“We’re expecting gawpers today.”
“Can’t you keep them at a distance?”
“We’ll put tapes across and then the residents will complain about a loss of freedom. Can’t win. It’s okay. We’re used to this.”
“I was thinking you’re nicely placed to observe what goes on among the people who live on the boats. You know the couple I’m interested in?”
“Deck the Halls? Woman with the young kid? You were talking to her when you were here.”
“Right. The man has the day job. Uses a motorbike.”
“I saw him when we arrived this morning. He visited Daisy Belle before he left for work.”
“Who’s she?” Diamond asked.
There was a tone of disrespect in Earnshaw’s answer. “It’s a boat. The narrowboat moored next to them. I got the impression it was locked and not in use. He had a key and let himself in like he owns it.”
“Perhaps he does. Like a second home, extra storage or something.”
“But the wife doesn’t go in. She’s here all day and she doesn’t set foot on board. It’s only him. Do you think he’s got another woman installed there?”
Diamond laughed. “Too close to home, I reckon.” But he wrote Daisy Belle on the notepad on his desk, with a question mark beside it. “Mustn’t hold you up. I hope you search under the jetty.”
“I’m standing on it now.”
“I’d be happier if you were underneath.”
“I’m directing operations.”
Hope sprang briefly in Diamond’s breast. “So the diver is underneath?”
“Out in the middle. The final strip of open water. What is it with the jetty?”
“It’s the place I would stow a corpse if I had one to dispose of — out of sight in case it rises to the surface.”
“We’ll see if you’re right, but don’t hold your breath. It may not be today.”
Diving for bodies in cold, muddy water doesn’t bring out the best in people, Diamond decided.
After ending the call, he took out his phone and found the Bristol Post website and the headline POLICE DIVERS SEARCH MARINA. Below was a picture of a black-clad figure jumping into the water in full gear with snorkel cylinders strapped to his back.
He closed the page without reading the main text. He knew what it would say and the publicity would do no harm. The public would be reassured that the police were doing something, or seen to be. He might need to convince Georgina of that.
His self-confidence, usually so robust, was being tested by this case. If nothing was recovered from the marina, his suspicion of Fergus and Candida would have to be reassessed. He might even ask himself whether he’d got it hopelessly wrong and there were no bodies anywhere.
He hadn’t slept well. His brain had been struggling to process all the information he and the team had gathered. Worryingly, he couldn’t remember a piece of conversation he’d believed at the time was significant, or might be.
Bad sleep, memory lapses, loss of confidence. Could Georgina be right about wanting to pension him off?
Perish the thought.
He stepped into the incident room and found Ingeborg working her keyboard. “Your memory is better than mine, Inge. Cast your mind back to when we interviewed Sabine. There was a lot to take in and she was more talkative than you or I expected, right?”
“Quite the charmer.”
“I hear the same note in your voice as when you reminded me she’s an actor. Her charm passed you by. Enough of that. I’ve been trying to recall something you said when we were with her.”
“You did most of the talking, guv.”
“Right, but you chipped in when you felt I was in danger of missing a point, as you do.”
“We were on a steep learning curve,” Ingeborg said. “There was a lot to take in.”
“Plenty. Isn’t it annoying when you’re trying to hook things out from the back of your brain and can’t? Your comment on something Sabine said made an impression on me — not enough of one, it seems.”
“Something I said?”
“And I didn’t follow it up at the time. I told myself you and I could discuss it later.”
“Can you give me a rough idea what it was about?”
“I have a feeling it was when we spoke about the jinx incidents with her.”
“Let’s go through them, then,” she said, spreading her hand to count them off on her fingers. “Trixie pulling out?”
“Not that.”
“The fire in the sound engineers’ van? The injury to the stuntmen?”
“Keep going.”
“Dave Tudor going missing? Mary Wroxeter’s death?”
“Not that.” Does she think I’m losing it? he asked himself.
“Dan Burbage?”
“No.”
“Daisy Summerfield?”
His hand went up. “Something about the old lady. You took over the questioning when Sabine mentioned her. What was it you said?”
“That the way she died was mostly speculation? The break-in was only discovered after she was found dead.”
“Something else. A remark you made.”
“That it was odd the burglar chose that evening to break in?”
“Yes!” A surge of relief. “I can almost hear your exact words: ‘How did the burglar know Daisy was supposed to be away filming?’”
“I said that?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe I was reading too much into it,” Ingeborg said, without fully appreciating the significance. “I suggested the burglar had seen the call sheet. But there was this last-minute change he couldn’t have known about. She came home early after they filmed her scene as an add-on at the end of the day.”
He felt like hugging her. “This is what I’ve been struggling to remember and it has to be followed up.” His brain was in overdrive now. “We’ll call the Met and get the latest on their investigation.”
“‘We,’ meaning me?” she said.
“No. I need your brainwork for this, not your research skills. It’s a job for Jean Sharp.”
He crossed the room. Jean saw him coming and turned as pale as the whiteboard behind her.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not asking you to drive me anywhere. I have an in-house task for you. Daisy Summerfield, the old dear who played Swift’s mother in the show. Cardiac arrest believed to have been triggered by finding a burglar in her bedroom. We haven’t examined the full facts.”
She was frowning. “It’s not our case, guv.”
“Right. I need an update from Richmond CID. The name of the investigating officer would be a start. Case notes, postmortem report, anything the coroner is willing to let us have. Maybe no more can be said about a sad occurrence, but it’s part of our brief and we should have looked at it before now.”
Confident she’d deliver what he’d asked for, he returned to Ingeborg. “It’s too much to hope they already arrested the burglar.”
“The Met clear-up rate for residential burglary is about five per cent, guv, and that’s better than ours.”
Crime statistics were a sore point for Diamond. He was always being reminded by Georgina that Bath lagged behind everyone else. “But they’re investigating and they may even have their suspicions who it was. Burglars have their MO, whether they favour smashing windows or ringing the doorbell and conning their way in.”
“I can’t see how this helps,” she said.
“Trust me, it could.”
“I thought we decided her death couldn’t have been deliberate.”
“And we may have made a mistake. Your point was a telling one. The burglar broke in believing Daisy was away in Bristol. Her return to Richmond was a last-minute decision that turned out to be fatal.”
“It was a heart attack. They did the postmortem. It can’t have been murder, guv.”