He showed his warrant at the park entrance and got a wary look, but didn’t explain the purpose of his visit.
Incongruously, on his way to a possible crime scene, he found himself among small, noisy people and their young mothers pushing strollers. Donkeys, goats, lambs and ducks were penned at either side and rides were offered on tractors and go-karts. Most of the kids, he suspected on this cool April day, were heading for the shelter of the play barn. One shrill voice said, “Let me go on the death slide, Mummy.”
Diamond left all that behind and approached the tree-lined riverbank.
He stood for a few minutes, imagining the scene. The water was flowing at a good rate. Although the body had been found along this stretch it didn’t follow she had got into the water here. About a mile upriver was Swineford weir and she may well have floated with the current from just below there and finally lodged against some obstruction. Behind him were moorings for narrow boats but the body had been found before reaching there. As so often happens, a person walking his dog had made the discovery. The immediate area would have been combed for her shoes, a bag or a suicide note, but by CID standards the search may not have lasted long.
Might as well keep a lookout along the bank in case some item had been missed by the search team.
Too much to hope?
On this bleak day, yes.
He understood the mystification-to put it mildly-of his two colleagues when he’d changed his mind about Pellegrini. After days of insisting they were dealing with a serial killer, he’d let them down with a bump and made a poor job of trying to explain why. How do you explain a gut feeling?
That Damascus Road moment in Critical Care was impossible to convey to anyone else, but from his new perspective he could see how flaky the whole case was. When suspicion alone is driving an investigation you’re on dangerous ground. You need evidence and it’s easy to kid yourself you’ve got it.
Evidence?
The urns had not been sinister after all. The night excursions on the trike were either to scatter ashes or visit the HOPS. The Internet forum was just that, an exchange of information on computer. The Fortuny gowns looked like stolen property, but may have been a gift. The visit to Little Langford could have been by invitation. Unless it could be proved that one or more of the unusually large number of deaths had been induced, there truly was no case to answer.
There had only ever been one suspect. Cyril was almost certainly a thief but there was no suggestion he’d murdered anyone. Max’s death hadn’t benefited him. On the contrary, it had closed down his thieving possibilities.
He kicked at a stone and watched it splash. Some ducks took flight.
It had been an investigation like no other in his experience. The crimes may not have been crimes at all. The only suspect couldn’t be questioned. The witnesses were dead-all the principal ones, anyway. The scenes weren’t accessible without a warrant and he wouldn’t get that. The evidence was no more solid than a sandcastle.
What had induced him to start on this?
Suspicion.
You sow a seed and it grows. Water it and it thrives. Throw on some feed and it spreads all over. But watch out for what you get. It may be a monstrous weed.
Here he was, angry with himself and unable to face his own team. He’d never invested so much for such a poor return.
Ahead he could see a beam bridge spanning the river, a solid-looking, dead-straight construction of metal and concrete supported at the centre by twin piers. Not the most beautiful of the bridges over the Avon, he reflected as he walked towards it, but sturdy enough to carry heavy traffic, conceivably even a train.
Out here in the middle of nowhere? Unlikely. The main line to Bristol was half a mile south of here, running parallel to the Bath Road. This pointed in another direction, north-west along the valley.
Yet it had the look of a railway bridge.
Death and the railway: the two constants.
Out of curiosity he climbed the embankment for a closer look and sure enough he found a single rail track heading north-west to only God knew where. A path for pedestrians and cyclists ran beside it.
Memories were stirring. He’d heard of the privatised Avon Valley Railway without ever having had reason to visit. Volunteers had been working for years to restore some abandoned branch line near Keynsham and this was obviously it. The southern end couldn’t be far off or it would run straight through Swineford.
Wouldn’t hurt to check, he thought. So he followed the track for a short distance. Presently the single rail became double, operated by a point, and a short way further on were twin platforms. A little station with its own name: Avon Riverside. Beyond were more points and a loop arrangement of the track to enable an engine to move from one end of the train to the other.
All local railway enthusiasts must have known about this.
Shaking his head, forced to accept another possible link between Pellegrini and Jessie’s death, Diamond returned to the bridge, leaned on the railing, peered over the edge and saw the reflection of his head and shoulders fragmenting in the shifting water. Summed up the way he’d felt all morning.
He’d never considered suicide, even in his darkest moments, and he wasn’t planning it now, but he could feel an inexplicable pull from the swirling water below. Could Jessie have stood here and looked over?
Or had she been brought here by her killer?
21
His bad day was about to get worse, but he didn’t know it when he first returned to the office.
Alex the techie had left a voicemail message asking him to get in touch.
“I thought I’d ask for you in person,” Alex said. “It’s about that file in ciphertext you asked me to work on.”
“Did you crack it?” Diamond asked.
“Sure. It wasn’t all that difficult. Pretty basic, really. A programme they were using ten years ago. I didn’t expect to come across it again in my lifetime.”
“The person using it is quite elderly.”
“That figures. Well, I have it in plaintext for you.”
“Makes good sense, does it?”
“Sense, sure. Good, I’m less sure.”
Diamond didn’t pick up on that. He wanted to make up his own mind about the merits of the thing. It might be nothing to do with Pellegrini’s secret life, just some treatise on engineering. “Where can I pick it up?”
“This is what I was about to ask. Emailing may not suit you. And I got the impression you didn’t want me calling at the police station.”
“Understood. Where are you now? Can we meet?”
“In the Internet café in Manvers Street. Do you know it?”
“I know Manvers Street. I ought to, after working there almost twenty years.” Diamond had a troubling thought. “You didn’t print this out in a café?”
“What do you take me for, Mr. D? I like the coffee here, that’s all.”
“I can be with you in half an hour. As you say, a personal handover would be best.”
Fully two hours later, one poleaxed policeman remained in the Internet café with his third cup of coffee. Alex had long since left, duly rewarded for his expert help. He’d handed across a printout of the decrypted computer file and it was devastating.
Diamond had needed to read the thing in stages, forced to break off many times to get his head straight. Once through, he’d made himself start again. The shocks were just as jarring at the second reading. The pages shook in his hands. There was no way he could face his colleagues yet. Face them he must, but not in the blitzed state he was in after going through this material.
No wonder the file had been encrypted.