‘I’d forgotten about the costume. Have you hired it already?’
He hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to say so. ‘Paloma is looking after that. You expressly told me to get one, if you remember. Funny, I can’t picture Charlie in the gear. Have you told him?’
She coughed as if she had a bone stuck in her throat. ‘I haven’t spoken to him. His name came up when I phoned my opposite number at Bristol.’
‘It would,’ Diamond said. ‘The first name they’d think of.’
A pause for reflection.
‘Do we really need to have someone attending the Beau Nash Society?’ Georgina said.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m confused. You told me I should go there and mingle with the elderly members who were around at the time of the murder. You said you’d done me a good turn and arranged it with Sir Edward. “Hire a costume” were the words you used.’
‘So I did.’
‘We can see if it fits Charlie Crocker, but I doubt it somehow. He must be six inches taller than me and built like a super-heavyweight. Mingling with the elderly members will be a challenge. I hope he doesn’t knock any of them over.’
Georgina caught her breath and covered her eyes. ‘Say no more. I’ve made a ghastly mistake. This man mustn’t be allowed within a mile of the Beau Nash Society.’
‘How can we put him off?’
‘You say you’re well prepared. We’ll go back to Plan A.’
‘With me in charge?’
She nodded and he could see the full consequence of the decision struggling to emerge on her beleaguered face, so he helped with a suggestion.
‘You’ll speak to Bristol and tell them we don’t need reinforcements after all? We can cope?’
‘If you’re confident we can.’
‘Not a problem, ma’am.’
He came out of the office pumped up — until he realised he’d just talked himself into dressing in the damned frock coat and breeches and enduring a deeply embarrassing night. Up to this minute he’d promised himself it wouldn’t happen because he’d conjure up some excuse. No escape now.
Towards midday Keith Halliwell appeared in the CID room looking like a piece of twine chewed by Marley the sniffer dog.
‘Caught up on your sleep, then,’ Diamond said and didn’t wait for a reaction. ‘Did the crime-scene guys make any more discoveries?’
‘They made a preliminary check and put up a forensic tent and then decided to wait for daylight before doing the fingertip search.’
‘Sensible.’
‘But Jim Middleton arrived and made an inspection of the body by flashlamp. After an hour and a half he stopped for a cup of tea from his thermos.’
‘Tea and conversation, knowing him.’
‘I wouldn’t call it that. He did all the talking. It was more of a monologue than conversation.’
‘What about?’
‘Fishing. He’s an angler. So there we were at three in the morning talking about something called the perfection loop which had nothing to do with the killing. It’s a knot they use in fly fishing. Finally he got back to the job and did another hour.’
‘What did he have to say about the shooting?’
‘Bullet to the head would have been fatal whether it was the first shot or not. He wasn’t willing to say the range it was fired from except it wasn’t a contact wound. There was another through the chest. He ruled out suicide.’
‘That hadn’t even crossed my mind.’
‘Nor mine. We finally got away about four a.m. He arranged for the body to be removed at first light and he wants to do the autopsy this afternoon if we can get someone to make the identification. Is there a next of kin?’
‘We haven’t found one. We could ask his landlady, Miss Divine.’
‘Will she be okay with that?’
‘I’m sure she will. The first thing she said to me was that she’s dealing with life and death all the time. Can you be the police presence?’
‘I always am.’
‘Untrue,’ Diamond said, hackles rising. ‘I did the last one myself.’
Halliwell grinned. ‘The bones. So you did, guv. So you did.’
‘But with two investigations to oversee—’
‘Say no more.’
He asked Ingeborg to drive him back to the Royal Crescent. Although the rain had eased off, the turf was squelchy to walk over. Below the ha-ha, council workmen were clearing rubbish left by last night’s spectators. On the residents’ lawn, the crime scene area was marked with do-not-enter tape. High above it like a rebuke the charred figure of Beau Nash was outlined against the louring sky, Jane Austen having been dismantled.
The forensic tent, too, had gone. The body had been removed to the mortuary. Bright yellow evidence markers had been placed on the surface where items of possible interest had been found.
‘How many bullets?’ he asked the senior man.
‘Five for sure.’
‘Are you thinking a revolver?’
‘We’re not thinking anything, Mr. Diamond. We’re just collecting and marking at this stage.’
‘Any footprints?’
‘Shoeprints, unless you were expecting Man Friday. So many, it’s ridiculous. The world and his wife came by for a look. And where the surface turned to mud, all that rain has spoilt our chance of some nice prints. I wouldn’t pin any hope on a result.’
‘DNA?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Why is it never like it is in the training sessions?’
‘You tell me.’
Diamond doubted whether there was any value in remaining there and said so to Ingeborg. ‘I’m going to speak to the drugs squad again.’
‘You think that’s behind this?’
‘With guns in play? Got to be, hasn’t it? Perry must have upset someone big time. Our lot have the latest intelligence. They’ll know what’s happening on the street and who’s really dangerous.’
‘His phone may have some names.’
‘The phone and the computer. But I’m not confident, Inge. You don’t store your supplier’s contact details unless you’re daft, and Perry wasn’t that.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘He was a user, right?’
‘Fair assumption.’
‘Why would he get shot when he’s a paying customer? The drugs barons wouldn’t want him dead. They’d want him to go on depending on the stuff.’
‘Maybe he changed his supplier.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Or he complained about the quality or threatened to name names. The main thing that came across to me in my short encounter with him was that he didn’t kowtow to anyone.’
‘Dangerous.’
‘The barons may have thought so. Obviously it wasn’t a casual killing. There was planning behind this. They would have known where he would be and what a fine opportunity it was to gun him down when the fireworks were blasting out.’
‘When you say “they,” are you thinking there were other people involved?’
‘Not in the shooting. A job will be given to a single gunman, but others will have made the call. We’re likely to be dealing with hard professionals.’
‘Can we handle that?’
‘Of course. Let’s go.’
In this assertive mode, Diamond turned abruptly and felt a contact of something against his arm. A sudden movement above his head caused him to duck and sheer away. He lost his balance on the slippery turf and fell.
Only after he was dumped on his backside in the mud and felt the damp seeping through his trousers did he see what had happened. He’d bumped against the lancework figure of Beau Nash. Even as he lay shocked and humbled, there was a whirring noise and the mechanism gave one more twirl. The Beau performed an elegant bow.