In the deep of the night, that so-called red herring swam into his thoughts and refused to leave. The little that was known about Harry the tenant didn’t conflict with any of the facts about Harry the taxi driver. What if they were the same man? Harry the tenant had lived in Twerton with a woman called Sarah who had apparently left him in 1997. He’d carried on living at the same address for a couple more years until Jerzy the electrician took over the tenancy. He’d been described by the Twerton newsagent as in his thirties, white, with dark hair and not too talkative. He’d always paid in cash rather than by card. After he’d left the Twerton house the trail had gone cold.
Harry the taxi driver lived on the other side of town, in Larkhall, but nothing was known of his whereabouts before that. Could he have moved there from Twerton about 1999? His age at death had been forty-three, which fitted with Harry the tenant in his thirties in the late 1990s. Both had said little about themselves. The taxi driver was ‘a cagey character’ and the tenant ‘didn’t have much to say for himself.’
How did this fusion of the two men fit the events they were involved in? Perry’s father, the taxi driver, had formed a relationship with a woman called Fiona Glyn who gave birth to their child at Dolemeads in 1990. Both their names were on Perry’s birth certificate. But Fiona had raised the child alone. Only after her death in 2002 did Harry take full responsibility. So there were these twelve years or so needing to be accounted for, years when the guy clearly hadn’t left the area. Was he paying Fiona some form of maintenance and leading a double life?
Switch back to Harry in Twerton, living with another woman, called Sarah, until 1997, when she left him or was murdered, the same year a corpse in a Beau Nash costume was entombed in the loft of the terraced house they shared.
About 1999, Harry moved out of the house, leaving its gruesome secret so well concealed that the skeleton would not be found until the place was demolished. Nothing conflicted with him starting up again in Larkhall, taking on taxi work and providing a home for his young son in 2002 after Fiona died.
But then in 2007 came the fatal accident on the M4. Harry the taxi driver was killed and if he was also Harry the tenant he’d died with the secret of what really happened in the Twerton house in 1997.
Diamond heaved himself out of bed at four in the morning to make himself strong tea and see if it all made sense downstairs. He fed the cat and pondered the matter. He couldn’t find a flaw in the reasoning. Each date, each event, slotted in. Ingeborg’s red herring didn’t smell fishy. It was the true explanation. Had to be.
Harry Morgan may have got away with murder. But the fates had dealt with him.
Case closed?
Not to the point of absolute proof. Even so, the match-up of the Harrys was a breakthrough. He felt like calling Ingeborg to tell her, but she might not appreciate a call at this hour. Texting was still a skill he had to learn.
He could now put all his effort into finding who had murdered Perry. He returned to bed and fitted in two hours of untroubled sleep.
He was first in to work.
Ingeborg arrived at Concorde House soon after 8:30 and he called her into his office straight away. She stepped in apprehensively.
‘Well done.’
‘What for, guv?’
‘What you told me last night. The two Harrys being the same person. Everything fits. You’ve cracked it.’
She actually blushed. Compliments from Diamond were as rare as rich uncles.
‘Sorry I didn’t show much excitement when you spoke of it last night,’ he said. ‘This hasn’t been easy, dealing with two cases twenty years apart, and now to find a link between them is a shock to the system.’
‘If you’re certain,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It was just an idea.’
‘An inspiration. Yesterday changed everything. We now know the name of the victim.’ He spoke on a rising note, as if testing her.
‘Sidney Harrod.’
‘And who did it.’
‘Harry Morgan.’
‘Even better, we don’t have to flog ourselves finding Harry because he’s dead. We can focus on Perry.’
‘Good.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a hundred percent good,’ he said. ‘What’s bugging you?’
‘Before we close the case,’ she said, ‘what was Harry’s motive?’
‘I thought you’d ask me that and the obvious answer is NOTS.’
An acronym from Diamond, who despised them? He was in a heady mood today. ‘What’s that?’
‘Now open to suggestions. We already know Harrod was a conman, a particularly unpleasant individual who leeched on to a rich old man in the early stages of dementia and was stealing and selling items from his house.’
‘Did Harry know that?’
‘Can’t tell. What I’m saying is it’s well possible Sidney Harrod became a threat to Harry.’
‘How come?’
‘Harry was leading a double life, with a son he probably hadn’t mentioned to Sarah, the woman he was living with in Twerton. Let’s say Harrod got to know about his secret and demanded money in return for silence.’
‘Blackmail?’ she said, frowning. ‘Do you have any evidence for that?’
‘We know Sarah left.’
‘You think she got to know the truth?’
‘That’s my best guess. Either she quit because Harrod tipped her off about the other woman or it was after the murder and she legged it fast.’
‘If you’re right, it may not have been murder,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The two men could have had a huge argument that turned violent.’
‘With a sharp implement?’
‘The first thing that came to hand.’
‘Now you’re talking like a defence lawyer,’ Diamond said. ‘They’d have a field day with this. Good thing the case will never come to court.’
Paul Gilbert was waiting to see him after Ingeborg left his office. The young DC had just received copies of the documents Diamond had asked to see — Lord Deganwy’s death certificate and will.
‘So what do they say he died of?’
Gilbert passed the certificate across. ‘Vascular dementia and cardiac arrest.’
‘No surprise there.’ He glanced through the details. ‘This was April 1998, then. Not long after he gave up the presidency of the Beau Nash Society. Died at home, in Widcombe Hall... Funny.’
‘What’s funny, guv?’ Gilbert asked.
‘Funny peculiar.’ Without saying any more he placed the certificate on his desk. ‘Give me the will.’
Simple to dissect, a shorter document than he expected from a rich landowner. Basically, everything Lord Deganwy had owned, including Widcombe Hall, was to be sold. The proceeds were to go to the Electoral Reform Society, apart from a few legacies to his staff.
Electoral reform? The old peer’s politics hadn’t been discussed so far in this investigation. Evidently he’d espoused the cause of proportional representation and he must have been deeply committed to leave the bulk of his fortune to a society that after more than a century of existence was still a long way from achieving its aim. The two main parties in Britain had a vested interest in retaining the first-past-the-post system for the foreseeable future.
Diamond shook his head. The money was wasted, in his opinion. Personally, he didn’t give a toss for politics and politicians even though he was at the sharp end of decisions made in parliament. He voted at elections and let them get on with it. The corruption scandals of recent years had hardened his cynicism.
The other legacies in Lord Deganwy’s will were small beer compared to the millions destined for the ERS, but at least they would have gone to real people. Of those, one name stood out for Diamond.