Peter Lovesey - The Secret Hangman

‘I didn’t hear what was being said.’

‘And Mr Monnington left when?’

‘Towards the end. Say about ten minutes before we closed.’

‘Ten to midnight?’

He looked towards the kitchen, to make sure the manager couldn’t hear. ‘Actually, it was earlier. We had no more customers, so I closed at eleven.’

‘Tell me some more about Delia. Did she talk to you about her life at all?’

‘Not much. She once said she had kids. She lived with someone in the music business.’

‘Was she acting normally on that last evening?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Was anyone waiting for her when she finished work?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Same as usual. Jeans and a top. I can’t remember what colour.

Trainers.’

‘She’d worn those things while she was working?’

‘No. We have lockers for our working clothes. We change into our own things when we leave.’

‘Changing rooms?’

‘One, the size of a cupboard.’

‘Unisex?’

‘One person at a time. You’d have a job getting two in there.’

‘In a minute you can show me. Who changed first?’

‘Delia did. When she came out I said goodnight and that was the last I saw of her. I changed into my day clothes and locked up and left.’

‘What, a few minutes after Delia? Didn’t you catch up with her?’

‘She goes a different way.’

‘I was going to ask about you,’ Diamond said. ‘Do you live alone?’

Luigi blinked nervously now the focus was back on him. ‘Yes.’

‘So do I,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s not a crime. Where’s home, then?’

‘I have a flat in Twerton.’

‘I know Twerton. Which street?’

‘Innox Road.’

‘D’you walk it?’

‘Bike.’

‘Pushbike?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good man. No petrol fumes. Where do you keep the bike?’

‘Under the stairs you just came down.’

‘Do you have a car as well?’

He hesitated. It was obvious what the question was really about. Delia’s killer had probably used transport. He said, ‘An old Honda, but I don’t use it for coming into work.’

Carlo the cook was next up for questioning. His English wasn’t so fluent as Luigi’s, but he was better than Signor Tosi. In his kitchen, he continued peeling and chopping vegetables with a rapid movement that spoke of long experience. The knife was razor-sharp. Carlo had a mild, disarming manner. Short and bald, with a black moustache, he gave his answers in a subdued voice. No, he hadn’t emerged from the kitchen at all on Tuesday evening, so he couldn’t speak about the diners. Delia had seemed the same as usual. He liked her. She never hustled him when he was trying to get the orders out.

‘Did she talk to you about her life?’

‘That night?’

‘Any night.’

‘She liked Bath, she say. Plenty good ladies’ shops. Azzuro, Annabel Harrison, Kimberly. All her money go on nice Italian clothes. I have a joke with her that she serve Italian so she can buy Italian.’

‘Did she mention her two daughters?’

‘To me? No. Luigi tell me she have daughters.’

‘How about you, Carlo? Are you married?’

‘Am I married?’ He stopped chopping and drew the knife across the front of his throat, rolling his eyes. ‘Three times. Five kids. Four back in Napoli with wives one and two, must have cash every month. One baby son here. And wife number three.’

‘Here in the city?’

‘No chance. I keep her away from those dress shops. Combe Down.’

‘Do you drive?’

‘Can’t afford. I take the bus.’

Diamond asked to see the locker room. It was through the kitchen and Tosi the owner took this as his chance to grab the limelight again. He wanted it known that his facilities met the hygiene regulations and insisted on showing the staff toilet and washroom as well. Luigi’s description of the locker room was right. It was little more than a cupboard with three metal lockers and barely space to change your clothes. When Diamond had established which locker was Delia’s, he asked Halliwell to go in and force the lock.

‘No, no,’ Tosi said in alarm. ‘No damage please. I have extra key.’

He went away to fetch it.

Halliwell leaned against the locker door and it opened. ‘Not much of a lock,’ he said.

The faint smell of scent carried to them, as if Delia herself was protesting that her privacy was being invaded again. Diamond took Halliwell’s place in the small space. He found a hanger with two white blouses and a black skirt. On the shelf above were two bars of KitKat, a box of tissues, a mirror, a lipstick and a comb.

Tosi returned with the key. ‘So I waste my time, eh? Open after all?’

Ignoring him, Diamond stooped to pick up a pair of low-heeled black shoes. Under them was a book of matches. ‘Was she a smoker?’

‘No smoking, no.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Nobody here smokes,’ Luigi said.

So why did she want matches? Diamond returned the shoes to the locker, picked up the matches and folded back the flap. None had been used. They were black, with white tips, from the Hilton Hotel, Bath. Someone had written the number 317 under the flap. He slipped them into his pocket.

On the way out, he stopped to look at Luigi’s bike, chained to a post in the space under the stairs. ‘I should get one of these,’ he said to Halliwell without meaning it. ‘Give me six months and I’d be as slim as that waiter.’

‘It’s the job that keeps him in shape,’ Halliwell said.

‘What are you saying — that I should get off my butt more often?’

‘I was talking about the waiter, guv.’

Towards the bottom of Milsom Street, outside Waterstone’s bookshop, Diamond stopped walking again, causing Halliwell real concern about his health. The short distance they’d covered had been all downhill. ‘We’ll go in here,’ the big man said.

‘Are you after a book, guv?’ Halliwell said, playing along with him.

‘They have a coffee shop up here,’ he said, surprising Halliwell by climbing the stairs two at a time. At the top he was still breathing normally. ‘I was counting on Tosi offering us one. He missed an opportunity of cosying up to us there. Not so much as a complimentary peppermint on the way out.’ He looked over the display of pastries. ‘We’ll go halves on one of those almond croissants, right?’

Halliwell, who never took snacks, didn’t like to disappoint him.

At a table by the window they shared their findings. Luigi the waiter had to be a prime suspect. He’d been the only man in the restaurant at the end of the evening, the last known person to have seen Delia alive. Never mind his insistence that he’d used a bike that evening. He owned a car and he could have parked it nearby and offered her a lift and driven her to his home for a night of passion.

‘Two nights,’ Diamond said, recalling that she wasn’t found until Thursday. ‘That’s a lot of passion.’

‘Maybe he was keeping her there against her will,’ Halliwell said. ‘Most Italian guys think they’re God’s gift to women.’

‘And finally killed her when it didn’t work out the way he wanted?’

As for the others in the restaurant, Diamond said, he didn’t rate them as suspects. He couldn’t see the pot-bellied Signor Tosi suspending a body from a swing. It would require considerable strength. Neither could he picture Carlo as the killer. The way the little cook had talked of having three wives — rather than two ex-wives — suggested he collected women rather than disposing of them.

‘There’s the lone diner as well,’ Halliwell said.

‘Mr D. Monnington. Decent of Luigi to go to all the trouble of getting the name for us,’ Diamond said with irony.