The Last Detective

How it happened so swiftly, Diamond was uncertain, but there was no denying that the interview had been turned around and he was on the defensive now. An unpleasant suspicion crept into his mind that this smart-mouthed professor knew about the Missendale case. Maybe the thought was timely; the temptation to pound the truth out of him had to be suppressed at all costs.

Instead he swallowed his pride and turned for support to the men in white coats. 'You can't buck the lab reports. If you killed her, the forensic evidence will stitch you up, as you put it, not me. Your blood, fingerprints, the samples from your car. I'm willing to wait a few more hours.'

'What does my car have to do with it?'

'The body must have been transported to the lake by some means.' He thought as he heard himself saying these things, I'm losing my grip. I was supposed to be charming the truth from him, not scaring him rigid.

'I'm allowed to have fingerprints on my own car,'Jack-man said, frowning.

'Yes, but if, for example, some human hair was found in the boot and proved beyond doubt to have been your wife's, you would have some questions to answer.'

Jackman looked dubious. 'Can they identify hair like that?'

'It isn't the hair itself,' Diamond backtracked. 'It's the microscopic particles of skin attached to the roots.'

'Did they find any hairs?'

'They're very assiduous. They find all sorts of dust and debris.'

'You are going to stitch me up.'

'You should stick with Milton and Shakespeare, Greg. You're way off beam.'

Jackman said defiantly, 'You have a hunch that I killed her, and you won't let go.'

The whole tone of the conversation had changed irreversibly. Diamond shook his head slowly for a measured interval, conveying the message that he had more than a hunch, infinitely more.

Jackman said, 'How do I convince you that you're wrong?'

'You begin by explaining why you waited almost three weeks before notifying us that your wife was missing.'

'I should have thought that was obvious.'

'Not to me.'

'I wasn't surprised to find she'd gone. She'd stolen the Jane Austen letters and was unwilling to face me with the truth.'

'Where did you think she was?'

'With some friend or other. She wasn't short of bolt-holes.'

'Did you phone around?'

'I tried the obvious people and got nowhere. It was quite possible that she'd asked them not to tell me anything.'

'But you didn't report to us that she was missing. You didn't even report that the letters were missing.'

'Because I wanted to deal with it myself,' Jackman insisted. 'I was certain that she'd taken them. If I ran straight to the police and branded her as a thief, what was that going to achieve? I didn't want the story getting to the newspapers.' His answers were sounding plausible, disturbingly plausible.

'How did you deal with it – apart from phoning her friends?'

'I thought she might try to get the letters valued, so I made inquiries at auctioneers and dealers in the West Country as well as London. Again, I drew a blank.'

'Let's get this clear,' said Diamond. 'You're telling me now that you expected her to sell the letters? You told us earlier that you thought she must have taken them out of malice.'

Jackman nodded. 'That was my first assumption. I didn't think their cash value was of any importance to Gerry. She wasn't short of funds, as far as I was aware. Then a few days after she'd gone, her bank statement arrived. I opened it in hopes of getting some clue to her whereabouts. She was overdrawn almost three thousand pounds.'

'Overdraivn?'

'I found her credit card statement and she was carrying a fifteen hundred pound debt there. She'd run right through her money ' through 'How?'

'Most of it was signed out to cash amounts. She was borrowing money on the credit card, which is plain stupid at the rates they charge.'

'Yes, but what would she have spent so much money on?'

Jackman lifted his shoulders in a gesture of uncertainty. 'Living it up with her so-called friends.'

'Running through a fortune?'

'I don't know if you could call it a fortune. I had the impression she was very well off when we met. The television money was good, and there were plenty of extras.'

Footsteps clattered on the tiled floor. One of the constables from the incident room crossed the canteen and put an end to the conversation by telling Diamond that he was wanted urgently on the phone.

'Who is it?'

'Inspector Wigfull, sir.'

'From Bristol?'

'Yes.'

'Bloody better be urgent. Wait here with the professor. I'll be back shortly.'

Cursing Wigfull under his breath for having the gall – he was damned certain – to check up on him, he snatched up the phone when he got to the interview room. 'Yes?'

'Mr Diamond?'John Wigfull's voice was tense.

'Who else?'

'I just spoke to the Plato couple. They told me something I think you ought to know right away, sir. On the day Professor Jackman last saw his wife – the Monday – she phoned the Platos some time between ten and ten-thirty.'

'In the morning?'

'You see the point, sir? If Jackman caught the 8.19 to London, as he claimed, and then went on to Paris, he couldn't have killed her. She was alive after he left. Mr Diamond – are you there?'

Diamond dropped the phone without answering. He shouted across the room, 'Sergeant Boon!' shouted 'Sir?'

'Did you check the professor's movements as I asked?'

'Yes, sir.'

'With what result? Come on, man!'

'It all checks out, sir. He saw Professor Dalrymple at University College, London, some time before eleven on II September and he was on the 1410 Air France flight from Heathrow to Paris.'

For a moment Diamond had the look of a deflating balloon. Then he managed to say in a small voice, 'Have a car at the back door directly. The professor is going home.'

Chapter Six

THE FIRST FROST. PEOPLE HAD talked all Summer of the damaged ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, unable to accept that weeks of steady sunshine were possible in the English climate. Now normality was restored. On this chilly morning the geraniums in the window-boxes of Bath had a wan, defeated look that Peter Diamond noted with a cynical eye as he waited in a traffic queue on his way up Manvers Street towards the police station. This year the Parks and Gardens Department had spared no effort in trying to wrest the title of top floral city from Bath's main rival, Exeter. Every sill, ledge and surface had been stacked with pots, even the roofs of the bus shelters. Not a lamp-post had been without its hanging basket. Such enthusiasm! Such commitment! To no avail; Exeter had retained the title. Bath's abundant flowers were losers.

Diamond, too much the policeman to take a few wilting geraniums as his text for the day, still wished someone would cart them away.

The bus ahead slowed as it approached a stop. Diamond moved out to overtake, only to discover that the entire line of traffic in front had stopped. Not a promising start to the day, stuck out there, obstructing the opposite lane. Fortunately someone behind flashed his headlights and backed a few yards. Decent of him. Diamond shunted back into line and looked in the rearview mirror to see who the Good Samaritan was. A fellow in a Toyota. Big moustache, wide grin. John Wigfull, of all people. Probably thinking what a dumbo his superior was for failing to notice that the bus was one of the bright yellow open-top double deckers for tourists. Every kid in Bath knew that the city tour buses didn't use the regular stops.

He switched on the radio, and after the crackle as the automatic aerial went up (he hadn't wiped it clean for weeks), he heard the newsreader saying on Radio Bristol, 'Detectives are today expected to step up the hunt for the murderer of Geraldine Snoo, the former star of the long-running BBC television serial The Milners, whose unclothed body was recovered from Chew Valley Lake at the weekend. She was identified by her husband, Professor Gregory Jackman, of Bath University, who is understood to have given the police -'