“Yes, and I’ve looked for him at the next checkpoint after the two tunnels, but he misses that. He must have rejoined the race towards the end.” On the wall beside her was pinned a large-scale 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map of Bath on which she’d highlighted the entire half marathon course in yellow. She placed a fingertip on one of the southernmost points and moved it upwards. “Here’s the first tunnel. If he stayed above ground and went over Combe Down, he could have taken a short cut through Lyncombe Vale and cut out a large loop.”
The short cut was obvious when she showed it.
“And still taken four hours? It doesn’t make sense. Can you bring up the clip of him finishing?”
“This is the problem, guv. I’ve been through the footage any number of times and I haven’t found him.” She went back to her computer screen, found the video of the finish and used the pointer icon to accelerate the action. “The race time is shown at top right.”
“Okay. He finished in how long?”
“Four hours, twenty-three minutes, twenty-six seconds. He ought to be obvious.”
Runners in various states of exhaustion were crossing the line. He saw the ostrich with swollen legs go by. “Four hours, three minutes. That’s when I gave up myself and stopped watching. Move it on.”
After a few more plodded through, a sturdy, smiling blonde woman approached the finish with her arms going like piston-rods beneath conspicuous well-contained breasts.
“She’s walking,” Diamond said. “It’s Olga.” He couldn’t hold back a smile of his own. “Show me again.”
Exuberant, confident and with a touch of self-mockery, Olga crossed the line again.
“Back to work.”
DC Sharp stopped the action at 4:23:26. “This is where we should see Pinto, but we don’t.” In slow motion, she ran the film through the next few seconds. First, another fun-runner came through with a polyester Royal Crescent curved across his shoulders. “He’s got so much superstructure you can scarcely see the guy immediately behind, but you do get a glimpse on one frame. Here.”
She had stopped the film again and the head and shoulders of the second runner definitely didn’t belong to Tony Pinto and wasn’t anyone Diamond recognised. The height was about right, but the physique was heavier, the face broader, the mouth wider and the kit was different, the cap and T-shirt black. The time was correct at 4:23:26.
“Run it on a bit longer.”
She worked the mouse again. “I must have watched this fifty times over thinking I missed him. If you can see him, you’ve got X-ray eyes.”
“This is all I need,” he said.
She blushed. “Sorry, guv.”
“I was talking to myself, not you. You’ve done all you can and done it well. It’s up to me to make sense of this.”
That evening he took a taxi to Lyncombe. Paloma had promised to cook. An appetising aroma was drifting into the hall from the kitchen.
She looked him up and down. “How are you on your pins?”
“Fine. I could almost manage without the stick.”
“Don’t you dare. In that case, I’m going to ask a favour.”
“You left the veggies for me to do?”
She shook her head. “They’re done. It’s Hartley.”
“Oh?” He’d forgotten about Hartley. “You’re still in charge of him?”
“Yes, and he’s being a pest tonight. He’s so restless. I had to shut him in the office. He had his walk earlier but I think he may need another.”
“No problem.”
“Are you sure? He’ll pull on the lead.”
“He’s just a scrap. He’s not going to pull me over. What time are we eating?”
“Take as long as you like. It’s a beef and ale casserole in the slow cooker and I can serve it whenever we want.”
“I caught a whiff of something special as soon as you opened the door. You know what? I can tell you why Hartley is playing up. The smell is driving him crazy.”
“It’s not for him. As well as the ale there’s half a bottle of Rioja in it.”
“A drop of booze won’t hurt him.”
“Take him for his walk, Peter, and we can argue later.”
He collected Hartley and clipped on the lead. He was about to go out of the door when Paloma handed him a small plastic bag.
“What’s this for?”
“There speaks a cat owner. On your way, guys.”
It was an open question who was being taken for the walk. Hartley set off at a fast trot, helped by the downward slope, head down and ears almost brushing the pavement, straining to get to the limit of his retractable lead.
Lyncombe Hill is paved on one side only. Ten-foot walls front the road on the other side, guarding large properties, so everyone uses the pavement on the side where two-storey terraces stretch down most of the way. Hartley hadn’t got far when he met quite a procession of men and women, twelve or more, toiling up the gradient from the opposite direction, mostly a few yards apart from each other.
Diamond’s first thought was that a train had come in and they were commuters on their way up from the station. On getting closer, he decided they didn’t have the tired look of office workers. Nor were they out for an evening on the town. Soberly dressed, the women mostly in heeled shoes and skirts and the men in suits, they had a sense of purpose about them — and that was all he could tell.
Being a cat owner, as Paloma had put it, he didn’t foresee what happened next. He was so interested in the advancing cohort that he forgot about Hartley. The excited beagle was already among the skirted and trousered legs. A sudden interest in a lamppost and the cord tightened behind the heels of a frail silver-haired woman with a stick, across the shiny black toecaps of a stout man and under the heel of a younger woman in stilettos.
“Watch out,” someone shouted.
Everyone watched out, including Hartley. To give the small dog his due, he stopped and looked round at Diamond.
The elderly woman felt the cord move against the back of her ankles and screamed.
Diamond yelled, “Hartley!”
A blonde woman who wasn’t in the tangle acted swiftly. She ran forward, reached down, grabbed Hartley around the chest, scooped him up and averted mayhem.
Mortified and shaking his head, Diamond stepped forward. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said to the people disengaging themselves. Hartley was immobilised, but because he was off the ground the long cord of the lead had ridden up the back of the elderly woman’s legs and revealed a white lace slip. She didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Excuse me.” Diamond moved around the back of her to slacken the cord. She said something he didn’t understand. The stout man spoke, also in a foreign language.
Order was restored, the cord reeled in. Diamond reached out with his free hand to collect Hartley and found himself face to face with Olga Ivanova.
“What on earth did you find to say to her?” Paloma asked later, when the casserole was served and he’d given his account of the incident.
“I forget the actual words. I felt like a horse’s arse at the time. I can’t blame Hartley for what happened. I didn’t see the problem coming. Olga’s husband, Konstantin, is in custody on suspicion of murder and she was on her way to chapel, to pray for him or herself, I suppose. That’s where all these people were heading in their formal clothes.”
“They’ll be from the Orthodox church,” Paloma said. “They have a chapel on Lyncombe Hill they use for Vespers, or whatever the evening service is called. How did she react to you?”
“She was as surprised as I was, but she wanted to talk when she recognised me. There wasn’t time, unfortunately. She would be late for the service, so I arranged to meet her tomorrow. She’s staying with Maeve, her friend. The house in Sydney Place is off limits while ROCU look for evidence.”