Peter Lovesey: Bloodhounds

"Some of it got on his beret. Later he found it was paint."

A low rumbling like a growl came from deep in Diamond's throat. "I wish we'd known this earlier. What about this character with the spray? Is there a description?"

Halliwell shook his head. "Rupert had nothing to say about him."

"Well, it tells us one interesting thing: Rupert didn't recognize the bugger."

"Is that useful?"

"It is if we're dealing in murder here. It eliminates just about all our suspects."

"You think Rupert was murdered, sir?"

"I can't rule it out."

"Shoved over the bridge and hanged?" Halliwell sounded skeptical. "That wouldn't be easy, would it? It would take some strength to get the noose around his neck and heave him over the railing."

"Two people could do it."

"No question… but where are we going to find two?"

Diamond turned and looked Up at the window of the room he'd just left. "Be patient with the old girl, Keith. She's had some shocks."

"I'll treat her like my own mother, sir."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"What's next for you, Mr. Diamond?"

"A little culture." He ambled across to his own car and started up.

For once he didn't curse when he saw the usual queue for the roadworks beginning to form on the London Road approaching Bath. He was in a more positive frame of mind. A pretty demanding investigation was coming to its climax. Mysteries that had seemed impenetrable had been solved by- what? — steady detective work, or brilliance? Either way, he had now disentangled the problems of the locked room puzzle, the riddles, the paper bag, and Miss Chilmark's secret payments. There remained only the unmasking of the killer.

Or killers.

This was when the likes of John Wigfull would run to their computers and start keying in information in the expectation that a mighty buzz from the megabytes would produce a perfect offender profile. "Your murderer is a writer of verse in possession of a ladder and window-cleaning materials and a car or other means of transport, with access to a computer and printer, possessing also a twisted sense of humor, a better than average knowledge of philately, detective stories, padlocks, and the topography of Bath. Now arrest the bastard, you dim plods."

The solution to this one, Diamond had long ago decided, wasn't going to come out of a computer. It required deductions on a more sophisticated level, an understanding of the strange workings of the human mind, fathoming why such a bizarre series of crimes and murders had been necessary or desirable. The sequence of events had almost certainly started with some weirdo wanting to score points, whether from frustration, a grudge, or just a wish to impress someone else. The Bloodhounds had been picked as the patsies. Then the thing had erupted into violence, into murder. Was the first murder always part of the plan, or an unwished-for consequence? And was the second, the killing of Rupert-if murder it was- made necessary by something Rupert knew, or was it cynically carried out to derail the investigation? The latter, surely. It seemed inescapable that the staging of the "suicide" was an attempt to frame Rupert as the conscience-stricken killer of Sid Towers. In other words, to draw a line under the case.

And it hadn't worked.

Ten minutes later, he walked into the Walsingham Gallery, only to be told by a young woman with cropped blond hair that it was Jessica's day off. He was also informed with just a hint of a smile that AJ. wasn't expected in today either.

"Any idea where I can find them? It's important." He showed his ID card.

"You could try the house. You can phone from here if you like."

With maddening inevitability, an answerphone message came down the line from Jessica's.

He turned to the blond woman. "Do you have a number for A.J.?"

She shook her head. "They could be out for a walk. They walk by the canal sometimes."

"It's a bloody long canal."

He tried Barnaby Shaw's business number with a little more success. Barnaby thought Jessica had spoken about going to the framer's. An artist had delivered a picture with a chipped frame, and she wanted a new one for it.

"Which framer?"

"The Meltone Gallery, in Powlett Road."

"Can you find me the number?"

There, the trail went cold. Mel, of Meltone, hadn't seen either of them all day.

It was Keith Halliwell, back at Bath Central, who got the inquiry back on course. Spotting Diamond as he stomped in, the frustration writ large, he reported that Miss Chilmark was now installed at the Paragon again. "She blubbed a bit, but I did my best with her, and she cheered up no end when she got back. There was a nice note from someone saying he'd call later. I went out and got her a box of Mr. Kipling's."

"Jesus Christ."

Halliwell went white. "Did I do wrong?"

"Did this note say what time?"

"I don't know. Teatime, I suppose. That's why she wanted the cakes. What is it now?"

It was ten to four. Diamond actually ran out of the building to his car. He drove white-knuckled, at the limit of his nerve, bucking two sets of traffic lights on the way to the Paragon. Leaving the car to create the mother and father of all tailbacks in the homeward traffic, he dashed across the pavement and down the basement steps.

A.J.. had not yet arrived. The disappointment showed when Miss Chilmark opened the door. She had changed into one of her high-necked oriental dresses and restored the makeup in lashings. She would be in thrall to that extortionist for as long as he cared to trouble her.

Diamond told her he would wait inside.

She protested, "But I'm expecting a visitor."

He said, "That's who I want to see." Then he banished her to the kitchen at the back.

Ten minutes went by, Diamond just to the left of the door, trying to be invisible through the frosted glass while squeezed behind the foliage of a tall benjamina.

About four twenty, someone descended the steps to the basement in a businesslike way. The doorbell rang. Diamond stepped out and flung open the door. The uniformed police constable standing there started to say "Is that your car parked out…?" Then he practically choked as he recognized Diamond.

Miss Chilmark came eagerly from the kitchen, saw the policeman, and said hysterically, "Oh, my God, what's happened?"

"This officer has come to tea-that's what's happened,"

Diamond told her through gritted teeth, tugging the man inside and slamming the door. "Give him his Mr. Kipling, and I'll see to him later."

A short time after came the visitor Miss Chilmark was expecting. Upon seeing Diamond, AJ. did a double take, turned about, and bolted up the stairs, but Diamond's large right arm groped through the iron railing, grabbed a leg, and pulled the man off balance. He fell heavily and gashed his hand on the edge of the bottom step.

"Looks like you're nicked."

The emergency was not over. Before relieving the traffic chaos outside, Diamond called Bath Central and had a message radioed to all units. He wanted Jessica Shaw brought in. She might be heading away from Bath in a new white Peugeot 306. He gave the registration.

Back at Manvers Street, AJ. was waiting in an interview room, stroking the fresh Band-Aid on his hand. He had recovered his composure enough to tell Diamond, "I don't know what the fuck this is about. You're going to pay for this."

"Save it." Diamond ignored him, and fiddled with something on the desk. His cackhandedness defeated him. "Someone's got to get this bloody contraption working for me." He walked out again.

A further twenty minutes passed before he came back with a sergeant, who attended to the tape recorder. "You'll have to wait, squire," Diamond now informed AJ. "They're bringing in Mrs. Shaw. Like I thought, she was heading out of town in the car." He grinned. "Luckily, there's still one hell of a snarl-up on the London Road."