The Tooth Tattoo

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘Panic stations. We had to cancel that night’s concert with the audience already in their seats. I was all for improvising with some solo numbers, but the others couldn’t cope. Ivan was a dead loss. He’s no use at all when things go belly up. And Anthony is an ensemble player first and last. Doesn’t do solos. I could easily have given them “The Swan” and there are hundreds of pieces for the fiddle that Ivan could have picked from, but no, he insisted we cancel the show. Good thing Douglas was with us. He found a local stand-in for the remaining concerts and we got through somehow, but it wasn’t pretty.’

  ‘And you never heard any more from Harry?’

  ‘Nothing. None of us knew where he went in his time off. The embassy found that hard to believe, but it’s the way we are. So the local police didn’t know where to start looking.’

  ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

  ‘I hate to think it, because he was a lovely guy, but what else could have happened? If he’d gone on a bender that night he’d surely have got in touch when he got his head together. He needed the quartet. It was his living.’

  ‘He could have had an accident and lost his memory.’

  ‘Some kind of freak event? We can only hope, but as every day passes … You see, being the female in the group, I’m locked in, heart and soul. You guys belong to me, even bossy old Ivan, bless his little cotton socks.’

  He was about to say something about the maternal instinct and stopped himself in time. She didn’t mean that at all. Behind all the brazen chat was a woman getting emotional – if not sexual – fulfilment from being so close to three men. ‘We’re lucky to have you.’

  She smiled. ‘You’d better believe it.’

  9

  You couldn’t have mistaken it for anything else but an incident room. Desks, computers, phones. Graphic photos of the corpse, with a close-up of the tooth tattoo. A large-scale map of the Avon. Lines of enquiry listed on the whiteboard. Plenty of noise and movement from the CID regulars and civilian staff. Presiding over it all, Peter Diamond, much more his old imposing self.

  ‘I’ve asked for a second autopsy,’ he announced to the few members of the team who weren’t out of the building on active enquiries.

  ‘Can you do that?’ Halliwell asked. ‘Isn’t it the coroner’s call?’

  ‘The coroner isn’t God. He’s a public servant, same as you and me. I’m not satisfied, and I told him. The medic who did the first one wasn’t a forensic pathologist at all. He was a hospital man, a histopathologist. What’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Neither am I, not at all sure. He writes a two-sheet report and comes to no conclusion except that the woman had been dead for some time. I could have told him that.’

  ‘He found the tooth tattoo.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He asked some dental expert to look at the teeth and she spotted it. No wonder I don’t have any confidence.’

  John Leaman looked up from his computer screen. ‘Histopathology: the branch of medicine concerned with changes in tissues caused by disease.’

  ‘There you go. It’s not disease we’re bothered about, it’s crime. No use to us at all. I want a proper forensic man like Bert Sealy. Sarcastic swine, but at least he does the job and misses nothing. You don’t get short-changed by Sealy.’

  ‘What did the coroner say?’

  ‘He’ll look into it. He will.’

  ‘Does the ACC know you spoke to him?’

  ‘She’s away on some course, isn’t she? Can’t reach her. If I could, she’d be the first to know.’

  Halliwell grinned.

  Energised, Diamond stalked the CID room delegating duties to anyone unlucky enough to catch his eye.

  ‘Haven’t we heard back from Paul Gilbert? He’s taking his time round the hotels. What’s he doing – testing the beds? You.’

  ‘Me, sir?’ some hapless DC said.

  ‘Give Gilbert a call and tell him we need a progress report.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘It had better be. And why is Ingeborg so silent? She should have got some names out of the colleges by this time.’

  Towards the end of the morning, he used the marker pen to list the hotels Gilbert had visited. ‘This is taking too long,’ he said. ‘We need more manpower. I’ll ask for back-up from uniform. The plods are as capable as we are of checking names.’

  Ingeborg looked in at lunchtime. ‘It isn’t easy, guv. Some of the private colleges are hopeless at keeping records. They can tell you who joined and when, but there’s no check on day-to-day attendance. As one college secretary said to me, it’s the students’ loss if they don’t put in the hours.’

  ‘And if one goes missing altogether?’

  ‘Could be weeks or months before the system picks it up. Most have personal tutors, but the tutors aren’t overly concerned if the students don’t appear. There’s often a valid reason, they say, like a change of course or a transfer to another college, and they aren’t always notified.’

  ‘Sounds like the perfect set-up for absenteeism. It wasn’t like that when I went through police college.’

  Ingeborg was briefly lost for words, struggling, no doubt, with the thought of Diamond as a police cadet. ‘I was told the attendance record for Japanese students is above average.’

  He nodded. ‘They’re a law-abiding race. The Japanese police spend most of their time helping people find their way.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ Halliwell said.

  ‘Foreign students come here on visas,’ Diamond said. ‘There must be a record.’

  John Leaman, the resident know-it-all, said, ‘That would be with the UK Border Agency.’

  ‘They decide who gets in, right?’

  ‘Through a points system. All students from abroad need a valid visa letter to say they’ve been accepted by an approved college. That gets them thirty points. Then they must prove they’ve got several thousand pounds in the bank for twenty-eight days. That gives them the remaining ten points they need.’

  ‘And you and I know there are loopholes. The money can easily be borrowed.’

  ‘Right. And the letters have been forged on occasions, but not by the Japanese. Like you said, it would be highly unusual to find them fiddling the system. If our young woman was a student, it’s more than likely she came officially and her name is known.’

  ‘Along with several thousand others.’

  ‘I’m not sure of the numbers,’ Leaman said.

  ‘Let’s assume she’s on the books. Can the Border Agency tell us if she’s dropped out?’

  ‘They’d rely on the colleges informing them.’

  Diamond sighed. He’d found the flaw. ‘Which they don’t.’

  Ingeborg said, ‘To be fair, guv, some of them do.’

  ‘Why would anyone drop out? Anyone from Japan, brought up to do the right thing, work hard and get results?’

  ‘Can’t keep up with their studies. Loss of face.’

  He glanced across at the photos of the victim on the display board. ‘Can’t argue with that.’

  No one smiled.

  ‘If the Border Agency doesn’t have a grip on this, we’re dependent on the colleges,’ Diamond said.

  ‘This is the problem I’m finding,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The colleges are a law unto themselves.’

  ‘Or no law at all?’

  ‘Not much of one, anyway.’

  ‘Haven’t they given you any names?’

  ‘Three are being followed up as we speak. It’s a matter of contacting the staff concerned and that takes time because the lecturers aren’t all in college at one time.’

  ‘Speak to the students. They’ll tell you if one of their mates has gone missing.’

  Diamond had put his finger on it, as usual. Students would surely cooperate, especially if it was made clear that a body had been discovered. Going through official channels wasn’t the only option.

  ‘Thanks, guv. I’ll give it a go.’

  By
the end of the day all the checking had come to nothing. Everyone had been accounted for, even the three Ingeborg had mentioned. She had tried questioning groups of Japanese students. They were keen to help when they heard what she said and there was a useful grapevine of information between different colleges. They had answered the few queries that had come up.

  ‘It’s looking more and more as if she was a tourist,’ Halliwell said.

  ‘So what did Paul Gilbert find?’

  Silence.

  ‘He must be still out there.’

  The hotels had been easier to check than the colleges. Registers existed and were reliable. It was just a matter of getting round to them all. The extra help from uniformed officers had lightened the load. There remained a number of bed and breakfast houses that would wait for the morning.

  ‘A day visitor?’ Halliwell said.

  ‘In a coach party? They count them back in, don’t they?’

  ‘I was thinking she may have been travelling alone – by train, say, from London. Plenty do.’

  ‘There’s no way of finding out.’

  ‘Unless her people back in Japan report that she hasn’t returned. Have we asked the embassy?’

  ‘One of the first calls I made – and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a chain of command. It’s always the way with bureaucracy. They have to check ten times over before they tell you what day of the week it is.’

  ‘It’s in their interest to cooperate.’

  ‘I’m not saying anyone is being obstructive. The people I spoke to were ultra-polite. They’ll check with their government and the police and we’ll get a response by Christmas.’

  ‘We haven’t much to help them apart from describing the clothes.’

  ‘We emailed the dental record and the all-important tooth tattoo.’

  ‘DNA?’

  ‘DNA as well.’

  ‘Did we send a photo?’ Halliwell said.

  Diamond tilted his head towards the shots of the corpse. ‘That? You wouldn’t identify anyone from that.’

  From across the room John Leaman had overheard what was said. ‘Just a thought, guv.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Something we may be able to do. There are experts who can reconstruct a face from a skull.’

  ‘A decomposing skull?’

  ‘They put it through a CT scanner and get the digital data to produce a computer image, one you can rotate and look at from all angles. From that, they make an exact model in styrene foam with a computer-controlled milling machine – ’

  ‘You’re losing me,’ Diamond said.

  ‘A replica of the actual skull. Then they use wax or clay to add the muscles and tissue.’

  ‘Hold on. How do they know how much wax to add on?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Generally you’ve got an artist – a sculptor – working closely with a forensic anthropologist.’

  ‘Not the best of combinations.’

  ‘It’s not infallible, I grant you.’

  ‘And slow, I wouldn’t mind betting.’

  ‘But there is a quicker method.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When it’s all done on the computer, using a high-resolution 3D image of the skull. They have a large stock of facial features that they manipulate into place until something fits.’

  Diamond gave him a squint. ‘Is that more reliable than the wax?’

  A pause. ‘I couldn’t say. I’m not an expert.’

  ‘Sounds like trial and error. Where did you pick up these pearls of wisdom?’

  ‘From one of those CSI shows on TV.’

  ‘Say no more.’

  Halliwell came to Leaman’s defence. ‘Some computer-generated images would look good on the display board.’

  Swayed by the suggestion, Diamond tapped the point of his chin. ‘D’you think so?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what I think. The ACC would like it.’

  ‘Georgina?’ A fleeting smile. He knew exactly what Halliwell was getting at. The Assistant Chief Constable, Georgina Dallymore, had him down as a technophobe. ‘On second thoughts, maybe it’s worth a try.’

  ‘The computer graphics option?’ Leaman said.

  ‘Definitely.’ Even Georgina would think a wax head was over the top.

  ‘Why don’t you find out some more?’ Halliwell said to Leaman.

  That evening Diamond walked the towpath alone. He’d heard nothing from Paloma since the bust-up at the Dolphin and his pride wouldn’t allow him to call her. She’d dumped him, so it was up to her to get in touch if she still had any regard for him. Actually the speed of her departure had caught him unprepared. A few unguarded words from him and she was off.

  You and I are through.

  He’d gone over it repeatedly. Maybe she had a point, he had decided as the days went on. He’d treated her as if she was staff. What was the word he’d used when she’d told him a trouble shared was a trouble halved? Claptrap. Not a nice thing to say in the circumstances, and she didn’t know she’d touched a raw nerve. He didn’t want to share his troubles with anyone.

  Yet he knew the seed of the misunderstanding had been sown earlier, in Vienna, when they had come across the little shrine by the canal. It was clear from what she’d said that he shouldn’t have distanced himself from the death of the woman. He’d treated the tragedy professionally, as a policeman, sidestepping the sympathy Paloma had obviously felt. Someone had come to a tragic end and he’d not shown the concern expected of him. Paloma had wanted to learn more about the victim while his instinct was to move on and be grateful it was someone else’s case.

  His bigger misjudgement had been to follow up on the Vienna incident, asking Ingeborg to find out the facts. If he’d been consistent, he would have let well alone. Stupidly, he’d wanted Paloma to be pleased he’d gone to this extra trouble – even allowing that he’d only delegated the duty. He hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t sensed that by raising the subject again he was giving her a rerun of the same scene: his professional way of dealing with the fact of death against her heart-felt sympathy.

  The outrage she’d kept in check in Vienna had reared up. A moment of turmoil neither of them could have prepared for.

  Would she come round?

  Women could be every bit as obstinate as men.

  Without much to console him, he stopped to watch the steady flow of the river. Recent heavy rain had quickened the current and pieces of driftwood were being carried quite swiftly. Any one of them could have resembled the body when it was first noticed, demonstrating the impossibility of finding exactly where it had entered the water. It must have been submerged somewhere upriver for a considerable time before the internal gases made it buoyant and mobile.

  He’d ruled out a search of the river banks.

  But there were finites he hadn’t taken into account until now. The Avon wasn’t free-flowing from source to sea. He should have remembered it had man-made barriers. Only a few hundred metres upstream from here was Pulteney weir, where he’d often seen floating objects trapped by the curved wall. And not far downstream was Weston lock.

  The obvious conclusion was that the body had entered the water somewhere below the weir. It had been recovered some way short of the lock, not much over a mile away.

  He revised his plan of action. Both river banks along this stretch needed to be searched, a real fingertip search for possible items belonging to the deceased. Her shoes may well have been lost while in the water, but what about her bag, phone, watch or an item of jewellery? Find some object belonging to her and you would almost certainly know where she’d got into the river. Then the sub-aqua team could go to work.

  He’d have a search squad make a start in the morning.

  With that decided, he resumed his walk and almost immediately his pulse quickened. Ahead on the towpath, approaching from the Saltford direction, was a familiar figure. He recognised the way she walked, her height and the cut of her hair. Coincidence, or had she chosen to walk the towpath knowing he
often came here at this time in the evening?

  He’d spotted her, so she must have seen him. She continued her approach at the same deliberate rate.

  What now? he asked himself. Do I say I behaved abysmally and ask her to forgive and forget? The fact that she’s chosen to come this way at this time of day must surely mean she’s in a forgiving frame of mind. She’s missing me as much as I’m missing her.

  Best offer her a drink, but not – for an obvious reason – in the Dolphin, and not the Old Crown, his local, where some of the regulars still remembered Steph. He was still dithering between pubs when he became conscious of a movement by his feet. A small dog, a dachshund, had trotted past and then returned, as if checking if it knew Diamond. It had a confident look, head cocked to the right, although who was the owner of this silky charmer wasn’t clear. Having decided, apparently, that Diamond was a disappointment, it turned and scampered off – straight towards the woman he had taken to be Paloma.

  Odd.

  So far as he was aware, Paloma didn’t possess a dog.

  He watched the dachshund run the short distance, stop, turn and apparently come to heel – and the woman stooped to fasten the lead to its collar. Now he saw with crushing certainty that she wasn’t who he’d supposed. She had the same style of walking, but she was undeniably someone else. He’d superimposed his image of Paloma on to this stranger, a younger woman with lighter-coloured hair.

  How pathetic was that? He was as churned up inside as a smitten teenager.

  He about-turned and retraced his steps. The world wasn’t a romantic novel. Chance meetings don’t happen when you need them. If he wanted an improvement in his wretched situation he’d better do something active towards it.

  Like what?

  Picking up a phone? Ringing her doorbell?

  No chance, he told himself.

  The search of the river banks got under way in the morning, twelve officers in overalls and boots progressing methodically along both sides below Pulteney weir. As one constable cynically remarked, it was a cheap way for the council to get its rubbish collected. Everything from cigarette stubs to beer cans was painstakingly picked up, and its position noted.

  The first stretch as far as North Parade Bridge was deceptively easy. Then the footpath along the west bank came to an end and the footing became perilous. One side of a river is generally easier than another to move along, so they switched duties when possible and everyone was given a share of wrestling with brambles and scrambling along the muddy, uncultivated side. The quality of the finds didn’t do much to improve morale. They were the boring throwaway items you would expect and mostly coated in ‘grime or slime’, as one of the searchers put it.