Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘If his insurance company is any good, he’ll get a replacement. They usually cover theft and fire.’

  ‘That’s a thought.’ She released a nervous breath. ‘I’ll break it to him now. Do you mind if I phone from the next room? Mothers say the silliest things to sons.’

  ‘Can I get a drink ready?’

  ‘What a good idea. A whopping great vodka and tonic. The cupboard in the corner.’

  Left alone, with the drinks poured – his own more tonic than vodka – he looked at the art on the walls. No cheap reproductions, these. Abstract, large, in muted colours, they may not have been his choice, but they testified to the success of Once in Vogue. If he’d dabbled in shares he would have been asking if her company was open to investment.

  She returned and said, ‘Whew! That was tough. Give me a hug.’

  He didn’t just hug her, he kissed her as well.

  ‘Now where’s that drink?’ she said.

  He handed it to her. ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘Pretty badly, poor old lad. It wasn’t his first car, but the first he’d really treated like a pet. He said he’ll drive up to Lansdown after he’s finished at the hospital.’

  ‘He’d do better tomorrow in some daylight.’

  ‘Try telling him. That was his baby.’ She’d emptied her glass. ‘I need more vodka in this, I think.’

  He took the bottle across to her. She’d sat on the sofa. ‘Is this your favourite tipple?’

  ‘In times of stress. I was all of a tremble, seeing you and getting that unwelcome bit of news.’

  ‘A double shock?’

  She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ She put the glass on the floor. ‘Oh, come over here and shag me to bits.’

  She’d opened her bathrobe and was naked under it. She lay on the sofa in total confidence.

  The speed of the invitation might have troubled many a man. It didn’t hamper Diamond. He did pretty much as asked.

  They showered and Paloma found a bathrobe for him. Down in the kitchen she cooked a pasta dish with cream and chopped bacon and spinach. Fast food, but not from a packet. An Italian red wine came with it.

  ‘You’ll stay the night, won’t you?’ she said.

  ‘That wasn’t what I had in mind when I called.’

  ‘You simply planned to tell me about the wretched car and leave?’

  ‘It’s a mean man who takes advantage of a lady in distress.’

  She said, ‘It was me who took advantage. I’m like that, I’m afraid. Don’t miss an opportunity.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Peter Diamond,’ she said. ‘You may be a red-hot detective, but you don’t know the half of it where I’m concerned. You can’t have any idea how much I wanted you.’

  He smiled. ‘Detective work doesn’t apply here. You made your intention pretty clear.’

  Now she was shaking her head and he could see she wanted to make a serious point. Her face had turned pale and she was twisting her fingers into knots. He wondered if he’d upset her. He wasn’t much of a hand at flirting.

  ‘Confession time,’ she said, and her voice shook a little. ‘I’ve been wanting to own up to this ever since that first evening. The bag of shopping you drove over at Sainsbury’s. I planted it there. It was a set-up. I wanted an excuse to meet you. Isn’t that appalling?’

  He didn’t fully understand. ‘The child and the lost puppy? You made that up?’

  ‘I know. I’m shameless.’

  He thought back to the incident. ‘Do you mean you saw me drive up in my car and decided you fancied me and planted your bag where I’d reverse over it?’

  ‘No, it’s worse than that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I was lying in wait.’

  ‘But we hadn’t met . . . had we?’

  ‘No.’ She sat back in her chair and studied her fingernails, avoiding eye contact. ‘Peter, I’m the woman who was pestering you. I wrote you a letter, and sent you the cake and spoke to you on the phone. You’re right. We hadn’t met, but not for want of trying.’

  He was letting it sink in. ‘I must be so dim. I didn’t connect you with that letter at all.’

  ‘It’s scary, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I was stalking you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it stalking.’

  ‘I would. How else did I know you do your shopping in Sainsbury’s on Saturday evenings?’

  ‘Scary’ wasn’t the word for what had happened, but it made him uncomfortable. Up to now he’d thought he had some influence on how they’d met. He’d just found out how little it was.

  ‘You’ve gone awfully pale,’ she said.

  ‘Never could take a surprise.’

  ‘I wanted you to know the truth of it.’

  ‘Yes, and I appreciate that,’ he said. He wouldn’t let it damage the relationship, but in some ways he was wishing she hadn’t told him.

  They were watching a DVD of The Third Man, Paloma’s head on his shoulder, when the doorbell chimed.

  ‘That’ll be Jerry,’ she said. ‘I thought he might show up.’

  Jerry had the unlucky knack of showing up at inconvenient moments.

  ‘Peter’s with me,’ Paloma said, as she ushered him in.

  Jerry said, ‘Hi, Peter.’ But his mind was on other things. ‘I’ve just come from Lansdown. I’m certain it’s my car.’

  ‘My poor darling,’ Paloma said, putting an arm around him. ‘Why did they have to set light to it? If they must steal a car, can’t they content themselves with driving it around and leaving it somewhere?’

  ‘They want to remove all traces of themselves,’ Diamond said. ‘Even the dimmest of joyriders have heard of DNA. We’ll have forensics look at it, anyway. Something may have survived the fire.’

  ‘Catching them won’t be much consolation,’ Jerry said.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to use the Porsche for some while longer,’ Paloma said.

  ‘Thanks, Mum, but no. It’s yours again. I’ve rented something bigger. The space is the problem. I’m on the move so much that I use the car as an office. I’ll call for a taxi in a minute and you can have your Porsche.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Diamond said. ‘I can drive you home.’

  ‘What – and ruin your evening? You’re not even dressed. A taxi will do fine. But I could do with a bite to eat. Is there anything in the fridge, Mum?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Paloma said. ‘Have a look.’

  When Jerry had left the room, Paloma gave Diamond a knowing smile and said, ‘Comfort food.’

  ‘Where does he live? I can easily run him back.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s kind, but we can afford the taxi. Besides, I can see he’s a bit embarrassed. Nothing personal, but he doesn’t really approve of what I get up to.’

  ‘Is that the church bit?’

  ‘Probably. They’re all pro-marriage and anti-naughties from what I can gather. Wouldn’t suit me at all.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he said. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

  ‘I’m told banging a tambourine is the height of ecstasy,’ Paloma said.

  ‘I’d be out of a job if it was.’

  Jerry came back into the room spooning chocolate-chip ice cream from a tub. ‘Taxi’s on its way,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit low on bread, Mother, so I’ve helped myself to a loaf. And some slices from that chicken.’

  ‘Take the whole bird if you want,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m going to need it.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ he said. ‘Peter might wake up feeling hungry.’

  28

  ‘Is this a takeover?’ Diamond asked.

  The pathologist Jim Middleton was sitting with eyes closed, gently revolving in Diamond’s own chair and humming a tune as if his mind was on some intricate dance step. This at nine twenty the next morning.

  ‘Nowhere else to park myself, squire,’ Jim said, returning to the here and now. ‘Where have you been? I came in specially. They tried calling you at home, bu
t you must have left.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have caught me at home.’

  ‘Don’t you have a mobile?’

  ‘I don’t use it in the car.’

  ‘I thought you people were working round the clock.’

  ‘We squeeze in an hour of sleep every three or four days. What have you got for me?’

  ‘Not what I expected,’ Jim said. ‘Not what you expected, I dare say.’ He reached for a scuffed brown briefcase and removed the folders containing the autopsy reports on John and Christine Twining. ‘Tell me about the fellow who wrote this stuff.’

  ‘Dr Shinwari? There isn’t much. He was attached to various hospitals in this area as a pathologist. He carried out hundreds, if not thousands, of autopsies. Eighteen months ago he resigned and returned to Pakistan.’

  ‘He’s definitely left the Health Service, has he? I want to be sure of this before I say any more.’ Jim, as ever, behaving as if he was treading on glass.

  ‘No question,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s left, decamped, quit the stage, flown the coop, hoisted the Blue Peter. No forwarding address. No contact numbers.’

  ‘Did you read these?’

  ‘I could follow some of it. At least they’re in simpler language than our friend Dr Sealy’s reports.’

  ‘The language is the problem.’

  ‘What are you on about, Jim?’

  ‘Is he a fluent speaker of English?’

  ‘How would I know? I’ve never met him. What problem?’

  Jim’s eyes gleamed as they did when he executed a perfect chassé on the dance floor. He opened one of the reports. ‘There’s a section here. “Post Mortem appearance: face pale, lips, tongue and mucous membrane bluish. Petechial haemorrhages under the conjunctivae. Early putrefactive discoloration on the lower abdominal wall.”’

  ‘You’ve lost me already,’ Diamond said.

  ‘Follow the words I’ve marked in pencil.’ He handed the report to Diamond, and then turned to the second folder. ‘You’ve got John Twining. This is Christine. “Post Mortem appearance: face pale, lips, tongue and mucous membrane bluish.” And so it goes on, the wording precisely the same. That’s just one example. It goes on for pages.’

  ‘Well, if the method of death was the same, wouldn’t the appearance be the same?’

  ‘Peter, you don’t repeat yourself word for word. And no two autopsies present precisely the same symptoms. Look at the other section I marked. “The line of the ligature followed the line of the jaw, then passed obliquely upwards behind the ears, where it was commonly lost.” Exactly the same wording in both reports. But what does he mean by “commonly lost”? It makes no sense to me as a pathologist. Do you understand it?’

  ‘Read it to me again.’

  ‘It’s just the phrase “where it was commonly lost”.’

  ‘Don’t know. Typing error?’

  ‘I think he didn’t understand it himself. He’s used a crib.’

  ‘What – copied from something?’

  ‘And I’m damned sure where he got it from.’ Jim took from his case a black book that had the look of a much-thumbed Bible. He’d put markers between the pages. ‘This is Glaister’s Medical Jurisprudence, the standard work when I was going through college. Chapter 6: Asphyxia, sub-section 4: Hanging. See if this sounds familiar. “The line of the ligature must be carefully examined. In suicidal suspension, it usually follows the line of the lower jaw, then passes obliquely upwards behind the ears, where it is commonly lost.” Glaister is talking about the generality of suicides by hanging. In its proper context the word makes sense.’

  Diamond studied the textbook and then the two reports. ‘You’re thinking Dr Shinwari didn’t know what he was writing about?’

  ‘That’s clear. The way he borrows the word “commonly” is the giveaway. He may have known how to dissect a corpse, but not enough English to report his findings.’

  ‘So he copied out of the textbook?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind betting that if you checked other reports you’d find Glaister being quoted verbatim.’

  ‘To cover up Dr Shinwari’s poor English?’

  ‘That’s the obvious inference, isn’t it? Either that, or he was lazy and just copied out the same stuff each time.’

  ‘Poor English seems more likely.’

  ‘Whatever it was, he was going to get caught some time. My guess is that a coroner was on to him, which is why he quit the country. To avoid a scandal.’

  ‘But I was told he was one of their busiest pathologists. Wouldn’t he have been rumbled before this?’

  ‘Peter, you have a touching faith in the system. Believe me, you can get by for a long time in the Health Service before any failings are picked up by management.’

  ‘I’m surprised some lawyer didn’t notice.’

  ‘Dr Shinwari wouldn’t often appear in court. He isn’t a forensic pathologist. I would have known him if he was. He does routine autopsies.’

  ‘Suicides are routine?’

  ‘If the coroner decides so. If he has any suspicion about the death, he’ll call up someone from the Home Office list, not a jobbing pathologist like Shinwari.’

  Diamond said in disbelief, ‘The Twinings were thought to be routine suicides?’

  ‘Hanging is, as a general rule. Firearm deaths and overdoses are more open to doubt. So is jumping off a building. If you want to do away with someone and pass it off as suicide, you’re unlikely to choose hanging.’

  This was crucial to the suspicions Diamond had been forming. He needed expert help here. ‘Haven’t you ever come across a case of murder by hanging? Or murder dressed up as a hanging?’

  ‘Personally, no,’ Jim said. ‘It’s extremely rare. Off-hand, I can think of only two cases in recent times. There’s Roberto Calvi, that Italian banker found on the end of a rope under Blackfriars Bridge. There were suspicions that he was murdered first. You had the double ligature mark around the neck. Keith Simpson, the pathologist, decided the two marks were caused by the movement of the rope when the body was shifting in the water and subject to the tide. He went for suicide. But there have been at least three inquiries since, and it’s still an open question. Incidentally, one of the suspicious points was that the rope was fastened with a slip knot.’

  ‘Really? Like Danny Geaves.’

  ‘Yes. And the other suicidal hanging that some people say was suspicious was that of Rudolf Hess, the old Nazi in Spandau Prison. Once again, it was the mark that created doubt. It ran horizontally, rather than in the inverted ‘V’ that is typical. Several experts have concluded that Hess was strangled. But these are very unusual cases.’

  ‘Coming back to the Twinings, these reports are useless, then?’

  Jim smiled. ‘He’s got the dates right. And the places.’

  ‘Big deal.’

  ‘It’s a pity there aren’t any photos. If these had been forensic autopsies, you’d have more to work with. This far on in time, an exhumation wouldn’t tell you much.’

  ‘Wouldn’t tell us anything. The Twinings were cremated. Thanks, anyway, Jim. You’re a star.’

  The prospect of stardom didn’t appeal to Jim. ‘I don’t want publicity. It’s off the record, everything I’ve said. If this man comes before the Medical Council, I don’t wish to testify.’

  ‘He won’t. He’s scarpered.’

  ‘As long as that’s clear. And you will see about that licence?’

  ‘Licence?’

  ‘For the tea dances.’

  Just in time, Diamond remembered. He winked and tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Consider it done, old friend.’

  For some minutes after Jim Middleton had left, Diamond pondered what he had learned. Dr Shinwari’s borrowings from Glaister meant that the autopsy reports were worthless, but it didn’t alter the fact that a couple had been found hanging two years ago in circumstances remarkably similar to Delia and Danny, in public places, the woman first, and then the man a day or so after. There had to be a link. His pr
iority was to find what those four people had in common.

  Keith Halliwell put his head around the door, usually the cue for a coffee. Not this morning.

  ‘Guv. We’ve been looking all over for you. That pathologist was here.’

  ‘Seen him. He’s left now.’

  ‘You were in here all the time?’

  He exaggerated slightly. They didn’t need to know he’d turned up late for work, or where he’d spent the night. ‘When I walked through the office you weren’t about.’

  ‘I know. I was chasing all over the building.’

  ‘What’s the panic, Keith?’

  ‘There’s been another hanging.’

  29

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You know the big stone gates at Victoria Park? She’s suspended from one of the arches.’

  ‘She?’

  On the short drive to the scene he was silent. Try as he did to suppress the memory of three years ago, driving to Royal Victoria Park to view his beloved Steph, he could not stop the thoughts crowding in. He told himself repeatedly that he was over the shock, but an event such as this still had the power to ambush his confidence. He folded his arms so that Halliwell wouldn’t see his hands trembling.

  Put your mind on the bloody job, he told himself. You’re a professional.

  The professional analysis was this. He was faced with one more dead body in the series, no question. The location, a public place, fitted the pattern. Some macabre point was being made each time. The victims had to be exposed to public view, however briefly, before they were discovered and taken down.

  The gateway to the Royal Victoria Park consists of two arches on either side of the road that are not arch-shaped at all, but perpendicular. Said to be ‘triumphal’ and in the Greek Revival style, they were built in 1830 to a design by Edward Davis. To Peter Diamond’s eye they had the look of something made from a child’s building blocks. He’d never liked them.

  A patrol car with roof light flashing was parked across the road to prevent traffic from entering the park, and diversion signs were in place. Tapes had been drawn across to keep the inevitable gawpers well back. A crime scene photographer was getting pictures.