The Tooth Tattoo(12)

‘It’s a modern custom.’

‘And a nice one. Her family must be devastated. For this to have happened thousands of miles from home – that’s heartbreaking.’

He couldn’t prevent Paloma identifying strongly with the people involved. He’d hoped she would be satisfied knowing the main facts. She’d spoken of the temporary shrine of flowers several times since returning from Vienna.

He tried one more time to draw a line under the incident. ‘Nothing we can do about it. Bad things are happening every day in this world. It’s no good letting them get to you.’

She rounded on him with more passion than he expected. ‘That’s bloody typical of a policeman, if I may say so. Cut yourself off from reality. Develop the hide of a rhinoceros. This was a tragic suicide, a young life sacrificed and probably for love, if the netsuke means anything.’

‘Paloma, we didn’t know her. I haven’t even told you her name.’

‘It’s the offhand way you said it: “Nothing we can do” – as if she’s just a statistic. I know there’s nothing we can do. It’s up to the Austrian police. But I can’t forget we were there and I picked up the flowers. Someone obviously cares about her enough to place a bunch of lilies there four years after the event, even if you want to turn your back.’

He ignored the last remark. ‘Japanese friends, I should think, or local people with more sympathy than most of us, like you.’

‘There you go again, analysing, looking for explanations. I’m saying it’s a personal tragedy. It’s real.’

No question: the very thing he’d wanted to avoid was happening. Paloma was reliving the incident and more upset than ever. Worse, it was becoming an issue between them.

She continued, ‘We spent most of our time in Vienna tracking that bloody film as if the events actually happened. It was only a story, but you seemed more affected by it than the real human tragedy we stumbled over. I tell you, that scene has been on my mind a lot since we got back.’

‘That much is obvious,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to keep telling me. That’s why I asked Ingeborg to find out more. Maybe I shouldn’t have done.’

She turned her head, as if talking to the river. ‘It’s better knowing, even if we can’t do anything about it.’

They walked as far as Weston footbridge before Diamond spoke again, trying to make peace.

‘You had a basinful of The Third Man. Selfish of me. I should have given you more choice in what we did.’

‘I’m not complaining about that. What I find hard to stomach is that you can get emotionally involved in a film, yet cut off from a real death.’

‘My job. Simple as that.’

‘Being detached, you mean?’

‘Any professional will tell you the same – doctor, paramedic, fireman.’

‘Yet you’re a softie underneath. I’ve seen you in tears at the end of the film when the woman walks straight past Joseph Cotten and into the distance.’

‘You weren’t supposed to notice. I’m just the same in Casablanca. She was Anna, by the way.’

‘Who was?’

‘The woman in the film, played by Alida Valli.’

‘For pity’s sake, Peter, I despair of you. Yet you won’t name the Japanese suicide victim.’

‘If it mattered, I would.’

At Twerton, the river divides to accommodate a weir. They followed the towpath along the Western Cut as far as the small humpback bridge that takes its name from the Dolphin.

‘This is almost three hundred years old, did you know?’ Diamond said with a too-obvious shift in the conversation.

‘It can’t be.’

‘Most of it is. One side was bombed in the Bath Blitz and had to be rebuilt. The pub copped it, too. It’s said to be equally old.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I live just down the road, don’t I? This is one of my locals.’

‘One of them. I like that.’

It was too damp to sit in the garden, so they found a table in one of the eating areas inside. He brought a pint from the bar and a glass of Chablis for Paloma.

She was still tetchy with him, as if more needed to be said. He wittered on for a while, explaining that the Dolphin hadn’t got its name from a small whale that had strayed up the Avon, but an old word for a mooring post.

Only when their meal arrived did Paloma say, ‘When I called you a softie just now, it wasn’t meant as an insult. I don’t think it’s bad if you shed a few tears over a film. It shows you have emotions that are bottled up mostly. You keep them hidden in your working life and I understand why. What I can’t work out is why you don’t relax enough to let your feelings show when you’re off work, such as now.’