Understandably after all the trouble she’d taken, Ingeborg was scathing. ‘Beating the truth out of someone who knows?’
‘Not that old-fashioned. I mean looking at motive, means and opportunity.’
‘Means and opportunity are obvious,’ she said. ‘The killer had a handgun and used it. That was the means. And the opportunity was the fireworks display when there were major distractions. Motive is all we have to work with.’
‘Yep, and it’s a brute,’ Diamond agreed. ‘We know he was a cokehead and drugs attract violent people, but I can’t see how his death was necessary. Even if he missed a payment, he was due a big profit from the fireworks contest and would be able to settle up later.’
‘It was a free show.’
‘The finale was. The competition went on all week. The ones at the Rec brought in gate money. Wasn’t payment discussed in the emails?’
She clicked her tongue, annoyed with herself. ‘I must be blitzed from reading them. Now you mention it, there was a down payment.’
‘This is stuff I rely on you to tell me.’ He was feeling as frayed as she.
If he expected a show of contrition he didn’t get it. She folded her arms and stared him out.
‘Anyhow,’ he went on, ‘dealers don’t murder their users. They want them alive and paying.’
‘Unless he’d threatened to name names.’
‘Unlikely. He had a reputation to keep up. He wouldn’t want it known he was on cocaine. The drugs may be a red herring.’
‘What else is there? He didn’t seem to have any rivals putting on shows.’
‘He may have seriously upset someone with the kind of thing he was doing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Setting off the fireworks. Objections from the residents.’
‘The people living in the crescent? With gunfire? Come off it, guv.’
‘They’ve had to endure displays before, but always set off behind the terrace, not in front on their precious lawn. I’m thinking some elderly army officer may have been so incensed that he went out there with his service weapon and shot the organiser. Simple as that.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Are you kidding?’
He shook his head. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle. Never underrate an angry Bathonian.’
‘He would have shown himself by now. We’ve had a team knocking on doors at the terrace, haven’t we?’
‘For possible witnesses, not looking for Nimbys.’
‘Have you done a debrief?’
‘To see if any of them spoke to a mad colonel? Actually, it wasn’t mentioned as such. Seriously, we shouldn’t discount the crazy person with a grudge against Perry. Anyone running big public events is going to ruffle feathers. There could be some nutcase with a grievance following the guy around with the idea of shooting him when the chance came.’
She wasn’t persuaded. ‘Did anything come back from ballistics?’
‘You saw their report. No match with any known weapon, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘I know that much. They were going to get back to us later with more findings.’
He riffled through the paper stuffed into his in-tray. In the computer age most people had long ago dispensed with in-trays. Diamond had moved on, but only from wire to plastic. He found the document he wanted and handed it to Ingeborg. ‘This came in yesterday. Didn’t excite me much or I’d have shared it with everyone.’
She glanced through the summary of findings. ‘“Five bullets examined, but no casings... likely to have been a revolver.” Does anyone use revolvers now?’
‘You mean in the services?’
‘Army, police. It’s all semi-automatic, isn’t it? They stopped issuing service revolvers back in the 1960s.’
‘Still used in crimes,’ he said.
‘But this one isn’t on the database. It hasn’t been fired in the course of a crime and certainly not a murder.’
‘What’s the point you’re making, Inge?’
‘Our killer used an old-fashioned weapon not on the NABIS database. The chance is high that this was a one-off. Unprofessional.’
The last time Ingeborg had made this point, he’d made some unkind remark about the killer keeping the weapon in his sock drawer. She’d stuck with her theory, and now he gave it more respect. ‘Okay. Where does that get us?’
‘To somebody with a personal issue. It’s unlikely to have been a contract killing or something to do with a drug war. I say we should home in on Perry’s close circle, people he dealt with from day to day, family, friends.’
‘There weren’t any.’
‘That was according to his landlady, Miss Divine, but how much did she know?’
‘Quite a bit, I thought. “I don’t believe in prying,” she told us and clearly did the opposite. She had the combination and could enter the flat at will. Not much got past that lady.’
‘The cocaine in the cornflakes did.’
He laughed. ‘You’ve got me there.’
Ingeborg was in full flow. ‘Perry was smart enough to hide that part of his private life from Miss Divine, so why not the rest? He was born in Bath and lived here all his life. There must be people in this dozy town who know more about him than Miss Divine does. Got to be. He wasn’t a recluse. He was a social animal, confident.’
‘We’ve been down this route before,’ he said. ‘What did we get from social media? Masses of flimflam about the shows he put on, but about the man, zilch. There’s no family, no close friends, no obvious points of contact. All the press coverage brought in nothing we didn’t have already. Paul Gilbert wasted most of a day checking the university registers.’
‘That was always a long shot,’ she said.
‘All right, I’ll put my hand up to that one. It was only a hunch because we couldn’t think where his confidence came from. I’d like to look at it from another angle — the low point in his life when his parents died, first his mother, from cancer, and then his dad in the car crash.’
‘Where does that lead us?’
‘His dad was a taxi driver. They spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for fares. They all know each other, those guys. Haven’t you seen them sitting in each other’s cabs? They’re the bush telegraph.’
‘It was a while ago.’
‘2007, the year Henry Morgan died. That’s not the dark ages.’
‘I’ve no memory of it.’
‘CID weren’t involved, that’s why. It was an accident. Some of the older cabbies will remember. It must have been a big event in their lives, one of their number killed. And if they remember him, they’ll remember Perry, how he took the shock and what happened after.’
‘I’ll go.’ She was already halfway to the door. She said she’d try the rank at the railway station.
Paul Gilbert reported back shortly after Ingeborg had left.
‘You took your time,’ Diamond said, still grouchy. ‘Chatting up the library staff, were you?’
He would never guess how close he came to the truth. Gilbert told the boss everything he needed to know. The date with Tulip wasn’t included.
‘And you got out of the Moon Street estate in one piece?’ Diamond said with more admiration when he’d heard the story. ‘You’re a legend. I only ever visit there with an armed back-up.’
‘It was quiet, guv.’
‘That’s when I start worrying.’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Brave man. The pieces are falling into place now. Fortnum and Mason — I like that. I wonder which other names he went under.’
‘Flossie didn’t mention any others.’
‘Mr. Harvey on the driving licence and Mr. Nichols on the bus pass?’
The joke passed Paul Gilbert by. His clothes came from T.K. Maxx.
Diamond went on, ‘He’d have to be careful what he called himself in Moon Street. Flossie sounds a sharp lady.’