Authors: Peter Lovesey
“What time was that?”
“Not long before the alarm sounded. Say about four or four thirty.”
“But you didn’t hear shooting?”
“No.”
“Up the tree he’d be an easy target, so I doubt if it was a volley of shots.”
“Even a single shot so close to the house would surely wake people,” Ingeborg said.
“Both the women I just questioned talked of shooting after the alarm, but not before. It’s possible we’re hearing the truth—that he wasn’t shot, but fell from the tree.”
“Or was pushed.”
“The bodyguards went up the tree, you think? I can’t see it happening. Has Keith asked you about the make of the limos?”
She nodded. “They were both Daimlers.”
“Where would they be making for?”
She spread her hands. There were limits even to Ingeborg’s knowledge.
The image Halliwell had mentioned, of Paul’s corpse being slung into the river, was haunting Diamond’s thoughts. Hellish as it was to face the unthinkable, he had to be professional and outguess the perpetrators. “They’ll dispose of the body first and then go into hiding. They may well make for the airport. He probably has houses abroad. We’d better alert all the ports and airports. Would you get onto that?”
“Keith has already done it, guv. Every patrol in Avon and Somerset is looking for them.”
The next phase would be tough to endure. The real action—if any—was out of his immediate control. He would remain here in Leigh Woods until there was some sort of breakthrough. Unlikely as it seemed, Nathan could yet return.
Back in the house, he used his abundant manpower to begin a search of the building and outhouses. He called everyone to the hall and announced his wish list of items, starting with Nathan’s passport, credit cards, wallet, iPhone, address book and keys, any of which might have been left in the house in the hurry to get away, and going on to documentation for the cars. He added that there might also be stray firearms about the building, even though it was known where the main cache was stored.
“Do you want to take a look at the gunroom now?” Ingeborg asked him. In all the concern over Paul’s fate, her big discovery had been pushed down the agenda.
“It’s as good a time as any.” Action of any sort was welcome.
She led the way up the main staircase to the corridor she knew floorboard by floorboard and pointed out Nathan’s room at the end, the door still open. “While I’m here, I must remember to collect some of Lee’s clothes,” she said. “She’s only got her night things with her.”
“Is she still in your flat?”
“I left her asleep. I doubt if she’ll leave. She should be safe from Nathan there.”
“I hope so, for both your sakes.” To Diamond’s eye, the décor in the bedroom was nauseatingly kitsch, the huge double bed under a coronet drape in pink chiffon and the oversized soft toys on the lace-edged pillows. Lee’s choice, he imagined. He didn’t say anything to Ingeborg in case she, too, had the home life of a fairytale princess, but he doubted it. He opened every one of the cupboards and drawers and found nothing of help to the inquiry. “So where’s the gun collection?”
The panic in this place a couple of hours earlier must have been extreme, because the door to the secret bathroom had been left ajar. Ingeborg showed him inside. “You’ve got to give them credit for deception,” she said. “It’s amazing. Doesn’t it look genuine? The plumbing is in place and it works. The only thing that doesn’t work is the shower and you’re unlikely to turn that on and risk getting a soaking if you’re making a search. It took me two goes to suss it.” She gripped the sides of the shower cabinet and rattled it to demonstrate how robust it was. Then she pressed her foot on the drain and demonstrated how it clicked to its lower position, allowing the cabinet to move.
“Full marks,” Diamond said. “I’m damn sure I would never have worked it out.”
With the confident air of one who had been here before, Ingeborg pushed the whole structure forward and slid the door open and a dog leapt at her throat, teeth bared, snarling hideously.
The Dobermann had been shut inside the gunroom, making no sound. Ingeborg swayed back, karate-trained to react against sudden attacks, if not from dogs. But her shoes slipped on the metal floor of the shower and she keeled into Diamond’s arms with the dog’s front paws clawing at her chest. All three, a shrieking, growling melee, crashed heavily on the bathroom floor. Forced away from Ingeborg’s neck, the dog closed its jaws on Diamond’s shoulder. He was
wearing his suit, but he felt the points of the teeth penetrate the cloth. With a yell, he rolled away, taking Ingeborg with him. His right hand came in contact with soft fabric that he supposed was Ingeborg’s cotton shirt until he felt how chunky it was. He’d grasped the bathroom mat, a large oval of white candlewick. Taking a stronger grip, he tugged. He rolled some more, got to a kneeling position, jerked the mat from under Ingeborg and swung it free.
Extreme situations call for extreme reactions. In a continuous movement, Diamond flung the mat over the Dobermann, wrapped, lifted and slung the snarling and snapping beast through the shower cabinet into the gunroom and shut the sliding door.
Ingeborg sat up. “Christ almighty.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. How mean was that, leaving the dog in there?”
“There are no rules in this game.” He held out his hand and helped her upright. She was shaking, and so was he. “At the back of my mind, I knew something didn’t add up about this place. I clean forgot to ask where the dog was. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. More than I can say for your jacket.”
He checked it. The sleeve was ripped from the shoulder.
Ingeborg said, “Thanks, guv. It would have had me. The gunroom will have to wait for another day.”
“Not necessarily. I’ll get one of the dog-handlers to subdue the brute.”
As if in defiance, there was growling from the other side.
They returned to the entrance hall and told Halliwell about their experience.
Inside ten minutes, the Dobermann was caged and brought downstairs.
“Are you game to resume the tour?” Diamond asked.
Ingeborg stepped through the shower and said, “Shit.”
The gunroom had been cleared of every weapon, every
piece of ammunition. The cupboards and racks remained, but there was nothing left to incriminate Nathan.
“Now we know what kept them busy for an hour this morning,” Diamond said when he’d followed her in.
“The place was stacked to the ceiling,” she said. “What did they do with everything?”
“Lugged it all downstairs and loaded up the limo in the garage,” he said. “That’s why they didn’t drive off immediately with Paul in the boot of the other car. They knew you were certain to be back shortly.”
“I’m an idiot. I should have collected the two Webleys when I had the chance. I didn’t want my prints all over them.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. You were trying to escape. And the law wouldn’t look kindly on evidence seized undercover.”
She was incensed and it showed in her voice. “Where would he take all those guns? He can’t fly out of the country with them.”
“He’ll have a safe address somewhere near, a lockup maybe. The guns are his source of wealth and also his biggest risk. He would always have had an emergency plan for them.” He rapped the inner wall with his knuckles. “This isn’t a plywood partition. It’s brick. Whoever built it did a good job.”
“Oh my God.” Ingeborg clapped her hand to her forehead. “There’s something I didn’t tell you when I reported on what happened last night. I heard it from Lee when we got back to my flat this morning. The sound studio and gym, which you haven’t yet seen, were built by Wefers Construction.”
“Bernie?” He gave a low whistle.
“He came here in person. He knows Nathan. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he installed this gunroom as well. They go back some way, apparently.”
Diamond took this in, frowned and made the considerable mental effort to shift his attention from the current emergency to the case that had started all this. “Bernie and Nathan? Who would have thought it?”
“I meant to tell you sooner. It got overtaken by all this.”
“It’s okay,” he said, still making the connection and trying to see how it played.
Ingeborg filled him in more fully. “I asked Lee about each of the main suspects. I think she’s in a little bubble of her own. She didn’t know about Gildersleeve being killed and she hadn’t heard of Dr. Poke or Monica, but when I mentioned Bernie, she knew him straight away as someone who came here and discussed the specifications for the studio and the gym.”
“Monica hasn’t been here?”
“Not to Lee’s knowledge, anyway.”
“But Bernie has definitely done business with Nathan?” He was still absorbing, still calculating.
“I got the impression they were thick as thieves.”
He leaned back against Bernie’s solidly constructed wall and gave his verdict. “This takes us into uncharted waters. If Bernie is a regular here and very likely built the gunroom, he wouldn’t think twice about borrowing a handgun. We know he threatened Gildersleeve at the time of the divorce. It’s not looking good for Bernie. Your undercover mission has really paid off.”
“I still wish I’d picked up those bloody Webleys. One of them is almost certainly the murder weapon.”
“Let’s not assume anything,” he said.
“Did you look at the list I brought back?” she asked, hardly listening. “That could clinch it.”
“Personally, no. I haven’t had time. Someone in the office is going through it looking for initials we can recognise, but they may be in code.”
“Is Nathan as careful as that?”
“I don’t know. You’ve met the man. I haven’t yet. Going by his actions, I’d say he’s a smart operator.”
They returned downstairs and inspected Lee Li’s purpose-built annexe, the sound studio and the gym. “I’m sure he genuinely loves her, to provide all this,” Ingeborg said.
Romantic deeds didn’t feature in Diamond’s take on
Nathan. “He didn’t stop his bodyguards shooting at her when you were escaping in the Aston Martin.”
“They wouldn’t have seen her. I told her to keep her head down.”
The search of the building continued. The entrance hall was being used as the headquarters and Halliwell was presiding. Little of interest had been found so far. Of Diamond’s wish-list, only the logbooks of the Daimlers and the Aston Martin had been found. The registration numbers had already been obtained from the Police National Computer.
“No news of sightings, I suppose?” Diamond asked.
“I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?” Halliwell said. “But the crime scene team have started work under the tree.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
Diamond took off the ripped jacket and slung it over a chair.
“That’s blood on your shirt,” Ingeborg said.
“Nothing serious.”
“You should get some antiseptic on it.”
“Don’t fuss.”
“You saved my life. I have a right to fuss. I’ll get the first aid kit from the car and don’t try and stop me.”
In five minutes he was shirtless and being fussed.
“Do you mind if I ask something?” Ingeborg said.
“Ask away.”
“Why did you send Paul Gilbert here?”
“I didn’t.
I couldn’t understand why your car was left on the dockside. Georgina got wind of it and wanted action, so I gave Paul an outing. In no time he was hot on your trail.”
“But we agreed that I wouldn’t report in.”
“Absolutely.”
She changed abruptly from caring nurse to counsel for the prosecution. “You couldn’t let me get on with it, so you sent Paul to check?”
“Are you listening Inge? It wasn’t like that at all.
He took it on himself to put the house under surveillance. The first I knew of it was when he started texting me. I finally get a phone call late last evening and he’s up the tree with the dog in attendance.”
“What a mess. What did you do?”
“I was angry. I told him to use his initiative and get the hell out of there.” He made a movement of his shoulders that could have been taken for a shudder. “If I could turn the clock back, I would.”
Ingeborg nodded, more accepting now. “You know he lives with his mother. Should we let her know?”
“As yet, we don’t know for certain ourselves.”
“If he’s not been home since yesterday morning, she’ll be worried.”
“Don’t you think he would have phoned her?”
“To say he was on a job? I suppose.”
“If there’s bad news to pass on, I’d rather be certain about it,” he said. “And I won’t do it over the phone.”
Late in the afternoon, with no more news and nothing to show for the search, he released the armed response team and they got in the buses and returned to Bath. But in the grounds, the CSI team continued the painstaking examination of the area under the oak. Nothing new of any significance had been found.
Even the Dobermann had given up barking and was asleep in the caged area behind the house where it was kept.
As time passed, Diamond was thinking increasingly about Paul Gilbert’s mother. Maybe Ingeborg was right and they should contact her soon.
Then Halliwell took a phone message from Bristol Central. A corpse had been sighted in the River Avon.
26
Bristol police informed Diamond that the location was difficult. The body was beached three hundred metres downstream from the Clifton suspension bridge, on the Leigh Woods side. The sheer sides of the gorge made access a problem.
“So how do I get there?” Diamond asked, his thoughts more on the grim task of identification than the practicalities.
“Where are you now?”
“Still at Nathan Hazael’s place.”
“You could leg it through the woods but it would take at least an hour.”
“Too long. Oh Christ, I’ll work something out.”
“A bike?” Ingeborg said, when he came off the phone.
“Are you serious?”
“That’s the quickest way I can think of. The cycle path runs the whole way along the gorge. I did it once.”
He hadn’t sat on a bike in twenty-five years, but this was an emergency. “Where do I get one?”
“I’ll come with you,” she said. “We can phone ahead and have two bikes waiting for us at the car park in the woods. Won’t take us long to drive there and then we can cycle down to the river.”