you?”
“Confident of what? His guilt?”
“Not that exactly. Don’t get me wrong, guv. You’ve got my full support. The thing is… can we be certain these deaths are suspicious?”
Diamond could have erupted, but he didn’t. He summoned a smile. “Of course they’re suspicious or we wouldn’t be beating ourselves up to get at the truth. All the suspicion is on our side-or mine, if you like. So, yes, they’re suspicious deaths as long as we have our doubts about them. The question you meant to ask is can we be certain these deaths are murders, and of course we can’t. They were certified as natural and the bodies were cremated.”
Halliwell eased a finger around his collar. After this admission, he really had to press the big man harder. “We wouldn’t be questioning them at all if it wasn’t for what we know about Pellegrini.”
“True. He almost got away with it.”
“We’re pinning everything on him?”
“Is there anyone else?”
“But there’s nothing definite.”
“This is normal, Keith. We’re not going to find a smoking gun. We do the groundwork and build up a case. It’s why Inge has been slogging over the computer and you’re phoning taxi firms.”
“I understand that.” He cleared his throat. “I was awake most of the night asking myself how it was we came to cast him as a killer in the first place.”
“That’s down to what I found in his workshop.”
“The Internet material?”
“And the stolen gowns.” Some irritation crept into his voice. He, too, was well down on sleep. “I thought you were up to speed on all this. Max Filiput was suspicious that valuable items like the gowns were disappearing from the house. He talked to Dr. Mukherjee about it.”
“It makes Pellegrini a thief, but does it make him a killer?”
“It gives him a motive for murder, covering up the crime. The timing is significant, too. Filiput dies pretty soon after. You still don’t look happy with this. Have I missed something?”
Halliwell rubbed the side of his face, deeply ill at ease. “Until yesterday we were thinking those old men in the railway club were earlier murder victims, but we changed our minds because of the death certificates. They didn’t die mysteriously in their sleep. They were ill, seriously ill. Flu, bronchial pneumonia, an aneurysm. The reason Pellegrini had their cremation urns was to scatter the ashes secretly along the railway as they’d requested.”
“Agreed.”
“Murder was in our minds,” Halliwell went on in the same dissenting tone but almost apologetic. “Serial murder. But now we have to rein back.”
“Okay,” Diamond said, testy from fatigue. “Three names come off the victim list.”
“Who’s left? What about the wives? We thought he may have killed Trixie and Olga but that’s far from certain.”
“We know he was present when they died, both of them,” Diamond said. “Up to now we concentrated on the others. We’ve yet to investigate what really happened. There’s only so much three of us can do.”
“The women are long shots if we’re honest, guv. Olga falling down the stairs doesn’t square with any of the other deaths.”
“So what are you telling me? None of it happened?”
“It’s not the case it was shaping up to be. We’re down to Max and possibly Cyril, and they were signed off by their doctors as dying naturally.”
“Naturally-but suddenly.”
“They were both old men over ninety. What I’m trying to say is are we clinging to the idea of murder on not much evidence?”
Diamond put a good face on it but he was shaken. He understood the effort it had taken for Halliwell to voice his concerns. The team was losing confidence, and it had to be addressed. “Personally, I don’t share your doubts, but maybe that’s because I’m closer to the man than you are. I’ve spoken to some of the people who knew him and I’ve seen inside his house and his workshop and sat beside his bed in hospital. I gave him the kiss of life, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to say I have a hunch about him. I don’t work on the basis of hunches, as you know. But I’m not giving up on him. It’s your choice whether you go along with me. It’s not part of your job description, right?”
“I’m not quitting, guv. It needed to be said, that’s all.”