The Last Detective

Diamond swore and left the room.

One of the filing clerks said to nobody in particular, 'I wish we were back in headquarters.'

'Why?' the sergeant asked her.

'He intimidates me, that's why. I don't like to be so near him. You can't get away from him in this poky caravan. There's more room in a proper incident room. And he breaks things. Have you watched him? He breaks things -paper cups, pencils, anything he gets his hands on. It gets on my nerves.'

The sergeant grinned. 'That's how he got where he is today, by breaking things.'

Outside, at a signal from Diamond, John Wigfull terminated the press interview and the two men took a walk along the edge of the lake, past fishermen spaced at intervals. Wigfull waited until Diamond had given him the gist of the news from Merlin, and then said with his habitual optimism,'That's a big step forward.'

'It may be, when we eventually find out who she is,' Diamond said, and was moved to confide to his assistant, 'I can't even feel sorry for the woman without knowing anything about her – her name, her background. I need to care about what happened to the victim, but I don't. She's just a stiff. That isn't enough.'

'We know a certain amount,' Wigfull pointed out. 'She was married. She cared about her appearance. She wasn't a down-and-out.'

'I keep telling myself that. Someone ought to have noticed that this woman is missing by now. It's over two weeks. She must have had people she knew, friends, family or workmates. Where are they?'

'I'm following up those missing women we talked about yesterday and I've got a long list of brunettes who could be worth checking on.'

Diamond aimed a vicious kick at a fir cone.

They retraced their steps. Before they reached the encampment of blue and black vehicles inside the taped cordon, a police motorcyclist rode along the track and stopped by the incident room. He went inside, was evidently told where to deliver his message, came out and walked across to Diamond and handed him a brown envelope, sent from police headquarters at Bristol.

'My promotion, no doubt,' Diamond quipped as he opened it. Inside was a faxed diagram. 'No,' he said. 'It's from the Yard. Mrs Zoomer's dental record. I regret to inform you, Mr Wigfull, that by the look of this your eccentric author has two superfluous wisdom teeth. Two more than our lady of the lake.'

Later that afternoon, the decision was taken to decamp. The house-to-house enquiries and the search of the lake perimeter had been completed. The scenes-of-crime officers had long since left. It made sense to transfer to Bristol.

The midges in their millions were casting their evening haze over the water when the last police car left the site and headed through Bishop Sutton towards the A37. In the back seat, Diamond remarked, 'You know what depressed me most about that spot?'

John Wigfull shook his head.

'Those goddam fishermen. They were showing us up.'

Just short of Whitchurch, a message came through on the car radio. It was the desk sergeant at Manvers Street Police Station in Bath.

'Don't know if this is relevant to your inquiry, sir. A man has come in and reported that his wife is missing. Her name is Geraldine Snoo, sir.' name is Geraldine

'Snoozer?'

'Snoo. Geraldine Snoo.'

Beside him, Wigfull opened his mouth to speak, but Diamond put up a restraining hand.

The sergeant added, 'She's thirty-three and he describes her hair as auburn.'

'When did he see her last?'

'Almost three weeks ago.'

Diamond cast his eyes upwards in an expression of gratitude that was almost worshipful. 'Is he still with you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Keep him there. For God's sake don't let him leave. What's his name?'

'Professor Jackman.'

'Professor? Hold on. You say his name is Jackman, and he's the husband, but you just gave me the woman's name as Snoo.'

'That's the name she's known by, sir. She's an actress. Well, that's an understatement. She's a star. Do you ever watch The Milners on TV? Geraldine Snoo played the part of Candice.'

Diamond had taken too strong a grip on the window handle. It jerked out of its socket.

Chapter Six

If a soap-star had tO live anywhere, it might as well be Bath, that squeaky-clean city in the south-west. Ribbons of Georgian terraced houses undulate elegantly between seven green hills, diverting the eye from anything more unsightly. Stone-cleaning is second only to tourism as a local industry; the Yellow Pages list fifty-four firms. High-pressure water-jets have transformed old blackened buildings into gleaming backdrops for television plays of the sort the British are supposed to do best. With two thousand years of history, Bath chooses to ignore all but the Roman and the Georgian periods. Some people say that it's just a theme park, that if you want to see a real city you might as well drive the thirteen miles further west to Bristol. If you tried, as Peter Diamond did most mornings, you'd suffer the curse of a real city – its traffic. With the soap-star and the stone-cleaners, he was content to make his home in Bath.

His house on Wellsway was only twenty minutes' walk from here – south of the railway. Not the smartest end of town, but the best a senior detective could afford.

He almost waltzed across the car park and up the steps of Manvers Street Police Station. Already he had brushed aside the trifling embarrassment of his remarks about the people who had phoned in to say that the dead woman was a TV star. He didn't believe in fretting over past mistakes. Infinitely more was at stake than his own self-esteem. What mattered in a major inquiry was the ability of the man in charge to seize his opportunity when it came. Diamond was sure that the moment had arrived. His luck had changed now that he had turned his back on that pesky lake.

He was met by the desk sergeant, whom he knew well.

'Is he still here?'

The sergeant nodded and made a dumb-show of pointing towards a door.

Diamond scarcely lowered his voice. 'What line is he taking?'

'He's very concerned about his wife, sir.'

'He ought to be after three weeks.'

'He's been away from home a good deal, he says. He thought she was with friends.'

'And left it until now to go looking for her? What do you make of him?'

The sergeant vibrated his lips as if the question was all too much to cope with. 'He's not my idea of a professor, sir.'

'They don't all look like Einstein. Is he telling the truth about his wife? That's what I want to know.'

'I think he must be, else why would he come in here?'

Diamond answered with a look that said he could think of a dozen reasons. 'Does he know about the body in Chew Valley Lake?'

The sergeant nodded. 'Friends told him.'

'And what's a murdered wife between friends? Has he seen the picture we distributed?'

'He hasn't mentioned it.'

'Right. Don't stand there like a Christmas tree. There's plenty to do. I propose to set up the incident room here. We were on our way to Bristol, but this has changed everything. Get it organized, will you? And I need someone to take a statement.'

With the confident air of a man about to do the thing he enjoys best, he thrust open the door of the office where the professor who had lost his wife was waiting. 'My name is Diamond,' he announced, 'Detective Superintendent Diamond.'

It was immediately clear what the sergeant had meant. The man standing beside the window had the look not of a professor, but a sportsman. He might have just showered and changed after a five-setter at Wimbledon. Some padding in the shoulders of his black linen jacket clearly contributed to the effect, but he still didn't pass muster as an academic. He could not have been much over thirty. He wasn't wearing a tie, just a sky-blue cotton shirt sufficiently open to show a double gold chain across the chest. His thick, black hair was expensively cut and he had a Mexican style of moustache. Young men were running the money markets. Had they now taken over the universities? 'Gregory Jackman,' he introduced himself in a voice that was pure Yorkshire. 'Do you have any news of my wife?'