The Tooth Tattoo(31)

‘Of schoolgirls? No, he wasn’t that way inclined. What he got up to was grown-up stuff and he didn’t like me asking about it.’

‘Was he gay?’

‘Harry? No, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen how pleased he was when women came onto him. The first commandment of quartet life is that you don’t pry into each other’s goings-on, but laws are meant to be broken and I’m curious by nature, and it sounds like you are, too.’

‘He interests me for obvious reasons,’ Mel said. ‘I’ve stepped into his shoes.’

‘All I can tell you is that he covered his tracks. When we needed to get hold of him at short notice – as you do at times because of a change in arrangements – it was the devil’s own job trying to reach him. He was never at his lodgings. But you couldn’t fault him for reliability. He turned up at the hall in good time for concerts and rehearsals. Looked a little jaded on occasions, but I guess we all do from time to time.’

‘So when he disappeared, it came as a shock?’

‘Panic stations. We had to cancel that night’s concert with the audience already in their seats. I was all for improvising with some solo numbers, but the others couldn’t cope. Ivan was a dead loss. He’s no use at all when things go belly up. And Anthony is an ensemble player first and last. Doesn’t do solos. I could easily have given them “The Swan” and there are hundreds of pieces for the fiddle that Ivan could have picked from, but no, he insisted we cancel the show. Good thing Douglas was with us. He found a local stand-in for the remaining concerts and we got through somehow, but it wasn’t pretty.’

‘And you never heard any more from Harry?’

‘Nothing. None of us knew where he went in his time off. The embassy found that hard to believe, but it’s the way we are. So the local police didn’t know where to start looking.’

‘Do you think he’s dead?’

‘I hate to think it, because he was a lovely guy, but what else could have happened? If he’d gone on a bender that night he’d surely have got in touch when he got his head together. He needed the quartet. It was his living.’

‘He could have had an accident and lost his memory.’

‘Some kind of freak event? We can only hope, but as every day passes … You see, being the female in the group, I’m locked in, heart and soul. You guys belong to me, even bossy old Ivan, bless his little cotton socks.’

He was about to say something about the maternal instinct and stopped himself in time. She didn’t mean that at all. Behind all the brazen chat was a woman getting emotional – if not sexual – fulfilment from being so close to three men. ‘We’re lucky to have you.’

She smiled. ‘You’d better believe it.’





9





You couldn’t have mistaken it for anything else but an incident room. Desks, computers, phones. Graphic photos of the corpse, with a close-up of the tooth tattoo. A large-scale map of the Avon. Lines of enquiry listed on the whiteboard. Plenty of noise and movement from the CID regulars and civilian staff. Presiding over it all, Peter Diamond, much more his old imposing self.

‘I’ve asked for a second autopsy,’ he announced to the few members of the team who weren’t out of the building on active enquiries.

‘Can you do that?’ Halliwell asked. ‘Isn’t it the coroner’s call?’

‘The coroner isn’t God. He’s a public servant, same as you and me. I’m not satisfied, and I told him. The medic who did the first one wasn’t a forensic pathologist at all. He was a hospital man, a histopathologist. What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Neither am I, not at all sure. He writes a two-sheet report and comes to no conclusion except that the woman had been dead for some time. I could have told him that.’

‘He found the tooth tattoo.’

‘No, he didn’t. He asked some dental expert to look at the teeth and she spotted it. No wonder I don’t have any confidence.’

John Leaman looked up from his computer screen. ‘Histopathology: the branch of medicine concerned with changes in tissues caused by disease.’

‘There you go. It’s not disease we’re bothered about, it’s crime. No use to us at all. I want a proper forensic man like Bert Sealy. Sarcastic swine, but at least he does the job and misses nothing. You don’t get short-changed by Sealy.’

‘What did the coroner say?’

‘He’ll look into it. He will.’

‘Does the ACC know you spoke to him?’