“She’s right about that, only it’s better to go public now than wait for it to leak out.”
“My feelings exactly, but I just hope we get some information back. I’m in the dog house already. I know where I’ll end up if this doesn’t succeed and it won’t be fragrant.”
Keith Halliwell was back from the postmortem when they returned to the police centre. He was able to report that Aaron Green had died from compression of the heart between his sternum and his vertebral column.
“Basically,” Halliwell said, “his upper body hit the steering wheel with such force that he died at once.”
“And I bet he wasn’t wearing the seatbelt,” Ingeborg said.
“It’s not compulsory for police drivers.”
“I know that.”
“I can see the reason if you’ve made an arrest and got a suspect in the car,” Diamond said, “but it’s stupid not to use one if you’re on an emergency call.”
“They think it’s macho to go without,” Ingeborg said. “The younger guys in particular.”
“Macho? Lew Morgan was wearing his and it saved his life. He’d have been flung through the windscreen.”
“He’s still going to lose a leg,” Ingeborg said.
Halliwell shook his head. “That’s bad. I didn’t know.”
Diamond said, “I was at the hospital this morning.”
“Me, too,” Halliwell said. “I could have given you a lift.”
Diamond could tell it wasn’t meant as a dig. Halliwell came out with things like that from genuine willingness to be helpful. There was an understanding in CID that he stood in for Diamond at all postmortems. The big man was uncomfortable with dissections. But he was also self-conscious about it.
Diamond updated Halliwell on his somewhat surreal conversation with Lew Morgan. Halliwell was unable to throw any light on the matter. Rabbits, he said in his forthright way, were outside his experience. He’d seen them in the lanes around Bath but never travelling with any purpose.
“Me neither,” Diamond said. “Maybe we should put it down to the painkillers he was on.”
Before lunch, calls started coming in. The first appeal for information had been on BBC Radio Bristol and a number of Bathonians had phoned in to say that the tricyclist in the deerstalker was a well-known local character. This was a beginning, even though no one seemed to know his name or address.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Ingeborg said. “Someone will know.”
Diamond hoped so. He needed the result before the police were hammered by the headlines in next day’s papers.
So there was great relief all round when, about two-fifteen, a Mrs. Roberts from Henrietta Road called the radio station to say that the man was almost certainly one of her neighbours. Her contact details were passed to the police.
“He’s called Ivor,” she told Diamond when he phoned her. “An elderly gentleman all on his own. Lives in a big house up the road from us. All we’ve got is a two-bedroom flat. Ivor’s place is easy to spot because there’s a large workshop at the side with a corrugated-iron roof. How he got planning permission is beyond me. It doesn’t do anything for the beauty of the street. But I feel sure he must be the person they spoke about on Radio Bristol because of the deerstalker hat and the tricycle. You don’t see that too often, do you? His wife died some time towards the end of last year. And as if that isn’t enough to bear, poor man, now this happens. Will he pull through?”
“We hope so. Do you know his name?”
“I told you: Ivor.”
“The surname.”
“I can’t help you there. We don’t say Mr. this and Mrs. that. We’re friendly along here, even though some live in million-pound mansions and others more modestly, like my husband and me. He always gives us a wave as he goes by, but being on his tricycle he doesn’t stop for a chat. I heard he was an engineer before he retired.”
This checked with Dessie’s evidence that the bike was homemade and expertly welded. “How long has he lived there?”
“Quite a long time. We arrived sixteen years ago and they were here then. His wife Trixie was a dignified lady who I never once saw without a hat, rather shy, I always thought. Flat shoes and twin-sets. No make-up. But they were very close. She had an unusual shopping trolley with large wheels that I think she once said he made her. She had a beautiful funeral. Lots of flowers and a white coffin. They buried her up on Lansdown in the cemetery there.”
“Buried her? Are you sure she wasn’t cremated?”
“Absolutely. You can visit the grave. It’s very peaceful up there and she’s got a lovely headstone.”
So much for Lew Morgan’s information about Trixie’s ashes. And Ingeborg’s theory about the scattering of them.
Mrs. Roberts talked on, through his distracted thoughts. “But I was telling you Ivor was the only mourner who went from the house and only a handful came back after. Sad, really. I don’t know if they had family.”
“Have you seen him riding out early in the morning? The accident happened about six.”
“Lord help us, I’m never up as early as that. What would he be doing out at that hour?”
“We don’t know. That’s why I asked. Does he drive a car?”
“Years ago he had a beauty, one of those expensive German makes. White, it was, and he kept it beautifully clean, but I haven’t seen it for ages. He must have given up the driving when he got older. He gets about on the tricycle these days.”
Mrs. Roberts had been a useful source but she’d told him as much as he needed, so he thanked her and ended the call. Ingeborg had already found the house on Google Earth and got the number. The electoral roll gave the name of the occupier: Ivor Pellegrini. His wife Beatrix was still listed.
“Distinctive name,” Diamond said. “Stay online and see what else you can find. It would be good to get a picture, to be certain this is the right man.”
“I doubt if he’s on Facebook, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Me?”
She smiled. The boss didn’t do his networking electronically.
“But check it, by all means,” he said.
“Can we speak to the people next door? They might know more than I can get from the Internet.”
And now he grinned. “That’s a big admission, coming from you. Okay, we’ll try both. You get surfing or tweeting or whatever and I’ll visit Henrietta Road and do some old-fashioned door-stepping.”
The buildings in Henrietta Road lined one side only because one of Bath’s prized green areas was opposite. Henrietta Park, originally part of the Bathwick Estate, had been gifted to the city in 1897 by one Captain Forester to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The Pleasure Ground Committee had arranged for the ground to be turfed and given paths and a drinking fountain. When the park opened, the villas along the west side of the triangular plot were already in place and their situation was much enhanced by the new amenity. Most had since succumbed to economic constraints and been divided into flats. As properties they were not the grandest in Bath but, as Mrs. Roberts had accurately stated, you would still need more than a million to buy a single villa outright.
She had also been right about the iron-roofed workshop. The advantage to Diamond was that no other villa had such an eyesore in front, so Ivor Pellegrini’s home was easy to spot, a handsome three-storey stone building with large sash windows and a corniced entrance with a front door painted yellow.
He left his car outside and took a closer look, starting with the workshop. Clearly the retired engineer liked to keep his hand in with some mechanical projects, but whatever was inside couldn’t be inspected. The windows were too high to see into, the door was sturdy and fitted with a lock that looked as if it would do for Lubyanka prison. A metal plaque said the building was protected by a response alarm. He spotted the bell under the overlap of the roof.
Switching his attention to the main building, he saw at once that it was fitted with CCTV-and the cameras were not dummies. Nothing remarkable in that. If you had a nice house you might well discourage intruders. He took a stroll round the side.