Not for the first time, Diamond was impressed by her clarity of thought. “The events dovetail neatly. The funeral marks the end of Cyril’s stealing. Everything is taken over by the executors, listed and locked away. One steady source of income has dried up, but blackmailing Pellegrini is a new opportunity.”
“Wicked old man.”
“It didn’t help him, did it? He was up against a master criminal.”
“I don’t know why you’re so uneasy about it all,” she said. “You seem to have it buttoned up.”
He shook his head. “None of this will stand up in court. I need evidence and witnesses.”
“You’ve got the gown.”
“I returned it to the workshop.”
“Well, you know where it is. You can go there any time. Have you still got the stolen necklace?”
“I have, but it incriminates Cyril, not Pellegrini. And Cyril is dead.”
“What about the printout from the workshop-the murder forum? You have that still?”
“I do. But it proves nothing, except an interest in criminology, as any lawyer would point out in court.”
“A morbid interest.”
“Plenty of people like to read about such things.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve looked along your bookshelves. But you’re a professional. You need to know about this stuff. A retired engineer doesn’t.”
“You can’t convict on people’s interests,” he said. “Pellegrini is no more culpable than all the people who contributed to the forum. Less so, if he simply reads the stuff and doesn’t join in. We can’t even prove it was downloaded to his computer.”
“When he comes out of the coma, he’ll have plenty of questions to answer.”
“If he comes out of the coma.”
“That’s defeatist talk I don’t expect to hear from you, Peter Diamond.”
His mobile phone rang. He’d left it in the hall by the front door.
“Do you want me to get it?” Paloma asked.
“Don’t bother. It’ll be some cold call.”
“Do you get them this late? I don’t.”
“Not usually, but I’ve known it to happen.”
“Could be an urgent call from the police.”
“Yes, and I could be out walking the dog.”
“You don’t have a dog.”
“The neighbour’s dog, then. If it’s important, they’ll try again.”
The ringing stopped.
“Where were we?” Paloma asked.
“Defeatist talk.”
“Yes, you were saying Pellegrini might never come out of the coma, but even if that’s the case, the truth about his crimes needs exposing.”
“Sorry to disillusion you,” he said, “but we drop the investigation when there’s no one to prosecute.”
She frowned. “You mean they’re the winners if they die first?”
“In a sense they are. We can’t collar Cyril for stealing the jewellery. He gets away with it. All we do is make a note on file that he was the main suspect.”
“And what if he was the killer? Is that the end of all interest as far as the police are concerned?”
“Cyril the killer? That’s a new angle.”
“For argument’s sake, I mean.”
But Diamond was already running with this fresh idea. “He was desperate enough to kill. Bath’s lowlife were issuing threats. But I can’t see how it would help him to have Max dead. That’s killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
“I wasn’t serious.”
“I am. We can’t rule out anything. Let’s not forget Max was getting suspicious about the jewellery disappearing. How do we know he didn’t confront Cyril and accuse him of being the thief?”
“Max died in bed,” Paloma said.
“I’m not suggesting they came to blows. It’s the same MO, some slow-acting knockout drug. Cyril was on Temazepam for his insomnia. He was already out of his mind with worry about Larry Lincoln demanding payment.”
Seeing it now, she took over. “To cap it all, Max-pathetic old scatterbrain that he is-works out what’s happening and threatens to blow the whistle on him. The thieving has to stop.”
“Exactly. What do you do with a goose that stops laying? You kill it.”
“So you’re stymied,” she said.
“Why?”
“If Cyril is the killer and he’s dead there’s no one to prosecute. Case closed.”
The phone rang again, except this time it was the landline beside his bed. If this was the same caller, they had to be someone who knew him well.
“What time is it?”
“Almost ten,” Paloma said. “You’d better pick it up.”
“Guv?” The voice was Ingeborg’s and she sounded excited. “Sorry to trouble you this late. I thought you might like to know I found something tonight on Pellegrini’s hard disk.”
“Great!”
“I’ve been checking his files all day. It’s why I wasn’t in. You got my message, I hope? I needed to work alone.”
“What have you found, Inge?”
The words came in a torrent. “A file in a place where you wouldn’t go looking for it, among the administrative tools. It’s clearly been put there for a reason. It doesn’t even have a name, just a number, and it’s been stored among about ten others with numbers, but they must be a distraction for this one to hide among. They’re mostly empty or have a jumble of letters and numbers that he’s typed in at random.”
“You’re talking to a computer dummy, Inge.”
“I’m trying to use simple language, guv.”
“Just tell me what’s on the file.”
“I can’t. It’s encrypted.”
“Great.” This time he spoke the word ironically.
“But I can tell it’s nothing like the extraneous stuff. There’s something there for sure. Solid information that he’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide using an encryption tool that employs algorithms.”
“Can you decrypt it-if that’s the word?”
“It’s well beyond my level of competence but the data forensics unit could surely crack it.”
He sighed. “I can’t use police people, Inge. I’d have to explain what it was for and Georgina would be on my back straight away.”
“That’s a pain. Wouldn’t one of them do it unofficially?”
“I don’t know any of them well enough to ask a favour. They’re not my choice of drinking companions. We soon run out of things to talk about. They might respond to you, the blokes, I mean. In fact, I’m certain they would.”
Mistake.
“Don’t start me off,” she warned him. “You ought to know by now I’m not going down that route.”
He felt the sting of her disapproval down the phone line.
Rapid rethink. “Before computers took over the world we used to have a young guy called Alex who dealt with the queries. This would have been before your time. He was red-hot, and he was at least nine parts human.”
“Did he give up?”
“He was transferred to another station and I heard later he couldn’t take any more, so he left.”
“A personality clash?”
“The nature of the work. Not many last long as police geeks these days. They’re forced to spend most of their time trawling through sickening footage of child porn, rape and every kind of extreme sexual behaviour and if they can’t stand that they find themselves doing counter-terrorism-torture and beheadings. Alex jacked it in for some kind of job outside the police. Industrial espionage, I think. But I’m sure I can track him down and see if this interests him. He’s discreet.”
“He’ll want a fee, no doubt.”
“I’ll deal with that. Bring in the box of tricks tomorrow and we can see if we get lucky.”
Paloma had stepped out of the room while the call was going on. She returned wearing her jacket. “Was it a call worth taking?”
“It was. We could be on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“Don’t get carried away,” she said. “Normal life goes on. I just opened a tin for Raffles. He was hungry.”