He turned to Halliwell. ‘This stinks. I’m going out to Warminster to see her.’
Shearman was shaking his head. ‘You’ll send her into a panic. She’ll think she’s under suspicion.’
‘She is. I don’t want you tipping her off,’ he said and told Halliwell to stay with Shearman for the next hour.
‘Don’t you people understand that I have a job to do?’ Shearman demanded.
‘There’s no job. The theatre is dark now.’
‘That’s when things get busy for me. I’ll be organising a team to strike the set.’
‘To what?’
Halliwell said, ‘He means moving the scenery, guv. They want to clear the stage so it’s ready for the next production.’
Diamond pointed a finger at Shearman. ‘Don’t even think about shifting it. Leave everything in place, exactly as it is. That’s an order.’
20
South-east of Bath in the thick of the Friday afternoon commute along the A36, Diamond drove at his usual steady forty, heading a procession increasingly desperate to overtake. At his side was a detective sergeant almost his own age who had transferred from Chipping Sodbury a couple of months back, a soft-speaking, dependable type. Lew Rogers had merged into the CID room almost unnoticed. This was a chance to get to know him better. About all Diamond had discovered was that he cycled to work from Batheaston. Either a fitness freak or a green, he had decided.
‘I’ll be relying on you to guide me to the street where this woman lives,’ Diamond said. ‘I generally steer clear of Warminster.’
‘Why is that? All the sightings of UFOs?’
‘No. The bypass.’
They both smiled. Back in the sixties and seventies there had been persistent reports of flying saucers over Warminster and the nearby downs. There were claims that some local residents had been abducted. Books had been written about extra-terrestrial visitors.
‘Have you thought about getting a sat-nav?’ Rogers asked in his innocence.
‘Got one.’
‘Where is it?’
‘It’s you, sat here and navving for me. More reliable, I hope, and with extras, like hands. If you look in the glove compartment you’ll find some Softmints. Have one yourself.’
‘Thanks, but I won’t.’ Rogers said. He passed a mint to Diamond. ‘Does Kate live alone?’
‘As far as I know, yes.’
‘Are you going to nick her?’
‘If necessary.’
‘Is she on the run?’
‘Would I be driving at this speed if she was?’
‘I was told you don’t do more than forty in any situation.’
Diamond looked ahead without even the suggestion of a smile. ‘You’re well informed. There’s a stretch of dual carriageway coming up. They can all overtake if they want. We’ll get there soon enough. We’re not far off now.’
Two minutes later, all the brake lights started going on. Both lanes of the carriageway were blocked as far ahead as he could see.
‘Shouldn’t have spoken. What’s this about?’ he said. ‘One of those idiots who just overtook us, I wouldn’t wonder.’
Everything came to a complete halt.
‘Could be road works,’ Rogers said.
‘I don’t think so.’ He’d heard the two-tone wail of an emergency vehicle from behind. ‘Can they get by?’
An ambulance snaked a route through the stationary traffic.
Diamond switched off the engine and took out his phone. After speaking to traffic division he informed Rogers that the problem was half a mile ahead, almost in the town. ‘Some idiot managed to turn his car over and the fire service are using their cutting equipment. Fancy a game of I Spy?’
‘Perhaps I will have one of your mints, guv.’
‘Live dangerously.’ Fitness was Rogers’ thing, Diamond decided.
He dialled CID for an update and was pleased when Ingeborg answered. She was better than any of the team at summing up what was happening, and was just back from interviewing the chairman of the board at Melmot Hall.
‘Learn anything new?’ he asked.
‘Yes, and I would have called you if you’d kept your phone on.’
‘You’re in danger of nagging the boss, Inge. I was driving.’
‘You’ve got someone with you who could take a call, guv. Anyway, this will make you sit up. Melmot told me Kate is working her notice. He sacked her a week ago.’
‘Melmot sacked Kate?’ he said more to himself than Ingeborg, to gain a couple of seconds while the implications sank in.
‘He said there had been problems with her before, not doing the job properly.’
‘Now he tells us.’
‘She’d clung on because of her relationship with Shearman, who always backs her and says the criticism is unfair. But when Mel mot was approached about the state of the wardrobe room he went to see it for himself and was so appalled that he fired her.’
‘It was a dog’s breakfast when I saw it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve no experience of these places.’
‘You can’t run a theatre wardrobe in such a mess. Everything has to be in place and organised.’ That was one of Ingeborg’s favourite refrains. She was right, of course, whether it was a theatre wardrobe or a CID office.
‘Shearman was silent about this when I questioned him.’
‘He would be.’
‘He did say at one point that her heart isn’t in it any more. That should have alerted me. He doesn’t give much away.’
‘Do you want to know who the whistle-blower was?’
‘Go on.’
‘Denise Pearsall.’
He gave a whistle of his own. ‘That could be the clincher. Melmot told you this?’
‘He said she took some photographs of the wardrobe room with her phone and went to see him with them.’
‘She was asking for trouble, shopping her boss.’ The facts were slotting in like the last pieces of a jigsaw. ‘Kate must have known who dropped her in it. You can’t keep stuff like that to yourself. This is dynamite, Inge. It means she had a red-hot motive for revenge on Denise. And if she thought Denise had mentioned any of this to Clarion, she had a strong reason to kill Clarion as well.’
Ingeborg sounded a note of caution. ‘Before we get carried away, guv, let’s not forget Shearman. He’s Kate’s lover. He could have killed Denise. In his case, there was a personal element because Denise ignored him, went over his head and complained to Melmot.’
‘Point taken. And he was the best placed of everyone to murder Clarion.’ He pressed back against the headrest and released some of the tension with a huge sigh. ‘Whoever it is, we’re onto them. When I get to see Kate, I’ll know. The one small problem is that I’m stuck in a bloody traffic jam. Nothing is moving.’
A further ten minutes went by. The hold-up had reached the stage when people were out of their cars discussing what was going on. Diamond remained seated, thinking of other things, using the time to revisit each stage of the murders, down to such detail as the placing of the butterfly in dressing room one and the secreting of the suicide note in the stove. Nothing conflicted with either Kate or Shearman committing both murders.
‘When we finally get moving again and find the house,’ he said to Lew Rogers, ‘we’ll make sure she doesn’t see us coming and escape through the back. I’ve had that happen before. I’ll park some distance up the street and you can make the first approach. She knows me. I don’t think she’s met you.’
‘I was in the theatre last night with the others.’