Питер Ловси - The Stone Wife

His persistence paid off. One of the staff was freed to help him make a physical search. They drove down to the Old Red Building, where he learned that no file existed of excluded students. The only way of finding the names was to compare the records of thousands of enrolled students with the lists — almost as many — of thousands who had gone on to complete their degrees. Anyone who didn’t feature in both lists could be assumed to have dropped out. However, the dropouts would include students who had left the university voluntarily, transferred to other universities, failed the first year exams, or became too ill to continue, or died.

‘This could take days,’ he said. ‘All I want is the name of one bad egg sent down by the dean for dealing in drugs.’

Leaman came to the rescue. ‘Can’t we narrow it down?’

‘Good thinking. They were studying English and History.’

‘In the session two-thousand to two-thousand and one,’ Leaman added.

The task was still daunting, but more manageable. The helpful admin officer said she thought she could compile a list of all the dropouts by next day.

Diamond told her she was a star.

Outside the Old Red Building, Leaman said, picking his words with tact, ‘Are you thinking someone held a grievance all these years and hired professional hitmen to kill Gildersleeve? To me, it doesn’t seem likely.’

‘Me neither,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s a loose end I wanted tidied up.’

‘Well. I hope that woman doesn’t lose much sleep over it.’

On the drive home through Reading at the rush hour, he kept making audible intakes of breath.

‘You all right, guv?’ Leaman asked.

‘I wish you wouldn’t drive so close to the car in front, that’s all,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the Defender, it’s a little old Honda with bodywork that buckles on impact.’

‘It’s my car.’

‘It’s my body you have in the passenger seat.’

‘We’re crawling.’

‘Try creeping.’

As they approached the motorway on the A33 everything came to a complete stop.

‘What’s up now?’ Diamond said.

‘Someone up there heard your prayer.’

‘That’s a first, then.’

‘Do you feel more comfortable now?’

‘Don’t get snarky with me.’ He took out his phone.

‘Are you going to check what’s happened?’

He nodded. But it wasn’t the traffic hold-up he was checking. He got through once more to Bristol and asked if there was news from the search in Leigh Woods. Nothing had been reported. Neither had there been a sighting of Nathan’s two limos.

‘Are we checking the CCTV footage at the suspension bridge?’ he said into the phone.

They were, and it was still going on.

‘I want to be informed as soon asБ’

The line went dead. He didn’t like to think they might have cut him off deliberately.

Leaman found the local radio station and learned that the westbound section between junctions 11 and 12 had been closed because of an accident and was unlikely to be opened again for two hours.

Ahead, cars were making U-turns. Leaman checked his mirror and started to do the same.

‘Where are we heading now?’ Diamond asked.

‘Back through the town to find the back way to the next junction.’

To keep his mind off the driving, he tried to think of the positives from the funeral. Basically, he’d got what he came for, the interviews with Monica Gildersleeve and Archie Poke. And there was an intriguing new lead to pursue. Who was the anonymous seller of the Chaucer portrait who had missed out on a fortune when John Gildersleeve gave his expert opinion?

Ingeborg arrived early at Manvers Street next morning to find Diamond already there making waves, on the phone to Bristol, asking if the search of Leigh Woods had resumed, firing a series of questions at the hapless inspector on the line. How much of the woods had they covered? Were they still using the dog team? How many dogs? How many men? He went on to ask about the camera footage at Clifton suspension bridge. The check had been completed, a long, laborious process, and it emerged that one of Nathan’s limousines had definitely crossed the bridge in the Bristol direction at 5:50 A.M. on the day Nathan’s body was recovered from the river. The second limo had not been spotted.

‘They split up, then,’ he said, talking to the Bristol inspector as if he was up to speed on every detail of the case. ‘It makes sense. The car caught on camera must have been carrying the gun collection to some secret lock-up in the docks area. The other was used to dump the body somewhere in the woods. Then that second car crossed the river by another route, most likely using Brunel Way and Avon Bridge. Nathan will have known every patrol car in the county was looking for those limos. He will have got them off the road and out of sight as soon as they’d shed their loads. Then he’ll have told his men to disperse and lie low. He’ll not have told them he was about to make his way on foot to the bridge to commit suicide.’

There was a short pause in Diamond’s flow when the inspector got a few words in.

Then: ‘I don’t know if you’ve got the manpower, but somebody needs to search for the weapons and the cars. I’m strongly of the opinion that you’ll find them in the docks area. But the search for DC Gilbert has priority over everything. Do you understand me? Top priority.’

Then he put down the phone and sighted Ingeborg, calm and groomed again, with her blonde hair in the ponytail she usually wore and her lightly pencilled eyes giving no clue as to the tough time she’d been through.

‘Rested now?’

‘Rested and ready to go.’

‘How did Lee Li take the news of Nathan’s death?’

‘Like I expected. Shock. Some tears. She felt responsible, she said, and I soon knocked that on the head. She’s now come round to the view that she was lucky to escape when she did. He could easily have turned angry and she might have ended up dead in the river. Now she can get on with her life and her singing career without looking over her shoulder every minute.’

‘Is she still at your flat?’

‘Only until this afternoon. She’ll be staying with a friend.’

‘You like her, don’t you?’

A shrug and a smile. ‘She’s sweet, but not empty-headed. She’ll have more success, I’m sure.’

‘When she collects her Brit Award, you’ll get a mention in her acceptance speech: “And finally Ingeborg Smith who rescued me from the clutches of a major crime baron.” ’ He updated her on the Reading trip. ‘So you see, there’s a lot happening,’ he concluded. ‘I’m off to Melksham presently to waylay Bernie Wefers.’

‘Want me to come?’ she offered.

He needed her instead to get on the trail of the mystery seller of the Chaucer drawing. ‘I have a strong hunch it’s worth finding out,’ he said. ‘We know the dealers were Matlock and Russell, who seem to have gone out of business. But it was only ten years ago. Someone must know the inside story.’

‘Were they London-based?’

‘I’m not even sure of that. Would one of your contacts from the newspaper world be able to help?’

Before she could answer, another fresh morning face in the CID room set Diamond on a different tack. ‘Hello, here’s the myrmidon of the mortuary.’

‘The what ?’ Keith Halliwell said.

‘Never mind. What did you glean from yesterday’s autopsy?’

‘That you’re unlikely to survive if you jump off the suspension bridge. You hit the water at thirty-three metres per second. Your thoracic cage is crushed and the ribs penetrate your vital organs. Lacerated lungs, ruptured liver and heart. Do you want me to go on?’