The Tooth Tattoo(121)

‘Maybe not. Anthony may not say anything at all.’

‘Really?’

‘The little he does say is going to be true. He’ll need drawing out, though. I’m not sure how much he knows.’

‘Is it a conspiracy then?’ Halliwell asked.

‘It could become one. This is like nothing else I’ve come across, four strikingly different individuals who don’t mind sniping at each other, but in reality are as close as atoms in a nucleus. They must stick together to survive as performers and their music-making matters more to them than morality or law-breaking. They’re not comfortable going it alone, any of them. They have no family commitments. The Staccati is their family and quartet-playing is what they do. One goes, and it’s curtains for all of them.’

‘A few mixed metaphors there, but we get the point,’ Ingeborg said.

Diamond gave her a pained look. ‘Do you want to go through it with a red pen?’

She bit her lip. ‘Sorry, guv.’

‘Are they as good as they think they are?’ Halliwell said to defuse the tension.

‘Musically as good as it gets. Morally, the jury are out,’ Ingeborg said, diplomatically picking up Diamond’s theme.

‘Better dive in, then,’ he told them. ‘Who’s going to be first to split the atom?’

With that, he lifted the Do Not Cross tape and entered the secure area.

He was handed a package wrapped in polythene.

‘XL for you,’ the crime scene woman said.

‘I’m taking that as a compliment.’ He stepped to one side and started the undignified process of stepping into the protective suit. These things weren’t designed for people with more flesh than figure. A well-cut suit hides a lot.

Inside the forensic tent three similarly clad crime scene officers were at work. He had to squeeze around the open doors of the car and step over legs and equipment to make his presence known to the police surgeon, who was standing over Harry Cornell’s corpse.

‘Anything I should be told, doc?’ Diamond asked.

‘I can tell you one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You need a forensic pathologist for this, not a family doctor. They’ve sent for Bertram Sealy. He knows his stuff, whatever you and I may feel about his corpse-side manner. I’ve done my bit. Life is extinct. I’m off to see someone who really needs me.’

‘Before you go, did you look at the bullet hole?’

‘I did, and the bullet passed right through the head,’ the doctor said. ‘But don’t expect any CSI stuff from me.’

The body was still in the position Diamond had first seen, head against the steering wheel with only the right side of the face visible. ‘Would this be the exit wound?’

‘We can agree on that, going by the stellate shape,’ the doctor said, ignoring his own injunction. ‘I believe that’s due to bone fragments being forced out by the action of the bullet. If you lift the head to look at the other side, you’ll find a neat round hole where it went in. Is that what you wanted to know?’

‘Thanks. It confirms what I thought.’ He paused. ‘No chance you could estimate the time of death?’

‘Yes.’

Diamond’s eyes opened wide. ‘You can?’

‘I mean yes, there’s no chance.’

Still wearing his forensic jumpsuit, Diamond returned to the house. Ivan and Cat remained in the sitting room, sombre and silent. They each gave his mode of dress a long look, but passed no comment.

‘Are we under way with the statement-taking?’ he asked.

Cat nodded. ‘They’re limited by the poky accommodation. The young woman is in the kitchen with Anthony, and Mel is upstairs with the man. We were just saying it could take a while.’

Ivan made a point of looking at his watch. ‘We’d better be through before lunch, all of us. We’re due in the recording studio at two.’

‘What are you hoping to record?’ Diamond asked.

‘There’s no hoping about it. The session is fixed. The Grosse Fuge.’

‘Can’t say I know it,’ Diamond said. ‘Can you whistle a few bars?’

Ivan scowled.

‘Beethoven,’ Cat said. ‘It’s in our contract to cut a disc in aid of the university.’

‘If you get there I may listen in.’

Ivan stared through him. Obviously anyone who hadn’t heard of the Grosse Fuge was a waste of space.


Dr. Bertram Sealy arrived within the hour holding his trademark flask of coffee and the case he called his guts-bag. Diamond watched from a distance, allowing him to make some progress before going out to join him, wondering what insult Bath’s least congenial pathologist would have for him.