‘I’m obviously missing something here,’ Diamond said, turning to Mel. ‘Did you have a meeting with Harry?’
‘Last night. He came to see me at my lodgings.’ Mel launched into an account of almost everything Harry had told him, about the poker debts; the mammoth ivory; the netsuke carver he had found in Vladivostok; the sex with Emi Kojima in Vienna; the gift to her of the netsuke piece; his capture by the yakuza in Budapest; the long, uncomfortable journey by car to Vladivostok; the mysterious disappearance of the carver; the refusal of the yakuza to believe Harry knew nothing about Emi’s killing; the amputation of his finger joints; his escape; and his eventual return to Britain.
A short silence followed, time required to absorb the extraordinary sequence of events.
Diamond couldn’t see any way Mel had invented such an elaborate story. Nothing in it conflicted with his own discoveries. Moreover it was evident from Ivan’s twitchy reactions that each mention of his personal influence on events touched raw nerves.
‘The one thing you haven’t spoken about is the gun,’ Diamond said.
‘He only produced it after he’d said all this,’ Mel said. ‘I was shocked.’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Cat said. ‘None of us slept last night wondering if Harry would come knocking – or without knocking.’
‘Did he threaten you with it?’ Diamond asked Mel.
‘Not at any point. He made enough of an impact by simply producing it. He held it out in the palm of his hand. It scared me.’
‘What did he want from you?’
‘An update on what the others were saying about him.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No, but it was clear he was feeling insecure.’
‘How did you answer?’
‘With the truth as I understood it. I told him straight there had been the full range of feelings from annoyance that he failed to turn up for the Budapest concert to concern when he went missing, to resignation after years went by that he could well be dead. He asked if the quartet really believed he’d killed Emi and I said nobody had ever suggested he was a murderer.’
‘It didn’t cross our minds,’ Ivan said, ‘but in view of what’s happened this morning …’
Cat said, ‘What are you trying to tell us, Comrade Bogdanov? Do you think he shot himself because of a guilty conscience?’
Ivan spread his hands. ‘We’ll find out, presumably.’
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Diamond pressed Mel. ‘What else did he want to know?’
‘The name of the person who supplied my new viola. I didn’t tell him. I’m strictly bound to keep that a secret.’
‘Even at gunpoint you held out?’ Ivan said.
Mel clicked his tongue in impatience. ‘I told you he didn’t once point the gun. He had no intention of shooting me. He told me the gun was for his own protection and I believed him. He’d escaped from the yakuza, as I told you, and he thought they were still after him.’
‘Not to mention the mafia wanting their poker debts settled,’ Cat said. ‘If that wasn’t a rock and a hard place I don’t know what is. Poor old rascal didn’t know where to turn.’
‘And then the second girl was strangled and the two cases were linked,’ Ivan said. ‘He became a suspect for the first, if not the second. We don’t know how long he’s been in England, do we?’
‘He didn’t say,’ Mel said.
‘Could Harry have murdered Mari Hitomi?’ Cat asked, big-eyed. ‘I can’t think why.’
‘Maybe she also was working for the yakuza,’ Ivan said.
She took a sharp breath. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
The speculation wasn’t helping Diamond. He’d run through similar possibilities in his own mind already. He picked up the last point Mel had made. ‘Why was he interested in your viola?’
‘It’s a beautiful instrument, an Amati,’ Mel said, nodding. ‘As a fellow violist, he wanted to handle it, but I didn’t let him. He didn’t insist. He knew the owners of these fabulous instruments set strict conditions about their use.’
Cat said, ‘Harry knew that. He had a Maggini on loan to him. None of us can afford the beautiful toys we play with.’
Diamond asked Mel, ‘Was anything else said that might help me to understand Harry’s mind-set?’
‘I’ve covered it,’ Mel said. ‘He acted more like someone on the run than a threat to me or anyone else. I know he had the gun, but in the end he put it away and left quite tamely.’
‘Would you say he was suicidal?’