Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill

The cameraman on the team took several shots before Diamond lowered the head. ‘How soon can I get copies?’

‘Soon as I finish here.’

‘He’s not needed here any more, is he?’ Diamond asked Duckett.

Another sigh. ‘I suppose. It’s bloody easy for the rest of you, going back to town and leaving us to this.’

‘Cheer up. You don’t have to do any digging this time.’

‘In this place I wouldn’t recommend it.’

Diamond stood up and gave a little grunt of discomfort. ‘Tough on the knees, all this stooping. I’ve seen enough for the present. It’s upgraded to a crime scene, agreed?’

‘You’re the expert.’

‘Let me know if you find the weapon.’

The drive down the hill to Manvers Street was thoughtful and mostly silent. They’d reached Broad Street when Diamond said to Halliwell, ‘Two suspicious deaths on Lansdown. Is that pure chance, Keith?’

A pause for thought. ‘They don’t have much in common considering one happened up to twenty years ago.’

‘I suppose.’

‘One a burial and the other just left in the open to be discovered. One a young woman- ’

‘All right, I hear what you’re saying.’ The stress was showing. He’d invited Halliwell to offer an opinion and now he’d shut him down – his loyal deputy. ‘You know what’s on my mind, don’t you?’

‘Georgina?’

‘Spot on. She won’t like me running two murder enquiries if they’re not connected. She won’t wear it, Keith.’

‘We don’t know if they’re murders yet.’

He took the point, grinned and nodded. ‘That’s not bad. I could run with that for a while.’

‘Difficult to do, anyway,’ Halliwell said.

‘What?’

‘Run two murder enquiries.’

‘I’d give it a go.’

Digital photography is a boon to police work. Within the hour Diamond had a series of crime scene pictures on his desk and on computer. They included six close-ups of the dead man’s face. Displayed thus, they intrigued him and he rearranged them several times as if playing Patience. Pictures of the dead can be deceptive. Rigor hadn’t set in when the shots were taken, so the muscles were slack, giving an appearance that wouldn’t be seen in the living.

‘Come and look at these, Keith.’

Halliwell crossed the room. ‘I saw the face when you lifted the head.’

‘Well, I didn’t,’ Diamond said. ‘Not from the angle of the camera. Something is familiar. Don’t know what.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No, I don’t. Never met the guy.’ He scratched the patch of hair above his right ear. ‘Even so…’

‘Do you want them on a board where we can see them?’

‘Good thinking. Excellent pictures, aren’t they? I bet the poor sod never had a snapshot of this quality taken when he was alive.’

‘Shall I set up another incident room?’ Halliwell was excited. A much more promising investigation was in prospect.

Diamond hesitated. They already had an adjoining room where information on the skeleton death was being processed. He thought about Georgina’s likely reaction to two incident rooms. ‘Not yet, Keith. Let’s see how we go.’

‘Up at the graveyard you seemed certain he was murdered.’

‘I’m inclined now to soft-pedal on that. It could be manslaughter – the result of a brawl – or even an accident.’

‘But you said a second person was involved and tried to cover it up.’

‘The drop of blood? Yes.’

‘That was good spotting, guv.’

‘Bad.’

‘Bad?’

‘But it was good that it was bad.’

‘You’ve lost me now.’

‘The spotting. By the perpetrator, not noticing the blade of grass.’

Halliwell tried humouring the boss by smiling, a forced smile, leaving him vulnerable.

‘Make some calls to all the local refuges, the Sally Army, and so on,’ Diamond said. ‘See if they can throw any light on this. There’s a bush telegraph among homeless men.’

‘Are you going to attend the PM?’

A casual enquiry, but both men knew what was behind it. Diamond didn’t have the stomach for post mortems. Halliwell was inured to them by now, always the police presence there. After years of standing in for the boss, watching a pathologist at work was no ordeal.

‘Tomorrow morning, I expect,’ Diamond said, as if mentally consulting his diary. ‘Pity.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve got to be here in case of developments. Could you stand in for me on this one, Keith?’

‘I was thinking about visiting a refuge.’

Diamond’s eyebrows popped up. ‘Am I that difficult to work with?’

‘A refuge for the homeless, following up on the phone calls.’ ‘True.’ Diamond frowned and then raised a finger as inspiration dawned. ‘Ingeborg can do the refuges.’

‘Leaving me free.’

‘Free to go to the ball, Cinderella.’

Raffles the cat, who had taken to sleeping at the end of Diamond’s bed, was roused unusually early next morning. To add insult to injury, his wrong-headed owner then went to the garage instead of the shelf where the cat food was stored and started sorting through the old newspapers stacked for the refuse collection. Ten minutes of leafing through copies of the Bath Chronicle brought a result. He’d found the picture feature on the missing cavalier.

‘That’s my baby, Raffles,’ he said. ‘And now we’ll celebrate by opening a new tin of chicken in jelly.’

True, the portrait of Rupert Hope was just a mugshot, probably taken for some university ID, but there was a distinct resemblance to the dead man. He read the text again. The age was about right. On consideration, the relatively healthy state of the skin and hands made sense. He’d not been a vagrant for long. From cavalier to corpse in how long? Two to three weeks? The days between took on a new importance.

Raffles was standing beside his empty bowl giving Diamond the glare usually reserved for next door’s pampered Persian.

John Wigfull kept to the civilised hours of a civilian and arrived at his office soon after nine. His moustache twitched in annoyance when he saw Peter Diamond seated on the corner of his desk.

‘Something the matter?’ Wigfull asked.

‘Far from it,’ Diamond said. ‘I’ve solved your puzzle. I’m here to claim my reward. Was it a brand new BMW or three weeks in the Bahamas?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

He held up the newspaper. ‘The missing cavalier.’ With an air of triumph he produced one of the glossy photos of the dead man and held it beside the pictures in the paper. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take the BMW.’

Wigfull gave the picture a squint. ‘Who’s this, then?’

‘Rupert.’

‘Rupert who?’

‘Rupert Bear, and I’m Bill Badger. Come on, John. I know it’s early in the day, but you can see it’s the same guy as the one in the paper.’

‘He doesn’t look the same.’

‘He’s dead, that’s why.’ He was tempted to go into the Monty Python dead parrot routine, which he knew by heart, but it would be wasted on Wigfull. ‘We found him yesterday in the graveyard up at Beckford’s Tower.’

‘You think this is Rupert Hope?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Dead?’

‘Were you hoping for a happy ending? Is that what this is about? Compare the pictures. Look at the hairline, the eyebrows, the mouth.’

‘I suppose it could be him,’ Wigfull said finally. ‘How long has he been dead?’

‘Yesterday, or the night before. No longer.’

‘Where was he all this time?’

‘He wasn’t in any condition to tell me. I’m telling you as much as I know. He looked as if he’d been living rough for some days, but it was obvious he wasn’t a long-term homeless man.’