‘My Mari? You got to be joking,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘You see why your photos are so vital?’ Diamond said. ‘It’s okay to use them, I hope?’
‘Be my guest,’ Hitomi said.
‘In that case, we’ll email them to Bath.’
‘Sure. Go ahead.’
For all Diamond’s battles with modern technology, he couldn’t deny that it had simplified parts of his job — as long as someone else was there to press the right keys. Paul Gilbert made sure the complete set of digital images was sent to Bath. A text from Ingeborg with the one word Magic confirmed the transfer.
Hitomi’s account of his daughter had been priceless information. Up to now he was the only person in Britain known for certain to have seen her. Other witnesses might yet see the photos and come forward, but there was no guarantee that they would.
For all the clichéd tough talk, Diamond could sense the pain this father was suffering, and warmed to him for bearing up so bravely. No question about it: Hitomi had loved his daughter and felt guilty for failing to keep tabs on her.
‘I need to be clear about this. Did she know anyone in Britain apart from yourself and the Exeter friends?’
He shook his head.
‘Had she visited you before?’
‘Here in Britain? No.’
‘So we have to assume she was killed by someone she met here on this trip, or a total stranger. Difficult.’
‘But with her picture you find witness, no problem, yes?’
Hitomi said.
‘We can hope. It won’t be easy. But you’ve given us a chance we didn’t have before.’
For the drive back, Diamond bought pasties from a shop further up Lavender Hill, confiding to Paul Gilbert that the smell was so appetising he had to get some, even though he knew there wouldn’t be enough meat for his liking. ‘I get caught each time. Sniff the cooking and can’t pass the shop entrance. And then I regret it later.’ He picked up a six-pack of beer for himself and some bottled water for Gilbert, explaining that they couldn’t risk being breathalysed.
Not far along the M4, he opened the last tin and said, ‘I feel a lot of sympathy for Mr. Hitomi. He was bearing it well, but suffering inside.’
‘I expect his ex-wife is having a bad time, too,’ Gilbert said. ‘Must be worse, being so far away.’
‘Tough. Very tough. But Hitomi wasn’t just grieving. He felt responsible, guilty even.’
‘He wasn’t to know what was going to happen.’
‘He’ll always believe he should have stayed in touch, texting or phoning.’
‘She was over twenty, guv. She wasn’t a kid. And he was busy with his job. That sushi bar was really humming. It must take most of his time ordering supplies and checking on the kitchen and his waiting staff, taking reservations, being nice to his customers. All these things make a difference in the catering business.’
‘But when the job takes you over completely and your nearest and dearest get pushed to the margins, you have to watch out. That’s what I’m saying. A lesson for us all.’
Paul Gilbert drove on in silence as if doubtful what to say next.
He needn’t have worried. Diamond was deep in thoughts of his own, about Paloma and the conversation on the towpath concerning his bottled-up emotions. Her plea — ‘I thought I was a part of your private life’ — still pained him. And so did the bust-up that had followed.
13
In the incident room next morning, the whiteboard display was strikingly improved by Kenji Hitomi’s photographs of his daughter when alive. Everyone felt the investigation had moved on. The computer-generated images had been removed. Mari the victim didn’t much resemble the woman painstakingly assembled in Philadelphia.
‘Did they charge us yet?’ Halliwell asked John Leaman. ‘I don’t think we should pay up.’
‘Too late. It was fifty percent up front and the rest on receipt. Already went through the bank.’
‘Demand a refund.’
‘They had a clause to rule it out.’
‘You signed an agreement? They’ll have lawyers waiting to pounce.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So how much of our budget was wasted on this?’
‘Don’t ask. I haven’t even told the guv’nor yet.’
‘It’s Georgina we need to worry about. She’s looking for any excuse to downsize us.’
Diamond himself appeared soon after and called for silence. ‘We’re going public with these pictures of the victim. Someone in the city must have spotted her. She was here in Bath at least one day — the day she was killed.’
‘Not necessarily, guv,’ Leaman said in the irritating singsong he used when he knew he was right.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She could have been murdered in Exeter and brought here by the killer and disposed of in the river.’
‘She never reached Exeter.’
‘We don’t know that for certain. Her so-called friends told her father she didn’t reach there, but one of them could have killed her and driven to Bath with the body. We ought to check the Exeter end.’
Diamond backtracked fast. ‘You’ve got a point. Christ, what’s the matter with me, not spotting that? The Exeter lot definitely have to be questioned. There could be some falling-out we haven’t heard about.’ He looked right and left for help, like a floundering swimmer. ‘Paul, did we get their names from Mr. Hitomi?’
‘He didn’t actually name them, guv.’
‘Get through to him now. No, better text him. We need the correct spelling.’
‘Will do,’ Gilbert took out his iPhone.
‘Want me to call Exeter CID?’ Halliwell asked.
‘What — ask them to do the job? We’ll handle this ourselves. Even if these friends are innocent as newborn babes it’s possible they can tell us stuff about Mari her father doesn’t know.’
Leaman couldn’t resist rubbing in his small triumph over Diamond. ‘Equally she could have been killed in some other place and brought here: Bristol, Swindon, Devizes—’
‘All right. We get the drift.’
‘Shouldn’t we put out a countrywide alert?’
‘That’ll happen willy-nilly. The press are sure to go national on these pictures. They’re quality photos and they tell a story. If she was seen in any place from here to John o’Groats we’ll get to hear of it.’
‘Better expect some mistaken sightings, then.’
‘That’s inevitable. I still favour Bath as the location — there was local knowledge at work — but we’ll keep an open mind.’
‘Why would she have come to Bath?’
‘Why do thousands of tourists come every year? You’re forgetting this city is known all over the world. Her father said he reckoned she came as a tourist.’
And now, with Diamond shown up once as fallible, Keith Halliwell pitched in. ‘He could be wrong. She could have come for some other reason.’
‘Such as?’
‘Something she didn’t want to tell her father about.’
‘Go on.’
‘Looking up an ex-boyfriend.’
‘Japanese?’
‘British, American, Japanese — who knows? Someone she knew in Yokohama who is now working or studying in Bath. Mari has set her heart on reviving the relationship. But it turns out he’s living with someone else, may have a child as well. Mari is hurt and angry when she finds out.’
‘Straight out of Madame Butterfly,’ Leaman murmured, annoyed that someone had stolen his thunder.
Halliwell wasn’t being put off. ‘She threatens to tell the new partner about his past. They have a row, it gets violent and he kills her.’
‘Quite a theory,’ Diamond said.