Peter Lovesey: The Secret Hangman

‘I can handle it.’

‘With a bloke at your side, Inge. I don’t want two female detectives knocking on his door.’

She drew a sharp breath, and then bit back what she was going to say and settled for less. ‘It says here Corcoran is cooperating.’

‘They do at the beginning. That’s an order.’

He looked at the printout she’d given him. Delia Williamson was thirty-three, dark-haired and wore glasses. The two daughters, aged eight and six, were from a previous relationship. ‘Get the name of the father,’ he told her. ‘Everything you can on him.’

At home in Weston that evening, he felt in his pocket for a pen and discovered that letter from the secret admirer. He’d forgotten to shred it. No need. He’d tear it into small pieces and dispose of them with the rubbish.

But he didn’t.

Here in the black hole that was his private life, with only domestic chores and television to keep self-pity at bay, he thought about the effort it must have taken to write that letter and deliver it to the nick. He unfolded it and read it again. The woman hadn’t said if she was bereaved or divorced. I’m back to the single life and I can’t say I enjoy it.

‘You and me both,’ he said.

Even so, he wasn’t going to be suckered into walking into a pub to meet a stranger who’d read about him in the paper. It would be worse than a date set up by one of those agencies that make money out of lonely people. At least they show you a video-clip to help you decide.

Three years had gone by since he’d found Steph gunned down in Royal Victoria Park. He’d loved her with a passion no one else would understand. She had been warm, amusing, honest, wise, sexy, brave and, in his eyes, beautiful. She’d made him the luckiest man in the world — until that February morning. He’d repeatedly told himself he would find his own way through the grief. For Steph’s sake he wouldn’t let the sadness show. She would have expected him to hold up, and he had, so far as anyone could tell. Finding her killer had helped fill the gap in those early months. Work, work, work had been the therapy since. Slack times were black times.

He could just about remember the newspaper interview this woman must have seen. It had been in the Bath Chronicle six months after the murder, when the investigation seemed to be going nowhere. He hadn’t kept a copy. His mind had been on other things. They must have printed that trivia about the black-and-white films and the rock music, or where would she have got it from? But what was he doing, talking to the press about music and movies six months after Steph had died?

He could check in the newspaper files, but he’d be wasting his time. The letter was of no importance. He wouldn’t be meeting the woman.

He glanced down the page and smiled at that sentence: I just wanted you to know I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West. She had a sense of humour, whoever she was. He stuffed it back into his pocket. Then he sorted through the heap of dusty videos on the floor and picked out The Postman Always Rings Twice. The original version, with John Garfield and Lana Turner. It would see him through until bedtime.

A woman’s body was found next morning in Sydney Gardens. It was hanging from the crossbar of a swingset in the children’s play area.

‘Are you up to this?’ Georgina asked Diamond.

‘What do you mean — up to this?’ he said. But he knew exactly what she meant: a woman dead in a park.

He took Keith Halliwell. From the Beckford Road entrance they were able to drive right up to the play area along an asphalt path generally used only by pedestrians. The swings, chute, seesaw, roundabout and sandpit were enclosed by a metal fence, so police tape hadn’t been needed. A uniformed constable manned the gate. Already some gawpers were standing outside as if it was the first day of a sale. Two were young mothers with kids in strollers. People amazed him sometimes. He asked them to move along.

The dead woman was suspended from the yellow swings meant for the older children. Dark-haired, she was dressed in jeans, dark blue sweater and Adidas trainers.

‘Get this screened off now,’ he told the sergeant at the scene.

He went right up to the corpse and looked at the face without shifting the hair that lay over one eye. She had turned a bluish red, as if she’d struggled, he thought. People who choose to hang themselves don’t know what they’re in for. They hardly ever do it right. Mid-thirties, he estimated. The nose had the pressure marks of glasses. He glanced at the hands. No wedding ring. ‘I might know who this is,’ he told Halliwell.

Halliwell gave him a concerned look, recalling the last time he’d recognised the victim.

But he was calm. ‘A woman went missing from Walcot this week, name of Williamson.’

‘Was she-’

‘Dark hair, glasses, in her thirties.’ He looked around, raising his voice for the others. ‘Did anyone find a bag or a suicide note?’

Heads were shaken.

‘Strange choice,’ he said to Halliwell. ‘The hangings I’ve seen have all been in private. If I’m right about the victim, she’s a mother of two. Fancy choosing a play park.’

Halliwell, practical as always, pointed out that a swing had certain advantages for a would-be suicide. The crossbar was a good height and the seat of the swing was well placed for stepping off.

‘What I meant,’ Diamond said, ‘is that a mother might give a thought to being found here by young kids.’

‘We don’t know for certain that she’s a mother, guv.’

‘We don’t know for certain that she hanged herself. Where’s the doc? Did anyone call the police surgeon?’

Dr Hindle had already been by, the constable told Diamond. She’d advised leaving the body in situ. A forensic pathologist was on his way from Bristol.

‘Why? Is there something fishy?’

‘She didn’t say, sir.’

‘Sally Hindle, you said? I’ll give her a bell. And while we’re waiting, chase up those bloody screens, man. Let’s show this poor woman some respect.’

Sally Hindle was a local GP who earned extra for dealing with police-related medical matters. The title of police surgeon meant no special skill in forensic medicine. ‘I simply certified that death had occurred,’ she told Diamond from her surgery. ‘No, I had no reason to doubt that she hanged herself, but I don’t advise moving her until the pathologist gives his consent.’

She was right, and they had to wait. Some canvas screens arrived and were erected. The police photographer took his shots and the crime scene people tried to make sense of footprints in abundance. Now that the swings were enclosed there was a sense of intimacy, as if they were in a room with the corpse.

Diamond stepped outside and phoned Ingeborg and asked her to come to the park and bring a picture of Delia Williamson.

‘Have you found her, guv?’

Always with Inge, the ex-journo, questions he wasn’t able to answer and she needn’t have asked.

‘Just get in your car and drive here.’

‘Try and stop me.’

Her eagerness to please was a pain at times, but he was glad to have her on the team. So were the others. She was a real babe.

He joined Halliwell again. ‘Two young kids, if I’m right. She’d have to be desperate.’

‘Wouldn’t anyone?’ Halliwell said. ‘To top themselves, I mean.’

‘Extra desperate.’

‘True.’

After a long pause Diamond said, ‘You know what I’m thinking, don’t you, Keith?’

Halliwell hesitated. He’d worked with this boss for most of his CID career, but he still wasn’t sure how frank he ought to be. ‘Like, em, you’ve been through a bad patch yourself?’

Diamond frowned. ‘What?’