It had made sense for Perry to retire into the shadows between announcements. Having watched the show from the front, Diamond had needed to understand how the event had been handled up here on the residents’ lawn. Little more could be learned from this witness so he let Bateson go.
Detectives are taught at police college that the first twenty-four hours after a murder are the most productive of vital information. You shouldn’t expect much sleep. Diamond had never followed the rules. He called Keith Halliwell over. ‘One of us should be here when old motormouth arrives to look at the body. Is there any word from him?’
‘Jim Middleton? Last I heard, he was on the road.’
‘Which road?’
‘He’s coming in from Devizes. If you want to get away, guv, I’ll do the honours with Jim. At this time of night he might be less talkative than usual.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
This earned a grin, but both men knew the real reason Diamond didn’t want to meet Middleton. Halliwell had been with his boss on that dreadful morning in February 2001 when Steph Diamond’s body was found.
‘I’m going to take you up on it,’ Diamond said. ‘If I’ve had some shut-eye, I’ll be firing on all cylinders in the morning. I’ll tell Inge to stand down as well. And most of the plods. There isn’t a lot they can do at this stage.’
‘It’s down to us as usual.’
‘But I wouldn’t call this usual, Keith. Everything I’ve seen and heard so far makes me think this death is unusual. Highly unusual.’
18
‘First job: next of kin.’
Nobody spoke.
‘You know my view on this,’ Diamond said. ‘I don’t believe in asking uniform to knock on someone’s door and give them the bad news. It’s our duty.’
It didn’t surprise him that no eyes locked with his when he looked around the room. The entire CID team apart from Keith Halliwell had assembled next morning for instructions.
‘I’m asking one of you to take this on.’
Ingeborg broke the silence. ‘We don’t know who it is, do we?’
‘We should get an idea after we enter the victim’s flat. He lives over the pet shop in Union Passage. If there’s someone sharing it with him, a wife or partner, be ready to break the news sympathetically.’
‘And if no one is at home?’ Ingeborg said.
‘Talk to the neighbours, look at the address book, files, letters or whatever, and get names. It could be his parents in this case. He was in his mid-twenties by the look of him.’
‘They will have heard already, won’t they?’ John Leaman said. ‘His name is all over the media this morning.’
‘We still speak to his people. Whoever breaks the bad news will then become the family liaison officer.’
‘Job like that needs the woman’s touch,’ Leaman said.
Ingeborg snapped back: ‘Sexist. I was waiting for you to say that. What’s wrong with a man supplying the TLC for a change?’
‘Enough,’ Diamond said. ‘This is a job for you, Paul.’
Paul Gilbert nearly bit the end off the pen he was chewing. ‘Me?’
‘You can handle it.’
‘I’m not even married. Comforting some widow — I wouldn’t know how to start.’
‘May not be a widow,’ Leaman said. ‘Think about that.’
‘May be his parents, like the boss says,’ Ingeborg added. All too obviously she and Leaman were relieved to be spared one of the hardest of all duties a police officer has to perform.
Diamond hadn’t picked Gilbert randomly. The young man had been the junior member of the team for longer than was good for him, yet he was probably the same age as Perry had been, if not older. In more affluent times new recruits would have joined the team. Cuts in police numbers by successive governments produced this strange effect that a DC in his twenties was treated as the permanent new boy.
‘So,’ Leaman said, sitting taller now there was no need to keep his head down, ‘who gets to look inside Perry’s flat?’
‘Not you,’ Diamond said. ‘We have another operation underway in case any of you are forgetting. I need a senior officer to take charge while I deal with the shooting.’
‘The skeleton?’ The chance of an executive role had instant appeal for Leaman. ‘I don’t mind taking over if that’s what you’re saying.’
‘It’s exactly what I’m saying, John.’
The unexpected honour brought a glow to Leaman’s cheeks. He’d long considered himself capable of heading a murder investigation. ‘Thanks, guv.’
‘I mean taking over at Twerton.’
‘Understood.’
‘I’m not sure if you do understand. I’m talking about the dig.’
‘Dig?’
‘At the scene. I spent yesterday afternoon there. Didn’t Inge tell you?’
Ingeborg shook her head. ‘It was a busy time.’
‘Six PCs with spades are out at Twerton searching for another body, a woman who went missing in the late nineties. They got down four feet in the first trench. Found a few household objects, but no human remains as yet.’
Most of the colour drained from Leaman’s face. ‘You want me out there?’
Diamond checked his watch. ‘They’ll be making a start about now. I told them to be there early.’
‘It’s raining,’ Leaman said looking towards the window. ‘Bucketing down.’
‘That shouldn’t hold them up. They come prepared with wellies. It rained when I was there. Quite a cloudburst at one stage. Some water collected in the trench, but after it drains it’s easier to find things.’
Ingeborg said in an aside to Gilbert, ‘Suddenly the job of family liaison officer sounds quite appealing, eh, Paul?’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Leaman asked. ‘Oversee the digging?’
‘You said you don’t mind taking over. Take wellies with you. Waterproofs. An umbrella might not be such a good idea. The diggers could get stroppy if they see you under cover.’
‘How deep are they supposed to go?’
‘About another foot, but the going is slow at the level they are.’
‘And if there’s nothing down there do I call it off?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘You start another trench. Don’t look like that. It’s only a small garden.’
Others in the room were given jobs collecting information online. The autopsy wouldn’t be before next day, when Keith Halliwell would be back. As Diamond’s deputy he would attend. Normal service resumed.
Three of them drove into the city in Ingeborg’s small car. Because Union Passage is in a pedestrianised area, they were forced to park in the Podium and walk some distance through the downpour sharing one small pink umbrella. Things could have been worse. At about the same time John Leaman was squelching through mud at the building site. Nothing was said, but he was in their thoughts.
The narrow thoroughfare, twelve feet across, medieval in origin, appeared in early maps as Cockles Lane and Slaughterhouse Lane, and was rebuilt late in the eighteenth century by the city architect, Thomas Baldwin, who also designed the Pump Room and much else of note until he was sacked for refusing to let the corporation inspect his accounts. Close up — and you are forcibly close up in this congested walkway — the modern shopfronts make it appear much the same as any other twenty-first-century street. This morning its period charms had no appeal to the three detectives.
‘Where’s this pet shop? I’m getting soaked,’ Diamond said.
‘You’re holding the umbrella,’ Ingeborg pointed out. ‘Look at Paul.’
‘There’s more of me. Do we know the name?’
‘Fur All That’s Wonderful,’ Gilbert said.
‘Did you say fur?’
‘Groan,’ Ingeborg said.
They found it halfway along, close to the intersection with Northumberland Place. A poster for the fireworks was still in the window.