Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘And in the open, in public places.’

  His pulse beat faster. He’d missed that. ‘Good point. Have you looked this up in the newspaper files?’

  ‘Not yet. I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘Better do it.’

  She turned and gave him the full beam of her wide blue eyes. ‘If you remember, I’m supposed to be comparing witness statements for the ram raid.’

  ‘Someone else can take that on. Anything you can dredge up on the Twinings. Find out who did the post-mortems and see if you can get hold of the reports. This is probably one huge red herring, but we can’t ignore it.’

  He strolled back into his office, trying to look as cool as he’d sounded while his thoughts galloped ahead. What was going on here? Two double suicides in two years on his patch? A copycat effect? He couldn’t think why. The obvious assumption was that the two couples had something in common. Did they know each other? Had there been some kind of pact to take their own lives?

  Impressionable people sometimes get drawn into oddball communities with a morbid sense of alienation from the world, like the Manson ‘family’ or the Jonestown community or the Waco crowd, falling under the influence of a dominant figure with a destructive urge. Things like that happened in California or Texas, places where screwy behaviour surprised no one. Was it conceivable that some cult such as this – with suicide as a laudable objective – was active in staid old Bath? He couldn’t discount it. Even Bathonians were capable of weird behaviour.

  Georgina stepped into his office soon after, wanting to know what progress he’d made on the ram raid. She looked as if she already knew the answer, so he decided to surprise her.

  ‘Significant progress.’

  He could have saved his breath.

  ‘Because it’s a shocking crime,’ she went on. ‘An incident like this alarms the public. Driving a vehicle into a shopfront is a violent act. Shops are vital to the local economy.’

  ‘I know, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I use them myself . . . when I get the time.’

  She wasn’t listening. ‘In a way it’s an act of rape.’

  He raised his eyebrows at that. What a pig-ignorant remark. If he’d come out with it she’d have jumped on him from a great height, and rightly. A ram raid was a ram raid and rape was another class of crime, more selfish, more cowardly and more despicable.

  Georgina must have seen his expression because she tried to justify what she’d said. ‘In an abstract sense, I mean. A rape of property. A shopfront violated. I want these people arrested and put away for a long time, Peter. Do you have descriptions?’

  ‘Not when I last checked. It happened at night.’

  ‘Nothing on video?’

  ‘No cameras.’

  ‘Suspects?’

  ‘More than enough.’

  His phone buzzed.

  ‘Pick it up,’ Georgina said. ‘It may be for me.’

  The switchboard operator said, ‘Personal for you, sir.’ And before he could deflect her he was listening to Paloma.

  ‘Peter, I hope you don’t mind me calling you at work, but this gorgeous basket of flowers just arrived. How did you know I adore the scent of freesias? And the message. So thoughtful. You really didn’t have to do this, but it’s made my day.’

  His own day was disintegrating. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m in a meeting.’

  ‘Oh, trust me to pick the wrong moment!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘Can I call back?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘About two would be good.’ He put down the phone. ‘Sorry about that.’

  Georgina couldn’t have heard every word, but she would have a fair idea that the caller was female. She said, ‘I hope you’re giving this top priority.’

  ‘What?’

  She emitted a rasping sigh. ‘The ram raid.’

  ‘They’re working on it at this minute, ma’am.’

  ‘You say “they” as if you’re not personally involved.’

  ‘It’s all part of the ongoing work of the CID. I do have other things on my plate.’

  ‘Like those two hangings? I thought you’d have written your report and forgotten about them by now. You’re like a dog with a bone. What were you doing taking a vanload of policemen out to Bathford?’

  ‘We got a result – found the cave where Danny Geaves was holed up.’

  ‘And how does that assist us?’

  ‘Well, it’s, em –’ he was flapping around like a drowning man and they both knew it ‘– a guide to his state of mind.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Peter, we know he was suicidal.’

  He dug deep for some dignity. ‘If you remember, ma’am, on the day he died you woke me at six in the morning to go and investigate. I took it to mean the matter was important.’

  ‘Only because we can’t have bodies hanging from bridges.’

  ‘I understand now. Spoiling the scenery?’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm, Peter. The Geaves case was last week. We’ve moved on. I expect you to take a personal interest in the ram-raid inquiry. Is that understood?’

  Ingeborg burst in a few minutes after. The excitement was in her eyes, her stance, her voice. ‘The Twinings, guv.’

  ‘Twinings?’ He was bruised by Georgina’s attack. A dog with a bone. Was that how she thought of her top detective?

  ‘The couple who hanged themselves.’

  ‘I wish they had another name,’ he said. ‘Makes me think of tea.’

  ‘Guv, this is serious.’

  ‘So am I. You can tell me downstairs.’

  In the canteen, Ingeborg was on hot bricks. She started on about the case while they were in line at the self-service.

  He muttered, ‘Wait till we get to the table.’ The canteen ladies were his friends, but they dispensed as much gossip as food and he didn’t want it getting back to Georgina that he was checking on yet another double suicide.

  ‘I’ve dug out the Bath Chronicle reports and it’s the same pattern,’ Ingeborg finally managed to tell him. ‘There was no suicide note. They didn’t do it together. The woman went first, and then the man, two days later. And this is the really interesting bit. In those two days, nobody saw John Twining. He wasn’t at home or at work. He disappeared off the radar – just like Danny Geaves.’

  ‘Have you looked at the autopsy reports?

  ‘Not yet. I’ve asked for them.’

  ‘Who did the autopsies? Not our friend Sealy?’

  ‘No, it was another name.’

  ‘Bring them in as soon as they arrive. What else do we know about this couple? Was there anything in the papers about the people they mixed with?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’d be interested to know what sort of life they led. Were they part of any community?’

  ‘Religious, do you mean?’

  ‘Religious, hippy, drug-dependent. Get the drift? Some fringe group, alienated from society, that might have put them up to this.’

  ‘Were Delia and Danny part of some cult?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be considered. There’s a new dimension now, Inge, and it’s darker than I thought.’

  On his return to the office after lunch he found an envelope on his desk. His name was on it.

  ‘This is all I need,’ he said to Leaman, who happened to look in.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Georgina’s writing. Could be the old heave-ho.’

  He was wrong. He found two theatre tickets inside. Georgina had attached a note saying, Hope you can use these. It’s one of my choir nights, unfortunately.

  A peace offering, he decided, with a whole new perspective on his boss. She’d been well out of order earlier and no doubt regretted it now.

  Leaman asked, ‘Something nice after all?’

  ‘How did you guess?
Close the door as you go out.’ A smart idea had popped into his head. He looked up Paloma’s number and called her.

  She answered at once.

  ‘Sorry about this morning,’ he said. ‘I had the dragon sitting in my office.’

  ‘The lady boss? I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have called on spec like that. Just wanted to thank you for—’

  ‘You did,’ he said. ‘Look, I know you like the cinema, so I guess that goes for the theatre as well. I’ve been given a couple of tickets for the Theatre Royal tomorrow night and I thought we might do another restaurant afterwards. My chance to treat you for a change.’

  ‘I’d really enjoy that,’ she said. ‘What’s on?’

  ‘Can’t say I know it,’ he said, ‘but it sounds appropriate. An Inspector Calls.’

  18

  Later the same afternoon, Diamond took a trip to Norton St Philip and it had nothing to do with the ram raid. He’d asked John Leaman to drive him, leaving Halliwell in charge. Georgina wouldn’t be overjoyed to hear that her top man was elsewhere, but she’d know his deputy was capable of progressing the investigation.

  ‘You know what this is about?’ he said to Leaman.

  ‘The couple who hanged themselves a couple of years back? Ingeborg filled me in, guv.’

  ‘I would have asked Inge along, but she’s digging out files for me and she knows what she’s got and what she hasn’t. You and I are going to meet Harold Twining, the older brother. He’s a teacher on leave of absence at the moment, suffering from stress. So we treat him gently, right?’

  For all his fault-finding, Leaman had a sympathetic side that sometimes showed. After some thought, he said, ‘Brute of a job, teaching. I wouldn’t like it, facing a roomful of bolshie kids.’

  ‘If the teacher’s any good, the kids aren’t bolshie. You remember that from when you went to school, don’t you?’

  ‘When I was at school they clipped you round the head if you messed about. Teachers have got no sanctions now.’

  ‘They used the cane in my day. You favour corporal punishment, do you?’

  ‘They had other methods,’ Leaman said.

  ‘Like what? Slinging blackboard rubbers at the kids? Cold showers? Those were the bad old days, John.’

  ‘Didn’t do me any harm.’

  ‘So you end up in the police, whacking villains with batons. The old, old story.’

  Leaman realised he’d walked into that one. ‘Hey, what about you, guv? You’re part of it.’

  ‘Me? Haven’t you noticed? I’m the Mr Chips of Bath nick.’

  Leaman smiled and said no more on the matter. Presently they left the A36 and turned right. ‘I’m in your hands now,’ Leaman said.

  ‘Took that to heart, did you, about me being a gentle soul?’

  ‘What I’m saying is that this is Norton St Philip coming up and I don’t know where we’re meeting Harold Twining.’

  ‘Do you know the George?’

  Leaman nodded. Everyone who has been to Norton knows the George Inn, a mighty and magnificent pub said to have been built by the monks of Hinton Charterhouse. Samuel Pepys, Oliver Cromwell and the Duke of Monmouth stayed there, although not at the same time or Pepys’ Diary might have had an interesting entry.

  ‘He’s waiting for us in the main bar,’ Diamond said.

  ‘Off school with stress and he goes to the pub?’

  ‘Not much stress there.’

  ‘Unless like me you happen to be the driver.’

  They parked and went in and found a cheerful character at the bar telling a joke to a barmaid. They let him reach the punch-line, which was, ‘Don’t laugh. You’re next.’ Then he turned and said, ‘These must be my visitors. What’s your tipple, gentlemen?’

  ‘Mine’s a draught bitter,’ Diamond said. ‘A pint. His will be lemonade. And you’re . . . ?’

  ‘Skint,’ said Harold Twining, ‘so you’ve copped the first round.’ He chuckled at his own wit and Diamond remembered a history teacher from his grammar school who had the same annoying habit. ‘I hope you’re on expenses,’ Twining went on. ‘I’d love to treat you, but I know my limitations. If you press me, I’ll have the bitter as well.’

  At Twining’s suggestion – and Twining was making all the running, but it probably eased his stress – they took their drinks out to the garden at the back. The pastel softness of the Somerset scenery was worth it. A groundsman was using the mower on the village cricket green beside the church and the smell of cut grass wafted up to them.

  ‘Good to be alive, looking out at this,’ Diamond said to get the conversation under way. It was a distortion of his true state of mind. Having just put his hand in his pocket for the drinks he didn’t feel it was good to be alive at all.

  ‘Is it?’ Twining said. ‘I’m used to it. Lived here all my life.’

  ‘Do you teach here as well?’

  ‘In Norton?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Too close to home. Maths and physics at Frome.’

  ‘When you’re fit.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘How long have you been off work?’ All thoughts of giving this freeloader a stress-free time had gone.

  For the first time since their arrival, Harold Twining’s smile deserted him. ‘I thought you were here to talk about my brother.’

  ‘We are. I’m being friendly. Can’t dive straight in.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound friendly when the first thing you mention is my problem. People don’t understand psychosomatic illness. It isn’t obvious, like mumps or asthma, but it’s just as real. Some of those buggers at work believe I’m having a high old time of it.’

  ‘There’s no accounting for human nature,’ Diamond said and turned to Leaman. ‘Did it cross your mind that Mr Twining was skiving off, John?’

  ‘I take people as I find them, guv.’

  ‘There you are.’ Diamond smiled at Twining. ‘Let’s talk about your brother, then. And his wife. Because I understand it was a double tragedy.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ Twining said. ‘Afterwards you ask yourself if you could have helped in some way, but I had no inkling they were so unhappy.’

  ‘Were they?’ Diamond said. ‘You’ll have to give us some background. We don’t know the full circumstances.’

  ‘I doubt if anyone did. The coroner couldn’t work it out. Mentally my brother John was a hundred per cent and so was Chrissie. They had no money problems. Each of them was earning more than I ever will. Alpha people. You asked on the phone if I could bring a picture and I dug one out.’ He took a postcard-sized photo from his pocket and flicked it across the table in a way that seemed to express his contempt for the couple.

  Diamond picked it up. It had been taken with flash at some party. A good-looking couple with drinks in front of them. John Twining had receding hair and a thick moustache; she was blonde, the hair scrunched back. They both looked comfortable being photographed. The smiles weren’t at all forced.

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘She was a buyer for Marks and Spencer, a high-powered job. And John was an architect. They had a beautiful property he designed for himself in Hinton Charterhouse, just down the road from here. Holidays in the Caribbean, a sports car each. No kids. No ties, not even a budgie to look after.’

  ‘They seem happy with each other in the photo.’

  ‘I never saw a sign that they weren’t.’

  ‘So what was said at the inquest? How was it explained?’

  ‘I don’t think it was. The coroner came out with some claptrap about successful, wealthy people suddenly realising that their lives were vacuous. His word. Vacuous. It’s not in my vocabulary. I can tell you what a vacuum is because I’m a physicist. But a vacuous life is an unscientific term. He reckoned they must have made a pact to put an end to themselves. He said if they’d had children, or even a dependent relative, they might have felt their lives had more purpose. I’ll be honest with you, I would have volunteered to be a dependent relative. No problem.’

  Diamond didn’t need convinc
ing of that. ‘They left no note?’

  ‘Nothing was ever found.’

  ‘Did they write wills?’

  ‘Yes, that was taken care of, but not as a last-minute thing. They’d drawn them up four years before they died. Everything went to charity except what the government took. I didn’t get a penny.’

  ‘Were they religious?’

  ‘John and Chrissie? The only thing they believed in was their bank account. They might have gone to the Christmas midnight service, but you do in a village. It’s a social thing.’

  ‘Is it possible that they wanted a child and couldn’t have one?’

  ‘Another misguided theory. She had a baby stopped a year after they married. They “slipped up”, John told me. No question they could have started a family if they’d wanted.’

  ‘So do you have a theory of your own?’

  ‘I can tell you why my brother took his life. He was heartbroken after Chrissie hanged herself. It’s obvious, isn’t it? But what her problem was, I haven’t the faintest. As I said, I always thought of her as sensible.’

  ‘She wasn’t in trouble at work?’

  ‘No. The coroner read out a statement from Marks and Spencer. They valued her contribution. She was going to be difficult to replace. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Did she have family – parents, siblings?’

  ‘She was Australian.’

  ‘Even Australians have parents.’

  ‘What I mean is that they were half the world away. Nothing was said about them troubling her.’

  ‘She hanged herself in Henrietta Park, I understand. That’s the one at the back of Great Pulteney Street. Why would she choose there?’

  ‘You mean why didn’t she go to another park? Don’t know. Because she knew of it, I suppose. She’d walk a lot in her lunch breaks, the only exercise she had time for. She was found hanging from a tree. They tried to inform John, but he’d gone missing. They got onto me, and I couldn’t tell them anything. We weren’t close. He was found up at Sham Castle two days later, as you probably know. My guess is that he knew what she’d done. Maybe she left him a note. He was so shocked that he simply walked around in a dazed state and finally decided he couldn’t face life without her.’

  ‘Was Sham Castle a place he knew well?’