‘I’d be happier if you did.’
She began to laugh ‘Aren’t you comfortable discussing hairstyles with another guy? I’ll speak to them if you like.’
Keith Halliwell was back from the autopsy looking pleased with himself.
Diamond soon altered that. ‘Now we know it’s murder, we must pull out all the stops. That’s a musical expression, in case you weren’t aware of it. Try the embassy again for names. They promised to get back to us.’
‘Be good if we could send them the computer picture. What’s the latest from Philadelphia?’
‘Inge was talking to them about hair. They must be close to sending an image.’
‘They know she’s Japanese, do they? Japanese in our opinion, anyway.’
‘They can tell from the shape of the skull, can’t they?’
‘I was told it isn’t obvious.’
Halliwell did his best to reassure. ‘I expect they’ll give her the almond-shaped eyes.’
‘Christ, I hope so.’ Diamond had a fleeting vision of a Betty Boop cartoon. ‘You’re making me worried. I’m less confident now than I was.’
‘About the whole case?’
‘The picture they’re sending.’ Diamond vibrated his lips. ‘And the whole case, if I’m honest.’
‘But the case is keeping everyone busy. Georgina was gobsmacked.’
He raised a smile. ‘Yes, that was a nice moment.’
A knock on the door interrupted them. It was Ingeborg. ‘Guv, I’m sorry to butt in, but you ought to hear this. The people at forensics found that the iPod was working okay and I asked them to play it for us. Hold on a mo and I’ll put it through to your hands-free.’ She touched the amplifying phone on his desk and music filled the room — music of an unexpected kind. She stood with arms folded.
Glances were exchanged. This was the first time Beethoven had been heard in Diamond’s office, an event about as likely as finding the Judgement of Paris on his wall.
‘Bit highbrow for me,’ he said. ‘I was expecting something Japanese. What is it?’
Halliwell shook his head.
‘John Leaman says it’s a string quartet,’ Ingeborg said. ‘At times it sounds like a full orchestra, but four instruments can make a big sound.’
‘This is on the iPod?’ he said.
‘This and a whole lot more. Whoever she was, she was into classical music.’
The heavy notes from the cello were starting to rattle the framed photo of his late wife, Steph. ‘Turn it down, will you? I can’t think with that row going on.’
She did so. ‘The point is that it ties in neatly with the tooth tattoo.’
‘Any kind of music would have tied in with that,’ he said. ‘The Stones, the Beatles.’
‘Duke Ellington,’ Halliwell said.
Ingeborg smiled. She had to admit that they were right. ‘And now we know she had better taste than any of us.’
The computer image from Philadelphia appeared on Leaman’s screen towards the end of the afternoon. Everyone got up for a look. Leaman rotated the face through several angles. This was definitely a young woman of Eastern appearance, with high cheekbones, a small cupid-bow mouth and widely spaced eyes topped by well-defined eyebrows. She had the fringe and fine head of hair Ingeborg had described.
‘How do they know she wore lipstick?’ one of the civilian computer operators said.
‘They don’t. It’s a balance of probabilities,’ Leaman said. ‘Most Japanese women I’ve seen use make-up.’
‘Wouldn’t it be more useful to show her without any?’
‘I don’t see why. We’re issuing this to help people recognise her.’
‘The eyebrows are a bit thick.’
‘They have to give her some, don’t they? We told them she had a good growth of hair.’
Halliwell said, ‘It seems to me a lot of this is guesswork.’
Leaman wasn’t having that. ‘Only the superficial stuff. The bone structure is entirely real.’
‘But the fleshy bits can’t be. How do we know her nose looked like that?’
‘They choose from a bank of features. She’s what’s known as a Mongoloid type and that means small, flat noses. The Japanese were ahead of most other countries in making a data bank of soft tissues.’
‘One thing we can all agree on,’ Diamond said. ‘This is easier on the eye than the photos taken at the autopsy. Back to work, people. I want a copy emailed to the Japanese embassy now and we’ll go public with a press release tomorrow morning.’ After the first buzz of interest was over, he said to Halliwell, ‘What do you think, Keith? Will it help?’
‘To me, it looks like everyone’s idea of a Japanese woman. There’s not much character you can pick out.’
‘It’s a proper face. Remember the photofit pictures we used to work with? Compared to this, they were like kids’ drawings.’
‘But is it reliable?’
‘We’ll find out. If it isn’t, it could do more harm than good.’
He gave his attention to the press release. The tooth tattoo would be featured and so would the clothes the dead woman had been wearing. Until a definite connection was made with Green Park he couldn’t mention the iPod and the interest in classical music. He seemed to have spent the best years of his career waiting for forensics to go through their painstaking procedures.
But there was a big plus. The printouts of the computerised face from several angles made a pleasing difference to the display board. He thought about sending copies upstairs to Georgina, but in the end decided to let well alone. With any luck the ACC would be dealing with her backlog of paper work after a week’s absence.
That evening he got home to a string of messages on the answerphone. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered to play them before supper. Most would be junk calls. He was tired of being told by some fruity voice sounding as if doing him a huge favour, ‘This is a free message.’ But after all this time he still had hopes of a call from Paloma. Nothing.
He opened a pouch for the cat and a beer for himself. Put two large potatoes in the microwave. ‘What shall I have with it this time, Raffles? Beans, egg or cheese, or all three?’
Paloma had been encouraging him to cut down on the calories and take more exercise. There was a reward system. To earn a pie, he’d had to take a two-mile walk, and she’d come along to make sure. Lately, he’d let himself go again. His ideal had been to look like Orson Welles in The Third Man, but he was in danger of ending up like the Welles of the sherry commercials. Did it matter? In his present mood, not a lot.
Baked beans, scrambled egg and grated Cheddar joined the potatoes on his plate. One of those obsessive Swedish detectives was on the TV. He reached for his DVD of Casablanca.
More sensational news greeted him at the office next morning. The forensic lab had got through with an early finding. A hair Duckett’s team had picked up at the Green Park river bank site matched the DNA of the drowned woman. All doubt was removed that this was where she had entered the water.
A turning point.
‘We can forget about suicide or accident now, guv,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The heel marks prove she was dragged there and dropped in. You were so right to get us up and running.’
Keith Halliwell said, ‘What are we suggesting here — that she was killed before she entered the water and this was the murderer’s way of disposing of the body?’
‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Ingeborg said.
‘Then wouldn’t the body have floated, rather than sinking? A person who drowns takes water into their lungs. That’s why they go down. A corpse still has some air inside.’
John Leaman joined in with one of his erudite contributions. ‘It’s not as straightforward as that. Other factors come into it. For one thing, it depends how the body enters the water. Face down, any air in the lungs and airways is trapped and will take time to disperse. But if it gets submerged on its back, the weight of the head bears down and there’s more chance of water entering the nose and mouth. And anyway after a corpse has been several hours in the water the airways get filled passively and it will sink. Fresh water is less buoyant than the sea, so the process is quicker in a river.’