“I knew it already.”
“How is that?”
He frowned. “Have we got our wires crossed, ma’am? I’m speaking about Lew Morgan.”
“Morgan?” she said as if the injured sergeant was an alien creature. “For pity’s sake, I thought you’d been talking to the civilian you discovered. He’s our priority now. It’s not just a police car overturning. It involves a member of the public, and that’s the worst possible development.”
From the looks she was giving him, she blamed Diamond for finding the man. Would her life have been easier if the poor old coot had been left up there to rot? She probably thought so.
She was still on at him. “I thought you were telling me there was an improvement in his condition. Did you see him?”
“He’s critical. That’s the worst you can be, short of dead. They’d like to do a scan but they don’t want to unplug him.”
And now she had more worry lines than a Shar-Pei in a dog pound. “This could be catastrophic.”
“But we keep calm and carry on.”
She glared back. “Don’t try me, Peter. This investigation can be taken out of your hands.”
If only, he thought.
She shot him another reproachful look. “I’ll have to speak to Professional Standards.”
“I thought I was Professional Standards.”
“You’re their instrument. Did you say Ingeborg is with the press officer?”
“I did.” Being called an instrument was another first for Diamond and he didn’t much like it.
“Doing what?” Georgina asked.
“Issuing a statement about the man on the trike. As you were just saying, we urgently need to know who he is.”
Now her eyes bulged as if she’d swallowed her tongue. “You’re not making the information public?”
“We have to, ma’am, or we’ll never find out who he is. If he rides a trike around Bath, he must be well-known.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. The last thing we want is publicity. Don’t you ever read the newspapers? They love to run headlines about innocent people knocked down by speeding police cars.”
“We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. It’s going to get known anyway, so we might as well make it official.”
“Show me the statement you’re proposing to issue. I want to vet it first.”
“Too late for that, ma’am. It’s done and dusted. I asked Ingeborg to draft the piece and get it out as soon as possible. That was more than an hour ago. By now it’s public knowledge. The media can’t resist breaking news.”
“I’m speechless. You didn’t vet the statement before it went out?”
“I trust my team, ma’am. She’s an ex-journalist, as you know. There won’t be any grammatical errors.”
“That’s not the point, and you well know it. I wouldn’t have sanctioned this.” Georgina got up, walked to the door and looked out. “If it’s done and dusted, to use your phrase, why isn’t she back at her desk?”
“She’ll be with the press officer getting the first responses. Fingers crossed we’ll get his name shortly.”
“But at what cost? Headlines in the gutter press. I can see it already: pensioner critical after police car crash. All my efforts promoting our good name undone at a stroke. Attending countless civic functions being nice to people. I might as well give up trying.” Unable to think of a better exit-line, Georgina stomped through the CID room and out.
Events didn’t pan out as speedily as Diamond had predicted. He was told by John Wigfull, the ex-cop who had returned as their press and PR man, that Ingeborg had gone out for a coffee.
“Did she hand you the press release? Has it gone out?”
“It’s on my to-do list,” Wigfull said. “My in-tray is heaving.” Like Diamond, he never allowed anyone to think he was underemployed.
Theoretically, then, there was still a chance for Georgina to put a stop to the process.
“I didn’t hear that, John.”
“What?”
“‘On my to-do list.’ Get it on the done list before the ACC puts you in her out-tray.”
He wasn’t a detective for nothing. He found Ingeborg where he knew she would be: at Verona Coffee, their new place of escape from the police centre. He ordered a cappuccino for himself, tipped in more sugar than was good for him, asked for a triple chocolate muffin as well, and carried them to the table where his usually alert sergeant was so engrossed in the Guardian that she hadn’t seen him coming.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Murders are down and crimes against women are up. So what’s new?”
“Hi, guv.” She pushed the paper aside. “How was the hospital?”
“You mean, how were the patients? As expected. Lew Morgan is talking some sense and some nonsense. He’s going to lose a leg, poor guy, but I don’t think anyone has told him yet.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes, and I’m not sure if trike man is brain dead. They don’t want me to see him.”
“Maybe it’s a coma. People can go for years like that.”
“What a comfort you are.”
“I was looking on the bright side.”
“If that’s the bright side, next time I go for coffee I’ll join John Leaman.”
“You said Lew spoke some sense. Is there anything I should hear about?”
“Not a lot. He can recall the events leading up to the crash.”
“That’s all we need to know, isn’t it?”
“Except he had his eyes closed and didn’t see how they lost control. It had been a long night turn, he said. He heard the driver say ‘Jeez!’ and opened his eyes and they were already on two wheels.”
“Imagine.”
“I can, all too easily.” Diamond’s unease in fast cars was almost a phobia. “But he was also talking about trike man, called him Sherlock fucking Holmes.”
“You just said he didn’t see anything.”
“This is where it gets confusing. He must have got a sight of the old guy in the deerstalker.”
“In that instant he opened his eyes, obviously.”
“Then he started rambling about hops.”
“Hops they make beer from?”
“I didn’t think so. I assumed he was thinking of rabbits. He said you could hear them digging their holes.”
“Rabbits? Never.”
“You’d have to be up close to hear that going on. But let’s not forget we already decided the old guy could be a wildlife enthusiast. He was carrying field glasses and a camera. Lew mentioned something else: they were heading towards Bath at a mile a night.”
“What, the rabbits?” She laughed. “Beware the bunny invasion. Where did all this come from?”
“Hallucinating, I reckon.”
“But he knew about the man on the bike.”
“Evidently. When I asked if he’d seen him in Beckford Gardens, he denied it and turned angry and accused me of trying to get inside his head. He called the sister and she saw he was upset and asked me to leave.”
“His head will be clearer next time.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, with major surgery to come.”
“Well, then”-she sat forward in her chair and made a steeple of both hands-“he must have seen trike man being catapulted in the air by the crash and his brain is suppressing it. That’s why he got angry with you, because you tried forcing him to confront the ugly reality. If Aaron Green was at fault in his driving, going too fast or not concentrating, Lew wouldn’t want it known.”
“He did say something about nutcases.”
“And we know where he wants to point the blame.”
“I welcome your ideas on this, Inge, but let’s not make up our minds before all the evidence is in. We haven’t got Dessie’s report and we don’t know much about trike man-whether he was fit to be out on the roads at night.”
“I gave the press release to John Wigfull. We’ll get some take-up shortly.”
“Let’s hope so. And by the way, Georgina Dallymore isn’t too thrilled that we went public. She thinks Bath Police will be hung out to dry by the press for injuring a harmless old man.”