Peter Lovesey - The Secret Hangman

‘And you disappeared to it double-quick when I called you at the restaurant. We could have spoken there.’

‘I’m entitled to a private life.’

‘Or two, or three?’ Diamond said.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Car keys, please.’

‘What?’

‘We need to search your car.’

‘Again? What is it with you? You’ve been over my car. There’s nothing in there but brochures.’ He sighed and put his hand in his pocket.

Diamond passed the keys to Halliwell and indicated with a tilt of the head that the search had high priority.

‘And get your shoes on,’ he told Monnington. ‘We’re taking you in for questioning.’

Monnington’s woman friend watched in mute amazement as her date was escorted to the police car that had just arrived on her drive. Diamond remained with her, leaving the two uniformed officers to take the suspect in. There was a job to do, and it required the lady’s cooperation. She was Charlotte Brown, she said nervously when asked, known to everyone as Lottie. She’d met Dalton Monnington only last month when he’d asked to sit at her table at a busy time in the Retro Cafe in York Street. They’d clicked at once. This was their second evening together — or should have been.

‘I hardly know him at all,’ she said, and then realised how this could be taken and added, ‘It’s not what it sounds like. I don’t sit in cafes looking for men.’

‘You can relax, Lottie,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s the suspect, not you. We don’t know for sure, but between you and me, you may have had a lucky escape. Where was he staying?’

She reddened. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

Halliwell returned from outside, eyes gleaming. ‘You’d better come and look at this, guv.’

‘Hang on a bit. When did he arrive?’ Diamond asked Lottie Brown. ‘Today?’

‘This afternoon, about four thirty. He called me this morning and said he was visiting Bath and I offered to, em, put him up.’ She was a serial blusher.

‘So did he have an overnight bag?’

More embarrassment. ‘It’s upstairs.’

‘Mind if I look?’

‘I suppose.’

Halliwell was practically jumping up and down in his eagerness to tell Diamond what he’d found. On the way upstairs he said in a low tone, ‘I think we’ve nailed him.’

Monnington’s leather holdall was on a chair in Lottie Brown’s bedroom. Inside Diamond found a laptop among the clothes. He handed it to Halliwell. ‘I want our whizz-kid Clive to look at this.’

Lottie was getting uneasy. ‘Don’t you need a search warrant, or something?’

‘No, my dear. It’s your house and you invited us in. You’re not going to make our job more difficult, are you? Is that the door to the en-suite?’ He opened it and looked in. ‘He’s made use of it already, I see.’ A battery-powered razor was on the shelf over the hand basin. ‘Unless this is yours?’

‘No, that’s Dalton’s.’

‘And the washbag?’ He passed it to Halliwell.

‘That’s his, too. I don’t think you should help yourself to his things.’

‘He won’t need them here tonight. Let’s go downstairs again.’

In the living room, he asked if anything about Monnington had struck her as strange.

She was still unwilling to concede much. ‘I suppose I was surprised when we had to leave the restaurant in such a hurry.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘It was something to do with the phone call. Someone was being a nuisance, he said, and we’d better not stay.’

‘That was me,’ Diamond said. ‘The ultimate pain in the butt. Before he got the call was he acting normally?’

‘I thought so. He was being nice.’ Her look suggested that present company could take lessons from Monnington.

‘Did he talk about himself at all? His work?’

‘He told me all about that the first time. He’s a sales rep and he comes through Bath every month. What do they call those things? Jacuzzis. He said he could get me one at a knockdown price if I wanted, but he wasn’t pushing or anything.’

‘To sum up, then, there was nothing to cause you any concern in what he was saying?’

She shook her head. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’

Out on the drive, Halliwell opened the boot of the Mondeo with the air of a conjurer producing the rabbit. ‘How about that?’

Diamond was prepared for something special, but nothing so special as this. His heart thumped against his ribcage.

‘The same, isn’t it?’ Halliwell asked.

After a long hesitation he found words. ‘Looks like it to me.’

‘What do you reckon? Twenty-five feet?’

‘Thirty, more like.’

‘Enough, anyway.’

They were looking at two lengths of white plastic cord, loosely coiled. The last time they’d seen anything like that, it was tight round Jocelyn Steel’s neck and she was hanging from it.

O f all his colleagues, Diamond least wanted to see Georgina when he returned. At this time in the evening she should have been off the premises, singing her socks off in some rehearsal hall. Instead she stood with a commanding view of the staff car park at the back of the nick. The bust that wouldn’t be ignored was straining the silver buttons again. No way could anyone slide past and pretend she wasn’t there.

‘You’ve got things to tell me, Peter,’ she boomed.

‘Not really, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit premature.’

‘But you arrested a man for the murders. They brought him in twenty minutes ago.’

‘On suspicion.’

‘He’s the killer, though?’

‘Put it this way. I want the truth out of this scumbag before it’s too late.’

‘No violence, Peter.’

‘We haven’t found Martin Steel. His chance of survival is running out minute by minute.’

‘I’m serious about that.’

‘I thought it was one of your choir nights tonight.’

‘It is, but I’ve sacrificed it. What have you got on this man?’

‘Can I tell you later? There’s a heap of work to be done, people to see, things to check.’

‘Be mysterious, then,’ she said, pink with annoyance. ‘Personally, I’ve always believed in holding nothing back.’ Her chest swelled even more.

Diamond averted his eyes.

‘Things have been happening here,’ Georgina went on. ‘I’ll walk upstairs with you and fill you in.’

‘If you like.’

She made just enough space in the doorway for him to ease past without physical contact. For a moment they were toe to toe and he had a memory of the ladies’ invitation waltz at Jim Middleton’s tea dance with little Annie steering him with her thighs. With practice he might take to ballroom dancing. Maybe Georgina saw the look in his eye because she set off along the lower corridor as if pursued by a bear. He had to wait for the stairs at the end before she spoke again. ‘This afternoon it was all Harry Lang.’

‘At this stage I’m ruling no one out.’

‘And he ended up in hospital.’

‘His own fault, ma’am. Has he recovered consciousness?’

‘Allow me to finish, Peter. You’re like a coiled spring. He’s still too confused to interview, but the doctors are optimistic. Quite properly — and I give credit when it’s due — you ordered forensic tests on the Ballance Street flat and they are still going on. I can tell you that the early results are promising.’

‘Oh?’ She’d surprised him. He’d been on autopilot up to now. The evidence against Monnington had pushed Harry Lang way down the list of priorities. Now a sliver of doubt pierced his thinking.

‘Yes,’ she said in a throwaway voice, ‘the fingerprint team gave me a call. They lifted a mass of prints from the living room and kitchen area and some of these have been compared with the national database. They found three good matches.’