“Hmm.”
She didn’t sound impressed.
“One possible scenario,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s foolproof.”
“How does he get there in the first place?”
“Taxi. That’s his mode of transport. And when he’s ready to leave, he calls for another.”
“And Jessie? How does she get there?”
“She drives. She has her own car. We know that because she used to drive Cyril to Bath.”
“Yes, but where does she leave it? In the pub car park?”
She’d seen the flaw.
And so had he. “Her car is still going to be there. That is a problem. It would have been reported before now.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Well, there may be an answer. After pushing her in, he picks up her handbag and removes the key to her car and returns to the car park and drives away. We know he could drive at one time.”
“No disrespect, guv,” she said, “but on balance I’d rather keep an open mind about how Jessie got into the river.”
“Are you thinking a gangmaster did it?”
“Or a client. Or she jumped. We don’t know enough.”
He let her get back to the computer.
This day kept throwing up new problems and time was racing by. He needed to get a grip on the fundamentals of the case before confronting Pellegrini. He was strongly tempted to treat Jessie as a side-issue, unconnected with Pellegrini, and concentrate on the deaths of Max and Cyril.
And yet Jessie had been a main player. She’d visited Max’s house regularly with Cyril. She may well have known Cyril was stealing items of jewellery to fund his gambling debts. It wasn’t impossible she had been aiding and abetting him in the thefts. While the two old men played Scrabble she had the opportunity to root around the house for things to steal.
And she’d met Pellegrini at Max’s funeral. That meeting may have made her death inevitable. Pellegrini, too, had been stealing Max’s property. The Fortuny gowns were evidence of that. Was the funeral reception the occasion when Pellegrini discovered he wasn’t the only thief?
That afternoon in the house in Cavendish Crescent there had been some sort of incident involving Jessie. Diamond had heard about it from Mrs. Stratford, the actress who cleaned for the Filiputs-and from Jake, the gay railway enthusiast who lived in the signal box. In the unseemly scramble for railway souvenirs Pellegrini had upset coffee over Jessie’s skirt and she’d left the room and changed into something else. She hadn’t returned.
Why?
Surely because she was gifted with a last chance to roam the house looking for more things to steal while the party was in full swing downstairs.
What if she’d been caught red-handed by Pellegrini? He, too, must have realised this was his final visit to the house, an eleventh-hour opportunity of theft.
Or was it the reverse? Had Jessie discovered Pellegrini in the act of stealing?
Either outcome was fraught with danger. Exposure would be devastating for each of them. They had so much to lose if the police were called.
So there had been no hue and cry. It had been resolved another way.
Jessie couldn’t have known she was dealing with a killer.
All of this had to be set against the practical difficulties Ingeborg had raised. The MO was different. The victim was female and younger than the others. Pellegrini, at seventy, was taking on someone who could match him physically.
But the idea of murder was rooted in Diamond’s thinking. His way forward was clear. Get to the truth of Jessie’s death.
He went back to Richard Palmer’s office.
The chief inspector eyed him with amusement. “Found the identical twin yet?”
Diamond wasn’t in a jesting mood. “I’d like to see the postmortem report.”
“You still have doubts?”
Palmer accessed the report on screen and moved out to allow Diamond to use his chair.
His preferred reading didn’t include material such as this, but he worked steadily through the forensic pathologist’s findings. In effect, there were two reports: an interim one dictated at the time of the autopsy or shortly after, before the test results were obtained, and a second, with fuller information and a summing up, including discussion of the possible causes of death.
The description of the body was basically similar to the missing person appeal on the police website, but there were additional details. Some superficial injuries had been noted consistent with her having fallen into the river, travelled downstream and met obstructions. Nothing external or internal indicated she had been assaulted prior to entering the water, but the involvement of someone else couldn’t be ruled out.
As to the cause of death, it was impossible to be certain. The pathologist had looked for the classic signs of drowning. There was water in the stomach and oesophagus, but you would expect some from passive percolation regardless of whether the person had been dead or alive. The water within the body didn’t contain debris such as weeds and algae. No stones or weeds had been gripped in the hands, which would have indicated cadaveric spasm, and therefore drowning. The characteristic froth that forms in the air passages wasn’t present, but still didn’t make for a conclusive diagnosis.
The samples tested in the laboratory had yielded no findings of importance. A diatom test, for the microscopic algae present in water, had proved nothing either way. Nothing in the body fluids had suggested she was already dead prior to immersion.
“Drowning cannot be ruled out in this case,” the pathologist summed up, “but neither can it be ruled in. The circumstances in which the body was found make it probable. However, there is insufficient evidence to be certain.”
“You thought she’d got drunk and fallen in,” Diamond said after rising from Palmer’s chair. “There’s nothing here about alcohol.”
Palmer clung to his theory. “I told you before, it metabolizes quickly. We can’t be sure how long she was in the water. Twenty-four hours would do it unless she drank the pub dry.”
“Have you heard any more from Bulgaria?”
“About her past?” Now the chief inspector jutted his chin like a politician who is asked the question he was waiting for. “I was spot on.”
“They got back to you?” Diamond said with a grunt of annoyance. “Why didn’t you let me know straight away?”
“I was getting it on file while it was fresh in my head.”
“She really was in the sex trade?”
Palmer stood with arms folded, the embodiment of smugness. “They confirmed it, the familiar story, depressing, but all too common. She came from an orphanage somewhere out in the sticks, got into petty crime as a juvenile and made her way to the capital, where she was soon taken over by traffickers, promised a better life and driven with other girls across the border into Turkey. Forced into prostitution, escaped and was taken over by some other minder who was worse than the first lot. He shipped her out of the country and she found herself in Milan and then Rome, still selling her body. There the trail goes cold.”
“This was when?”
“About 2010, they reckon.”
“You got all this from the Bulgarian police?”
“About an hour ago.”
Diamond glared at his self-righteous colleague and felt too bruised to protest any more about poor communication. “The Bulgarians know all this and we know shit about her life in Britain?”
“It’s not for want of trying.”
“Oh, come on. She could have been on the game here as long as five years.”
“It’s not illegal, Peter.”
“But pimping is. Someone was controlling her.”
“You tell me.”
“All right, I will. She ends up in Britain, probably after a nightmarish journey in a container and presumably without papers. And some gorilla puts her to work, right?”