Skeleton Hill (32 page)

Diamond locked eyes with him. ‘I’m not giving you that satisfaction.’

‘So this great hypothesis comes tumbling down.’

‘No. It’s as safe as any house you ever surveyed. Charge him with murder, Septimus.’

40

D
iamond’s offer of supper in the canteen was interpreted by all but himself as free drinks in the Sports Bar of the Royal, the hotel at the east end of Manvers Street. He had little choice but to join the party and start a tab. Someone bent on mischief – probably John Leaman – got busy on the phone and in the next half-hour familiar faces kept appearing through the door, civilian staff, wives and partners. Paloma arrived – proof that their private life was an open secret – and there was a huge cheer when Keith Halliwell, pale, but smiling broadly, walked in with his wife.

Even Georgina had joined the party and was drinking lemonade with John Wigfull.

Diamond told Paloma, ‘This started with an offer of bangers and mash to one deserving case. I’ll need to take out an extra mortgage.’

‘It’s no bad thing to let them feel appreciated,’ she said.

‘They get that all the time from me.’

And for that evening, you might have believed him. There was a moment when the din was hushed and Leaman raised his glass and said. ‘To the guv’nor.’

‘The guv’nor.’

Ingeborg shouted, ‘Speech.’

With reluctance he hauled himself upright. ‘Apart from thanking you for a job well done, I don’t know what to say.’

Georgina said, ‘I’ll tell you what. We watched and listened through the glass and there isn’t any doubt that those two are guilty of murder, but you didn’t answer the question about the racehorse. Why, in the name of sanity, did they kill it?’

‘For the insurance,’ he said. ‘It was insured for a hundred grand.’

‘But that’s a fraction of what was on offer.’

‘From the sheikh? Didn’t you work that out?’

‘Come on, guv. Spill it,’ Ingeborg said.

He took a long look around the room. No one seemed to have got it. ‘Even a billionaire sheikh isn’t going to buy a horse for stud without proof of fertility. The agreement required an independent guarantee that Hang-glider was up to the job. The trainer’s regular vet wasn’t eligible, so Tipping asked his daughter’s firm to do the necessary and when Davina had the sample tested she discovered to her horror that the sperm count was negative. The horse was sterile. The deal was scuppered and they hadn’t insured against infertility. The insurance they had was for illness, foul play or mortality. They were left with a horse that couldn’t race and couldn’t breed. Between them they decided on the fake kidnapping to activate the foul play option. A hundred grand was better than nothing.’

John Leaman said, ‘How many years’ salary is that?’

‘But Tipping had paid out much more, and he felt entitled to some return. All he had was a pensioned-off horse requiring feed and care for the next twenty years.’

‘Can we prove this?’ Georgina asked him.

‘Davina destroyed all record of it, as you’d expect. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only one with a copy of the report. There aren’t many labs in our part of the world that offer equine sperm analysis. The second one I checked was able to confirm a test it conducted in July, 1993, for DTS Animal Care, Davina’s company. The horse wasn’t named, but the result was notable: a negative count.’

‘And that’s rare?’

‘Rare enough to make our case, ma’am.’

Georgina sighed. ‘I’m impressed – genuinely impressed.’

John Leaman said, ‘You speak for us all, ma’am. Don’t you think our guv’nor deserves some recognition?’

She frowned. There were limits. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘An honour, ma’am. As a result of all this isn’t there a vacancy in the Lansdown Society?’