“Bath and North-East Somerset?” the man said. “I thought this was a Sussex investigation.” He had the look of a petty official, tight, thin mouth and ferrety eyes. Dark hair flattened to his skull.
Diamond gave him the benefit of the doubt. “You’re perfectly right. I have a kind of watching brief. You can help us, in fact. Where’s the lifeguard hut?”
“Park near the beach café and you’ll see it,” he said. “Are they under suspicion, those lifeguards? They’re Aussies, you know.”
“That’s the bit of beach where the body was found, I was told.”
“So was I,” the man said. “I was stuck in here issuing tickets, so I missed all the excitement.”
“You must have let the police cars through.”
“I meant I missed what was happening on the beach.”
“Do you happen to remember the woman who was killed?”
“Out of a thousand or more who came past me? I’m afraid not, my friend. No doubt I met the murderer as well, but don’t ask me to pick him out.”
They drove through and parked where he’d told them. “Want an ice cream?” he asked Dr Seton, as they were passing the serving hatch of the beach café.
“I haven’t had such a thing for years,” Seton said
“Give in to it, then. It’s allowed. Wicked, but not illegal,” he said, having his own private joke. “If you don’t want an old-fashioned ice cream there are plenty of things on sticks. Take a look at the diagram and pick one out.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Go for it, man. You look like a Classic Magnum fancier to me.”
“All right.”
When Diamond had paid for two Magnums and handed one over, he said, “Looking at that board with all the different shapes and colours, I was thinking they’d make a nice research project for someone.”
Seton gave him a frown and said nothing.
They moved across the turf and sat on the stone wall above the pebbles. The tide was some way out, so Diamond was able to point to where the sand met the stones. “That’s approximately where she was found, I gather, in a white two-piece swimsuit. Don’t suppose you ever saw her in a swimsuit, Dr Seton.”
“Certainly not.”
Diamond was the first to finish his Magnum. He said he’d go and have a word with the lifeguards. Unfortunately the two lads on duty hadn’t been around on the day of the murder. “You want to speak to the Aussies,” one of them said. “They know all about it.”
He would have to leave the Aussies for another day. He crunched across the pebbles to Seton and said, “Let’s go. Mustn’t keep you from your researches.”
Seton didn’t smile. He was probably thinking Diamond was a suitable case for analysis.
7
Diamond got back to Bath just before seven and dropped Dr Seton outside his lodgings, where else but in Odd Down? He swore a few times to release the tension, lowered the windows for some fresh air, and then set off directly for the university campus at Claverton.
Tired from all the driving, which he knew he didn’t do well, he found himself in the early evening snarl-up. Coming down Wellsway into the city in a slow-moving line of traffic he let his attention wander. Halfway down, they had erected one of those mechanical billboards with rotating strips that displayed three different ads. These had the same slogan, BECAUSE IT’S BRITISH METAL, but the pictures altered. He watched an image of Concorde being replaced by the Millennium Bridge-and then jammed his foot on the brake just in time to avoid running into the bus in front of him. Fortunately the driver behind him was more alert.
He was relieved to complete the drive without mishap.
The Department of Behavioural Psychology was quiet at this hour, though not deserted. A research student confirmed that Professor Chromik had been in earlier.
“Do you happen to know where he lives?”
The young man shook his head.
“It’s important.”
“You might catch him at the end-of-semester bash later tonight if he hasn’t already pissed off to Spain, or somewhere.”
“Where’s it held?”
“The clubhouse at the Bath Golf Club.”
Dr Seton hadn’t mentioned a staff party. Possibly his colleagues had decided not to tell him.
There was time to go home to Weston and shower. He called the nick to make sure he still had a job, as he put it to Keith Halliwell. Nothing more dramatic had happened in Bath than a middle-aged streaker running down Milsom Street. “He didn’t have a lot to show to the world,” Halliwell said. “Nobody complained.”
“How did we get to hear about it, then?”
“A Japanese tourist tried to get a photo. The streaker grabbed the camera and carried on running and we had to decide whether to do him for theft. But you know how it is trying to nick a naked man. Not one of the foot patrols answered the shout, so he got away. The camera was recovered later behind a bush in Parade Gardens.”
Unwisely, Halliwell asked if the trip to Bognor had turned up anything.
“Which reminds me,” Diamond said. “You went up to the university and spoke to the professor, right? Did he tell you about the tosser he unloaded on me for the day?”
“Not a word,” Halliwell said.
“Is that the truth?”
“Didn’t you get on, guv?”
“Don’t push me, Keith. I have a strong suspicion you were in on this.”
“In on what? I’m not following you at all.”
He seemed to be speaking sincerely, so Diamond moved on to other matters. “What’s this professor like? I’m going to meet him tonight.”
“He’ll talk. Doesn’t give much away, but I don’t know how much there is to tell. The dead woman was very brilliant, he said. She’s on the list of approved offender profilers and the university seem to be under some obligation to let her go off and assist with investigations.”
“Pressure from the Home Office?”
“Could be. All their undergraduate students have to be found placements in their third year for job experience. Some of them go to the Crime Analysis Unit at the Yard.”
“Did he talk about the cases she’s involved in?”
“He was guarded about that.”
“Let’s see if I can catch him off guard tonight.”
He took that shower, and decided on the dress code for a university staff party at a golf club on a summer evening. Cream-coloured trousers, navy shirt and pale blue linen jacket. As a safeguard, he tucked a tie into an inner pocket. Golf clubs could be sniffy about open necks. The shirt was a favourite, made of a fabric that didn’t crease. In the year since Steph had died, he’d scorched a couple of shirts trying to iron them.
It was after eight when he parked his old Cortina in a nice position outside the club, only for some member to point out that he was in the space reserved for the club captain. Tempted to riposte that the captain wasn’t using it, he controlled himself and found another berth. As an extra gesture to conformity, he put on the tie, a sober-looking black one with a repeat design of silver handcuffs, some wag’s bright idea for a birthday gift for a copper.
Inside, he located the psychology crowd in a private room upstairs. Plenty of beards and bow ties. Leather jackets seemed to be de rigueur for the men and black trouser suits for the women. Picking a glass of wine from a passing tray, he steered a course around the groups to where a dark-haired woman in a silvery creation with a plunge stood alone and conspicuous.
“You don’t have the look of a trick cyclist,” he told her.
She said, “Can I take that as a compliment?”
“Of course.”
“I’m Tara, the PA.”
“To the boss man, by any chance?”
“He’s the only one of this lot who rates a PA. And who are you?”
“The unlucky cop who took Dr Seton to the seaside today.”