‘She arrived by limo, you said?’ ‘Chauffeur-driven Mercedes, like I was told to look out for.’ ‘Was anything said when she first got out?’ ‘Not by her. She had a scarf across her face like one of them Arab women and the hood of her jacket was over her head. I told her to come with me and she did.’ ‘Did she appear nervous?’ ‘How would I know when all I could see was her eyes?’ ‘You’re in the security business. You can tell a lot from a person’s behaviour, or you ought to.’ ‘She was in control of herself, if that’s what you’re asking.’ ‘Was it busy outside the theatre?’ ‘It was past the time when they’re hanging about outside.
The show was almost starting. No one took any notice of her.’ ‘Was anyone lurking around the stairs to the box?’ ‘No.’ ‘After taking her upstairs, where did you go?’ ‘Back down and round to the stage door. I was there for the rest of the evening.’ Just a functionary. That was his defence, anyway. If anyone had a case to answer, it wasn’t Charlie Binns. Diamond kept an open mind. If Binns and Shearman could be believed, the people ‘in’ on the secret visit amounted only to three. But at the interval Fräulein Schneider was mouthing off to Gisella and Preston and everyone who happened to be in the wings that she’d seen the grey lady in the upper box. Anyone who guessed the truth or simply went to investigate could have attacked Clarion. Her death had taken place in that twenty-minute slot.
Was it murder?
He returned upstairs, fixed on dragging some definite information out of Dr Sealy. The stairs didn’t do anything to lower his blood pressure.
‘What killed her, then?’ he said when he’d got his breath back.
Sealy was still crouched over the body. ‘I told you -’ he barely managed to say before Diamond cut him off.
‘You told me nothing. You’ve been studying the body for
– what? – forty minutes and given me no help at all. I’ve got all of fifty people down there wanting to get off home. I can’t hold them indefinitely.’
‘Your call, old boy, not mine,’ Sealy said without looking away from the body.
‘Is there anything I should be told?’
‘About her death? Nothing I can tell you.’
‘Are you saying it was natural?’
‘No.’
‘Unnatural?’
‘I reserve judgement. I’ll do the PM tomorrow. Do you want to be there?’ He knew what to do with a knife, how to twist as well as dissect.
‘Not even a suspicion?’
‘I’m a scientist, my dear fellow. Suspicion is speculative and I don’t have any truck with it.’
‘Put it this way, then. Is it possible she was killed and no mark was left?’
‘Entirely possible, but don’t ask me to list the possible causes or we’ll be here all night.’ He stood up. ‘It gets to your knees, all this stooping. Pity she didn’t die sitting up in the chair.’
‘Just for your comfort?’ ‘Well, if she had, she’d have been visible to the audience and I imagine someone would have spotted something was wrong.’
‘I don’t know. People fall asleep watching dull plays.’
The first glimmer of concern crossed Sealy’s features. ‘Is it dull? I was given tickets for Saturday.’
‘I haven’t seen it. Look, if you’re not going to tell me anything, I might as well be off.’
‘There’s something I can tell you,’ Sealy said.
‘About the cause of death?’
‘No. About the victim. Take a look at her arms.’ He crouched again and rolled back one of the sleeves of the grey jacket as far as the elbow.
Diamond leaned over his shoulder for a better look. There were scars on the inner side of the forearm. ‘She was a druggie?’
‘No. These old injuries are not the same as you get from shooting up. She’s cut her wrists more than once. Clarion Calhoun was a self-harmer.’
17
An event as sensational as the sudden death of a major pop star becomes international news in a short time. Well before midnight on Thursday the police switchboard was jammed with media enquiries. Diamond issued a statement confirming that a woman had been found dead in a box at the Theatre Royal and that a post-mortem would be conducted next morning and a press conference would follow.
Early Friday he phoned Ingeborg at home and confided what the press didn’t yet know.
He heard her intake of breath.
The shock was still with him too, and gave more bite to his words than he intended. ‘When I asked you to bone up on Clarion’s life you didn’t tell me anything about self-inflicted injuries.’
The criticism hurt. ‘Be fair, guv. Don’t you think if I’d found even a hint of anything like that, I’d have told you right away?’
As so often, his plain speaking had caused more offence than he intended. ‘I’m saying this has come out of the blue, that’s all.’
‘If you remember, I was looking at websites and fanzines. This isn’t the kind of stuff a pop star wants to be known for.’
He backed off a little. ‘You’d think the tabloids would have been onto this.’
From Ingeborg’s tone, she appreciated the shift of focus. ‘She must have kept it well hidden. Thinking about it, all the pictures I’ve ever seen show her with her arms covered up.’
‘Well, you can’t hide much when you’re on the dissecting table. Sealy says he can use ultra-violet light to enhance old scars and give us an idea how long she was doing this.’
‘Can we be certain they were self-inflicted?’
‘They’re classic signs, he says.’
Ingeborg moved on quickly to the key question. ‘Are you thinking she may have damaged her own face with the caustic soda?’ She paused, shocked by her own statement. ‘It changes everything.’
He’d debated this with himself for much of the night. What if no crime had been committed at all and the whole of CID was flat out on a barren investigation? ‘Let’s find out if Sealy is right. That agent you and I met at the hospital – the dragon. What’s her name?’
‘Tilda Box.’
‘Yes. She must know what her client got up to. Where is she based? London, I suppose.’
‘We have her mobile number.’
‘You’ll get more out of her if you meet.’
‘We need someone to identify the body.’
‘Neat.’ Not for the first time, he valued Ingeborg’s quick brain. ‘What time is it? Wake her up and tell her we want her here before they start the PM.’
‘Now?’
‘Call me back as soon as you’ve fixed it. I’m at home.’ He put down the phone.
Raffles was pressing against his leg, reminding him of a duty that couldn’t be ducked. There was barely time to open a pouch of tuna before the phone rang.
‘She’s catching an early train,’ Ingeborg told him. ‘I’m meeting her at the station and driving her to the mortuary.’
‘She’d heard, of course?’
‘Oh, yes. She’s been up some time answering the phone.’
‘You can you handle this, can’t you, Inge?’
‘Getting her to open up? No problem, guv.’
‘She’s a hard nut.’
‘Brittle. I watched you deal with her.’
This sounded like a compliment, but it wasn’t. Cracking a difficult witness was a skill Ingeborg had learned in her days as a journalist. There were times when Diamond suspected she could crack him, too. Right now he wanted her opinion on the excesses of her age group. ‘You hear quite a lot about self-inflicted injuries among young women. Why do they do it?’
‘Guys do it as well.’
He smiled to himself. ‘Point taken.’
‘It’s often a teenage thing,’ she said, and then conceded a little. ‘I don’t know what the stats say, but you could be right that females are in the majority here. As to why, you’d better ask a shrink.’