“Words only? You got off lightly.”
“I thought so.”
“Did anyone else know?”
“I’m certain he told no one.”
Diamond tried putting himself into Greg’s shoes. “He had enough to deal with already, finding a way to write Daisy out of the show.” He hesitated. “Was there an element of sex? Was he attracted to you?”
Her face creased in disgust. “Thank Christ, no.”
“And you didn’t warm to him after he let you off?”
She shook her head as if she’d just come out of the shower.
“But he didn’t forget what you’d done. He saved it up for later.”
Her look became a caught-in-the-headlights stare. “You know it all, don’t you?”
“He forced you into conspiring with him to fake his death.”
She swallowed hard before her words came in a rush. “He blackmailed me into doing it. He said he’d protected me from prosecution and if I didn’t do what he asked he’d make sure I went to prison. The only reason I agreed is that if it worked I’d be free of him in future. He could never threaten me again because he’d be out of it, dead to the world.”
“He set up the attack in the field with you acting the killer?”
A long sigh before the words tumbled out. “Like you say, he was an organiser and I do stunts, so he planned the whole thing in one take and fitted the dash cam to his car to record it. He knew all there is to know about staging a stunt like that and making it look real. My part was simple. Well, two parts, first standing in the lane, directing him through the gate, and then as the knifeman. The key thing was I had to stay in shot. He’d laid white tape on the ground to make sure I got my moves right.”
“You wore the high-vis jacket in the lane and then discarded it for the stabbing?”
“He’d told me where to throw it out of the camera’s range. Each move was planned and rehearsed like an action scene from the show. He made me practise stabbing a side of lamb, so I knew how to make it realistic, not just waving the knife in the air.”
“But you didn’t cut him. How did the blood get there?”
“In a big plastic bottle. He’d been collecting it from his own arm, like he was a blood donor. He smeared some on his hand and the side of the car and the rest was poured on the ground to make you lot think he’d bled to death.”
“This was after the camera was switched off?”
“Yes. And then we collected the things and I gave him a lift on the bike to the railway station.”
“I don’t suppose he told you where he was going after that?”
She rolled her eyes upwards at such a stupid question.
“You must have wondered why all this was necessary, why he wanted to stage his own death. Was it discussed?”
“I was too scared to ask. He might have killed me.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t. When his full story is made public, you’ll know how close you came. Did you realise you messed up his masterplan by parking the motorcycle in the wrong place? It’s briefly visible on the dash cam footage when he drives into the field. That helped us work out what happened.”
She sighed. “I’m not much good at real crime, am I? What’s going to happen to me now?”
“It will help your case if you tell the truth about what got you into this mess. Why did you need to steal the stuff from Daisy?”
Her eyes slid downwards and she muttered, “That’s another can of worms.”
“Better own up to it, Ann.”
After a long pause while the pain of indecision was written across her face, she said, “I was doing speed. I’d gone through all the money I had and then some.”
“Are you still on it?”
A hesitant nod. “I need to get myself up for the stunts.”
“What you need, Ann, is help. I’ll give you the address of an addiction clinic. We’re going to take a statement from you, a truthful account of it all, what happened in Richmond and how Deans found out and used you. You may be called as a witness later and you’ll earn some credit for assisting us.”
“Are you going to keep me here?”
“Not if you cooperate. After you’ve signed the statement and your prints have been taken, you’re free to leave. In due course the Metropolitan Police will want to interview you and they’ll get a copy of everything you’ve told us. It’s up to them what action they take over the burglary.”
After she’d been taken out, Diamond asked Halliwell to see to the statement.
“What about Deans?” Halliwell asked. “He’s probably out of the country by now with his beard shaved off and his hair a different colour.”
“Immigration enforcement officers are on the lookout for him at all air and sea ports. Personally, I don’t think he’ll leave the country. He’s safer here, probably in London. He knows the ropes here.”
“Won’t he make for Romania?”
“That’s the last place on earth he’ll go.”
27
Next morning at the debrief of Operation Showstopper, Paul Gilbert had to endure another ordeal.
“You were crazy riding down those steps without a crash helmet,” Diamond said, “but you’re also incredibly brave. You made the arrest and we salute you.”
When everyone started clapping, Gilbert turned crimson and looked ready for a fresh stunt — jumping out of the window.
Ingeborg said, “Show a moped rider a Harley-Davidson and that’s what happens.”
Diamond shifted the spotlight. “And you, Inge, and you, Jean, earn a gold star each for finding the truth about Greg Deans. Not everyone knows yet, so would one of you like to sum up?”
“Oh.”
Put on the spot, the two women looked at each other. Ingeborg said, “I’ll start, then. After Natalie told us Deans was Romanian, somebody not a million miles from here came up with the idea that all three missing men, Tudor, Nicol and Deans, might be Romanian immigrants. Jean did some digging on the internet and Bingo!”
“Get away,” Halliwell said.
“Check if you don’t believe me. So we took up our theory with the embassy, sent them photos from the Swift and Proud personnel files and they confirmed that Tudor and Nicol had both been born there. Then we got into a long to-and-fro with them because the mugshot we sent of Grigore Dinescu, alias Deans, didn’t match the one they had. If he wasn’t the same man, who was he? Quite a search went on at the embassy and back in their own country. Someone there believed his face was familiar for some reason, but they couldn’t place him. Then Jean had the smart idea of suggesting they checked their criminal records and that’s how we learned his true identity.” She looked across at her colleague. “Come out from behind your screen, Jean.”
The shy member of the team surfaced and cleared her throat.
“Can’t hear you,” John Leaman said.
“I didn’t speak,” Jean said.
“We’re waiting.”
“Well,” she said in her soft, apologetic voice that managed to command everyone’s attention, “the Romanians used biometric recognition software and matched our photo to a known offender called Simion Stoica, who was convicted of three murders in Mangalia, on the Black Sea coast, in the year 2007. He’s known as the Knifeman of Mangalia.”
“Greg Deans?” Halliwell piped in disbelief.
Diamond said, “Can we get the picture on the big screen? It’s an amazing resemblance.”
Leaman switched on and Jean transferred the image. The red hair was cropped and the face clean-shaven. Even so, Greg’s strong features and calculating brown eyes were unmistakable.
“No doubt about that,” Gilbert said.
“The Romanians are confident, or they wouldn’t have told us,” Jean said before launching into the back story. “Stoica was a graduate in drama and he got a job with a theatre company by fatally stabbing the only other applicant. At the time it was believed his victim was mugged in the street. One of the company became suspicious and he, too, was knifed to death outside his house by someone wearing a ski mask.”