Towards midday Ingeborg reported her findings on the PNC: no findings at all. Kenneth Bellman had led a blameless life apparently.
“Bellman, Bellman-why does the name seem familiar?” he said.
“The Hunting of the Snark?” she suggested.
“The what?”
“It’s a poem by Lewis Carroll. A nonsense poem. The Bellman was the main character.”
He gave her a bemused look. “No, it can’t be that. You read poetry, do you, Ingeborg?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you happen to know The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”
“Bits, guv.”
“I don’t mean know it by heart. Have you read it?” With pride in the performance he recited those first two lines: “‘It is an ancient Mariner / And he stoppeth one of three.’”
Innocent of the tightrope she was walking, Ingeborg completed the verse. “‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye / Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?’”
But her boss’s reaction was positive. “Hidden depths. Tell me, what was it about the albatross that made it such a big deal in the poem?”
“It’s a bird of good omen, guv. Should have brought good luck to his ship, but he shot it.”
“With his crossbow. Then everything went pear-shaped?”
“Yes.”
“Right. I can understand that.” He sighed softly and shook his head. Some things he would never understand. “It’s a strange thing, Ingeborg. Since coming to Bath I’ve had to mug up so much English literature.”
“Yes?” She sensed he was unburdening himself of something she ought to know about.
“Famous writers keep cropping up. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and now Coleridge.”
“Are you doing an Open University degree, guv?” she innocently asked.
“Christ, no. Whatever put that idea in your head?”
Keith Halliwell was back by lunchtime and Diamond took him for a bite and a pint at Brown’s, just up the street on the site of the old city police station in Orange Grove, an Italianate Palazzo-style building so much easier on the eye than their present place of work. “So what do we know about Ken Bellman?” he asked, when they were settled in one of the squishy sofas upstairs.
“There’s not a lot to report, guv,” Halliwell told him. “He’s been around for about six months. Gets his paper-the Independent-from a shop on Bathwick Hill, and also buys computer magazines and chocolate. He dresses casually in polo shirts and baggy trousers with lots of pockets.”
“Where’s he from?”
“The north, I was told. He boasts a bit about the life up there being better than anywhere else.”
“Sounds like a Yorkshireman, all mouth and trousers. Why come south, if it’s so much better up there? Anything else, Keith? Is he a driver?”
“Yes, he has an old BMW that he services himself.”
“Useful to know. Colour?”
“He’s white.”
“The car, Keith, the car.”
“Oh, I didn’t discover that. It’s a series 3 model.”
“Description?”
“Thirtyish, about five nine, with a mop of dark hair.”
“You mean curly?” Diamond said, thinking of the man in the black T-shirt.
“It’s what they mean, not me, guv,” Halliwell said, with reason on his side but at the risk of nettling his boss. “And they said a mop.”
“You didn’t catch a glimpse of him, I suppose?”
“He wasn’t about.”
“He hasn’t done a runner?”
“No. He was at the shop for his paper this morning, eight thirtyish. That’s the routine.”
It was decision time. “Wait for tomorrow and then bring him in late morning. I want to give DCI Mallin a chance to get here.”
“When you say ‘bring him in,’ do you mean by invitation?”
“Oh, yes. No coercion, Keith, unless he’s really stroppy. We need cooperation at this point, help with our enquiries, right?”
“Shall I ask Ingeborg to fetch him?”
“Why not? She’s got to get experience. Pick some muscle to go with her, but let her do the talking. Tell them to be there early, keeping watch on his movements, the walk to the paper shop, and so on. We want to make certain where he is. Another thing, Keith.”
“Guv?”
“Some office furniture found its way to the top corridor. It was stored originally in the room we’re using as our incident room. Georgina isn’t happy about it. See if you can shift it somewhere else.”
“Right.”
“Don’t look like that, Keith. It’s priority, OK?”
“OK.”
“Directly we get back?”
“If you say so, guv.”
“And can you get the team together this afternoon, say around three? There’s some news about to break that I want them to hear from me.”
They listened in silence to his prosaic, almost plodding account of the Mariner’s murderous agenda. Officially it was news to them, but their faces didn’t register much shock. Most, if not all, were familiar with the contents of the decrypted files. Only when he started telling them about the gas raid on the safe house did the interest quicken significantly. This was news to them, and it was pretty sensational. Yet no one interrupted. They were deeply curious to know where this was leading, how it affected them personally. Like the best storytellers, he kept them in suspense to the very end. “Yesterday, after the snatching of Matthew Porter, I spent some time with the SIO on the case, DCI Jimmy Barneston. I think I’ve convinced him that the third of the Mariner’s targets, Anna Walpurgis, isn’t safe any more in a so-called safe house. A radical rethink is necessary, to take the initiative away from the Mariner. I suggested bringing Ms Walpurgis to Bath.”
He paused, letting this sink in. There was a nervous cough from someone. A couple of people shifted in their chairs. No one was ready to say that the boss had flipped, but doubt was in the air.
Halliwell was the first to speak. “Do we have a safe house in Bath?”
“No-and that’s the point, Keith, to do something he isn’t expecting. It buys us a little time.”
“Don’t you think he’ll find out and follow her here?”
“I’m sure he will. That’s OK by me. He’ll be on our territory.”
“It’s a hell of a risk, guv.”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m telling you. Any of you could get involved as well. The man is dangerous and single-minded. Stand in his way, and you risk being eliminated.”
“Where will she stay?” Leaman asked.
“Yet to be decided. She’ll have a say in the decision.”
“She’s a fireball, isn’t she?”
“So I’ve heard.”
Ingeborg said, “She could stay with me, if you like.” The first to volunteer again, so keen to make her mark.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” At the back of my mind, he thought. “I brought this to your attention because the main facts of the case are being made public at a press conference as we speak. The papers will be full of it tomorrow.”
“Anna Walpurgis included?” Leaman asked.
“No. For obvious reasons that’s classified information. Don’t discuss it with anyone. But the Mariner will make the headlines, which will please him no end.”
“Give him enough rope.”
“That’s the general idea, John. Any other questions?”
“How does all this link up with Emma Tysoe?” Ingeborg asked.
“You put your finger on it. We don’t know. She was working on a profile of the Mariner, so in a sense she was shoved into the firing line. That was my early assumption. Now I’ve veered in the other direction.”
“Because of Ken?” He was reminded of her sharp questioning in the days when she worked as a freelance journalist. She’d put him through the grinder more than once. Bright and keen as she was, he didn’t want her dominating the case conferences.
“Not specially. We’ll find out more about him tomorrow. No, I’ve come to think of the Mariner as the kind of murderer who plans his crime like an architect, every detail worked out, measured and costed. But the strangling of Emma Tysoe wasn’t planned. Couldn’t have been. She only made up her mind to go to the beach the evening before she visited Jimmy Barneston. And the murderer couldn’t have known in advance which section of the beach she would choose, and if she used a windbreak and how close other people would be sitting. It had to be an opportunist killing. The variables would have horrified the Mariner.”