The Tooth Tattoo (29 page)

‘It over-ran,’ he said.

‘Never mind,’ Tippi said, giving the elastic a tug. ‘Get ’em off.’

‘Can I have a raincheck?’

‘What?’

‘It’s an American expression. Means: could we make it another time?’

‘You’re joking.’ She explored the front of his pants and then said with less certainty, ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’ve had a rough day, Tippi. Got knocked down by a car.’

‘Mummy told me.’

‘Yes. She saw it all.’

‘She says you were like Superman charging across the street. She’s got it into her head that the driver was a stalker, stalking me. To be honest I haven’t noticed him myself.’

‘It was the first I’d seen of him.’

‘But as you did it for me I decided to give you this nice surprise.’

‘I’m touched,’ Mel said.

‘I wouldn’t know it yet,’ Tippi said, checking again.

‘The thing is, I hurt my arm and it’s still quite sore.’

‘Your arm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing further down?’

‘Oh, no. I’m fine in that department.’

‘Prove it, then.’

‘I can’t, because of the arm.’

‘Come again.’

‘The arm. That’s why I suggested a raincheck.’ Just in case that hadn’t settled the matter, he tried giving her something else to think about. ‘The man in the car may not be stalking you. He may be interested in a new viola I’ve been given to play. It’s a valuable item, extremely valuable actually.’

‘He shouldn’t have driven the car at you, whoever he is.’

‘I agree, but I reckon he was trying to drive past me.’

‘Mummy doesn’t think so. She told the cops he meant to hit you.’

‘What did you say?’ he said in alarm. ‘The cops?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Tippi said. ‘You’ll wake her up. She called in at the police station in Manvers Street tonight and told them what happened. She said it’s her public duty to report him.’

‘For Christ’s sake why?’

‘Well, he was stalking me and he almost killed you.’

‘I wish she hadn’t,’ Mel said.

‘Too late now. I expect they’ll want to hear from you.’

‘I was never in any danger.’

‘Your arm’s hurt. You just said.’

‘Aches a bit. I wouldn’t want to put any weight on it. That’s the problem.’

‘No problem at all.’ Tippi grabbed his pants and yanked them down his thighs. ‘Move into the middle. This’ll be fun. Me on top.’

Tired as he was, he felt himself responding.

At breakfast, he waited for Mrs. Carlyle to raise the matter of the police. He was keen to hear what they’d said, but he couldn’t turn back the clock. What was done was done. And this morning he
was
done. It had taken a superhuman effort to get downstairs.

‘You were late coming in last night,’ she said while she was cracking the eggs.

‘I hope I didn’t disturb you,’ he said, meaning every word.

‘Not really. I may have heard something. If you disturbed anyone, it was my Tippi. I heard her moving around in the small hours. I’m not expecting her down for breakfast.’

‘I took my shoes off.’

‘Very considerate.’

‘I mean when I first came in.’

‘I believe you. I saw them when I came down this morning.

So was it a good concert?’

‘Not really. I was a bit off.’

‘Played some wrong notes, did you?’

‘It was more a matter of rhythm and tempo. You need to be on top of your form to respond to the other players, and I wasn’t and it showed – not all the time, but enough to shake my confidence and theirs.’

‘Maybe you should have cancelled after all you went through. You’re still looking pale.’

‘It has to be something drastic to call off a concert. People were going to turn up. It was too late to let them know.’

‘If they were told what happened to you and why, they’d be sympathetic. How’s your arm today?’

‘Improving.’

‘They say exercise is the best remedy. Are you up for it?’

For a moment, he was unsure what she meant. Then the plate of bacon and eggs arrived in front of him.

‘Get your knife and fork working on that,’ Mrs. Carlyle said. ‘I told the police you’re a superhero. It’s all on tape. They took me into a special interview room. This was yesterday evening. I decided it was my duty as a mother to report what happened, so I went down to Manvers Street
and saw this nice young man in plain clothes called Paul. Far too young to be a copper, in my opinion, but he knew how to treat a lady. Tea and a biscuit, I got. He told me to take as long as I wanted and I had a wicked thought that I can’t repeat to a gentleman like yourself. Anyway, I said what happened, how brave you were and everything, having a go like that.’

‘I wouldn’t call it having a go,’ Mel said. ‘I only went over to speak to the guy.’

‘You got knocked over and injured for your trouble. He’s a danger to the public and I told them so. I don’t want him across the street ogling my Tippi. I know she dresses to attract the men but that’s no reason to have them sitting outside the house like tom cats. You don’t know what they’re thinking. Well, you do, and you don’t want it. He wasn’t her age. He was out of the ark compared to her. I gave them a description, as much as I could.’

‘Are they going to do anything about it?’

‘I don’t expect so, but they’d like a statement from you and I think you ought to go along and volunteer like I did.’

‘They’ll have got as much as they need from you. I didn’t get a proper look at the guy.’

‘But you saw his black Renault Megane, rather too much of it, in fact.’

‘It’s a common make. They’ll never trace it.’

‘That’s not the point. He could be back today. Show them your injuries and they’ll get him for dangerous driving and attempted murder.’

‘I don’t think so. They’re minor injuries.’

‘He needs to be locked up, Mel. If he doesn’t come after my Tippi you can be sure he’ll pick on some other young girl and it could be far worse next time. You don’t want that on your conscience. Besides, they know your name and where you live and what you do for a living. I told them.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

She missed the sarcasm. ‘A mother’s instinct, caring for her young. Under all that make-up is an innocent child.’

‘I
won’t be making a habit of it,’ Diamond said of the soirée.

Ingeborg was more positive. ‘It was really good in parts.’

‘The part that matters is that we met the manager,’ Diamond said. ‘We weren’t there for the music.’

‘What did you make of him?’ Keith Halliwell asked.

‘Douglas Christmas?’ Ingeborg said. ‘A smooth operator. I guess you need someone like that fronting a cultural group. He’d make a good impression abroad with his old-world charm.’

‘Rather less with you?’ Halliwell said.

‘Charming people always have a hidden agenda.’

He grinned. ‘If you’re a blonde.’

The CID team were all present and there was a sense of anticipation. Diamond’s case conferences tended to be informal, for whoever happened to be around. This one had been scheduled in advance as not to be missed.

‘Listen up, people,’ he said. ‘Yesterday as you know an international dimension was added to the case. It emerged that another Japanese woman went missing in a city where the Staccati were performing – in this case, Vienna, in 2008 – and was found dead some time after in the Danube canal. We can’t be certain of a link, but it has to be investigated.’

While Diamond was speaking, Ingeborg pinned a new photo to the display board. Posed against a whitewashed wall, a woman’s face making no effort to please stared forward from the centre of the frame. This was no family snap. Everyone in the room knew a mugshot when they saw one.

Diamond continued, ‘Points of similarity. One, her
nationality, of course. Two, the body was recovered from a city waterway. Three, she was submerged too long for a cause of death to be determined. Four, no obvious injuries. Five, she was clothed. Six, there was no great alarm when she went missing. And seven, she died at about the time the Staccati were in town.’

He waited for that to take root.

‘And these are the differences. One, this woman, Miss Emi Kojima, was about five years older than Mari Hitomi. Two, she’d been out of touch with her family for rather longer. Three, she was found with a netsuke under her T-shirt. That’s a small antique ornament of a particular design that led the Viennese police to deduce she took her own life.’

‘But it could have been planted by her killer,’ John Leaman said, keen as always to chip in.

‘Goes without saying.’ Diamond folded his arms and lulled everyone into thinking there was little else to report. ‘Nothing we don’t know already, you’re telling yourselves. But I asked Ingeborg to run a search on the Vienna victim and she’s discovered some background that I’m sure you’ll agree is new and significant.’ He turned to Ingeborg. ‘Over to you.’

‘Getting straight to it,’ she said, ‘from an early age Emi Kojima attended one of the famous Tokyo violin schools.’

Murmurs of interest rippled through the room.

‘Music again?’ John Leaman said.

‘She was said to have been an exceptionally gifted player. They take them young and get them up to an amazing standard. But at seventeen she was caught in possession of cocaine and asked to leave the school. After that she seems to have left home and drifted into petty crime and prostitution. She lived in one-room in a notorious Tokyo slum. The picture you see was taken after an arrest, one of many. Her family despaired of getting her back to some kind of normality. A sad story, but far from uncommon.’

Most eyes had returned to the photo on the display board. Emi Kojima’s jaded look seemed to confirm that she had been pulled in and charged so often that it had no meaning for her.

‘So,’ Diamond said, ‘we can add one more point of similarity: an interest in classical music. And one difference: this woman had a police record.’

‘How did she make it to Vienna if she was in poverty?’ Halliwell asked.

‘Three guesses. She wasn’t there on a city break.’

‘Are we talking organised crime?’

‘We could be.’

‘Trafficking?’

‘That’s well possible.’

‘To work as a hooker in Europe?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Excuse me,’ Paul Gilbert said, ‘but how would this link up with the string quartet? None of them are Japanese.’

‘Doesn’t stop one of them paying for sex with her,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Guys on tour for weeks on end.’

‘Classical musicians?’ Gilbert said in disbelief.

‘They need to get their rocks off, same as you, ducky,’ Ingeborg said.

Young Gilbert turned puce and everyone else enjoyed the moment.

‘He’s right to ask the question,’ Diamond said. ‘It comes down to this: did one of the Staccati pick up Miss Kojima in Vienna and kill her, and also Miss Hitomi in Bath?’

‘Someone who fancies Japanese girls?’ Halliwell said.

‘Or hates them.’

Paul Gilbert was still grappling with the concept. ‘Something doesn’t add up. If she was working as a prostitute in Vienna and got picked up and killed by one of the Staccati, the fact that she went to violin school is neither here nor there. That was all in the past.’

Ingeborg looked as if she was in free fall. In her eagerness to join up the dots she’d missed this basic flaw in the logic. ‘Now you put it like that, the music link may be a red herring. It must be what she was doing in Vienna that got her killed.’

‘That makes sense to me,’ Diamond said, moving smoothly on. ‘Let’s stay with it.’

‘If we’re talking about the Staccati in Vienna,’ Halliwell said, ‘this was before Mel Farran joined. There are only two males in the frame, the old guy and the silent one.’

‘ “Old” is a relative term,’ Diamond said. ‘He could be my age.’

No one else spoke a word.

‘Losing some of his hair doesn’t make him decrepit. But as you say, either of these might have gone looking for paid sex. And we shouldn’t ignore the third man.’ Diamond stopped and looked around the room. ‘Do I hear someone whistling?’

A few heads turned towards the source of the Harry Lime Theme.

Caught again.

Paul Gilbert seemed to shrink within himself.

Diamond could have hung the young man out to dry. Instead he gave a disarming comment. ‘It sounds better on a zither.’

Relief all round.

Diamond wasn’t departing from his script. ‘The third man – Harry Cornell – known to go off on missions he discussed with nobody. He’s in the frame with the others. It’s possible he was with this woman and killed her. The next city they visited was Budapest and he went missing there.’

Leaman was encouraged to develop the scenario. ‘He dumped her in the canal in Vienna and he expected the body would be discovered any time soon, so he went into hiding.’

‘Yeah, down the sewers,’ Halliwell said.

‘Don’t try me,’ Diamond said. ‘The joke’s been done.’

Halliwell clearly wasn’t impressed by the third man theory. ‘For this to make any sense, Harry would have stayed in hiding for four years and turned up again in Bath and killed another Japanese woman. For Christ’s sake, why?’

Ingeborg said, ‘We haven’t discussed the motive.’