‘Strange,’ Ingeborg said. ‘I thought pets were upset by fireworks.’
‘Let’s get in the dry,’ Diamond said, pushing open the door.
The shopkeeper, a large blonde woman with owl-like eyes behind red-framed glasses, must have wondered what this trio had come to buy. They didn’t have the look of customers wanting to buy a kitten. In the state they were in, a sack of dry straw bedding might have been more to the point.
Diamond introduced himself and learned that he was addressing Deirdre Divine, the owner of the shop and the flat upstairs as well.
She’d heard about the shooting. ‘It’s tragic,’ she said with all the sensitivity of someone reading the shipping forecast. ‘If I wasn’t dealing with life and death all the time, as I am in this line of work, I’d be crying my eyes out. Who would want to shoot Perry? He was a delightful man and a perfect tenant, the best I’ve ever had.’
Alert to his new responsibility as family liaison man, DC Gilbert asked, ‘Did he live alone?’
‘Sadly, yes,’ she said. ‘I offered to let him have a parrot or a budgie for company or even a small reptile. He wasn’t persuaded. Perry always said he was too busy to care for a pet.’
‘Didn’t he have anyone else in his life? We need to find his next of kin.’
‘Who would that be?’
‘Parents? Family?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Visitors, then?’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever noticed anyone. He had his own front door, and I don’t believe in prying. Most of his business was done on the phone or the computer as far as I could tell. He was a busy man.’
‘Did he ever speak of any worries?’ Diamond asked her.
‘To me? Lord, no. He kept up with the rent, so I had no complaints.’
They were getting the impression Perry didn’t confide much about his private life to his landlady.
‘We need to see inside. Do you have a spare key?’
‘It’s a smart lock.’
‘Smart in what way?’
Ingeborg murmured, ‘Digital, guv.’
Miss Divine explained with a cryptic smile, ‘You have to know the combination for the push buttons.’
‘And do you know it?’
‘Of course I do. It’s my property. I thought it up.’ She may indeed have thought it up, but she wasn’t ready to volunteer it. The smile hadn’t shifted.
‘And?’
‘There’s no point in having a security code if you give it away the first time you’re asked.’
‘We are police officers, ma’am.’
‘Hamsters.’
Diamond didn’t take offence. He’d been called worse, a lot worse. She was being playful, he decided. He indulged her with a grin. ‘We do have a job to do. I’m trying to save you the bother of going out in the rain to let us in.’
She was persuaded. ‘One ate one, one ate two. There’s no room for sentiment among pet-shop owners. All kinds of animals consume their young, hamsters especially. Do you follow me?’
‘I do now.’
Outside in the rain, in front of Perry’s door, they ignored sentiment, thought of cannibal hamsters, and punched in 181182 and it worked. Facing them on the other side of the door was a flight of stairs. All the way up were posters of events Perry must have arranged: pop concerts, more fireworks, a fashion show and a celebrity football match.
The flat was open plan, with a double bed at the end farthest from the street and a separate area for lounging, with twin sofas, plasma TV and sound system. The computer shared a white desk with a printer, some local papers, neatly stacked, and a range of reference books including Who’s Who, The Good Hotel Guide and the Complete Book of the British Charts. The cooking area looked as if it wasn’t much used. In fact, the entire flat was so tidy it was hard to believe anyone lived there.
‘You’d better check the computer, Inge. Paul, I suggest you start opening drawers. Letters, notes, addresses, like I said. I’ll see if there are phone messages. This guy shouldn’t be a mystery much longer.’
Having assigned the duties, Diamond started searching for a phone. Not obvious. He’d assumed there would be a landline. Now he supposed it would be a mobile. He tried the bedside table and the desk.
Gilbert was going through a chest of drawers. ‘He looks after his clothes well. So carefully folded they look new.’
‘Maybe they are,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He can afford it.’
‘It’s almost obsessive,’ Diamond said after looking into cupboards with the contents lined up like little soldiers. ‘And there isn’t much you can call personal.’
‘I need a password,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He’s strong on security.’
‘Try Fixer.’
It didn’t work.
‘Pyro.’
She used the keyboard again. ‘No joy. We may have to take the computer back to the office and get an expert working on it.’
Frustration was starting to set in. Diamond’s confident claim that Perry wouldn’t be a mystery much longer was looking threadbare already. ‘You’d think a man as active as he was would have an address book or a calendar,’ the big man said.
‘Phone,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He’ll keep that stuff on his phone.’ She didn’t add that it was high time Peter Diamond moved into the twenty-first century, but it was implicit in the way she spoke.
‘That’s my point,’ he said, rattled. ‘I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to find it.’
‘He’ll have had it with him. Wasn’t there a mobile on the body?’
‘We made a point of respecting the integrity of the scene. If there was one, it will either have been picked up by the SOCOs or gone to the mortuary.’
‘Or taken by the killer.’
‘You can trace a stolen phone.’
‘If we knew the number, we might be able to.’
‘People he was doing business with will know it.’
‘Let me do some checking.’ Ingeborg took out her own phone.
Diamond was already thinking the crucial facts about Perry wouldn’t be found here in the flat. ‘And I expect he owned a car and we need to find that,’ he said to Gilbert. ‘He probably drove to the crescent and left it somewhere near. Parking was a nightmare on the night, but he will have got there early enough to go anywhere he wanted.’
‘Charlotte Street car park was nearest,’ Gilbert said. ‘Just a short walk away.’
‘On second thoughts he may have used a taxi. Living here in the centre of town, where would you keep a private car?’
‘I can ask Miss Divine.’
‘Do that.’
With his two assistants occupied, Diamond returned to the unpromising job of searching the flat. He was puzzled by the absence of any obvious affluence. Perry had made a name for himself staging major entertainment events. Where there is mass participation there is money. Yet the wardrobe, when he looked in, had only two suits and some casual jackets, none of them with expensive labels. The four pairs of shoes or trainers looked more useful than fashionable.
If the money didn’t go on material luxuries, where was it spent?
He was getting an idea.
Beyond the bedroom was an open door to a shower room. To one side was a hand basin and above it a mirror and a glass shelf with brush and comb, aftershave, deodorant, electric toothbrush and floss sticks. Opposite was a wall-mounted medicine cabinet.
People’s pills and potions are almost always instructive but, once again, Perry seemed to have the basics and little else. Ibuprofen, indigestion pills, antihistamine, throat lozenges, sun oil, nail scissors and Band-aids.
He shut the door, disappointed. Tried a chest that contained bed linen, each item folded and stacked tidily, though not after Diamond had been through it.