‘Unrelated, then?’
‘Pathologically speaking, yes. I’ll tell you more when I’ve done the PM. Make sure they handle him with care, would you?’
‘What age would he be?’
‘Thirty to forty. Nobody looks at their best when they’re dangling on the end of a cord. Why don’t you take a look?’
‘They want him off the bridge so the traffic can move.’
‘The places people choose,’ Sealy said. ‘What was he after? Maximum disruption? He achieved that all right.’
After Sealy had gone, Diamond took the short walk to the railway station and emerged along the platform and down the slope to the gravel beside the lines. It didn’t take long. Ahead the firemen were approaching with the corpse in a body bag on a stretcher.
‘I’ll take a look,’ he said.
One of them unzipped the top end. A short length of the noose was still tied with a slip knot round the neck.
He recognised the victim.
No question. He’d been circulating pictures of the same face for days. This was the missing man, Danny Geaves, the one-time partner of Delia Williamson.
His first reaction was guilt. They’d failed to find Danny in time. This could have been prevented. Then he told himself they’d made every reasonable effort to find the man. The police are not guardian angels. They are limited by resources and manpower.
He zipped the bag, walked on and checked the parapet. He’d get the SOCOs up here to search everything, but this had the look of a suicide. Danny had slung the cord twice round one of the battlements and secured it with a good knot. It was still in place. It was easy to picture him fastening the noose round his neck, sitting between the battlements and choosing his moment to drop.
9
‘Y ou can relax,’ he told Ingeborg when he looked in at the incident room. ‘Your search is over. The hanged man is Danny.’
‘Topped himself because of what he’d done?’
‘What do you think?’
She tapped a pencil against her chin. ‘So Danny is the killer.’
‘Was.’
‘Murdered Delia and then killed himself?’
‘So it appears.’
‘What drove him to it — jealousy, I bet. He couldn’t have her, so neither could anyone else. You guys are so possessive.’
‘Hang on, Ingeborg,’ he said. ‘Before you slag off the whole of my sex, the story we had from Ashley Corcoran was that Danny had given up on Delia and the children. He took no interest. That doesn’t sound like jealousy.’
‘Why would he have killed her, then?’
‘Maybe his life wasn’t worth living any more, and he blamed her for all his troubles.’
‘So if it’s not jealousy, it’s the blame game. That doesn’t say much for the whole of your sex.’
‘Give it a break, Ingeborg,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the go since six this morning. Bloody phone ringing and a wet bed into the bargain.’
She said no more. Even an enquiring mind like hers didn’t want to know about Diamond’s wet bed.
From across the room Halliwell said, ‘So what do we do, guv? Dismantle this lot?’
‘We wait for the post-mortem report. Meanwhile you and DC Gilbert had better get into his lodgings in Freshford and see if he left any clues. A suicide note is too much to hope for.’
He went through to his office and shut the door. His thoughts had turned away from Geaves and Delia Williamson to the children they had left behind. Deprived of both parents in horrific circumstances, those two small girls couldn’t have faced a worse shock. He hoped they would find inner strength. He picked up the phone and called their grandmother, Amanda Williamson.
Her voice was nervous. She’d heard on the local radio that a body had been found. ‘I didn’t like to think who it might be. They haven’t named him, have they?’
‘It’s not officially confirmed, but I think you should be prepared to hear that he’s the girls’ father, Daniel Geaves,’ he said, trying to break it gently.
There was a pause, and then she said, ‘Dreadful.’
‘It is, ma’am.’
‘You’re certain of this?’
‘I’ve seen the body myself.’
‘Is he… did he kill my daughter?’
‘That’s what we have to find out. There will be an inquest. We should all know more after that. I’m calling you now because you may want to think about the children, what they should be told, and whether you want to take them away for a few days. The press are going to want pictures if they can get them.’
‘Pictures of the girls?’
‘It’s what they call a human-interest story. It will soon blow over. If they aren’t there to be photographed when the story breaks, no one will pester them in a few days.’
‘I understand. I’ll see what can be done.’
She sounded a good woman, calm in a crisis, controlling her own emotions while she was responsible for the children.
Looking at the phone he’d just cradled he tried to understand why Geaves had chosen to hang himself in such a public place. Almost all suicidal hangings are carried out in familiar surroundings, the home, or garage or workplace. This one had been done covertly, at night, but the location couldn’t have been more public. Perhaps, Diamond mused, the man had felt some remorse for the way he’d strung up his ex-wife in the park. Perhaps he’d condemned himself as he’d condemned her, to be a public spectacle after death. Skewed thinking, but then it needs a skewed mind to top yourself.
For Diamond personally this was a grinding anticlimax. Until this morning, he’d had an intriguing murder case with suspects and lines of inquiry. The killer had snatched it away from him. There was only paperwork in prospect now, and plenty of that.
First he’d go downstairs for a late breakfast.
In the corridor he saw Georgina coming. At this minute he didn’t want to be told he was looking peaky, or peakier, so he opened the first door on his right and found himself face to face with a large poster of a dog with teeth bared. To his left was a desk and behind it was seated the sergeant in charge of dogs, head cocked, eyes shining.
‘Sorry, wrong door.’
‘No problem, sir.’
The good manners were being tested again. ‘But now I’m here I’ve been meaning to ask you something.’
‘Yes?’
Something canine, if he could think of it. He dredged deep.
‘Bloodhounds. Whatever happened to bloodhounds?’
The sergeant frowned. ‘We don’t use them, sir. They’re not well suited to the work.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘They pick up a scent faster than anything, but they tire easily.’
‘Good sniffers but poor athletes?’
‘In a nutshell, yes. And their temperament isn’t good. They’re timid by nature. When you’re pursuing a suspect you don’t want a dog that won’t follow through. A German shepherd does the job better.’
‘That explains it, then,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He opened the door and looked along the corridor. Georgina was not in sight. Deciding it was safe, he stepped out.
As if it were fated, Georgina came out of the room opposite. ‘Peter, there you are.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you all right? You look as if someone just walked over your grave.’
‘My temperament,’ he said. ‘Timid by nature.’
‘I’d never noticed.’
He was going to add that he was a good sniffer even so, but it would have been lost on Georgina. She’d think he was snorting coke.
‘If you’re really all right, can we talk about the hanging?’
She was up with the morning’s developments. She just wanted his take on them. In her office upstairs he settled into a leather armchair and confirmed that it looked as if Geaves had killed himself.
‘Is there any doubt?’ Georgina said.
‘We haven’t had Dr Sealy’s report yet, but at the scene he called it a proper hanging.’
‘That’s straight talking from a pathologist. By that he meant there weren’t any signs the man had been strangled first, as Delia Williamson was?’
He nodded. ‘It’s all about the marks on the neck.’
‘So Geaves killed his ex-wife and then took his own life. Why — because he despised himself for what he’d done?’