Born in a Burial Gown (26 page)

Fluke gave her a look. She laughed.

‘Sorry, boss, teaching you to suck eggs there. But someone round here might not know,’ she said. ‘Anyone here not know that?’ she asked the team crowded round the computer.

The chorus of boos and other sarcastic remarks told Fluke that Jo had been the only one who’d found it interesting.

‘Scraping the underpants of the Diamonds. Think I prefer my job today,’ Towler said, to general agreement.

Jo laughed again and pressed F9, the refresh button. Another red email appeared. As she opened it, Fluke leaned forward, as if being closer to the screen meant he’d get the result quicker.

He read it to himself as it flashed on the screen. Although there were several attachments with photos of evidence labels, scientific graphs and other indecipherable bullshit, Fluke was only interested in the second line. The name the sample was taken from and the result: a cousin who was in HMP Durham but had been out at the time of the rape. An interfamilial match but negative. Fluke leaned back, disappointed.

‘How many are interfamilial?’ he asked.

‘Everyone bar one, boss. They’re all related to the sample we have, apart from Uncle Jonna or whatever it is he calls himself. My guess is he’s one of those family friends who’s been called uncle from such an early age, it becomes fact. I bet if you asked any of them they wouldn’t know he wasn’t a blood relative.’

Fluke knew it was likely. He also knew it wasn’t a class or criminal thing. Towler’s daughter, Abi, called him Uncle Avison. With extended and complicated families like the Diamonds, just identifying who was who was going to provide valuable intel for years to come.

Another email came in. Another negative.

‘This could take ages,’ Fluke said. He decided he’d go back to his temporary office and ring Chambers to let him know where he was, in case Fluke was needed at HQ. He rang and was put through to Chambers’s PA. After they exchanged some banal pleasantries about Fluke’s health, she asked him to wait while Chambers finished a call. As Fluke was listening to the hold music, he got a text. It was from Towler.

Got him
!

Fluke put down the phone.

‘Old man Diamond,’ Towler said, when Fluke got to the room the team had colonised.

Fluke was genuinely surprised. Kenneth Diamond was the only one of the family who seemed to be an upstanding citizen. He was a businessman. He had the big house in Stanwix. When compared to the rapist profile in Fluke’s head, Kenneth was twenty years older than Fluke had imagined. ‘Wasn’t he was away at the time of the rape?’

‘Dunno, boss,’ Skelton said. ‘He’s been away for a short while now, no one seems to know where he is. He’s supposed to have distanced himself from the family though. Disowned the lot of them. He did it publicly, if I remember. We only checked his house to rule him out and to see if anyone else of interest had been there.’

‘Are we sure the sample’s definitely from him?’

‘Sure as we can be, I suppose. Until we actually take a sample from his mouth, we can never be one hundred per cent.’

‘They probably wear each other’s undercrackers in that family,’ Towler said, unhelpfully.

‘Good enough,’ Fluke said, eventually. ‘Until we know anything otherwise, our number one priority has to be finding him. When we have him, we’ll swab him so we know for certain. Good work today, everyone.’

By the time Fluke had organised teams to search for Kenneth Diamond locally and sent out a nationwide alert on him to all territorial police forces, he was exhausted. Luckily Skelton had already warned off the Border Agency. He left Towler to organise searches into Diamond’s personal and business life.

As Fluke left the building, he smiled to himself. Towler had done exactly what he’d have done, he’d shouted for Jiao-long. It looked like his plan to send him home for some sleep wasn’t going to be a reality for a while yet. With the investigation in full flow and a manhunt being organised, Fluke felt he should really stay but he reminded himself that the nosebleed earlier had most likely been caused by overworking. It was time to go home and get some rest. His car was still at HQ so he got a lift home with uniform, and arranged for someone to pick him up first thing.

It was still light enough to sit outside for a while and he opened a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, poured it into a pint glass and sat on the porch of his log cabin, staring out across the lake. Long shadows were being cast on the fell on the other side of the lake. Fluke stared across and marvelled at the heat and pressure that must have forced the enormous fell up from the earth’s crust, only for great rivers of moving ice to chip away at it, eventually forging a way through. Ullswater, the permanent reminder to the glacier that cut the mountain in half.

He lit a cigar and opened up the file he’d brought with him. Years before, Fluke had discovered his brain worked best looking at things in isolation, in small batches. That way, when he came to look at the thing as a whole, he knew he had an intellectual grip on everything. So instead of taking everything home, he’d only take the things he either hadn’t read or wasn’t sure he fully understood yet.

That evening, he’d taken the evidence log from Farrar’s flat. He also took out the card with the numbers and clipped it to the top of the file. The list was short and there was nothing that stood out. The SOCO officer had obviously started in the bathroom.

Toothbrush, electric, still charged.

Toothpaste, half-empty.

Floss.

Assorted toiletries and make-up, used.

Hand mirror.

Coins, from window ledge.

Paracetamol, bottle, 15 tablets remaining.

Toilet paper, two rolls.

Bed wetting alarm and attachments.

The list continued, going from room to room. Her clothes were listed and Fluke’s first suspicions were right. They were all brands he knew to be expensive. SOCO had attempted to separate out her personal items, from items that were part of the furnished flat. Fluke knew that efforts were underway to get hold of the landlord in London for an inventory, up to then without success. They would need to know how long she’d lived there, as William had been vague. Fluke also wanted to know how she was living there without any bills being paid. He suspected she’d paid the landlord a large amount of cash to keep it in his name, but Fluke needed confirmation.

Despite the cold, Fluke felt his eyes closing so he shut the file. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind and would do more harm than good if he persevered. He considered ringing one of his sisters to try and get back some normality but decided against it. He usually enjoyed hearing about his nephews’ and nieces’ latest adventures but he wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He relit his cigar and finished it, drained his beer and went to bed.

For once, he wasn’t disturbed by nightmares.

It was still dark when Fluke’s alarm went off and he opened his eyes. In that halfway state – not asleep but not yet awake – he was able to remember the last thing he’d dreamt of. It had been the inventory. Something in his subconscious had been bothered by it. But as his mind cleared and he woke fully, so did any chance of remembering. It would come back; there was no point forcing it. He knew how his mind worked.

Fluke had no qualms about telling everyone they were working Saturday but felt that when he did, he should be in first. He debated whether to put on some fresh coffee but decided to have one when he got to work instead.

He got to Carleton Hall to find the incident room deserted. He put a fresh filter in the coffee machine and started it off. Towler was already in but had gone to find a newsagents in Penrith to buy some milk. As the machine hissed and gurgled, Fluke thought about what he wanted to achieve.

First, he needed to check with the custody suites that everyone apart from Nathaniel Diamond had been released. Fluke wanted another go at Nathaniel. Although he wasn’t a suspect in the rape, he knew something, plus his dad was now in the frame, He’d task the first DC to arrive, to go and get an additional twelve hours from the on-call magistrate to question Nathaniel. The advantage of asking in the early hours was that the magistrate would be woken at home and less likely to say no.

While Fluke waited for the coffee machine, he opened his file from the previous night. He stared at the list, willing that night’s thoughts to come back but there was nothing. Apart from the bed-wetting alarm, it was still a list of everyday items. He’d mention it at the morning briefing. He turned to the photo of the alarm. It was bothering him as well. He couldn’t help feeling there was something else on the list that made sense of it. The previous day, he’d thought she was running from someone and was having nightmares because of it. Now he wasn’t so sure.

There was also the question that Kay Edwards, the DC who had travelled with her to the SARC, had raised. If she was in hiding, why had she even been going out for a drink at all? Fluke had initially thought it had been a fair question but it had slipped his mind before he could seriously consider it. Put alongside his own unasked question of whether anyone that scared would report a rape, it took on greater significance. He had the feeling that Samantha still had secrets to be revealed.

Find out how the victim lived and you’ll find out how they died.

Fluke enjoyed those rare moments of solitude. Surrounded by the fruits of the investigation, he liked looking at things in isolation at home but in the incident room he could look at everything as a whole. It was his wide-angled lens. The board with photos of the two crime scenes was full. The previous day, photos of the different Diamonds had been staring back at him. That night, someone had replaced them with a single photo of Kenneth. It had been cut out from a newspaper article about a new business venture he was involved in. One other photograph was on the board: the cold, lifeless face of Samantha Farrar. It was up to Fluke to find out if the link between them had been the cause of her murder.

The coffee machine had quietened down and Fluke poured himself a large mug. As he drank it, he let his mind drift from one photo to the other, taking in all the pictorial evidence.

His peace was interrupted by another of his team coming in. Jo Skelton walked through the door. Surprised to see him, she was even more surprised to find that there was already a pot of fresh coffee. ‘There’s no milk yet, Jo. Matt’s gone for some.’

‘No organisation, you two,’ she said, pulling a carton from her bag.

She grabbed her ‘World’s Best Mum’ mug and filled it. She walked over and perched on the edge of the table, next to Fluke. ‘You get any kip, boss?’

‘Some. You?’

‘Not much, nasty one this. I let Tom sleep in. He can take the kids to football today. I may struggle to come in tomorrow, though.’

Fluke nodded. He knew Jo’s husband was in a band that played at weddings so he normally worked weekends. ‘No gig tonight?’

‘Nope bookings are down nearly thirty per cent. People just want discos and hog roasts these days. He’s enjoying the extra time with the kids, though. I’ve been thinking about everything we have, trying to make some links but I can’t get my head round it all yet. Can’t remember the last one we had that was this complicated.’

‘Same here. That inventory is bugging me,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Can’t put my finger on it yet. There’s just something that isn’t quite right.’

Fluke had worked with Jo for long enough to know that she was what he called a ‘plodder’. He’d mentioned that to Chambers once, and he’d asked if he wanted her replaced. Fluke had had to explain that it wasn’t meant as an insult. His team worked best when there were hares
and
tortoises. He needed officers who could methodically plough through hours and hours of evidence, who wouldn’t get bored doing repetitive tasks, who wouldn’t miss things, who would take care to set up and maintain HOLMES. The ACPO Murder Manual stated that the office manager of an incident room should be either a Detective Sergeant or a Detective Inspector but Fluke chose Jo every time. She never complained and knew she was valued highly, fully accepting her role in the team. Police work was ninety-nine per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration. A cliché, yes, but some clichés were clichés because they were true.

‘You’ll get there. How’s your health, boss? You’ve been looking pasty the last couple of days.’

Some officers had earned the right to ask questions like that and she was one of them.

‘I’m tired, Jo. Weary. Can’t seem to shake it off. Normally I can leave all this behind,’ he said, pointing at the evidence boards. ‘Not this one though. This one’s staying with me. There was nothing personal about it. Every murder I’ve ever worked has had anger at its core, whether it’s about money, sex or jealousy. At least there’s a spark of humanity. Not this one. This was cold. Someone probably rang a number or sent an email, and an emotionless sociopath came up, shot her and threw her in a hole. How’d you try and make sense of that?’

She blew on her drink. ‘We’ll get there, boss. We always do.’

They finished their coffees in silence as the incident room filled up.

Fluke appeared to be alone in his concerns over the list. No one else had given it a second thought, but as he sometimes made links that others couldn’t, he knew they would all look again. No one had any new thoughts on the numbers either. Not a dead end. Just dead. He was prepared to accept that they meant nothing, but there were too many random things in the investigation already. They were all potential leads.

The rest of the briefing was spent allocating tasks for the day, most of which were about the search for Kenneth Diamond. That was Towler’s specialty; running people to ground. If he was still in Cumbria, Towler would find him.

With Towler busy with the manhunt, Fluke took Vaughn with him to re-interview Nathaniel Diamond. He took his own car and Vaughn took the pool car. Fluke needed to be mobile. He wasn’t expecting anything to break early on and if he got time he’d decided, he’d go and see Leah, and check if she’d found someone to talk to about cosmetic surgery.