Denise Beal cleared her throat. She’d turned beetroot red this time. ‘Actually, I did find him.’
Sullivan swung to face her.
‘Behind one of the grandstands,’ she said.
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘No. I kept it to myself.’
‘Why was that?’ Diamond asked before Sullivan waded in.
‘I, um, thought he was simple.’
‘The suspect – or Andy Sullivan.’
The joke fell flat. Neither smiled. Diamond wished he hadn’t spoken. ‘You spoke to the man whose body has been found?’ he said to get Denise started again.
‘I didn’t know who he was.’
Sullivan said, ‘This is totally new to me.’
She said, ‘You were a long way off at the time.’
‘You’d gone different ways?’ Diamond said.
Sullivan said, ‘I was checking the stables.’
‘You sent her round the enclosure area while you took a stroll along the racecourse? How long have you been in the police, Denise?’
‘Six weeks, sir.’
Diamond gave Sullivan a look and passed no comment. There were bigger issues here. ‘So what did you say to the guy?’
‘I asked him what he was doing there and who he was. I was trying to keep him talking until Andy arrived.’
‘Did he identify himself?’
She bit her lower lip and looked even more the nervous schoolgirl. ‘He said he was known as Noddy.’
‘Are you sure?’ The troubling image returned of the man at the races he’d taken for a drunk. ‘Did you ask for a proper name?’
‘I tried. He didn’t seem to have an answer. That’s why I thought he was simple. I couldn’t smell drink on his breath. He was smelly from living rough, not boozing. I asked if he’d just come from the car park and he didn’t seem to know. In the end I let him walk away. I didn’t tell Andy – PC Sullivan – because he’d told me to keep the suspect talking if I met him and I’d failed.’
The hell with Andy Sullivan’s hurt feelings. ‘Did you notice anything about his speech?’
‘Yes. He had quite a nice voice. Educated.’
Definitely the same man. ‘But some aftershave would have improved him?’
She smiled. ‘Or a shower.’
‘So how did you deal with him?’
‘I told him to keep away from the car park.’
‘Because the major and his wife were still there?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘You felt sorry for him?’
‘He didn’t act like a villain.’
‘All right,’ Diamond said, and brought Sullivan back into the discussion. ‘The second time you were called to deal with this man was when?’
‘Sunday morning, sir. We were told he’d been nicking food at the car boot sale.’
‘I know a bit about this,’ Diamond said, to keep it brief. ‘This was the hot meat pie.’
‘The woman said she’d made a citizen’s arrest, but I thought we could deal with it on the spot,’ Andy Sullivan said. ‘I asked him his name and got the same answer.’
‘Noddy?’
‘It wasn’t as cheeky as it sounds,’ Denise piped up. ‘He did do a lot of nodding while he was talking to us. I can understand someone calling him that.’
‘And you?’ Diamond asked Sullivan. ‘Did you think he was taking the piss?’
He swallowed hard. ‘It didn’t come across like that. He was serious. He didn’t seem to know much about himself apart from the name. I tried to find out where he lived and didn’t get a proper answer.’
Denise confirmed it. ‘He said he slept anywhere he could find that was dry.’
‘Like a refuge?’
‘I don’t think he knew,’ Sullivan said. ‘You know how you can tell from someone’s eyes that they’re not all there?’
‘What else did you discover?’
‘That was about it, sir. Unfortunately, it got out of hand after that because the pie lady attacked another woman and we had to separate them.’
‘Both of you?’
‘I asked PC Beal to do it, being a woman, handling another woman, like. And when we’d sorted that -’
‘When Denise had sorted it.’
‘Yes. The suspect had gone.’
‘Which saved you a lot of paperwork.’
‘We didn’t let him go on purpose, sir.’
‘I’m not suggesting it. You must have heard by now that your man Noddy has been identified as Rupert Hope, a university lecturer who has been missing for a couple of weeks. His picture was in the Chronicle.’
‘I haven’t seen it,’ Sullivan said.
‘I haven’t seen it,’ Sullivan ‘Nor me,’ Denise added.
‘You want to listen to what your sergeant tells you at morning parade. This was the man who was murdered in Lansdown cemetery. He was probably suffering from memory loss when you spoke to him. The post mortem showed he took a heavy blow to the head about two weeks before he was killed.’
Shock was written plainly on their faces.
‘That’s awful,’ Denise said. ‘He was gentle, no threat to anyone. If we’d arrested him, it couldn’t have happened.’
‘Don’t lose any sleep over that,’ Diamond said. ‘You did your job. I wouldn’t have done any different and neither would Andy here, would you, Andy?’
‘Er, no.’
‘You won’t be playing the blame game, right?’
‘Right, sir.’
Sullivan would. He would undoubtedly accuse Denise of dis-loyalty later, but the sting had been taken out of it. This young woman cared more about what had happened to the victim than her own good record. Diamond liked what he’d seen of her. She’d make a better copper than Sullivan.
After they’d left the office he thought more about his own sighting of Rupert Hope on the racecourse and the shambolic, wayward figure he’d cut. He’d misjudged the man. Everyone seemed to have got him wrong. This investigation was more personal now.
Keith Halliwell looked in.
‘You don’t mind me asking, guv? As I’m running the skeleton enquiry now, I wonder if you’ve got any pointers for me. Where were you going next with it?’
‘You want some tips?’ Diamond said, basking in the respect of this old colleague.
‘I’d be a fool to let you go without asking.’
‘A total idiot.’
Halliwell grinned sheepishly. ‘As you know, we looked at the mispers index and there was no one obvious.’
‘Plenty of missing persons don’t get on that list for all kinds of reasons, Keith.’
‘I know that, but I can’t see how we can move on until we identify the woman. We know her approximate age and when she died, within a year or two, and that’s all. Without the skull we can’t use dental records.’
‘I doubt if you’ll find the skull. The point of the killer removing it is to hinder identification. You know what I’d do if I was wanting to get rid of my victim’s head? I’d chuck it into a reservoir. A skull isn’t going to float like the rest of the body. Drop it in deep water and it’s gone like a stone.’
Halliwell was frowning. ‘I don’t have the manpower to go dredging reservoirs.’
‘I know. I’m telling you why you won’t find that skull.’
‘I was looking for encouragement.’
‘Okay. Has anything resulted from the press coverage? There are always members of the public who call in.’
‘Some have. I’m not optimistic.’
‘Have you done a computer search of our own files from the nineties?’
‘Unfortunately the time we’re interested in is before we went over to computers in a big way. A lot of case notes are still on paper.’
‘But retained?’
Halliwell nodded unhappily. Both men knew about the piles of dusty files boxed away in a store room downstairs.
‘Still has to be done,’ Diamond said. ‘And you’ll need to go through the local papers of twenty years ago. Crucial witnesses may have moved away, died, or whatever, but a disappearance could still have been reported. Look for mentions of Lansdown in particular. It’s hard graft. Let’s hope the effort brings a result.’ Privately he was relieved it was now someone else’s job. ‘And there’s one other thing.’