Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill

He had to face the possibility that he’d overplayed the possible connection between the two murders. It remained tentative, spec-u lative. Okay, both bodies had been found on Lansdown, and Rupert had actually sat beside Nadia’s grave and handled her bone before being murdered himself. But coincidences happen. Life is full of them.

Nadia had come to Bath in the month of the Sealed Knot re-enactment. Nothing linked her definitely to the Knot. It looked a possibility and that was the best that could be said. He’d been trying from the beginning to unify the investigation and now he wondered if he was forcing the issue too much.

He feared he’d missed something through trying to link the killings. If he’d investigated Rupert’s murder in isolation he might have had stronger suspicions about Dave, who’d come forward long after the original call for witnesses; or Major Swithin, the vigilante who’d called the police to the racecourse; or even the angry woman from the car boot sale who’d made such an issue of Rupert stealing a pie. Because these people had no apparent link to Nadia he’d not rated them as serious suspects. In theory Septimus should have put each of them through the grinder. In the large-scale exercise of reconstructing Rupert’s last three weeks of life, had the basics been neglected?

Somebody knocked on his door. Didn’t they know by now that when it was closed he was not to be interrupted?

Flushed with annoyance, he walked across and flung it open. ‘What is it?’

Septimus stood there.

Ready to confess he’d messed up?

‘Sir, I think you should hear about this.’

No one called him ‘sir’ unless the sky had fallen in.

‘I’m listening.’

Septimus took a deep breath. ‘The lab just called. They’ve been examining the blanket I sent in, the one we think was used by Rupert.’

‘And…?’

‘Something cropped up and they want an explanation.’

‘ They want an explanation?’

‘They’re saying it’s a horse rug.’

‘Okay, it’s not a blanket, it’s a horse rug.’

‘They removed a number of horse hairs from it and compared them with the one we’d sent them previously, from the zip fly. They say it comes from the same horse.’

He called the lab and asked to speak to the chief scientist.

The voice on the line was urbane, well used to dealing with awkward policemen. ‘Good of you to call back, Mr Diamond. No doubt there’s a rational explanation of our findings and I’m suggesting it must come from your end, not ours.’

‘Why is that?’

A definite chuckle was audible. ‘Because we’re scrupulous in our procedures. We don’t confuse samples.’

Diamond held himself in check. ‘Before I comment, let’s clarify what’s in your report, shall we?’

‘We haven’t made one yet. This was a courtesy call to let you double-check what’s been happening.’

‘A chance to redeem ourselves?’

‘I’m not playing the blame game, Mr Diamond. I’m a scientist looking for an explanation of an improbable result. The horse rug your people sent us contains hair clippings genetically identical to the one you submitted previously. We were led to believe that particular clipping had been buried for up to twenty years.’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Sixteen, then. And we were told this rug had been used recently by a murder victim sleeping rough. How do you reconcile that?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, then. There’s only one explanation I can think of, and that’s that you muddled the clippings in some way.’

If this wasn’t the blame game it sounded remarkably like it. ‘You’d better think again because that’s not possible,’ Diamond said, ready to trade blow for blow. ‘Your own scientists found the first hair trapped under the tab.’

‘Ah, but how many people handled the zip before it reached here?’

‘One only, and he was the crime scene investigator. It was put straight into an evidence bag. We followed correct procedures throughout and I don’t much care for these inferences you’re making. There’s no chance it could have been contaminated.’

‘Easy to say, harder to prove, superintendent.’

He was increasingly riled by the man. ‘Explain this, then. The zip was sent to you at least ten days ago. The rug wasn’t even found until the end of last week. How could there be cross-contamination at our end?’

‘You must answer that. It didn’t happen here. We’d be sacked for incompetence if it did.’

How tempting was that? He bit back the comment he wanted to make. Instead, he changed tack. ‘What’s your basis for saying that the hairs came from the same horse?’

‘DNA analysis.’

‘DNA from a horse hair?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘I know about DNA in humans.’

‘Animals have their unique profiles, just the same.’

‘I’m interested in the science here,’ Diamond said. ‘Genetic profiling in people is well known. How much data is there on horses?’

‘My dear man, it’s been going on for years. There’s a huge database. All the top racing thoroughbreds have their DNA on record and it can be analysed from hair samples just the same as yours or mine.’

‘And you’re totally sure the hairs matched?’

‘We routinely back up every test and I ordered more when this unaccountable result was reported to me. They came back identical to the first batch.’

Diamond felt as if he needed a cigarette, and he’d given up years ago. ‘I’d like to speak to my colleagues about this. I’ll get back to you later.’

‘Good thinking, Mr Diamond. It’s sound science to recheck every damned thing. We do, and we have in this case.’

His blood pressure rocketing, he slammed down the phone. He got up and circled the small office, taking deep breaths to get control of himself. Then he asked Septimus back into the office.

Was the Bristol man blushing under his black skin? He had an uneasy look, for sure.

‘You’ve had time to think while I’ve been on the phone,’ Diamond said. ‘How could this have happened?’

‘Not our fault.’ To the point, and no excuse offered. This was the way Septimus operated. If you wanted alibis, go to someone else.

‘Are you certain?’

‘We bagged up the blanket – sorry, horse rug – where we found it, in the gatehouse, sealed and labelled it and sent it off directly.’

‘If that was handled right, then what about the zip?’

‘Not for me to say. If you recall, the zip was already at the lab being cleaned before I came to Bath.’

Back of the net. Septimus was in the clear.

‘I can’t argue with that.’ Diamond hesitated, casting his thoughts back. ‘Keith Halliwell sent them the zip at my suggestion. He’s ultra-careful. He knows all about the chain of custody and the legal pitfalls if you do anything wrong.’

Septimus gave a shrug. ‘Keith was in London with you when the rug was found. It makes no sense.’

But it had to. Diamond leaned on his elbows and buried his face in his hands, locked in thought. After some while he looked up and said, ‘How long do horses live?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘I’m sure they get to twenty or thirty. It’s not impossible that the horse Nadia came into contact with is still alive. Say it was a three year old in 1993. It could be under twenty now.’

‘So Rupert happened to find the rug used for the same horse?’ Septimus said on a disbelieving note. ‘That’s stretching it.’

‘No, it could be one more link between the cases. You say “happened to”. There could be a logical reason.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘Rupert the historian had an interest in the Civil War. That’s why he joined the Sealed Knot. Agreed?’