They were eight-by-ten prints in black and white, mostly of groups of the crusties lounging in rooms, some in embraces, their dreadlocked hair inseparable and suggestive of sheep after a hard winter in the hills; others lolling in armchairs or lying full-length across the floor. There were also some striking portraits of individuals staring at the camera, their pinched faces and joyless expressions testifying to the hardship of life on the streets.
“Which one is G.B.?” Diamond asked when Prue Shorter came back into the room.
She picked one off the table. “How would you like to share an ice cream with that? Britt did. I wish I’d had my camera with me at the time.”
G.B. had a shaven head and a drooping eyelid. His teeth looked as if he had just eaten black currants. It was impossible to estimate his age. He was in an army greatcoat and he had a leather necklace with pointed metal studs, the kind people used to give guard dogs to wear. In the photo he was holding a beer can in each hand.
“How big is he?”
“Six-three, must be. Terrific shoulders. He must have done some bodybuilding.”
“Did you find out anything about him, his background, I mean?”
“Britt may have done. I’d say he was a Londoner by his accent. Actually he had quite an educated voice.”
“Bright?”
“Brighter than most of that boozy lot. Their brains rot with the stuff they put away.”
“You said Britt worked her charm on him. Was that as far as it went?”
“You mean did she do it with him? What a revolting thought!”
“Did you ask her?”
“I wouldn’t have insulted her.”
“Did they kiss, embrace, or touch at all? You see what I’m getting at? I want to know whether G.B. could have regarded her as his girl.”
“Sweetie, I’ve no idea what was in his mind, but I’d be very surprised if Britt let him get up to anything. She had any amount of dishy men to choose from.”
Diamond wasn’t to be distracted. “When you were in the house in Trim Street, how did they seem with each other?”
“You mean did they go upstairs for some how’s-your-father? If they had, I’d have gone with them. I was feeling very uptight among all those weird people. No, thank God, Britt was supervising me. She asked G.B. each time we wanted to move to another room or have some furniture shifted for a better shot, and he was very obliging, very eager to please. It was all done in less than an hour.”
“Did any money change hands?”
“Not while I was looking.”
“Might I keep this photo of G.B.?”
“Help yourself. I’ve still got the negs if I really want to remind myself of his ugly mug. How about some more cake?”
They got away without more cake.
In the car, Julie put the key in the ignition and said, “Dare I ask?”
“What?”
“Who gets the job of finding G.B.?”
He said, “It never ceases to amaze me.”
“What’s that?”
“A woman’s intuition.”
Chapter Eleven
He swung the door open. Then he stopped.
He had just come back to the storeroom they had given him as an office. On his desk was a bee the size of a walnut.
Anyone could see it was not a live bee.
He felt an idiot to have reacted as he did on first sight, furious at the gooseflesh that covered his arms. Grinding his teeth, he picked up the thing.
Made of black and yellow wool, with wire antennae, gauze wings and Perspex eyes with black pupils that moved, it was basically a soft toy. A ridiculous object. Someone’s feeble idea of a joke. Would Julie Hargreaves have planted it there? Not Julie, he decided, his investigative skills at work on something tangible at last. She hadn’t had the opportunity. She had been with him ever since she’d heard about the bee sting in his thumb and now she was-or should be-in the Abbey Churchyard, inquiring about G.B. the crusty.
Who would have thought it amusing? Any of the bunch he’d worked with in the old days. On arriving that morning, he’d mentioned his misfortune to the desk sergeant-a cardinal error. The story must have been passed around the entire station.
Footsteps were approaching, so he opened the top drawer, slid the bee inside, sat back and faced the door, fascinated to see if anyone came in. It is well-known that the first person on the scene after a crime will often turn out to have been the perpetrator.
John Wigfull walked in.
Surely not Wigfull! He was too po-faced to stoop to something so childish.
“How’s it going?” he asked Diamond innocently enough.
“Depends what you mean by going. There isn’t much activity.”
“Good thing.”
“Maybe.”
“I mean that the case is cast iron. Everyone says you sent the right man down.”
“Thanks.”
“So this is just a trip down memory lane for you.”
“A double-check,” said Diamond.
There was something faintly comical about John Wigfull foraging, like some small rodent with whiskers twitching. “Has anything fresh come up?”
“We’ve seen a couple of people I didn’t have time to interview the first time round.”
“With any result?”
“Nothing to get excited over.”
If Wigfull wasn’t there to assess the result of the bee tease, there had to be something else he wanted to know. He wouldn’t linger to indulge in casual conversation. He reached for Julie’s chair and then couldn’t summon the nerve to sit down, so he gripped the back and leaned over it. “It must be boring for you, all this inactivity. It shouldn’t be long before we catch up with Mountjoy.”
Diamond agreed that it shouldn’t be long, privately thinking it was down to the efficiency of the searchers.
“We got damned close last night,” said Wigfull.
“I was there.”
“We’ve stepped up the hunt. It will help us enormously if Mountjoy gets in touch again. He said he’d want another meeting to see what progress you’d made. Is that right?”
Diamond gave a wary nod.
“You would let us know if he contacted you directly?”
So that was what he had been leading up to. Far from being hot on the trail, they were desperate. “You know me, John.”
“Yes.” Wigfull looked at the shelves of blank stationery as if they would supply information as good as any Diamond gave, which was probably the case. “If you’re bored out of your skull, you might like to try some offender profiling.”
“Oh, yes?”
The voice took on a self-congratulatory note. “Do you know about offender profiling? It was being pioneered before you, em, moved to London. It’s a way of using statistics to build up the profile of an offender.”
“With a computer?”
Wigfull’s face lit up. “Yes. It’s a program called CATCH-EM.”
“Called what?”
“CATCHEM. That’s an acronym for the Central Analytical Team Collating Homicide Expertise and Management. The initial letters spell
CATCHEM.”
Diamond’s eyes narrowed. His face reddened. The woolly bee may not have achieved the desired reaction, but Wigfull had touched a raw nerve this time. In a tone thick with contempt came the words, “Who do they think we are?”
Wigfull blinked nervously.
“I said who do they think we are-ruddy seven-year-olds? Who are the people who dream up these names? They seem to think dimwits like you and me will learn to love computers if they give them names. We’re grown-ups, John. We’re in a police force, not a play school.”
“I don’t have any problem with it,” said Wigfull.
Diamond shot him a look that told him it was not an acceptable comment. “They think up these cutesy names and then bust a gut trying to fit rational words to justify them. There’s a police computer called HOLMES.”
“Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. What’s wrong with that?”
With difficulty Diamond resisted grabbing Wigfull by the tie and hauling him across the desk. “Doesn’t it strike you as puerile? Why use the words Large and Major together when they mean the same thing? I’ll tell you why. Because some genius rubbed his hands and said ‘We’ll call it Holmes-just the thing for the plod.’ Well, if you don’t find it patronizing, I do.”