Peter Lovesey - The Secret Hangman

She said in a prim tone that gave away more than she intended, ‘Not to my knowledge.’

He’d done enough skirting round the truth. He went into hard policeman mode. ‘I want the details of each of your trainers — full names, addresses, contact numbers. The same for the people they visit.’

‘Now?’

‘A printout. Your schedule as well, listing all the home visits.’

‘This will destroy my business,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Musclemen on tap, for home visits? Any clients you lose you’ll soon recoup with the extra publicity.’

An outraged sound came from the back of her throat, but she knew he wasn’t playing. While she busied herself with the computer he took out his new phone and tried to get a number. He gave it a shake.

Leaman said, ‘Try switching it on.’

‘Nothing gets past you.’ He made a call to Keith Halliwell. ‘Are the crime scene people still at Lang’s flat?’

‘Finished, guv.’

‘And?’

‘Too early to know.’

‘Did they pick up those letters?’

‘Yes. Do you want them translated?’

‘Do I want them translated? No, I’ll use my pocket dictionary. Get with it, Keith. First I’d like to know what language they’re in. Try Kosovan.’

‘Albanian.’

‘What?’

‘Kosovan is not a language. Most Kosovans speak Albanian.’

‘I was pulling your chain, professor. What else came to light?’

‘They lifted masses of prints,’ Halliwell said. ‘That could be a problem. He has more callers than a cat on heat.’

‘Any recorded messages on his phone?’

‘There’s no landline here. He must use a mobile.’

‘We didn’t find one on him.’

‘And there wasn’t one here.’

‘In his car, maybe.’

‘Sorry, but no. The car is with forensics. They bagged up everything and gave me a list.’

‘Must have slung it. ‘ Diamond looked at the clock on the wall. ‘OK. We’re leaving any minute now. It’s overtime for everyone on the team. Are they all about?’

‘Apart from Ingeborg. She’s on her way back. She kept trying to call you from Midford. Was your phone switched on?’

He felt a small stab of guilt from which he recovered at once. ‘A mobile doesn’t work underground, dumbo.’

‘L et’s face it, we’re too late for Martin Steel,’ John Leaman said to the rest of CID, now gathered in the incident room. ‘Going by what happened to the others, he’ll have been strangled already. He’ll be strung up overnight in some public place for the first hapless berk who comes by to discover tomorrow morning. We’ve failed him.’

‘John, that’s a load of bull,’ Halliwell said. ‘The men aren’t strangled first. Danny Geaves was hanged, and hanged at night. There’s still a chance to save this guy.’

‘Well, I could be wrong, but I know this much. The boss was down a mine all afternoon while I was above ground watching some kids kick a ball around. I’m a senior detective. I could have been better employed.’

Someone muttered in a passable imitation of Brando, ‘I could have been a contender.’

Halliwell said, ‘The boss caught up with Harry Lang.’

‘Top result!’ Leaman said with sarcasm.

‘What’s your problem with that?’

‘Turns out he’s an illegal immigrant and that’s why he scarpered when we raided the flat.’

‘So he’s an illegal. He’s still in the frame, isn’t he?’ Halliwell said. ‘Jocelyn Steel’s personal trainer and one of the last to see her alive. Has the boss given up on him?’

‘He should.’

‘Am I missing something here?’

‘Did any of the other female victims have personal trainers?’ Paul Gilbert asked, trying to be constructive.

‘Come on,’ Leaman said in the jeering tone you would only use with a rookie. ‘Delia Williamson had two kids and was working evenings as a waitress. She didn’t need to find ways of exercising. And Christine Twining had a demanding job with Marks and Spencer. Her brother-in-law told us a lunchtime walk in the park was the only exercise she got.’

‘I wouldn’t count Lang out of it until we get some forensic results,’ Halliwell said.

‘You think there’s more to him?’ Gilbert said.

‘A twenty-grand car, for starters. Where did he get that money when he’s living in community housing?’

‘Ask him when his head clears,’ Leaman said. ‘It doesn’t help us. There isn’t a profit motive in these killings.’

‘What is the motive?’ Gilbert asked.

‘If we knew that, we’d be making an arrest,’ Halliwell said.

‘We’re chasing a nutter,’ Leaman said. ‘We can forget about motive.’

Unseen by Leaman, Diamond had come in with Ingeborg at his side. ‘What’s your plan, John? Call in a shrink?’

‘It might be no bad thing.’

Halliwell rolled his eyes and looked towards Diamond. ‘Guv, I don’t know how much you heard. The thinking seems to be that Martin Steel is as good as dead already and we ought to be second-guessing where to find his body.’

‘Anyone who thinks like that had better leave now,’ Diamond said.

No one moved. No one blinked.

‘To business, then,’ Diamond said. ‘I saw Georgina earlier. Every park in the city is under surveillance tonight.’

Leaman said, ‘Bridges?’

‘What?’

‘Danny Geaves was hanged from a bridge.’

‘The plod are all over the city.’

‘You know what’ll happen? Tomorrow morning the cells will be full of rough sleepers and courting couples.’

Nobody smiled. Leaman had lost his audience.

‘What about Lang?’ Leaman said. ‘Is he in the clear?’

Diamond sidestepped that one. ‘He’s no threat to anyone where he is now. But there is a development.’ He turned to Ingeborg.

‘Tell them what you just told me.’

It was obvious to all that team spirit had sunk to a low point. Not an easy situation for Ingeborg, noted for her desire to please the boss and achieve early promotion. Her good looks simply added to the feeling that she started with an advantage. And no one would forget that she had been an investigative journalist. From their faces her colleagues might have been watching Lucrezia Borgia at a wine-tasting.

‘It may be nothing,’ she said. ‘The boss asked me to go through the filing cabinet in the Steels’ house. I was looking at some of the invoices. The fitness room was added about eighteen months ago. They installed the exercise machines and had a jacuzzi fitted.’

‘Who by?’ Halliwell said.

‘Give it a Whirl.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Nice work,’ Leaman said.

Some of the team hadn’t yet picked up the reference.

Ingeborg said, ‘Give it a Whirl is Dalton Monnington’s firm. Monnington — remember? The sales rep who dined at Tosi’s restaurant and tried to make a date with Delia Williamson.’

Leaman was not yet convinced. ‘But we went all the way to Wimbledon to interview him. The tests on his car were negative. The CCTV footage at the hotel didn’t pick him up.’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s in the clear,’ Diamond said. ‘He slipped out of the frame at a time when we were thinking Danny Geaves was Delia’s killer.’

‘He’s linked to two out of our three incidents,’ Halliwell said. ‘Let’s pull him in.’

‘Is there any connection with the other couple, the Twinings?’ Leaman asked.

‘We don’t know yet,’ Ingeborg said. ‘We haven’t had time to check. The Twinings were in the money. No reason why they shouldn’t have had a jacuzzi.’

‘We can find out,’ Diamond said. ‘Remind me where they lived.’

‘Hinton Charterhouse. John Twining was an architect and he designed it himself. All mod cons. It would be surprising if they didn’t have a pool at the very least.’