“Sorry, my friend. I’m doing a job here. I don’t have time to gossip.”
“Police,” Diamond said, showing his card. “Is there anything like a railway appreciation society in Bath?”
“Never heard of one.”
“Railway enthusiasts, then.”
“Are there any? You tell me. All I get is railway bellyachers. It’s the electrification causing cancellations. They don’t understand their journey to London’s going to take twenty minutes less when it goes ahead next year. A little bit of hardship now is all they care about.”
“This isn’t what I want to know,” Diamond said.
“There you go, then. You’re no different from the rest of them, slagging me off. You’d better try tourist information, under the subway on the other side.”
Wondering if this had been such a good idea, Diamond took the short walk to the office on the other side. Would tourist information be any better?
The young woman he approached was clearly dedicated to helping every enquirer, but when she heard what it was about, a trapped expression spread over her features. Personally, she said, she hadn’t come across any train enthusiasts, but she would ask her colleague Trudy.
Trudy, rather more senior, looked Diamond up and down as if he might be a sex pest. “What exactly is it you want, sir?”
He went through it again and identified himself as a police officer.
She consulted her computer and turned the screen for him to see.
“Is this what you mean?”
And there it was-the Bath Railway Society, founded in 1957 and clearly still active, with a colour photo of some forty members. Towards the back was a familiar face: definitely Ivor Pellegrini.
His pulse raced as if he’d won the lottery.
“Does it say where they meet?”
She used the mouse and showed him another page. “St. Mary’s church hall in Darlington Street.”
“Bottom of Bathwick Hill,” he said. “I know that.” Only a short walk from Pellegrini’s house in Henrietta Road.
“Once a month, on the first Thursday.”
“Is there someone I can contact-a secretary?”
Trudy clicked and found a name and a number and made a note for him.
“And one more thing: would you print me a copy of the team picture?”
“It won’t be as sharp as it is on the screen,” she said as she went through the process. Across the room, a printer hummed.
She handed him a sheet of paper. He could still pick out Pellegrini with ease.
“Trudy, you’ve made my day,” he said. “I could hug you.”
She gave him that look again.
He called on a Captain Jarrow in North Parade Road, said it was about the railway society and explained that he wasn’t a potential member, but a police officer.
He wasn’t invited in. This would be a doorstep interview.
“Before you say another word, police officer, I’ll make four pertinent points,” Captain Jarrow said with the voice of a man well used to addressing inferiors. “One, we’re a properly constituted, law-abiding society; two, we keep proper minutes and accounts; three, we pay in advance for the hire of the hall; and four, we always leave it as tidy as when we arrived.” Whether this gentleman was an army captain or from the navy, he had the military mind-set.
“And before you say another word yourself,” Diamond said, “I have no interest whatsoever in the way you run your club. I need only to know about somebody who I believe is one of your members. He happens to have a keen interest in trains. Ivor Pellegrini.”
“Say that again.”
“Pellegrini.”
“Foreigner, is he?”
“Originally, maybe. He lives in Henrietta Road, not far from where you meet, and he’s a retired engineer. He’s a bit eccentric. Wears a deerstalker and rides a tricycle.”
“A railway buff?”
“Definitely. He has a collection of items from the steam-train days.”
“And his name is Pellegrini? Not one of ours.”
He couldn’t have put it more clearly, and his words carried conviction.
Diamond took the group photo from his pocket to satisfy himself he wasn’t mistaken. “He’s on your website.”
Captain Jarrow gave it a glance. “At least two years out of date. I’m not responsible. I don’t do the computer jiggery-pokery. People seem to regard everything they see on a small screen as gospel, but it isn’t, and there’s the proof. If the police are getting their intelligence from the Internet these days, God help us all.”
“So is he a former member? This gentleman here, second row from the back. Don’t you have any memory of him?”
His mouth tightened in defiance. “There are certain individuals I’ve erased from my memory. I’m mortified to discover anyone should assume they belong to our society.”
“Was there a falling-out, then?”
“I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.”
“But I do mind. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. And I don’t believe you’d want to be accused of withholding information.”
Captain Jarrow’s curiosity undermined him. “Is Pellegrini up to no good, then? I’ve long suspected he had mafia connections.”
In Bath? This was one scenario that hadn’t occurred to Diamond. “He was critically injured in a road accident.”
The only sound for some time was the traffic in North Parade Road.
The captain seemed to decide he’d overstepped the mark. “I wish you’d told me earlier. When you gave his name and said you wanted information on him, I thought straight away he was wanted for some crime or other. Yes, I knew the man. He and certain of his friends were critical of the way we run the society. It was too all-embracing for them. They wanted to specialise. When it became clear that most of us were happy with the way we do things, they decided to defect.”
“When you say specialise…”
“Limiting their interest to the GWR.”
He didn’t press for more information. He didn’t want to get into the debate that had caused the schism.
“Let me try some other names on you. Were any of these people in the breakaway group as well? Edmund Seaton, Roger Carnforth or Jeremy Marshall-Tomkin?”
Captain Jarrow nodded. He’d lost some of his assertiveness. “All three.”
“Did you know they’re all dead?”
“I read somewhere that Seaton and Carnforth had passed over. Marshall-Tomkin went as well, did he? Is this what you’re investigating? Is someone targeting railway enthusiasts? I’d better warn my members to watch out.”
“I’ve no knowledge how they died. They’re simply names that came up.”
“Not in our society, they don’t. Not any more.”
“So they formed their own society, did they?”
“Absolutely not. No properly constituted society, anyway, with rules and a committee. I believe they meet in each other’s homes. Not the same thing at all.”
“One other name I’d like to try on you is Massimo Filiput.”
“I don’t recollect him. Bit of a mouthful. Sounds like another of the Cosa Nostra. Was he involved in the accident?”
“No, and he’s dead, like the others I mentioned. He was over ninety when he went. Lived in Cavendish Crescent.”
There was a pause for thought.
“I’m sure somebody from Cavendish Crescent came to some of the meetings a couple of years ago, but I thought he introduced himself as Max, not the name you said. He was getting on in years, as you indicated. We’re none of us spring chickens, but I’d put Max at ninety, easily. Good brain, even so.”
“He wasn’t a member for long?”
“Two or three meetings. That was the extent of it. I’m trying to remember him. He wore a suit, a rather beautiful grey pinstripe, and a fine silk tie. It made him stand out from the rest of us because we come more casually dressed.”
“That’s obvious from the group photo.”
“You’ll understand what I’m saying, then. Yes, if appearance counts for anything, Max had done rather well for himself.”