“I think so. Hen Mallin, the SIO, has a grasp of what’s going on, and there’s a bright young woman DS helping her. They’re having trouble finding genuine witnesses. That’s the main problem.”
“From a crowded beach?” Ingeborg said in surprise.
“They put out a TV appeal and had plenty of uptake, but not one was any use. The only person they can definitely link to the case is the fellow who found the body, and he’s done the disappearing act.”
“He has to be a suspect, then.”
“He is. Said his name was Smith.”
“That’s suspicious in itself,” Leaman said.
Ingeborg’s big eyes flashed fiercely. “Thank you for that.”
Diamond said, “Bognor police won’t make much headway unless we turn up something definite on Emma Tysoe. I didn’t get much from her workmates.”
“Colleagues,” Ingeborg murmured.
“You went to the home address?”
“Great Pulteney Street. There’s a big pile of mail I brought back, most of it junk, of course. A couple of holiday postcards. A short letter from her sister in South Africa saying the husband went into hospital. Various bills.”
“Bank statements?”
“Yes. She has a current account with about fifteen hundred in credit, and two hundred grand on deposit.”
“A lady of means. Did you get into the flat?”
She nodded. “Eventually. She has one of those code-operated locks on her front door. It’s the garden flat, amazingly tidy. Living room, bedroom, study and bathroom. The main room is tastefully furnished in pale blue and yellow.”
“We don’t need the colour schemes,” Diamond said. “Did you find anything that would tell us what she was up to in recent weeks? Diary, calendar, phone pad?”
“We looked, of course. I got the impression she’s organised. There’s not much lying around.”
“In other words, you didn’t find anything.”
He was confident Ingeborg had made a thorough search.
She said, “There’s an answerphone and I brought back the cassette. I’ve listened to it twice over, and I really believe there’s nothing of interest on it.”
“Address book?”
“She must have taken it with her.”
“Computer, then?”
“There’s one in the office, and she had a laptop as well, because we found the user’s guide. I didn’t attempt to look at the computer. I arranged for Clive to collect it.”
Clive was the whizzkid who handled all computer queries at the Bath nick. He would go through the files and extract anything of importance. Presumably Emma had written reports on previous cases. With luck, there might be e-mail correspondence about the new investigation.
“Is that it, then?” he asked Ingeborg.
“She drives a sports car, dark green.”
“Registration? Make? Have you checked with the PNC?”
The colour came to Ingeborg’s cheeks. “Bognor are onto it. They expect to trace it down there.”
“I don’t mind who checks so long as we’re informed. What else have you got?”
“She spends a lot on clothes. And she must be interested in golf. There was a photo of some golfer next to the computer, and it was inscribed to her. Do you play golf, guv?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you mob. It’s the high-flyers’ game, isn’t it? I’d be wearing white gloves and taking the salute at Hendon.”
He summed up by handing out duties. Ingeborg was to get onto Clive for a speedy report on the contents of the computer. She would also make contact with the sister in South Africa. Leaman would set up a mini-incident room. Halliwell would see what HOLMES could deliver on serial crimes in the coastal counties of Sussex and Hampshire.
Diamond himself would get onto the man at Bramshill who kept the list of profilers. Someone at the top knew what Emma Tysoe had been up to.
8
The National Police Staff College at Bramshill is in Hampshire, an easy run from Bath along the M4 to junction 11, but alien territory for Peter Diamond. His eyes glazed over at the name of the place. For years he’d ducked his head whenever anyone mentioned the Bramshill refresher course for senior officers. He pictured himself like Gulliver in Lilliput, supine and tied down by little men who talked another language. To find him driving there of his own free will was proof of his commitment to the Emma Tysoe murder case.
After reporting to an armed officer at the battlemented gatehouse, he was told to drive up to the house. Facing him at the end of the long, straight avenue was a building that made the word “house” seem inadequate, for this was one of the stately homes of England, a Jacobean mansion with a south front that in its time had drawn gasps of awe from hardened policemen of all ranks. The brick facade rose three storeys, dominated by a huge semi-circular oriel window, mullioned and double-transomed, above a triple-bayed loggia. At each side were three tiers of pilasters. Vast side wings, also triple-bayed, projected on either end.
Mindful of his parking error at the golf club, he picked a bay well away from the main entrance and walked back, pausing only to buff his toecaps on the backs of his trousers. His appointment was with a civilian whose name on the phone had sounded like Hidden Camera. It turned out to be Haydn Cameron. But cameras hidden and visible are at Bramshill in plenty. This academy for top policemen is more secure than the average prison. Someone had watched him polish his shoes.
Inside, he gave his name and was directed to the National Crime Faculty. It sounds like a college for crooks, he thought. What names these desk detectives dream up. He stepped through the Great Hall, panelled from floor to ceiling, into a waiting area where, if he felt so inclined, he could leaf through the latest Police Review, or The Times. Nothing so subversive as the Guardian.
His spirits improved when a bright-eyed young woman with flame-coloured hair came in, asked him his name and invited him upstairs, that is, up the exquisitely carved stairs. On the way she told him that the staircase had been built in the reign of Charles II, adding with a bit of a giggle that it didn’t belong to Bramshill. It had been plundered from some other mansion during the nineteenth century. He smiled at that. She was doing her best to put him at ease, and a pleasing thought crossed his mind. “Your name isn’t Heidi, by any chance?”
She looked puzzled and shook her head.
“I thought I might have misheard it,” he said. “Heidi Cameron?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Or is Haydn one of these unisex names?”
She was highly amused. “Now I know what you’re on about, and you’ve got to be joking. I’m not going to interview you. I’m just the gofer here.”
Wishful thinking. He was shown into the office of an overweight, middle-aged man with a black eye-patch and hair tinted boot-polish brown. The charming gofer went. And closed the door on them.
“What’s it like out there?” the real Haydn Cameron asked, as if he never left the office.
“Not so bad,” Diamond answered.
“Good journey?”
He tried an ice-breaker. “The last part was the best.”
“Oh?”
“Following the young lady upstairs.”
It hadn’t broken the ice here. “I don’t have a great deal of time, superintendent.” Cameron spoke Diamond’s rank as if it was an insult. Probably was, in this place.
“Let’s get to it, then.”
He got a sharp look for that. What did the man expect? Yes, sir, no, sir? He was just a civilian.
“We run regular courses on how to conduct murder enquiries for SIOs such as yourself. According to my records you haven’t attended one.”
The old blood pressure rose several notches and this wasn’t a good moment to have a coronary. Calm down and speak to the pompous prat in his own language, he told himself. “No, I haven’t found a window of opportunity yet.”