A. I tried. I was too late.
Q. Well, that sounds like an honest admission at last.
A. I mean I was on my way to a plates man in Chichester when I was stopped. I told you about him.
Q. And we checked and there’s no one called Stew on the trading estate.
A. He’s not going to have a board with his name, is he? He’s in a dodgy trade.
Q. He isn’t there. He doesn’t exist. Just imagine trying to get this story of yours past a prosecution lawyer. He’d eat you up.
Diamond flicked through more pages and found photos of the BMW and the body in the boot. Easy to understand the horrified reactions of the officers. You stop a stolen car and routinely open the boot and are faced with a sight like this. The wound to the head looked hideous: a bullet hole in front of the left ear and an exit wound that had blown a gaping hole the other side big enough for most of the brain to have been shot away. Yet the face was unblemished. As sometimes occurs after a shooting, the victim appeared serene, eyes closed, mouth slightly open and without strain.
A set of pictures from the autopsy was included, but Diamond had seen as much as he could take.
There were also mugshots of Danny looking bewildered, mouth in a tiny o and eyebrows arching. He had a God-given talent for appearing wide-eyed and misunderstood. In the same document sleeve were some more youthful photos projecting even more innocence. They must have been taken years earlier when he was caught stealing cars. Same expression, except he’d put on weight since then.
Various forensic reports stacked up more evidence implicating Danny. The tools of his trade, the jammer and the programmer, had been found in a carrier under the passenger seat, marked with his fingerprints and DNA. He had definitely handled the banknotes and the sack the body had been contained in.
The autopsy report confirmed the obvious — that the victim had died from a gunshot close to the head. No other injuries were found.
Diamond’s grasp of events was being helped by the methodical filing by date. A full two weeks had passed before the dead man was identified. Meanwhile Danny had been in custody, charged with stealing the car. The more serious charge had waited while more evidence had been gathered.
The focus shifted to the South Downs village of Slindon after Joe Rigden was reported missing and duly confirmed as the victim. The reports showed that Rigden’s isolated cottage had been searched and photographed, but no signs of violence or a break-in were found there and none of his property seemed to be missing.
A thick sheaf of statements showed how extensive the interviewing had been in Slindon. The murdered man had been well known locally and seemed to have led a blameless life earning an honest living. His skills as a self-employed gardener were appreciated and he wasn’t short of work. Statements had been collected from the people he worked for and they read like testimonials. ‘Reliable and knowledgeable... often worked long past the time he was paid for... came in all weathers... brought his own tools... got rid of the moles that were ruining my lawn... advised me on my roses and came with me to pick the best specimens at the garden centre... I trusted him absolutely.’
Three weeks in, the detectives working on the murder had held a case review. Reading between the lines, they were frustrated by the lack of information. The investigation was hampered by the absence of any obvious motive. The early suspicions that Danny had killed for the two thousand pounds had been scaled down when it became clear that the money couldn’t have been Rigden’s. The gardener banked his earnings regularly on Saturdays and his bank statements confirmed he hadn’t made any large withdrawals in the last three years. You might have expected a self-employed man paid in cash to have salted some of it away and avoided paying tax. Not so Joe Rigden. He kept accounts and was almost unbelievably straight with the inland revenue. Even his tips were declared. There was little chance that he had a large amount of cash in his house or on his person waiting to be stolen.
A month into the investigation, Chichester CID were forced to conclude that Danny had not acted alone and was not the prime mover in the murder, but an accessory. The money appeared to have been his payment for disposing of the dead body in a way that wouldn’t connect the killer to the crime. As a professional car thief, he had been hired to steal a vehicle and either dump the body in some remote place or leave it to be discovered in the abandoned car. Unluckily for him, he had been caught.
The case against Danny as a paid accessory was always more likely to succeed than charging him as the killer. Substantial efforts were made to pinpoint the main perpetrator. Danny was repeatedly questioned and continued to deny all knowledge of the murder. He couldn’t deny being in possession of the money and being caught with the body in the stolen car. And he was a self-confessed liar.
The Crown Prosecution Service took on the case and eventually it came to trial. Reading the summary, Diamond concluded that Danny had done himself no service by pleading not guilty and denying almost everything. The judge had come to the view that this habitual criminal knew the identity of the killer and was shielding him from justice. After a summing up stressing that the killing bore all the hallmarks of professional involvement and that Danny’s part in it was for financial gain, a unanimous verdict of guilty was returned by the jury. The life sentence came with a minimum term of ten years before he could be considered for release.
If Danny’s conviction drew a line under the case, it was only a dotted line. The team were conscious that the main man was still at liberty and reviews were held periodically, but each time they came back to the unanswerable question: why would anyone want to kill a popular working man who had never been involved in anything underhand? Without a motive they were hamstrung.
‘How far have you got?’
Diamond was so immersed that he took a moment to register that Georgina had spoken. ‘Ah. I’m up to the trial.’
‘We’ve been here almost two hours. I’m starting to skip things and I shouldn’t. I say we need a break.’
‘Can’t disagree.’
‘I’ll phone Pat Gomez and ask her for some tea.’
‘Mine didn’t taste too good. I don’t know what they put in it. Fresh air would suit me better.’
‘I can see the canal basin from here,’ Georgina said. ‘People are walking there and there’s a café of some sort with tables outside.’
They found that the Canal Trust had its own shop and the tea was drinkable. Apart from a family of swans, there wasn’t much activity on the water, but the path around it was ideal for a stroll and the locals were taking advantage of a fine afternoon. A group of schoolchildren had taken over a bench. There were cyclists and anglers.
‘I’m not too impressed by these CID people,’ Georgina said. ‘Barely civil, don’t you think?’
‘I can understand how they feel, their regular boss suspended and a jerk like Montacute in charge. There were some grins when you turfed him out of the office.’
‘I missed that.’
‘And one of them must be the whistleblower. There are going to be tensions in the team.’
‘So you think the anonymous letter came from an insider?’
‘Don’t you? It was sent from here. It had to be someone in the know.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Georgina said. ‘Yes, it would put everyone under strain.’
‘Were you shown the letter?’
She flushed a shade deeper. ‘I was told what it had to say. Brief and to the point, I gather.’