Down Among the Dead Men (18 page)

“He got angry? I would have thought you had more right to be angry.”

He gave a faint smile. “I was, to be truthful.”

“He was winding you up.”

“No, it wasn't like that. The concept of miracles unsettled him. He liked to believe everything had a rational explanation.”

“It sounds as if he was irrational, letting it get to him.”

“Sometimes it seemed like that. He told me—not for the first time—how much he disapproved of my hobby. He referred to it as conjuring, not magic, as I do. It was almost as if the word magic was too upsetting to speak aloud. I knew it was a sensitive point. I'm sorry our last conversation turned out the way it did.”

“Was there anything else on his mind, do you suppose?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe he was under threat.”

“From whoever shot him? I hadn't thought of that. All I can say is that he didn't seem himself at all.”

“Did you part as friends?”

Conybeare sighed. “With less grace than I would have wished. I could tell he was troubled and I thought it was my fault. I thanked him for the lift and that was the last I ever saw of him.”

“You said you knew several of the people he worked for. Were there any who treated him shabbily?”

“If there were, he would never have told me. He was discreet.”

“Any with a reputation for violence?”

“You're clutching at straws now, aren't you? I don't deal in tittle-tattle any more than Joe did, never have.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“No, I can't think of anyone who would have wished him harm.”

This was getting nowhere. A different approach was wanted. “Put yourself in my position,” Diamond said. “Here was a good man who apparently worked hard and gave no offence to anyone, yet was murdered and his killer was never found.”

“I understood a man was put on trial,” Conybeare said.

“Convicted as an accessory after the fact. He isn't thought to have committed the murder. The killer may still be living here as one of your neighbours.”

“Oh, I very much doubt it. People here are convinced it was an outsider, a professional criminal, some armed robber who was challenged by Joe at one of the large properties where he worked. It would have been typical of Joe to face up to an armed man. His sense of justice quite outweighed the caution most of us would exercise in such a situation. The robber shot him and drove off with his body to cover up the crime. We don't lose any sleep thinking we're going to be murdered by one of our own.”

19

A
fter the trip to Slindon, Diamond decided to visit Hen. Her black mood when he'd phoned the previous evening had been all too apparent. His efforts to shake her out of it hadn't made any difference. A face to face meeting—without Georgina looking on—might get a better result.

Up there on the third floor of her apartment block, he was surprised to find the morning's mail sticking out of the letterbox. He rang the bell and got no answer. Shame, he thought, but maybe it's a good sign if she's gone out.

Then he noticed some freshly splintered wood close to the latch. The door had been forced. At a push it swung open.

A chill spread through him.

Inside the small flat, he called her name.

Nobody answered.

The curtains were still drawn in the living room. There was no obvious sign of a burglary. His heart pounding, he stepped to a door at the end and crossed a small passage to the bedroom.

Drawn curtains again. He reached for the light switch.

Hen wasn't there. The duvet was half off the bed. On the bedside cupboard were an empty bottle of vodka, a glass tumbler and a used blister pack that had contained prescription capsules. He snatched it up.

Temazepam.

“Hen, what have you done?” he said aloud. “Crazy.”

On his way out he was met by a woman with shopping bags.

She said, “Did you want Hen? I live next door.”

“What happened?”

“She was taken off in an ambulance in the middle of the night. They had to break in. It woke us all up. She's been awfully down, poor darling. I think she lost her job.”

“Where will they have taken her?”

“St. Richards. That's the nearest.”

“Is that Chichester?”

“It's the main hospital. Off Spitalfields Lane.”

“I'll find it.”

He'd sent the police driver on his way, but he stopped a taxi in the Hornet and was at A&E reception inside ten minutes.

His ID didn't get him any favours. The receptionist confirmed that Hen had been brought in as an emergency during the night and he was told to wait with all the others.

Things have to be serious when the medics bar the police from going in.

With his own blood pressure rising to dangerous levels, he took his place in a crowded seating area among people in various states of unease and distress. A half hour soon passed. At one point his phone went and he got disapproving looks. He went outside with it and saw that the call was from Georgina. He wasn't ready to talk to his supremo about what Hen may or may not have done, so he switched it off and returned to the waiting area.

He'd never understood why people topped themselves. Even in his darkest crisis after Steph's death, he'd not contemplated that way out. But you can't get inside people's minds. Depression is an illness. It's futile to judge.

A new face was now behind the reception desk, so he had another try at explaining why he was there. He was told firmly to return to his seat. Twenty more palm-sweating minutes went by before his name was called.

“Are you Henrietta Mallin's partner?”

“Partner? No. I don't think she has a partner.”

“Next of kin?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

Fair question, but he took it as an attack and snapped back, “I keep telling you people. She's a police officer and so am I.” He brandished his ID again. “I'm also a friend. I know her personally, is that good enough?”

She held up a finger. “We're all under pressure here, sir. Let's not give way to it. Henrietta has been admitted. She's had some treatment and she's no longer critical, but she needs time here to recover. She's waiting for a bed now. You can go through and see her if you wish.”

Of course he wished. He'd been waiting almost an hour.

As he turned from the desk he heard the nurse say, “She's probably sedated and if she isn't she'll seem that way.”

He found Hen on a trolley in the corridor, her head bandaged. She opened her eyes when he spoke her name.

After a moment's uncertainty, she said, “Hell's bells.”

“It's me,” he said, “Peter Diamond.”

“I can see who you are, dingbat. I was expecting another wet-behind-the-ears doctor. How did you . . . ?”

“Never mind me. What happened? Did you fall?”

She screwed up her face. “Don't ask.”

“I've been to your flat,” he said. “I was able to walk in. The paramedics had to break in.”

“I was on the vodka—nuff said?” Hen in confessional mode again.

“You were depressed.”

“I'm not exactly jumping for joy right now.”

“We've all had a few drinks in our time.”

“Thought in my own home I could do as I liked. Woke up, needed the bathroom, stepped out in the dark and straight into a bookshelf. Hit my head and saw stars. It bled a bit. I thought I was all right and then I passed out. Tried standing up and it happened again, so next time I came round I crawled to the phone and called the ambulance. I don't remember much about it.”

“You did the right thing. You can't take chances with head wounds.”

“They say I'll survive. Brute of a headache. I don't know if it's a hangover or the bonk on the conk. They insist I spend some time in a recovery ward. Help me up, Pete. I want to be out of here now.”

“Take their advice. They won't keep you any longer than necessary.”

“I'm dying for a smoke. You don't happen to . . . ?”

“This is a hospital, Hen.”

“You could push this damned trolley outside.”

“No.”

“What a mess.”

“Did something else happen—or is it the situation you're in?”

“There's that, of course, and Joss.” She rolled her eyes. “And there's Danny Stapleton. He was on my mind after you and the she-wolf came to visit. To be honest, I hadn't thought much about him in recent years. Out of sight, out of mind. I have to face the possibility that it wasn't a pack of lies he gave me about how he came into possession of that stolen BMW. I could have put him away mistakenly for a life stretch and I feel wretched about it, thinking of him in jail all this time.”

“If it was a mistake, it was a reasonable one,” he said. “It convinced a judge and jury. We know Danny is a crook.”

“A small-time crook. You saw him in Parkhurst and he stands by his story after all this time.”

“Hen, I listened to him and he makes it sound plausible, but I was left in two minds. He'll say whatever he can to get another hearing. Any prisoner will.”

“I know, but as things are turning out, he could be on the level. He's on my conscience and it's doing my head in. That's why I took to the bottle last night.”

“The bottle—and the sleeping tablets.”

She blinked and looked more alert. “Pete, I wasn't trying to kill myself, if that's what you think—else why would I have called the ambulance?”

“You didn't let them in.”

“You're right. I don't remember. I must have passed out again. You know what I hit my head on?”

“You told me—a bookshelf.”

“It's the one in the passage outside the bathroom. My Agatha Christie paperbacks.”

“The Queen of Crime strikes again.”

A nurse and a porter arrived and told Hen they were moving her to the ward. She tried to sit up, said she was ready to leave, but they insisted she remained and Diamond gave the nurse his backing.

“I'll keep her company and when you say she's okay to go home I'll call a taxi and go with her.”

“You don't have to talk about me as if I'm a pet rabbit,” Hen said. “I can hear you. I'm fine now. I'll be all right.”

But she wasn't believed.

He passed twenty minutes seated beside the bed drinking lukewarm tea in a ward full of old ladies who stared at him.

Hen said, “Where's the dragon?”

“Georgina? Still at the nick, I hope.”

“My nick?”

“That's where I sent her this morning.”

“You sent her?”

“I went to see the Reverend Conybeare and I didn't want her muscling in. She's sniffing out a possible conspiracy in your CID.”

She shifted herself higher on the pillow. “Go on.”

“The search for Joss. I suggested they might be soft-pedalling.”

“God, I hope not. Why would they do that?”

“Out of loyalty to you.”

“I don't follow you. I don't want any soft-pedalling. I want Joss found as soon as possible, the same as everyone else. Her family are going spare with worry. We all are.”

“I know—and it won't hurt for Georgina to crack the whip.”

“You'd better watch it, chummy. She's not daft. She'll rumble you.”

“She often does.”

“I don't know how you stand it, Peter. I lost my cool with her, as you saw.”

“Practice. Georgina and I understand each other. In fact, I've got to know her a lot better since we came on this trip. I discovered she has a soft underbelly.”

The crossed swords of the Victory Arch in Baghdad were no higher than Hen's eyebrows. “The mind boggles.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “A weak point. Insecurity.”

“I get you. Which you will now exploit.”

“I doubt if I will, but I can read her better.”

Now Hen's mouth curved at the ends. “After all this time I do believe you're starting to understand the female psyche.”

“No chance.”

Each was silent for a while. Another patient on a trolley was wheeled past.

“So did you learn anything new from the sky pilot?”

“Conybeare? Well, you didn't tell me he's a member of the Magic Circle.”

“Why would you want to know? What the vicar does in his spare time doesn't have any bearing on the murder.”

“Ah, but it told me something interesting about the victim, Joe Rigden. He didn't approve.”

“Of the conjuring? How come?”

“For some reason it touched a raw nerve. There was an occasion when Conybeare performed a little trick, snapped his fingers and produced a bunch of flowers. They were only paper, but they unsettled Rigden so much that he slung them aside ‘like a piece of waste,' according to the vicar.”

“Why? It was just a bit of fun.”

“His explanation is that Rigden liked his world solid and real. For the same reason he didn't have any time for religion—which you would think made problems for their friendship, but they seemed to respect each other's point of view.”

Hen shook her head. “Peter, I don't know how you do it. You have this knack of rooting out information that goes over my head.”

“Well, you're only four foot something.”

“Bloody cheek.”

He became serious again. “The same raw nerve twitched the last time the two of them were together. Rigden used to give the rector a lift into Chichester on a Sunday when there wasn't a service in the church at Slindon. The day before the murder, they had a strong argument on the way home. Conybeare didn't want to tell me anything about it. I had to prise the story out of him. He'd been listening to a sermon about one of the miracles in the New Testament, the widow's son who is raised from the dead. Rigden said there was probably a rational explanation.”

“Talk about a raw nerve,” Hen said. “I should think that was a problem for the reverend.”

“Exactly—and it was. He felt bound to defend the story and miracles in general and Rigden got very angry and when they parted at the end of the ride, they were both feeling frayed. It shows Rigden's state of mind was edgy not long before he was killed. Everyone speaks of him as a nice, obliging guy, almost saintly, yet here was a topic that got him rattled.”

“No sense of proportion.”

“You could put it that way. Whatever it was, I can see how it may have got him into trouble.”

“You're not suggesting Conybeare shot Rigden?”

“No. Like you, I've racked my brains for a reason why such a well-regarded bloke was murdered. Thanks to the vicar I now know there was a different side to him. Call it obstinate, or bloody-minded, he gave no ground when he felt the issue mattered.”

“I can see that, but I can't see how it helps unless the killer was an evangelist or a magician.”

He nodded. “I agree it's not much to go on.”

A nurse came by and said to Diamond, “Don't overtax her. She's supposed to be resting her brain.”

He waited until the nurse was halfway up the ward and said, “One more question, then. Did you interview each of the people Rigden worked for?”

“Every one,” Hen said. “No conjurers and no clergymen, I'm afraid.”

“How many?”

“That's two.”

He frowned. She'd lost him. “Two employers?”

“Two questions. You said you would only ask one more. From memory, he worked in seven different gardens.” Hen's power of recall seemed to be unaffected by the injury.

“So which was the last he worked in?”

“It belonged to Mrs. Shah, an Asian lady who has since died.”

“Of natural causes, I hope.”

“She was almost a hundred, poor old duck. She lived some miles from his place.”

“Alone?”

“That generation are very independent. According to Joe's Filofax, he was due there the day he was murdered, the Monday.”

“And did he come? Did the old lady confirm it?”

“No chance. She hadn't the foggiest. She never left the house. She relied on the phone and direct debits for all her needs. Joe would turn up and do the work, whatever he decided needed doing, and never see her.”

“You must have checked the garden.”

“I'm not a total beginner, Pete.”

“What's it like?”

“Big enough to be called an estate in my opinion. There's a wild section, an orchard, several lawns. We searched for evidence of the shooting and found nothing. Dragged the pond. The job took several days.”