‘That’s the name of the shop?’
‘The top of Broad Street. If you question him, for Christ’s sake don’t give him any hint that he’s already on our radar.’
‘Relax,’ Diamond said. ‘We’ll make it clear we’re investigating Perry’s death and checking everything on his phone.’
‘You’ll keep me informed what happens? Now I’ve told you this, I’m insisting on cooperation.’
‘That’s rich,’ Diamond said.
‘You gave your word.’
‘All right. You’re in the loop, don’t worry. We got there in the end. You know, Don, you could take lessons from one of your team.’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘He doesn’t believe in faffing about. I’ve seen him in action. He’s straight to it.’
Tate reddened. ‘Who the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Marley the sniffer dog.’
Paul Gilbert had hit a problem with the task Diamond had given him as family liaison officer: there wasn’t any family to liaise with. The dead man Perry Morgan seemed to have been without a living relative. Miss Divine from the toy shop had performed the macabre duty of identifying the corpse before the autopsy and up to now she was the main authority on his life.
‘Have you discovered anything at all from public records?’ Diamond asked when he returned to the CID room.
‘He’s a Bathonian, born in Dolemeads in 1990.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘One of the cottages opposite the Baptist church.’
‘Prepare to meet your God.’
Gilbert blinked and stared back at Diamond, who wasn’t known to quote the Bible or utter death threats.
A nice moment this, watching the changes in the young man’s face as the penny dropped. ‘The writing on the roof?’
‘Spooky, eh, in view of what happened to him?’
‘As it turned out, yes.’
Widcombe Baptist Church, formerly the Ebenezer Chapel, on Pulteney Road, is distinguished by the sobering texts emblazoned in huge white letters on the four sides of its roof (the others being ‘Christ died for our sins’; ‘We have redemption through his blood’; and ‘You must be born again’). When the district known originally as ‘mud island’ changed over the decades from a slum to a new council estate to a gentrified locality where the average price of property rose to over half a million, requests were made by aspiring Widcombe residents to have the texts erased, but they remained and as part of a Grade II listed building their survival passed into the safe hands of English Heritage. For Peter Diamond, they were a feature of the city worth keeping, particularly as he didn’t live within view and see the messages each morning when he pulled back the curtain.
‘So you have the birth certificate, do you? Who were his parents?’
‘Henry Morgan, taxi driver, and Fiona Glynn, unemployed.’
‘Unmarried by the sound of it. Aren’t they still around?’
‘Both dead,’ Gilbert said. ‘I got the certificates. She went first, of cancer, in 2002, and he was killed in a car crash five years later. He was only forty-three.’
‘Perry would have been eleven or twelve when his mother died. Bloody hard for a kid that age.’
‘Really tough. I found the notice of her death in the Chronicle and he’s mentioned as her much-loved son.’
‘You’ve been busy. Was an address included?’
‘Not in the paper. On her death certificate. Oldfield Road.’
‘Anything in the report about her partner the taxi driver?’
‘They seem to have separated at an early stage. Not even sure if they ever lived together. His fatal accident gets a write-up in 2007 with a photo of his wrecked taxi. He broke down at night on the M4 coming back from Heathrow and was stationary on the hard shoulder when a transporter ploughed into the back. Pure bad luck.’
‘Not all that uncommon, sadly. Does Perry get a mention?’
‘In the paper? Briefly, as a son, living with him at Larkhall. But he’s named on his father’s death certificate as the informant.’
‘Same address as his father?’
‘Doesn’t tell you. It just says Perry Morgan, son.’
‘I’m getting the picture,’ Diamond said, more for his own benefit than Gilbert’s. ‘Brought up by mum until her death, when he goes to live with dad in Larkhall. After the crash he’s alone in the world at sixteen or seventeen. I wonder what he did next. The shock of being orphaned must have taken a while to get over. Can’t see him running the sixth-form disco. Yet in a few short years he becomes the local impresario staging everything from wrestling to the world fireworks competition.’
‘Where would he get the confidence?’
‘Cocaine helped.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘I know. There has to be some kind of grounding in event management. He didn’t leave Bath, it seems. These are the years we need to concentrate on. Make a list of all the shows he organised and start contacting the people he would have dealt with. How did they hear about him and what do they know? Find out who he mixed with.’
‘Miss Divine said he didn’t get visitors.’
‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t make contacts outside. He knew how the world works, so he must have rubbed shoulders with all sorts. He was capable of thinking big and persuading people he was the real deal. They call it chutzpah, but where did Perry get it from at such an early age? My first thought is some kind of training in art.’
‘Art? Why?’
‘Artists carry conviction. Tell you a row of bricks is a masterpiece and you look at it and believe them.’
‘Sometimes you do,’ Gilbert said in a tone suggesting he, for one, would take some convincing.
‘It’s all about persuasion. Where would he go to study art?’
‘The university?’
‘Why not? The art courses are all based at Newton Park these days, aren’t they? At one time it was the Academy of Art at Corsham Court and then it was Sion Hill and then it was all taken over by the university. See if there’s any record of him on their courses. He could have been a dropout.’
‘How about the cocaine angle?’ Gilbert asked, not wholly sold on the art college theory. ‘Does he have form?’
‘Nothing was known to the drugs unit until I mentioned it, but he seems to have bought his wraps from a supplier called Newburn.’ Diamond snapped his fingers. ‘And Newburn is a gallery owner. Must be why the art popped into my head.’
‘Want me to visit him, guv?’
‘I’d better go myself. DI Tate in drugs is pissing his pants about us interfering. You’ve done a useful job already. Now fill in the missing years.’
Paul Gilbert was proving to be a vital member of the team, growing in self-confidence. The best detectives have an inner fire. Motivation. A sense of justice. Commitment to the cause. Whatever it was that made a good cop, the young man had it in large measure.
Ingeborg had her hand raised to get Diamond’s attention. She, too, had proved her worth many times over. He crossed to her desk, tidy as always. A see-and-store book of 8 x 10 photos of the crime scene. Phone, notepad, pen neatly positioned.
‘The first ballistics report is in, guv.’
‘Quicker than usual.’
‘I’ve been giving them a hard time. I mean, when they’ve got bullets that impacted with soft turf, as they have, it shouldn’t be difficult getting the striation pattern.’
He was eager to hear this. The markings on the bullets — as individual as fingerprints — would have been compared with a huge bank of gunshot data to see if there was a match with any other crime. A positive result would very likely confirm that they were dealing with a contract killing. ‘So what are they telling us?’
‘There were no casings recovered, meaning almost certainly that the shots were fired from a revolver rather than an automatic. The shell casing stays in the chambers until it’s manually removed. They’re 9mm, which is nothing unusual. They checked the pattern with the national database and got a nil return.’