Peter Lovesey: The Secret Hangman

What he didn’t tell her was that his hunches rarely amounted to anything. His real purpose in going in was a late lunch of fish and chips. The landlord said Danny came in sometimes, but never stayed long. He’d take his drink and a packet of crisps to an empty table. He usually had a paper with him and did the crossword.

Afterwards they took their drinks outside and sat on the wall of the packhorse bridge listening to the ripple and gurgle of the Avon. Across a green field, the steep side of the Limpley Stoke Valley was covered in lush foliage. ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said. ‘Better than watching your friend Dr Sealy doing a post-mortem.’

‘Give me a break, guv. He’s no friend of mine. He’s pathetic.’

‘I can’t disagree with that.’

Ingeborg took a sip of lager and stared down at the waterweeds rippling in the flow. ‘I don’t know if it’s me, but the blokes who seem to fancy me are the ones I’d rather avoid.’

He was reminded of his secret admirer. For one mad moment he considered taking the letter from his inside pocket and showing it to Ingeborg, but the moment slipped by.

Back in Manvers Street what passed for an incident room was more like the quiet room in a silent order. Halliwell was hand-feeding a pigeon on the window ledge.

‘What progress?’ Diamond said, trying to energise someone.

Halliwell turned and said, ‘What progress?’

One of the civilian computer operators said, ‘There’s something on your desk, Mr Diamond.’

‘Desk work. That’s not progress,’ he said. ‘That’s punishment.’ He went into his office to look.

He’d never had anything so organised as an in-tray. Items for attention were heaped on his desk. On top now was a parcel with THIS WAY UP written in large letters and his name underneath. No address. It was wrapped in brown paper fastened with Sellotape and was about the size and shape of a box file. One end had been unsealed. Nothing suspicious about that: every package was security-checked downstairs. More damned paperwork, he guessed, though why it was done up as a parcel he couldn’t fathom. He picked the thing up and was relieved to find it didn’t weigh too heavily. He put it to one side and looked to see what else had come in.

Three pages of minutes from a meeting he’d managed to miss of the Police and Community Consultative Group. A reminder from Georgina that the overtime figures for last month hadn’t been presented yet. A request from the new boy, Paul Gilbert, for the firearms course. He was riding for a fall, that lad.

The rest of the heap could wait. He reached for the parcel and tore it open. Inside was a cardboard box and when he lifted the lid he found several layers of loosely crumpled red tissue paper. He removed them.

A chocolate cake.

‘What on earth?’

‘Is it your birthday, guv?’

He looked up. Ingeborg, Halliwell, Leaman, Gilbert and the civilian staff had gathered in the doorway.

‘Is this anything to do with you lot? Because I can tell you it isn’t anywhere near my birthday.’

‘We’re being nosy, that’s all,’ Halliwell said.

‘Security tipped you off, is that it?’

‘Someone thinks you deserve a treat, that’s obvious,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Is there a note with it?’

He lifted out the cake — which looked to have a black cherry filling — and went through the tissue paper and the wrappings. No message.

‘It looks yummy,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Do you like chocolate?’

‘I can take it or leave it.’ He added in an afterthought, ‘If I had a knife I’d offer some around.’

‘Got one in my drawer,’ Halliwell said almost too quickly.

‘A cake knife?’

‘A flick-knife confiscated from a nine-year-old. It’ll do.’

‘Get it then.’

‘You don’t have to, guv,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It was meant for you personally. You should take it home.’

‘And eat all of this myself? What kind of guts do you take me for?’

Halliwell did the slicing. Everyone agreed the cake went down a treat. It was rich and light-textured.

‘I don’t know when I last had chocolate cake,’ Diamond said.

‘You’ve obviously got a secret admirer,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Oops, get the boss some water.’

He was choking on the crumbs.

N ext morning Diamond turned to the back page of the postmortem report, expecting it to tell him all he wanted in words he could understand. What’s the point of a summary if it doesn’t save you wading through pages of medical jargon? Dr Sealy had put it in a nutshell all right. The trouble was that he’d stated only what everyone knew, that Delia Williamson had been strangled with a ligature and later suspended from the swing. What use was that?

He phoned the hospital and was given Sealy’s mobile number. Rightly or not, he pictured the little pipsqueak taking the call at home, reclining on a sun-lounger in the garden.

‘How much later?’ he asked. ‘Was she strangled in the park and then strung up?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘We agree on that, then. Did you find any medical evidence to back this up?’

Sealy sounded as if he was speaking through clenched teeth. ‘That’s what an autopsy is for. If you’d bothered to read my findings, you wouldn’t ask.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘The trouble with you policemen is that you only bother with the conclusion, and then you want it all in one-syllable words. In my description of the external findings on page two, which you seem to have ignored, I mention indications of hypostasis on the right side of the back and buttocks.’

‘Hypo…?’

‘… stasis. It wasn’t pronounced, but it was there. You have to allow for secondary gravitation, and that diminishes the effect.’

‘We’re talking about pressure marks?’

‘Essentially, yes. They show up as pale areas after a couple of hours or so in one position. If the body was suspended directly after being killed I wouldn’t expect to find hypostasis where I did.’

‘The right side, you said. As if she was lying on her side for some time?’

‘I would say so.’

‘Curled up in a car boot, perhaps?’

‘Speculation.’

‘She’d have to be transported to the park. A car is the obvious way to do it.’

‘You tell me,’ Sealy said.

‘No, I’m asking.’

‘Not my job, squire. She could have been brought there on the back of an elephant for all I know.’

‘What about the time of death?’ Diamond asked with little expectation of an answer. Even the friendliest of pathologists can be guaranteed to baulk at that one.

‘How long have you been in the job, Mr Diamond?’

‘The approximate time, then?’

‘More than three hours before I examined her at the scene. Probably less than fifteen. And now you’re going to ask me about secondary injuries, and you could have found them listed in the report if you’d bothered to read it instead of turning straight to the conclusion. There were not many. A couple of broken fingernails, but that could have happened post-mortem. She didn’t put up much of a fight. However, she was not sexually assaulted. The usual forensic tests are being carried out. If any of the killer’s DNA was recovered we’ll let you know, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

‘I’d like to bring her partner out to Bristol to make the identification.’

‘Bring who you like. I’ll be on the golf course.’

‘These days,’ Diamond said to Ashley Corcoran on the drive back from Bristol after viewing the body, ‘we have a family liaison officer to help you through a tragedy like this.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘It’s the children I’m thinking of. They’ll have to be told now we’re certain it was their mother.’