The Tooth Tattoo (12 page)

Without much to console him, he stopped to watch the steady flow of the river. Recent heavy rain had quickened the current and pieces of driftwood were being carried quite swiftly. Any one of them could have resembled the body when
it was first noticed, demonstrating the impossibility of finding exactly where it had entered the water. It must have been submerged somewhere upriver for a considerable time before the internal gases made it buoyant and mobile.

He’d ruled out a search of the river banks.

But there were finites he hadn’t taken into account until now. The Avon wasn’t free-flowing from source to sea. He should have remembered it had man-made barriers. Only a few hundred metres upstream from here was Pulteney weir, where he’d often seen floating objects trapped by the curved wall. And not far downstream was Weston lock.

The obvious conclusion was that the body had entered the water somewhere below the weir. It had been recovered some way short of the lock, not much over a mile away.

He revised his plan of action. Both river banks along this stretch needed to be searched, a real fingertip search for possible items belonging to the deceased. Her shoes may well have been lost while in the water, but what about her bag, phone, watch or an item of jewellery? Find some object belonging to her and you would almost certainly know where she’d got into the river. Then the sub-aqua team could go to work.

He’d have a search squad make a start in the morning.

With that decided, he resumed his walk and almost immediately his pulse quickened. Ahead on the towpath, approaching from the Saltford direction, was a familiar figure. He recognised the way she walked, her height and the cut of her hair. Coincidence, or had she chosen to walk the towpath knowing he often came here at this time in the evening?

He’d spotted her, so she must have seen him. She continued her approach at the same deliberate rate.

What now? he asked himself. Do I say I behaved abysmally and ask her to forgive and forget? The fact that she’s chosen to come this way at this time of day must surely mean she’s in a forgiving frame of mind. She’s missing me as much as I’m missing her.

Best offer her a drink, but not – for an obvious reason – in the Dolphin, and not the Old Crown, his local, where some
of the regulars still remembered Steph. He was still dithering between pubs when he became conscious of a movement by his feet. A small dog, a dachshund, had trotted past and then returned, as if checking if it knew Diamond. It had a confident look, head cocked to the right, although who was the owner of this silky charmer wasn’t clear. Having decided, apparently, that Diamond was a disappointment, it turned and scampered off – straight towards the woman he had taken to be Paloma.

Odd.

So far as he was aware, Paloma didn’t possess a dog.

He watched the dachshund run the short distance, stop, turn and apparently come to heel – and the woman stooped to fasten the lead to its collar. Now he saw with crushing certainty that she wasn’t who he’d supposed. She had the same style of walking, but she was undeniably someone else. He’d superimposed his image of Paloma on to this stranger, a younger woman with lighter-coloured hair.

How pathetic was that? He was as churned up inside as a smitten teenager.

He about-turned and retraced his steps. The world wasn’t a romantic novel. Chance meetings don’t happen when you need them. If he wanted an improvement in his wretched situation he’d better do something active towards it.

Like what?

Picking up a phone? Ringing her doorbell?

No chance, he told himself.

The search of the river banks got under way in the morning, twelve officers in overalls and boots progressing methodically along both sides below Pulteney weir. As one constable cynically remarked, it was a cheap way for the council to get its rubbish collected. Everything from cigarette stubs to beer cans was painstakingly picked up, and its position noted.

The first stretch as far as North Parade Bridge was deceptively easy. Then the footpath along the west bank came to an end and the footing became perilous. One side of a
river is generally easier than another to move along, so they switched duties when possible and everyone was given a share of wrestling with brambles and scrambling along the muddy, uncultivated side. The quality of the finds didn’t do much to improve morale. They were the boring throwaway items you would expect and mostly coated in ‘grime or slime’, as one of the searchers put it.

Diamond put in a mid-morning appearance at Ferry Lane, alongside the cricket ground, and watched the unfortunates making slow progress through the undergrowth. He didn’t have much sympathy, especially when he learned that nothing of interest had been found. He’d endured worse in his days as a rookie sifting the contents of a London council tip for bits of a dismembered corpse.

While he was there someone picked up a clay pipe and said it might interest the local historians. The sergeant in charge said it was probably at least a century old and could have been smoked by one of the bargees who once navigated the canal.

‘It’s a river, not a canal,’ Diamond said.

‘A waterway,’ the sergeant said.

‘So what?’

‘So it was used by the barges that used the Kennet and Avon canal. To all intents and purposes it’s part of the canal. The man-made bit feeds in at Dolemeads. They came down from Reading and linked up with the river for the last stretch to the docks at Bristol.’

The man was right. Never having taken much interest in the canal system, Diamond hadn’t given any thought to the river as a waterway. In his mind there was a clear distinction between a river and a canal. A canal was a man-made thing, like the one he’d walked beside in Vienna.

And now that the Danube canal popped into his mind, he thought fleetingly about the woman murdered there.

One dead Japanese woman in a canal in Vienna and another here in the Kennet and Avon.

Coincidence?

Sensible thinking suggested nothing more. It wouldn’t be
wise or profitable to start constructing theories of an international killer.

‘Keep up the good work,’ he told the sergeant, ‘but tell them I’m not really interested in clay pipes.’

Back in Manvers Street, he found John Leaman practically turning cartwheels in excitement. ‘It’s all under way, guv.’

‘What is?’

‘The facial reconstruction. I found a really helpful technician at the Royal United who arranges the CT scans and he knew exactly what I wanted. In fact, he’s really chuffed to be helping us.’

‘Probably watches CSI on the telly.’

Leaman took this as encouragement. ‘He does. So he’s already done the scan and emailed it to Philadelphia.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I found Professor Hackenschmidt through the internet. He’s a world expert in plastic surgery and uses computer imaging all the time. We’re hoping he can use his skills to recreate her face. We could have a result in a matter of hours.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ Diamond said. ‘The skull was put through the scanner in Bath and the pictures sent to Philadelphia?’

Leaman’s face betrayed some nervousness, as if he knew he’d overstepped the mark. Budgetary considerations were always a worry. ‘Correct.’

‘Did you ask for any to be sent here?’

‘Well, no. We wouldn’t know what to do with them.’

‘Oh yes we would,’ Diamond said. ‘You missed the point, John. We’d stick them on our board and look as if we’re going places with this investigation. Get on to your friend at the RUH and tell him this is our baby and we need a copy of everything.’

In other respects the progress was less spectacular. All the listed hotels and boarding houses had been checked and there was not a single report of a missing Japanese woman.

‘If some of you can’t look busier than this,’ Diamond said,
‘I’ll tell the search party on the river bank that reinforcements are on the way.’

After he’d gone into his office and slammed the door, there was a spell of silence. Then Paul Gilbert said, ‘Who’s that Swedish detective Kenneth Branagh plays on TV?’

Better news came through after lunch. The coroner had reviewed the autopsy report and decided on a second post-mortem to be conducted by a Home Office approved forensic pathologist at 8
A.M
. next morning. Diamond was invited to attend. He thanked the coroner and said he would do his level best to be there. If, however, something came up, his deputy would attend. After switching off the phone, he called across the room, ‘Keith.’

Halliwell looked up. ‘Guv?’

‘Are you a big breakfast man, bacon, eggs, the full English, as they say?’

‘When I can get it.’

‘Have a light one tomorrow. Early start for you.’

Autopsies and Peter Diamond didn’t mix.

Later in the afternoon came a call from the search squad. They’d found an iPod on the Green Park stretch of river bank between the Churchill Bridge and Midland Bridge. It looked as if it had been there some time.

Diamond said he would come at once. He asked Ingeborg to join him.

Green Park is a wedge-shaped space on the north side of the river, a piece of land that somehow escaped the builders of centuries past and enjoys some seclusion simply because it borders on the river and is a good distance from the main shops and tourist attractions.

‘I lose track,’ Diamond said to Ingeborg as they drove along Green Park Road. ‘What’s an iPod?’

‘You really don’t know?’ she said in disbelief.

‘I don’t have the patience to keep up.’

‘There are iPods and then there are iPods,’ she said.

‘Now you’re poking fun. It’s some kind of audio device, right?’

‘Or much more. There are touch-screen versions, video versions. Technology moves on.’

‘I can use a mobile phone.’

‘After much prodding.’

‘Am I missing something, not owning an iPod?’

‘Depends,’ Ingeborg said. ‘They can be good if you work out at the gym or go for a jog.’

He looked out of the window instead.

The sergeant from the search team was waiting for them beside a section of the river bank below the towpath now cordoned off with crime scene tape. Alder trees and bushes would have provided a useful screen for anyone up to no good.

‘Where is it?’ Diamond asked.

A transparent evidence bag was handed over. The object inside was small and square and so coated in mud you couldn’t tell what colour it was. A lead with two earpieces was coiled in one corner.

‘Good spotting on someone’s part,’ Diamond said. ‘This would have been easy to miss.’

‘There’s no certainty it belonged to the dead woman,’ the sergeant said. ‘On the other hand, people aren’t in the habit of slinging things like this away.’

‘One of the earpieces is broken,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It looks as if it’s been crushed, stepped on, or something.’

‘We noticed.’

‘The iPod itself looks all right. You might chuck out the earphones, but not that.’

‘I agree.’

‘The damage could have been done in a struggle.’

Diamond took a closer look. ‘Are there any signs of violence where it was picked up?’

‘Hard to tell, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Take a look if you like. We’ve marked an approach path. I made sure my lads didn’t trample all over the scene.’

Diamond could take a hint. His big feet wouldn’t aid the
investigation. ‘We’ll get the crime scene professionals out here and have it mapped and photographed. Where are your people now?’

‘The other side of Midland Bridge continuing the search.’

Diamond turned to Ingeborg. ‘What do you think? Any way we can link the iPod with the victim?’

‘The best chance is to find some hair at the scene or match some fibres with her clothes.’

‘Put a call through to the men in blue overalls, then. I’ll get a sense of where we are and how she might have got here.’ He told the sergeant that the search could stop at Windsor Bridge. The body must have entered the water way before there.

If, as he was tempted to suspect, the Japanese woman had been murdered, this little triangle of parkland was as good a spot as any to dump the body in the river. Quiet, well away from houses, with plenty of trees and scrub screening the view, the site had much to commend itself to a killer. You could get a vehicle right to the end of the road known as Green Park, no great distance from the river bank.

And no one would hear the screams.

G
eorgina Dallymore, the Assistant Chief Constable, had spent the past week attending a Home Office course. Rumour had it that the top bananas were being instructed on how to maximise resources, government-speak for cuts. So a collective shudder should have gone through CID when she reappeared. In fact, the team were so busy that Georgina was scarcely noticed.

‘What’s going on here?’ she asked Peter Diamond. ‘I wasn’t told we had a major incident.’

‘You’ve been away, ma’am.’

‘I wasn’t away from my BlackBerry, if you know what that is. I expect to be kept informed. What’s it about?’

‘A body found in the river. We’re treating it as suspicious.’

She eyed the display board. ‘It looks like a full blown murder investigation. Is all this justified?’

‘It is when there’s an international dimension.’

She twitched in alarm. ‘In what way?’

‘The victim – the deceased, I should say – is almost certainly from Japan.’

‘A tourist?’

‘Possibly. We’re working closely with the Border Agency and the Japanese embassy.’

‘Do you know who it is?’

He shook his head. ‘Female, below average height, twenty to thirty, with a tooth tattoo as the only distinguishing feature.’

‘What on earth …?’

Diamond explained. After the dig about the BlackBerry he wasn’t missing a chance to let the boss know he was street smart.

Georgina peered at the close-up. ‘It looks like a music note.’

‘A quaver, actually.’

‘I didn’t know you read music, Peter.’

‘I have hidden depths, ma’am.’

‘I’ve known that for a long time, but music is something else. So is this the only clue?’

‘An iPod has been found on the river bank in Green Park.’