Peter Lovesey - The Secret Hangman

‘Paloma, I can’t promise anything.’

But if he needed an extra incentive to finish the job he had one now.

*

Paloma was right. He was dog tired. He wished she hadn’t said it, because he felt more woolly-minded than ever. His brain was trying to pick up on something said during the questioning of Monnington, some detail that had been passed by. The harder he tried to grasp whatever it was, the more it eluded him.

‘I want to listen to the tape of that interview,’ he said to Leaman.

‘Rubbing my nose in it, guv?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I really thought we’d got him. I couldn’t see any other explanation for those bloody lengths of plastic.’

‘Nor me.’

‘He’s right,’ Leaman said. ‘I’ve done the sums now. The two cords from his car make circles just the size he says. And the laptop hasn’t given us a single name we know. It’s a lost cause. Shouldn’t we let him go?’

‘Fetch the tape. I want to hear it.’

In the incident room a few minutes later they ran the interview. Leaman, Ingeborg and Paul Gilbert huddled with Diamond over the machine. They were alert for Monnington’s responses, but Diamond had a curious feeling it was something Leaman had said that was significant.

After a couple of minutes, he said, ‘Stop it. Now play that sentence again.’

‘That was me, not Monnington,’ Leaman said.

‘Play it.’

Leaman’s voice came over: The thing is, all these people were found in Bath. That’s one common factor.

He nodded. ‘Common factor. That’s the cue. Now go back a bit further, to where Monnington was telling us about the kinds of people he targeted as customers.’

Leaman pressed the rewind. Now it was Monnington’s voice: All I remember is that they fitted the profile of our customers. High-flyers, professional people, singles or couples, generally with no kids.

Diamond snapped his fingers. ‘Stop there.’ The adrenalin rush was starting and his brain was making connections. ‘He’s talking about the Steels, right? Equally, he could have been talking about the Twinings.’

‘Except he claims not to have heard of the Twinings,’ Leaman said.

‘That’s not the point. Forget Monnington for a moment. Think of our victims and the common factor.’

‘But they weren’t all his customers.’ Leaman’s logical mind couldn’t follow Diamond’s free association of ideas.

‘I said forget him. It’s what he said. Professional people, singles or couples, generally with no kids.’

Next Ingeborg sounded sceptical. ‘That may be true of the Steels and the Twinings, but Delia Williamson wasn’t a high-flyer. She was working as a waitress.’

‘Maybe,’ Paul Gilbert said, ‘but don’t forget she lived with that muso in a big house in Walcot.’

‘He wasn’t the one who was killed,’ Ingeborg pointed out. ‘It was Danny Geaves, her ex, and he can’t be described as a professional. What’s more, she had two kids by him, so that doesn’t fit the profile either.’

Diamond nodded. ‘Two little girls.’ But he wasn’t shaken. His thoughts were slotting into place. ‘I’m trying to remember stuff. I need to look at some witness statements. Can we get them up on the computer?’

‘No problem,’ Leaman said, ever ready to showcase his efficiency. ‘Who, in particular?’

‘Let’s start with that skiving teacher you and I met in the George.’

‘Harold Twining? He’s on file for sure. I logged everything he said.’

‘Find the bit about children — the children they didn’t have.’

Leaman used the mouse to bring up the report he’d written. ‘He mentioned it several times. Here’s what he told us, the exact words: No kids, no ties, not even a budgie to look after.’

‘I remember him saying that.’

‘Then he comments on what the coroner said. He said if they’d had children, or even a dependent relative, they might have felt their lives had more purpose. Then you asked if they wanted a child and couldn’t have one and he said — these were his actual words — Another misguided theory. She had a baby stopped a year after they married. They slipped up.’

‘Right. Christine Twining had an abortion.’ Diamond’s gaze shifted swiftly from the screen to his team. ‘And so did Jocelyn Steel. Now who told us that?’

Paul Gilbert said at once, ‘The friend, Agnes Tidmarsh. I took down the witness statement. May I?’ He brought up another document on the screen and scanned rapidly to the sentence: ‘… a couple of years before they moved down here she had a termination. She was in that high-pressure government job and it wasn’t the right time. Neither of them was ready for a family then. She kept it quiet from everyone, including her mother.’

‘That’s two couples out of three,’ Diamond said. ‘Now, am I dreaming this, or did Amanda Williamson tell us her daughter had an abortion at some stage? Bring up the file.’

Gilbert returned to the list of files. ‘Williamson, Amanda? I don’t see it here, guv.’

‘Where the hell is it, then?’

‘Is the name exactly right?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Well, who would have typed up the statement?’ Leaman asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Diamond said, his patience snapping. ‘I can’t remember every bloody thing. Who was with me that morning in Bradford on Avon?’

Nobody spoke.

He thought hard, gave a deep sigh, and said, ‘I was alone.’ As the full catastrophe dawned on him, he said, ‘Oh, buggery.’

Furious with himself, he sank his face into his hands and muttered more obscenities.

The rest of them were silent. Nobody knew what to say.

He struggled to recall the interview, but so much had happened since. He could picture the scene, seated on the bench in Amanda Williamson’s small garden overlooking the town, but the words she’d spoken eluded him. He could visualise it all with ease: the church spire, the cars crossing the old town bridge with its quaint lock-up, the landscape stretching right across to Westbury. Then another detail came back to him: the tape-recorder on the bench between them.

He’d taped the conversation.

‘Wait.’ He got up and went to his office. The recorder was there on his desk half buried under all the other clutter. He brought the thing back in triumph and declared that he’d meant to ask one of them to transcribe the interview. In a moment they were listening to Amanda Williamson’s voice. He fast-forwarded and picked up his own voice asking, So what went wrong? Why did they split up?

Amanda answered, Who can tell what goes wrong in a relationship except the people involved? I made a point of not interfering.

He fast-forwarded a little, and she was saying, She went through a bad patch, needed lifting emotionally, and Danny didn’t see it, or was too busy to notice. He was doing all the caring for the girls.

He switched off. ‘What does that mean — “a bad patch”?’

‘Depression, obviously,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Can we hear some more? Does she say what caused it?’

‘That’s as much as I got,’ he was forced to admit.

‘It’s not what you said, guv. Amanda doesn’t mention her daughter having an abortion.’

He refused to be downed. ‘But it crossed my mind at the time. I could sense she was holding back. Do we have her phone number?’

‘It’s here on file with all the other contact numbers,’ Gilbert said. ‘Do you want me to call her?’

In a moment they were listening to the amplified voice of Amanda speaking live. ‘What is it? Do you have some news for me?’

‘I may have soon,’ Diamond said. ‘First I need your help. When we met, you spoke of your daughter going through a bad patch in her marriage. You didn’t specify what it was and I didn’t ask.’