Stagestruck (33 page)

‘What was he illustrating?’

‘It looked like comics to me.’

‘For kids, you mean?’

‘Who else reads comics?’

‘There are books for adults called graphic novels. They’ve got popular.’

‘Porn, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily. I suppose you don’t recall where he was working?’

‘It didn’t say. And there was nothing about his evil past. I bet his employer didn’t know.’

‘If he was working as an illustrator he must have had a publisher,’ Diamond said, thinking aloud. ‘They ought to have contact details. They have to pay royalties.’

‘Get on the case, then, if you really want to wallow in the mud,’ Glazebrook said.

‘You said you saw this magazine a couple of years back. Can you recall the title?’

‘No chance. And when I say a couple of years I could mean five or six.’

Thanks a bunch, mate, he thought.

‘One other thing, Peter.’

‘What’s that?’

‘When you put the boot in, give him one for me.’

Even Diamond was shaken by that. ‘He must be seventy-five, at least.’

‘So what? He didn’t care about the age of the kids he abused.’

The internet finally came in useful. He found a website devoted to graphic novels and their illustrators. An artist called Mo White was credited with rendering Dickens novels into illustrated books for adults. The latest were
A Tale of Two Cities
and
Bleak House
, both in 2003. The publisher was Stylus of New Oxford Street, London.

The woman at Stylus confirmed that White had produced the two books for them and she believed he’d retired soon after. The ‘Mo’ stood for his initials: Morgan and some other name beginning with ‘O’. She was guarded when Diamond asked for a contact address. It was company policy not to give out personal information.

Silently he cursed the Data Protection Act. ‘What a disappointment after all the research I’ve done,’ he said, sounding as if his world had caved in. ‘He was my art teacher forty years ago. It’s a school reunion. I was so looking forward to seeing the look on his face.’

She melted. White was living in Forest Close, Wilton.

Wilton, near Salisbury. Only about an hour’s drive from Bath.

The reunion was a must.

A call came in from an unexpected quarter: Duckett, the crime scene investigator, in a skittish mood. ‘How was the fish?’

‘What?’

‘The last thing you said to me was that you had other fish to fry.’

‘Do you want me to laugh?’ Diamond said.

‘You should be on your knees in gratitude. I have information for you. It’s not my full report. You’ll get that when I’m ready. But we found something of particular interest in dressing room eleven and I thought I’d pass it on at the first opportunity. You’ll recall that we established that two people were in the room, one presumably Denise, and one her possible attacker?’

‘Yes.’

‘And there were the base marks of a bottle and two wine glasses in the dust?’

One of the many annoying things about forensics experts was that they kept going over the obvious. ‘Of course.’

‘We analysed the dust nearby and found some particles of a chemical called flunitrazepam.’

‘Really?’ Another annoying thing was that they talked in a foreign language.

‘Better known as the date rape drug, Rohypnol.’

Now Diamond was fully alert. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s a prescription drug ten times more potent than Valium. In its original form it was colourless, odourless and tasteless, but since 1998 the manufacturers have added a blue dye that will appear when it dissolves.’

‘That much I know.’

‘There are still supplies in circulation of the pure version. This tested neutral, so it must be pre-1998. At least one capsule had obviously been opened to disperse the chemical in the drink. Have you had the blood test results from the post-mortem on Denise Pearsall?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I would expect them to confirm that she was drugged.’

‘For sex?’ Diamond said. ‘Nothing about recent intercourse was mentioned by the pathologist.’

‘No. I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on the date rape connection. The purpose would have been to induce passivity. Within ten minutes the subject feels euphoric and relaxed. She would then have allowed herself to be taken across to the gallery from which she fell or was pushed. In other words, Mr Diamond, I have just provided you with potential evidence of malice aforethought.’

‘I’m obliged to you.’

‘Have you found the glass she drank from?’

‘Her killer is too smart to have left it behind,’ Diamond said. ‘And I don’t suppose it’s any use trying to trace the source of the drug if it’s as old as you say. Who uses this stuff legitimately?’

‘People with severe sleep disorders. Personally I prefer Horlicks.’

Shortly after, Diamond stepped into the CID room to tell the team and they seamlessly picked up from where he’d ended the phone conversation with Duckett.

‘How do people get hold of this drug?’ Paul Gilbert asked.

‘It’s no big deal,’ Halliwell said. ‘I expect you can get it on the internet.’

‘This was old stock.’

‘Plenty of it was changing hands in the nineties and is still in circulation. We’ve taken it off blokes going into night clubs. They don’t seem to have any problem acquiring it. There are evidence bags downstairs with the stuff.’

‘There must have been a lot of it around.’

‘How many pharmacies are there in the country? How many doctors over-prescribe?’

‘Of more importance to us,’ Diamond said, ‘who in the Theatre Royal would be likely to have a supply of the stuff?’

Fred Dawkins said, ‘The pocket Lothario.’

‘Come again.’

‘Hedley Shearman. The little man with the large libido.’

‘Fred’s right,’ Halliwell said. ‘Shearman is just the kind of shagbag who would use the date rape drug. He has plenty of form as a seducer, as we’re finding out. Before coming to Bath, he was front-of-house manager at a theatre in Worthing and got one of the box office ladies pregnant. His second wife divorced him on the strength of it.’

Diamond was less convinced. ‘There’s no evidence that he or anyone else had sex with Denise.’

‘He could have made a play for her some other time,’ Halliwell said, clearly liking this scenario. ‘Maybe she gave him the brush-off and threatened to report him to the board. He got scared and set this trap for her.’

‘Is that enough to justify murder?’

‘He’s still paying for the divorce. Losing his job would be a disaster. That’s the motive and we know the opportunity was there. As manager he could move around backstage without anyone paying attention.’

‘But would he risk the theatre closing?’

‘It didn’t, guv. Everything carried on as usual after Denise’s death. He was one of the keenest to let the show go on. He argued with you about the matinee that was cancelled.’

‘True.’

‘He looks the strongest suspect we have,’ Paul Gilbert said.

Diamond was reluctant to pin it on Shearman at this point. ‘Are you also suggesting he murdered Clarion?’

‘He was the man on the spot, wasn’t he?’ Halliwell said. ‘He arranged for her to be seated in the Arnold Haskell box. He could have gone there any time during the play. He was the only one of the theatre staff we know for sure was in there with her. He admits she was dead at the interval and he delayed reporting it until the show was over. If that isn’t guilty behaviour, what is?’

‘But why? Why murder Clarion?’

Halliwell shrugged. ‘He’s unstoppable. He fancied his chances with her.’

‘Little Hedley Shearman?’ Diamond shook his head. ‘With an international pop star?’

‘You’ve got to remember how vulnerable Clarion was at that stage. She’d been scarred. She’d come back to the theatre, his territory. He felt he had power over her, placing her in the box. He came on strong with her, she told him to get lost and he snapped and killed her.’

‘With a plastic bag he happened to have brought along for the seduction? I don’t think so, Keith.’

Halliwell wasn’t giving up on his suspect. ‘Well, he tried it on earlier, before the interval, and she laughed in his face. He was humiliated, so he went back with the bag and suffocated her.’

‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind,’ Diamond said in a tone suggesting the opposite. ‘Has anything else of interest been uncovered yet?’ He moved around the room looking over people’s shoulders. He could be an intimidating presence. Everything went quiet again apart from the tapping of keyboards and the occasional beep of the phones.

One of the civilian staff called him to the phone. ‘DI Leaman would like a word, sir. He’s at the theatre.’

He picked it up. ‘John?’

‘Guv, we’ve started the search here.’

‘Any joy?’

‘I’m in wardrobe, with Kate.’

‘Lucky man.’

‘You asked us to look for carrier bags. The thing is, Kate has to do shopping for costumes and materials. She has a stack of bags. So far I’ve counted forty-seven.’

19

P
atience was a virtue Diamond didn’t have in abundance, but over the years he’d cultivated a little of it. Experience had taught him that you can’t rush the people who work in forensic labs. The blood test results from the post-mortem on Denise Pearsall would be revealed only when the scientists were ready. The men in white coats were well used to dealing with calls from policemen wanting swifter action. However, the same constraints didn’t apply to document examiners. They were used less often, so fair game for some badgering, in Diamond’s opinion. The suicide note supposedly written by Denise and recovered from the fake stove on stage at the theatre had been sent to an expert in Bristol called Lincroft. He hadn’t reported back yet.

‘Fearfully sorry, but I can’t help you much,’ Lincroft said when Diamond phoned him. ‘There isn’t much to go on.’

‘A signature.’

‘Half actually. She signed with her first name only.’

‘We sent you her real signature to compare it with.’

‘Well, I couldn’t do much without. If the suicide note is a forgery, it’s a good one. Often you can tell under the microscope, for example when there’s some shakiness to the writing from the effort to make an exact copy. There is slight evidence of a tremor here, but one has to make allowance for the writer’s state of mind.’

‘I don’t know how you ever reach a conclusion,’ Diamond said, hearing himself apeing the laid-back voice.

‘Usually there’s more to work with. And I don’t confine my researches to suicide notes. You’d be surprised what gets referred to me apart from the usual cheques and wills. Degrees, diplomas, even sick notes. Sometimes the deception is obvious, when, say, they trace over a signature in pencil and ink it in after. This certainly didn’t happen to the note in question.’

‘If this is a forgery – and there’s reason to think it is – how do they make it look right?’

‘By working from a genuine signature and practising. In that way they avoid the giveaway signs of uneven speed and pressure.’

‘But I can’t look to you for a firm opinion?’

‘I did say it was quite well done if it isn’t the real thing. I’ve spent considerable time, effort and taxpayers’ money examining this document. The fact that it’s merely a forename makes my task even more demanding. Even if I work on it for another week I’m unlikely to say what you want to hear.’

‘Oh, brilliant.’

At this point, Lincroft must have been moved by the disappointment in Diamond’s voice. ‘If I were you, I’d come at this from another direction.’

‘Oh?’

‘The letter was computer-generated. Did this lady possess her own computer and printer?’

‘Yes, but you can’t tell anything from printed stuff. It’s all done by laser, isn’t it? The days are long gone when we all used typewriters with chipped keys.’

‘Some modern printers still give information. I noticed some specks down the right edge, very small, deposited by the toner.’

Diamond picked up the photocopy he had of the note. He’d already seen some tiny dots randomly spread and hadn’t thought anything of them.

‘Cleaning the drum removes them,’ Lincroft went on, ‘but people tend to wait until the marks get worse and become obvious. There must be enough here to identify the printer that was used. I suggest you run some paper through the lady’s printer and then compare it.’

He was impressed. ‘Sounds like good advice.’

‘Glad to be of service. I’ll return the letter with my invoice. Goodbye.’

The phone went dead. There were times when Diamond wished he, too, was self-employed and issuing invoices.

He checked with the store downstairs where evidence was kept. They had what they called Denise’s motherboard, but not her printer. ‘Why not, for crying out loud?’ he said, and then aired his new expertise. ‘Some printers leave marks, you know. Vital information.’

They said it wasn’t their fault, but they would send someone to Dolemeads to fetch it.

‘Pronto.’

‘If that’s what you want, sir.’

‘What I really want is for someone to run a dozen sheets of blank paper through the thing and have them on my desk within the hour.’

He went down to the canteen. He’d arranged to meet his new recruits there. George Pidgeon and Dawn Reed were waiting by the door, as edgy as first night actors. Was it his imagination, or were police getting younger?

‘You should have gone in,’ he told them. ‘Or are you waiting for me to buy you tea and a bun?’

PC Reed started to explain, but Diamond interrupted. ‘You’ll soon learn that I’m not easy to work for. Whatever you do, it’s wrong. Coffee?’

They hesitated as if it was a trick question.

‘I’m having tea and a Bath bun,’ he said.

‘The same for me, sir,’ PC Pidgeon said at once.

‘But we’ll buy our own,’ Reed added.

‘In that case you can buy mine as well while I bag a table,’ Diamond said.

From the far side of the canteen he watched with amusement as they lined up at the counter talking earnestly to each other with an occasional glance to where he was, most likely settling who would pay for his tea and bun.

When they came over with the tray he held out a fiver.

‘It’s on us, sir,’ Reed said.