“I still don’t see the problem.”
“He has a record of violence.”
“What sort of violence?”
He explained about the knifing of Bryony Lancaster.
Ingeborg heard him in silence apart from several sharp, horrified breaths. Their conversation had got serious.
“I’m not assuming it happened a second time,” Diamond went on. “He had no grudge against this woman as far as I know, and runners don’t normally carry knives, but for my peace of mind I’d like to know if she finished the race.”
“So would I,” she said, fully alert to the danger. “You’ve got the results in front of you.”
“I don’t know her name. I was so shocked to see Pinto at liberty that I didn’t even make a note of her number.”
“But you remember what she looked like?”
“Blonde, thirtyish, with a good figure.”
“That’s all?” Ingeborg’s eyes rolled upwards, leaving no doubt what she thought about male perceptions of women. As it happened, she, too, was blonde, thirtyish and with a good figure.
“She was wearing a cap with a ponytail poking out of the back of it. That’s how I knew she was blonde.”
“T-shirt?”
“Red, with the heartbeat logo so many of them were wearing.”
“The British Heart Foundation. We’re getting somewhere.”
“It’s a long way short of identifying her.”
“You carry a phone. You should have taken a picture of them.”
“To me, Inge, a phone is a phone.”
She let it pass. “We need CCTV footage. Then we can get the number she was wearing.”
“I thought of that, but we’re talking about five thousand runners. I don’t know if I’d recognise her.”
“You’d recognise Pinto and she was with him. Where were you when you saw them?”
“In Sydney Gardens, soon after the start. No cameras there.”
Ingeborg was already committed to the cause. “May I see what you’ve got on your screen?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She was round his side of the desk and leaning over his shoulder. “I thought so. They give a split time for each runner at ten K. They’re able to do that electronically as they pass over the mat. His time is fifty-eight twenty. That’s reasonable going. He was definitely running at that stage. We have two ways to go here. Either we ask if they had CCTV at the ten-K point, which is quite possible, or we see if we can get the names of everyone who passed there within a few seconds either side of Pinto’s time. Let’s do both. I can get in touch with the organisers.”
He was swept along by her positivity. “Okay, but don’t be too obvious about it or I could be accused of running a witch hunt.”
After she’d returned to her desk, he had a twinge of unease. This had started as a personal quest, a visceral reaction to what he’d seen, but already he’d shared his misgivings with others — Paul Gilbert, Paloma, Deirdre and now Ingeborg — and everything up to now was supposition. Keeping a lid on it would be difficult.
Images of the race were already posted on the website, so he studied them keenly. Finding one of Pinto and his companion was a long shot that had to be tried. Most could be eliminated at a glance. The first batch were the elite runners, wearing three-digit numbers. Pinto’s number had been 2714. Actually there weren’t many shots from the middle section of the race and none that were helpful. The picture-takers had chosen instead to feature the fancy-dress people, among them, the ostrich with lumpy legs.
One batch of photos featured the railway tunnels, back views of runners entering and sinister-looking silhouetted figures chasing their shadows towards the next dim light. Pity any woman who found herself in there with Tony Pinto for company. Combe Down tunnel was a mile long.
Ingeborg returned, eager to report.
“I’ll give you the bad news first. No video camera at the ten-K mark. Plenty of people were there taking pictures of their own and there may be something helpful, but we can’t build up our hopes.”
“The good news?”
She put a sheet in front of him. “Never knock computers again. A click of the sort function and we get a list of everyone’s time in sequence as they crossed the ten-K line. Pinto’s was fifty-eight twenty, so I homed in on that and got the runners just before and after.”
He glanced at the names:
2618 Polly Perez Shelter SF 58:09.6
2800 David Smith VM45 58:11.0
2589 Amber Jackson WWF VW40 58:11.2
2612 Phil Spenser WWF VM45 58:12.0
2645 Belinda Pye BHF SF 58:19.8
2714 Tony Pinto SM 58:20.0
2817 Paul Davidson Oxfam JM 58:21.0
2629 Adrian Hardaker VM40 58:59.6
2736 Susie Bingham BHF SF 59:03.8
“Top of the class, Inge. You seem to have found her. Pinto in close attendance.”
“They crossed almost together.”
“I can understand the names of the charities and I can believe Pinto wasn’t sponsored. What does the SM stand for if it isn’t sex mad?”
“Senior male, between twenty and forty.”
“Which is untrue. He lied about his age. He wouldn’t want to be known as a veteran. So we have a name for the blonde: Belinda Pye.”
“And we can’t rule out Susie Bingham,” Ingeborg said. “Even forty-three seconds behind, in a BHF shirt, she could still be your woman.”
“Let’s concentrate on Belinda first. Put my mind at rest and tell me she finished the race.”
“I haven’t checked yet.”
“Do it, then. I’m still on the website.”
She took the mouse. “It should be simple. We can sort by name. Oh, Jesus.”
The data on the screen was clear.
2645 Belinda Pye BHF SF 58:19.8 DNF
“Is DNF what I think it means?” Diamond said.
“I’m afraid so.”
His skin prickled all over. “Get onto the organisers. They must have a contact number for her.”
Ingeborg snatched up his phone and got through to the Other Half office. Diamond switched to speakerphone.
No messing. Ingeborg said straight away that she was from the police, enquiring about a runner giving cause for concern. She insisted on knowing the name of the man she’d reached — always a wise move. Apart from assisting communications, it didn’t allow them to retreat behind their organisation.
Brian Johns was as helpful as he could be, allowing that Belinda Pye was only a name to him, too. He confirmed from the records that she was a non-finisher. There had been no reports that she was an emergency for any reason. More than a hundred had failed to finish. It was a demanding course and some entrants weren’t well prepared. Most who dropped out made their own way back to the start with the help of friends or volunteers, collected their bags from the baggage tent in the runners’ village behind the Sports Centre, and left.
“So you’d know if Belinda didn’t collect her bag?”
“There are always some bags people don’t bother to collect after the race for a variety of reasons.”
“Obviously you know who they belong to.”
“They’re all marked with the race numbers.”
“Can you check whether Belinda’s was collected?”
“If it wasn’t, it will be stored by now. The tent is taken down overnight.”
“It’s important, Brian,” Ingeborg stressed. “We need to know urgently.”
“I’ll get someone onto it and call you back.”
“Hold on. We also need all the information you have on her: full name, contact numbers, address. What else do you ask for?”
“They’re required to supply an emergency contact name and phone number.”
“Good. That, too. Bring everything up on your system and forward it to us now, please.”