Stagestruck (35 page)

He said to Shearman, ‘I picked up some tension between Kate and Denise.’

‘Did you?’ he said, as if it didn’t surprise him. ‘I wouldn’t make too much of that if I were you. Denise came under Kate’s supervision in the wardrobe department, but she’d worked here for six years, rather more than Kate had. There was bound to be some professional awkwardness.’

‘Kate didn’t seem too cut up about Denise’s death.’

‘I expect she was putting a brave face on it. A terrible thing like that takes people in different ways.’

‘Maybe. Just now I commented that wardrobe was a mess and you said her heart wasn’t in it. What did you mean by that?’

Shearman hesitated. ‘Oh, I was talking about the dreadful things that have happened. It’s enough to sap anyone’s morale.’

Smart answer, but not convincing, Diamond thought. ‘Going by the state of the place, it didn’t get like that in a couple of days.’

‘I’m sure the disorder is more apparent than real. She knows where everything is – or she did until your search party turned the lot upside down.’

Diamond hadn’t been swayed by the manager’s defence. Kate was definitely in the frame now. Her strong dislike of Denise had been obvious all along. She’d portrayed her as tough, calm and so indifferent to Clarion’s scarring that she could well have inflicted it. Coming from a colleague, that was quite a character assassination. It wasn’t beyond her to have lured Denise upstairs, slipped her the drug and pushed her to her death to fake the suicide. Working so closely with Denise, she would be familiar with her signature and well able to forge the note. Up to that point everything seemed to be going to plan. Then she’d found out that Clarion was making this secret visit to the theatre. Did alarm bells go off in her head – that Clarion had worked out the truth and was coming to confront her or even expose her as the killer? How simple to have picked up one of the many plastic bags in wardrobe and gone to the box and suffocated Clarion.

He turned to Halliwell. ‘This stinks. I’m going out to Warminster to see her.’

Shearman was shaking his head. ‘You’ll send her into a panic. She’ll think she’s under suspicion.’

‘She is. I don’t want you tipping her off,’ he said and told Halliwell to stay with Shearman for the next hour.

‘Don’t you people understand that I have a job to do?’ Shearman demanded.

‘There’s no job. The theatre is dark now.’

‘That’s when things get busy for me. I’ll be organising a team to strike the set.’

‘To
what
?’

Halliwell said, ‘He means moving the scenery, guv. They want to clear the stage so it’s ready for the next production.’

Diamond pointed a finger at Shearman. ‘Don’t even think about shifting it. Leave everything in place, exactly as it is. That’s an order.’

20

S
outh-east of Bath in the thick of the Friday afternoon commute along the A36, Diamond drove at his usual steady forty, heading a procession increasingly desperate to overtake. At his side was a detective sergeant almost his own age who had transferred from Chipping Sodbury a couple of months back, a soft-speaking, dependable type. Lew Rogers had merged into the CID room almost unnoticed. This was a chance to get to know him better. About all Diamond had discovered was that he cycled to work from Batheaston. Either a fitness freak or a green, he had decided.

‘I’ll be relying on you to guide me to the street where this woman lives,’ Diamond said. ‘I generally steer clear of Warminster.’

‘Why is that? All the sightings of UFOs?’

‘No. The bypass.’

They both smiled. Back in the sixties and seventies there had been persistent reports of flying saucers over Warminster and the nearby downs. There were claims that some local residents had been abducted. Books had been written about extra-terrestrial visitors.

‘Have you thought about getting a sat-nav?’ Rogers asked in his innocence.

‘Got one.’

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s you, sat here and navving for me. More reliable, I hope, and with extras, like hands. If you look in the glove compartment you’ll find some Softmints. Have one yourself.’

‘Thanks, but I won’t.’ Rogers said. He passed a mint to Diamond. ‘Does Kate live alone?’

‘As far as I know, yes.’

‘Are you going to nick her?’

‘If necessary.’

‘Is she on the run?’

‘Would I be driving at this speed if she was?’

‘I was told you don’t do more than forty in any situation.’

Diamond looked ahead without even the suggestion of a smile. ‘You’re well informed. There’s a stretch of dual carriageway coming up. They can all overtake if they want. We’ll get there soon enough. We’re not far off now.’

Two minutes later, all the brake lights started going on. Both lanes of the carriageway were blocked as far ahead as he could see.

‘Shouldn’t have spoken. What’s this about?’ he said. ‘One of those idiots who just overtook us, I wouldn’t wonder.’

Everything came to a complete halt.

‘Could be road works,’ Rogers said.

‘I don’t think so.’ He’d heard the two-tone wail of an emergency vehicle from behind. ‘Can they get by?’

An ambulance snaked a route through the stationary traffic.

Diamond switched off the engine and took out his phone. After speaking to traffic division he informed Rogers that the problem was half a mile ahead, almost in the town. ‘Some idiot managed to turn his car over and the fire service are using their cutting equipment. Fancy a game of I Spy?’

‘Perhaps I
will
have one of your mints, guv.’

‘Live dangerously.’ Fitness was Rogers’ thing, Diamond decided.

He dialled CID for an update and was pleased when Ingeborg answered. She was better than any of the team at summing up what was happening, and was just back from interviewing the chairman of the board at Melmot Hall.

‘Learn anything new?’ he asked.

‘Yes, and I would have called you if you’d kept your phone on.’

‘You’re in danger of nagging the boss, Inge. I was driving.’

‘You’ve got someone with you who could take a call, guv. Anyway, this will make you sit up. Melmot told me Kate is working her notice. He sacked her a week ago.’

‘Melmot sacked Kate?’ he said more to himself than Ingeborg, to gain a couple of seconds while the implications sank in.

‘He said there had been problems with her before, not doing the job properly.’

‘Now he tells us.’

‘She’d clung on because of her relationship with Shearman, who always backs her and says the criticism is unfair. But when Mel mot was approached about the state of the wardrobe room he went to see it for himself and was so appalled that he fired her.’

‘It was a dog’s breakfast when I saw it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve no experience of these places.’

‘You can’t run a theatre wardrobe in such a mess. Everything has to be in place and organised.’ That was one of Ingeborg’s favourite refrains. She was right, of course, whether it was a theatre wardrobe or a CID office.

‘Shearman was silent about this when I questioned him.’

‘He would be.’

‘He did say at one point that her heart isn’t in it any more. That should have alerted me. He doesn’t give much away.’

‘Do you want to know who the whistle-blower was?’

‘Go on.’

‘Denise Pearsall.’

He gave a whistle of his own. ‘That could be the clincher. Melmot told you this?’

‘He said she took some photographs of the wardrobe room with her phone and went to see him with them.’

‘She was asking for trouble, shopping her boss.’ The facts were slotting in like the last pieces of a jigsaw. ‘Kate must have known who dropped her in it. You can’t keep stuff like that to yourself. This is dynamite, Inge. It means she had a red-hot motive for revenge on Denise. And if she thought Denise had mentioned any of this to Clarion, she had a strong reason to kill Clarion as well.’

Ingeborg sounded a note of caution. ‘Before we get carried away, guv, let’s not forget Shearman. He’s Kate’s lover. He could have killed Denise. In his case, there was a personal element because Denise ignored him, went over his head and complained to Melmot.’

‘Point taken. And he was the best placed of everyone to murder Clarion.’ He pressed back against the headrest and released some of the tension with a huge sigh. ‘Whoever it is, we’re onto them. When I get to see Kate, I’ll know. The one small problem is that I’m stuck in a bloody traffic jam. Nothing is moving.’

A further ten minutes went by. The hold-up had reached the stage when people were out of their cars discussing what was going on. Diamond remained seated, thinking of other things, using the time to revisit each stage of the murders, down to such detail as the placing of the butterfly in dressing room one and the secreting of the suicide note in the stove. Nothing conflicted with either Kate or Shearman committing both murders.

‘When we finally get moving again and find the house,’ he said to Lew Rogers, ‘we’ll make sure she doesn’t see us coming and escape through the back. I’ve had that happen before. I’ll park some distance up the street and you can make the first approach. She knows me. I don’t think she’s met you.’

‘I was in the theatre last night with the others.’

‘But you didn’t speak to her. Anyway, you’re lower profile than I am.’

Ahead there was the sound of doors being slammed and engines starting.

‘Thank God for that.’

Progress was still slow, but at least there was movement. It went from a crawl to a sedate ten-mile-an-hour cruise as far as the roundabout and then slowed again on the two-way approach road to Warminster. Rogers looked up from the street atlas. ‘There’s another way into the town, but it may be just as congested.’

‘We’ll settle for this.’

Ahead was a police car with its blues flashing and a uniformed cop guiding the line of traffic past the scene of the accident.

‘Nasty,’ Diamond said as they came alongside a mangled blue saloon being lifted onto a breakdown truck. ‘Must have hit that tree. I wonder if it was fatal.’ Then he realised he was rubbernecking and gave his attention to the road ahead.

Lew Rogers was good with the map. Away from the town centre, Warminster is a maze of side streets and dead ends. He directed them unerringly off the High Street and over a railway bridge to the estate where Kate lived. The houses there must have been built as army quarters to support the nearby barracks, functional brick buildings without much to distinguish them. Some boys were kicking a football in the road.

Diamond succeeded in reaching the end without running over a child and parked at the curbside. ‘Did you spot the house?’

‘I did. It’s the one with the yellow door about halfway along.’

The way the houses were sited, an escape route from the back looked unlikely. Tall fences enclosed the back gardens.

‘Shall I see if she’s in, guv?’ Rogers asked.

‘Why not? Give me a wave if she is.’

Rogers started the walk back, watched covertly in the rearview mirror by Diamond and openly by the young footballers.

Rogers went through the gate and rang the bell on the yellow door.

Diamond watched and waited. The footballers had suspended play.

No one came to the door.

Presently Rogers returned to the car. ‘Nothing doing. The kids say they know when she’s home because she parks her car outside, a blue Vauxhall Astra.’

A disquieting thought popped into Diamond’s mind, but he dismissed it.

‘What do we do now?’ Rogers said.

‘We can at least see if she comes along in the next half-hour. She could have been caught in the traffic jam, like us.’

The evening light was still good although the shadows were lengthening. Behind the houses, the downs were turning pink. A fertile imagination wouldn’t have had much difficulty in seeing flying saucers.

‘Will we wrap this up tonight?’ Rogers asked.

‘I hope so. Why – do you have plans for the weekend?’

‘Not really.’

‘Married, are you?’

‘Second time around.’

‘She’ll have plans, then.’

‘No doubt.’

Diamond took another look at the house. ‘Was that ground-floor window open when you went to the door?’

‘I’m sure it was.’

‘Careless of her. Anyone could get in.’

‘True.’

After a pause, Diamond said, ‘We shouldn’t leave it unsecured. In fact, we have a civic duty to investigate.’

Rogers clearly understood what the head of CID intended. He may have been shocked, but he had the good sense not to mention it. The two of them approached the house. The security risk in question was a small top window opened for ventilation.

‘Your arm is longer than mine,’ Diamond said. ‘If I give you a hand-up, see if you can reach in and unfasten the catch on the window below.’

The footballers came closer while Diamond was helping Rogers get a foot on the outer ledge. The smallest of them, prompted by the others, said, ‘What are you doing, mister? Are you breaking in?’

‘It’s all right,’ Diamond called back. ‘We’re the police, making sure it’s safe.’

‘How do we know you’re the police?’

‘A burglar wouldn’t do this in broad daylight with you lot watching, that’s why.’

Rogers lifted the catch on the lower window and they both climbed in. The place was appreciably tidier than Kate’s workplace. A black sofa covered with a purple throw. Afghan rug. Flat-screen TV.

‘Can you work a computer?’ Diamond asked.

‘Depends what sort.’

‘See if you can find hers and run a sheet of blank paper through the printer.’

‘It’s right here against the wall.’ Rogers checked that the paper in the feed was clean and then passed a couple of sheets through and handed them to Diamond. ‘I don’t know what you’re expecting to find, guv.’

‘It isn’t this,’ Diamond said. The sheets were still pristine. ‘Mind, she could have used another machine. I’ll have a look round.’

A swift tour of the small house revealed no second printer and nothing else in the way of evidence. Up in the bedroom he started in surprise when his own phone emitted its archaic ring-tone. He’d left it switched on after speaking to Ingeborg. The voice was hers again.