‘Apart from the pants?’
‘That’s true. The Y-fronts may well be his own.’
‘You’ll let me know the minute the other tests come back?’
‘That is a promise, but don’t call me. I hate being pestered.’
Diamond wasn’t listening. His brain was in overdrive. He’d just been handed a twentieth-century murder case, if not a twenty-first. All the theorising about Beau Nash and how he had ended up could safely be forgotten. This was a new mystery with challenges of its own.
He didn’t make any new friends at the press conference, but he wasn’t feeling sociable. This duty had been foisted on him at a time when he wanted to be up and running. With Keith Halliwell at his side — all the friction between them forgotten — he went through the motions in front of a batch of microphones, some TV cameras and a smallish gathering of reporters and photographers who had come at short notice.
‘You all have a press kit and I won’t waste time telling you what you can read yourselves. The newsworthy bit is that this man appears to be a murder victim and the stabbing could have taken place more recently than anyone at first supposed. We’re just at the start of our enquiries. We haven’t identified the victim yet and this is where you can help. We’re interested in hearing from the public about any elderly male without teeth who went missing in the past seventy years.’
‘And had a thing about dressing in old-fashioned clothes?’ the man from the Sun asked.
‘Possibly.’
‘An actor?’
‘We’re not ruling anything out.’
‘Are the clothes authentic eighteenth-century — apart from the Y-fronts?’
‘Tests are being done on them. We don’t know yet.’
‘How long had he been in the loft?’ the Bath Chronicle woman wanted to know.
‘We can’t say with any accuracy yet.’
‘A long time, surely, to have turned into a skeleton?’
‘Could be as short as two years according to the experts, but the likelihood is longer.’
‘How much longer, do you reckon?’
‘I’m not reckoning.’
‘As long as Y-fronts have been available?’ someone from the back put in.
‘That would be the absolute beginning of the timespan. Which I’m told is just before the Second World War.’
‘Can’t they be dated from the style?’
‘Good point. We’ve taken that up with the manufacturers.’
‘Some of us keep our underwear going until the elastic goes.’
Diamond took that as a joke, not a question. It got a few laughs and somebody at the back made a remark he didn’t catch that sparked another bout of laughter. Most of these press people knew each other well.
The big-mouth continued with the backchat and there was an edge to the amusement — more like forced laughter — that Diamond didn’t care for. Difficult to see who this troublemaker was because his view was blocked by two TV cameramen. The glimpse he got when one of them moved was of shoulder-length dark hair and a fancy jacket, but the voice was definitely a man’s. A hippy with a grudge against the police? It would be worth checking whether this person actually had a press pass.
The questioning from the others was rapid-fire, so Diamond soon got distracted and when he next looked, the joker had changed position, or vanished.
He was relieved when the focus moved away from the Y-fronts. ‘How will you handle the murder element of this case?’
His answer came almost automatically. He wanted to get this over and start on the real work. ‘We have an experienced team in Bath CID and no effort will be spared in establishing the facts.’
‘Have you found anything else at the site?’
‘Nothing I haven’t told you already.’
‘The house is demolished, isn’t it? Will you be searching through the debris?’
‘Most of it has gone to landfill. If necessary we’ll do a fingertip search.’
‘“If necessary”? Don’t you think it’s worth doing?’
‘Identifying the victim is our priority. The few details we have about height and so on are in the press kit.’
‘It was a fatal stabbing?’
‘So it appears.’
‘Did you find the weapon?’
‘No.’
‘Have you traced the owner of the house in Twerton?’
‘That’s a separate line of enquiry. For some years the house has been condemned and occupied only by squatters.’
‘Haven’t you forgotten someone?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The skeleton — or does he count as a squatter?’
More laughter that Diamond didn’t join in. He sensed the unwelcome presence had moved to the opposite side. Those with cameras didn’t stay long in one place. He wasn’t giving the barracker the satisfaction of a proper look.
‘Was the loft sealed off from the rest of the house?’
‘We don’t know. The demolition took place before we could check.’
‘Presumably it was, or someone would have looked in there at some point and had a nasty surprise.’
More amusement and laughter that lingered too long. And this time Diamond did catch a glimpse of someone he didn’t know to be a journalist and the long hair looked uncannily like a wig. The face was old, the figure portly and the clothing... well, it was old-fashioned in style. But then in the blink of an eye it was gone. The trick of an overactive brain, obviously. The demands of this case weren’t good for his mental well-being.
Getting a grip on himself, he issued a warning. ‘I hope none of you make the mistake of reporting this in a light-hearted way. We’re dealing with the apparent murder of an elderly man.’ He stopped himself from adding, ‘It could come back to haunt you,’ but the cliché almost tumbled out. The presence at the back of the room must have brought the words to mind.
He continued. ‘Whatever his story is, it had a tragic outcome that will have affected several lives, people who may not even know it yet. He could be someone’s husband, father or grandfather.’ And now despite his best intentions the homily got personal. ‘Believe me, the moment of learning about a violent death is hell. Anyone unfortunate enough to have known a murder victim will tell you about the pain, the grief, the black despair that won’t go away. You people are the message bringers. Don’t forget the living when you report on the dead.’ At risk of being overwhelmed by his own memories, he took refuge in another cliché: ‘We’ll be pursuing every line of enquiry and as always we look to you to pass on any new information that may come your way.’
When they were well away from all the microphones, he put on a show of bravado for Halliwell. ‘Buggers. They’ll take no notice. They’ll play it for laughs, some of them, anyway, giving the skeleton a stupid nickname, Bony, or some such.’
‘If it catches people’s interest, does it matter?’ Halliwell said. ‘We want all the publicity we can get.’
‘Publicity is double-edged. The public gave us Beau Nash’s name. We spent the best part of a week on a wild goose chase thanks to that useless tip-off.’
‘He was dressed like Nash,’ Halliwell said. ‘The stuff we learned could still come in useful.’
‘Yeah? Convince me.’ He thought about asking Halliwell if he’d noticed anyone unusual at the back, but he couldn’t be sure how much of it he’d imagined.
‘Pity,’ Paloma said.
‘Why?’
‘I was thinking this was a case I could help with, something we could work on together. I even had visions of getting you into a frock coat and breeches and going to one of those costume balls they put on at the Assembly Rooms.’
He almost choked on his coffee. ‘Give me a break.’