Her eyes switched to full beam. “God almighty, do you think it’s someone else?”
The possibility hadn’t crossed Diamond’s mind until now. Was this the twist that could yet salvage his career?
Too much to hope. Face it, he thought: nothing has gone right since I started on this quest. I’m screwed.
“No, I believe it’s Belinda. Let’s hope so, for her sake. Would you ask her to come down?”
“Certainly not.”
Thrown by her refusal, he waited for more.
“It could be a stranger.”
“We’re the police, Mrs. Hector. You’re perfectly safe.”
“I’d rather you went up. Oh.” She looked at his crutches. “Would the young lady like to go?”
“Detective Sergeant Smith. What a good idea.” He glanced towards Ingeborg. “See what you can do.”
Mrs. Hector batted her eyelashes at Ingeborg. “How brave. The first door you come to, my love.”
Diamond asked, “Is there somewhere we can have a quiet chat with Belinda?”
“You can use my front room.” Mrs. Hector opened a door off the hall. “It’s not as tidy as I would like.”
While Ingeborg went upstairs, Diamond looked into the front room, which was dominated by a large-screen TV blaring out some noisy show about family feuds. Mrs. Hector’s armchair was squarely in front of it and some upright chairs would be available if the newspapers and magazines were removed from them.
“This will do nicely.”
“It will if your sergeant can tempt her down,” Mrs. Hector said, gathering newspapers to free up the chairs. “Don’t get up your hopes. She’s a very private person.”
He could have said that a locked door was no barrier to the police but he thought better of it.
Although the sound of Ingeborg’s knocking travelled downstairs, the words she spoke couldn’t compete with the TV volume. “Would you like to make a cup of tea?” Diamond suggested to Mrs. Hector. “She might come down for that.”
This had the double advantage of occupying the landlady in the kitchen and enabling Diamond to pick up the remote and silence the TV. Now he could hear Ingeborg saying, “You’re not in any trouble, Belinda. We just need to ask you a couple of questions. Everyone has been worried about you.”
There didn’t seem to be a response.
“It’s essential that we speak to you, not just for your own sake, but for other women who may be harassed or stalked.”
A socially responsible point he wouldn’t have thought to make and so much better coming from a female officer as empathetic as Ingeborg.
But she wasn’t succeeding. The persuasion had to be raised a notch. “It’s just me and my boss downstairs and he’s a teddy bear, really. He’s been so worried since you went missing.”
A lamb and now a teddy bear. He could almost be convinced it was true.
“We know you didn’t finish the race on Sunday and we have a good idea why that was. You’ll be doing a service to vulnerable women. Believe me, Belinda, if we don’t get your help, there’s a real danger of worse things happening.”
The sound of a key being turned in a lock was testament to Ingeborg’s strategy. Diamond limped out of sight, into the living room, more Quasimodo than teddy.
Soft steps on the stairs. No words other than a murmur of thanks from Ingeborg.
Then Belinda was in the doorway, brushing back dishevelled hair, a slender young blonde woman in a grey tracksuit, her eyes red-lidded, cheeks lined with tension. Without any doubt, she was the woman he’d seen in the half marathon getting full-on attention from Tony Pinto.
On first seeing the figure hunched over the crutches, she appeared ready to turn around and dash upstairs again, but Ingeborg touched her arm reassuringly. “Peter had his accident searching for you. Why don’t we all sit down?”
Mrs. Hector appeared with a tray and Diamond noticed she’d put four cups and saucers on it. “I’ll be in with the teapot directly,” she said.
“And then you’ll find something to do in the kitchen, won’t you?” he said. “We need to speak to Belinda in private.”
“She might be glad of my support.”
“Perhaps, but we have to follow our rules and no one sits in on interviews unless they’re solicitors.”
“It’s my own home,” she said.
“Yes, and I’m sure you know of another room you can use for a few minutes.”
She turned away, clicked her tongue and made for the door. “I’ll fetch the teapot.”
“Sergeant Smith will save you the trouble.”
With that settled, and alone in the room with Belinda, he offered her the armchair, but she wouldn’t take it, preferring one of the upright ones nearest to the door. “You look as if you’ve had a hard time,” he said, plonking himself on another chair across the room from her and resting the crutches against a radiator. “We both have.”
Belinda wasn’t for bonding.
Ingeborg returned with the teapot and biscuits on another tray and used her foot to close the door behind her. “We shouldn’t be disturbed now,” she said. “There’s a small TV in the kitchen and I found Jeremy Vine for her.”
Once the tea was handed round, Diamond forced himself to be agreeable to the instrument of his undoing. “We’ve got some catching up to do, Belinda. I can’t say enough how pleased we are that you’re safe and well.”
She refused to make eye contact. Or was too shy.
Ingeborg added, “You’re going to help us understand what happened, aren’t you? Let’s start with the race. We know you didn’t finish because your top with the race number was found in a field on Combe Down, some way from where the race went through.”
Staring down into the teacup, she said in the faintest of voices. “I put it there.”
“Under a hedge?”
“I didn’t want it found.”
“So you rolled it up and buried it under the leaves?”
She rested the cup and saucer on the chair next to her as if preparing to make a statement, but nothing came. Diamond wondered if she was about to get up and leave the room.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” he said. “You started the race with everyone else. Why did you pull out?”
He shouldn’t have spoken. He was ignored. Didn’t even get a putdown. This would be strictly woman to woman.
He reached for a biscuit just to fill the silence.
Ingeborg had her own more subtle way of eliciting the story. “You enjoy running, do you?”
The answer was a sigh, a faint release of breath that came across as negative.
“Why did you do it, then — to raise money for the charity?”
The murmur she gave was probably a yes.
“With someone in mind?”
She mumbled something inaudible and lowered her head so much that her hair screened her face entirely.
“I didn’t hear.”
“My mother.”
“She’s a heart patient?”
“She died a year ago.”
What can you say to that except the response Ingeborg gave?
“I’m so sorry.”
She was pausing for respect when Belinda used the back of her hand to wipe away tears and added, “I was alone with her.”
“At home? As her carer?”
“I lived there all my life until then.”
The history was becoming clearer, the mother — daughter bond persisting into adult life. No mention yet of her father.
Ingeborg said in a soft tone, “You wanted to give something back so you ran the race?”
The blonde hair shifted slightly.
Diamond watched and listened, took another biscuit and left the talking to his capable sergeant.
“That’s a lovely way of saying thank you,” Ingeborg said with warmth, as if the tiny movement of the head had been a full answer. “A big commitment, though.”
“It took...” The rest was lost. Belinda was still talking to the floor.