The Tooth Tattoo (17 page)

Not far along the M4, he opened the last tin and said, ‘I feel a lot of sympathy for Mr. Hitomi. He was bearing it well, but suffering inside.’

‘I expect his ex-wife is having a bad time, too,’ Gilbert said. ‘Must be worse, being so far away.’

‘Tough. Very tough. But Hitomi wasn’t just grieving. He felt responsible, guilty even.’

‘He wasn’t to know what was going to happen.’

‘He’ll always believe he should have stayed in touch, texting or phoning.’

‘She was over twenty, guv. She wasn’t a kid. And he was busy with his job. That sushi bar was really humming. It must take most of his time ordering supplies and checking on the kitchen and his waiting staff, taking reservations, being nice to his customers. All these things make a difference in the catering business.’

‘But when the job takes you over completely and your nearest and dearest get pushed to the margins, you have to watch out. That’s what I’m saying. A lesson for us all.’

Paul Gilbert drove on in silence as if doubtful what to say next.

He needn’t have worried. Diamond was deep in thoughts of his own, about Paloma and the conversation on the towpath concerning his bottled-up emotions. Her plea – ‘I thought I was a part of your private life’ – still pained him. And so did the bust-up that had followed.

I
n the incident room next morning, the whiteboard display was strikingly improved by Kenji Hitomi’s photographs of his daughter when alive. Everyone felt the investigation had moved on. The computer-generated images had been removed. Mari the victim didn’t much resemble the woman painstakingly assembled in Philadelphia.

‘Did they charge us yet?’ Halliwell asked John Leaman. ‘I don’t think we should pay up.’

‘Too late. It was fifty percent up front and the rest on receipt. Already went through the bank.’

‘Demand a refund.’

‘They had a clause to rule it out.’

‘You signed an agreement? They’ll have lawyers waiting to pounce.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So how much of our budget was wasted on this?’

‘Don’t ask. I haven’t even told the guv’nor yet.’

‘It’s Georgina we need to worry about. She’s looking for any excuse to downsize us.’

Diamond himself appeared soon after and called for silence. ‘We’re going public with these pictures of the victim. Someone in the city must have spotted her. She was here in Bath at least one day – the day she was killed.’

‘Not necessarily, guv,’ Leaman said in the irritating singsong he used when he knew he was right.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She could have been murdered in Exeter and brought here by the killer and disposed of in the river.’

‘She never reached Exeter.’

‘We don’t know that for certain. Her so-called friends told her father she didn’t reach there, but one of them could have killed her and driven to Bath with the body. We ought to check the Exeter end.’

Diamond backtracked fast. ‘You’ve got a point. Christ, what’s the matter with me, not spotting that? The Exeter lot definitely have to be questioned. There could be some falling-out we haven’t heard about.’ He looked right and left for help, like a floundering swimmer. ‘Paul, did we get their names from Mr. Hitomi?’

‘He didn’t actually name them, guv.’

‘Get through to him now. No, better text him. We need the correct spelling.’

‘Will do,’ Gilbert took out his iPhone.

‘Want me to call Exeter CID?’ Halliwell asked.

‘What – ask them to do the job? We’ll handle this ourselves. Even if these friends are innocent as newborn babes it’s possible they can tell us stuff about Mari her father doesn’t know.’

Leaman couldn’t resist rubbing in his small triumph over Diamond. ‘Equally she could have been killed in some other place and brought here: Bristol, Swindon, Devizes – ’

‘All right. We get the drift.’

‘Shouldn’t we put out a countrywide alert?’

‘That’ll happen willy-nilly. The press are sure to go national on these pictures. They’re quality photos and they tell a story. If she was seen in any place from here to John o’Groats we’ll get to hear of it.’

‘Better expect some mistaken sightings, then.’

‘That’s inevitable. I still favour Bath as the location – there was local knowledge at work – but we’ll keep an open mind.’

‘Why would she have come to Bath?’

‘Why do thousands of tourists come every year? You’re forgetting this city is known all over the world. Her father said he reckoned she came as a tourist.’

And now, with Diamond shown up once as fallible, Keith
Halliwell pitched in. ‘He could be wrong. She could have come for some other reason.’

‘Such as?’

‘Something she didn’t want to tell her father about.’

‘Go on.’

‘Looking up an ex-boyfriend.’

‘Japanese?’

‘British, American, Japanese – who knows? Someone she knew in Yokohama who is now working or studying in Bath. Mari has set her heart on reviving the relationship. But it turns out he’s living with someone else, may have a child as well. Mari is hurt and angry when she finds out.’

‘Straight out of
Madame Butterfly
,’ Leaman murmured, annoyed that someone had stolen his thunder.

Halliwell wasn’t being put off. ‘She threatens to tell the new partner about his past. They have a row, it gets violent and he kills her.’

‘Quite a theory,’ Diamond said.

‘You did ask.’

‘I’m grateful. And there could be some simple and obvious reason for coming to Bath that nobody has mentioned.’

‘What’s that?’

An interruption from Paul Gilbert saved him. ‘Guv, Mr. Hitomi will be texting the names in the next few minutes.’

‘Excellent. While we wait we can decide which of his pictures to release to the press.’

This didn’t take long. They chose three: a close-up of Mari in Hitomi’s house, a street picture with arms outstretched and the shot of her wearing the backpack looking over her shoulder at the camera.

The names of her friends came through soon afterwards: Taki Kihara and Mikio Nambu. Both were ex-pupils of Yokohama High School studying physics at Exeter University.

‘Exeter.’ Diamond turned to Ingeborg. ‘How long would it take you to drive there – a couple of hours?’

‘Probably less. Depends who’s sitting beside me.’

Smiles all round. Diamond’s dislike of high speeds was well known. Even he managed a twisted grin.

‘Tee it up with the physics department. We’ll go this afternoon.’ He continued doggedly with the briefing. ‘One thing Mr. Hitomi confirmed is that Mari was into classical music in a big way. We already knew there was Beethoven on the iPod. It now turns out that her mother in Yokohama is a violinist who studied to a high level at some music college in Tokyo.’

‘Kunitachi,’ Paul Gilbert said.

‘Someone give him a Kleenex.’

‘The Kunitachi College of Music. I made a note of it.’

Leaman took this as the cue to air more of his musical expertise. ‘Suzuki trained.’

The only Suzuki Diamond had heard of was a motorbike and he wasn’t being lured into admitting that. ‘We’ll take your word for it. The point is that Mari’s mother taught her to love music and she was keen enough to have miniature musical instruments fixed to her backpack. I’m thinking it’s possible she was here in Bath for some concert.’

‘But we don’t know when, so how can we tell?’ Halliwell said.

‘You want it on a plate. It’s a possibility, that’s all.’

‘The music festival is always at the end of May,’ Leaman said, ‘but there are concerts of one sort or another all year round.’

‘Ingeborg checked all the local music colleges for a missing Japanese student and came up with nothing,’ Halliwell said.

‘Get with it,’ Diamond said with an opportunity to score. ‘We’re not looking for a missing student now. Mari wasn’t living here. That wouldn’t stop her looking up some Japanese friend in a music college. The music may be a huge red herring, but it keeps swimming into view.’

Diamond and Ingeborg got on the road after an early lunch. The Exeter University physics department had set up a meeting with Mari’s two Japanese friends at 3.30 pm.

‘It’s a learning experience, this,’ he said after they were on the M5 and he’d asked Ingeborg to stay in the slow lane. He
believed conversation made the journey go just as quickly as belting along at dangerous speeds. ‘Classical music and now physics. Quite a mental leap.’

‘Einstein managed it,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He was a keen violinist.’

‘You’re starting to sound like John Leaman now.’

‘In what way?’

‘Trotting out facts. I’m not complaining. John’s a useful guy on the team. He was right, saying we must investigate these Exeter friends. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Am I losing my grip?’

‘You don’t miss much, guv.’

‘I’m not sleeping all that well.’

‘Any reason?’

‘Bit of a crisis in my personal life.’ He stared at the back of his hand as if it didn’t belong to him. ‘You might as well know. I split up with Paloma.’

‘Really?’ She hesitated before saying with sympathy, ‘That’s tough.’

‘My fault. I came out with one stupid remark too many. Any woman who takes me on is asking for trouble.’

‘Would you like to make it up with her?’

‘Don’t know. We’re proud people, both. She gave me an earful.’

‘Pity if it’s only words that came between you.’

‘There’s more – my attitude. I can’t stop being the hard-nosed cop. She thinks I should lighten up when I’m off duty. I try. Obviously not enough.’

‘It goes with the job.’ Ingeborg said. ‘We’re never entirely off duty. We see something wrong and can’t ignore it.’

‘What started this? You mentioning Einstein, making me feel inferior.’

Ingeborg laughed. ‘I’m no Einstein myself. I failed physics and I can’t read music.’

‘Too bad. I was hoping you’d be discussing relativity with these undergraduates.’

‘And in Japanese?’

‘They must be reasonably fluent in English or they couldn’t study here.’

‘How do you want to deal with them – as a pair or singly?’

‘Definitely one by one. Joint interviews don’t work. There’s always one loudmouth who dominates and it’s sod’s law that the quiet one has all the information.’

‘And we’re treating them as suspects?’

‘We must. John Leaman could be right. They may have murdered her in Exeter and dumped the body in Bath as a blind.’

‘They’re supposed to be her friends.’

‘They’d need a motive, yes, like some bad blood we’ve yet to find out about.’

Even in the slow lane, they reached Exeter ahead of schedule. The university complex north-west of the city was easy to locate. Finding a place to leave the car was more of a problem. ‘There was a time when most students couldn’t afford a motor,’ Diamond said.

‘It’s now,’ Ingeborg said. ‘They just run up a bigger debt.’

At the physics department they were told that the professor was off the campus all day, so they were given his office to use as an interview room.

‘Chair of physics at Exeter will look good on my CV,’ Diamond said as he tried the seat. ‘Who’s first up?’

‘It seems to be decided,’ the department secretary said. ‘We asked them both to be here at the time you stated. Miss Kihara is waiting outside, but the man is late.’

‘The
man
?’

‘Mr. Nambu.’

‘Funny. I assumed they were both female, being friends of Mari. Not obvious from the names.’

‘Unless you’re Japanese,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Ask Miss Kihara to step in, will you?’

The student was small and nervous, with powerful glasses that magnified her eyes into a permanent startled look. Being interviewed in the professor’s office must have been daunting.
She might have been more relaxed in the place Diamond had originally planned to use: the union bar.

‘May we call you Taki?’

‘Please do.’ At once it was clear there would be no problem over the language.

‘You knew Mari Hitomi, I believe, and you’ll have heard the sad news of her death.’

‘It’s incredible. A horrible shock.’

‘We spoke to her father and he understood she was planning to visit Exeter to see you and Mr. Nambu.’

‘That’s right. She called me after she arrived in London.’

‘Did she fix the visit?’

‘She didn’t put a date on it. She was going to text us nearer the time. I said she was welcome to stay a few days if she wanted. She could sleep at my place. So we left it flexible.’

‘And you didn’t receive the text?’

‘I wasn’t worried. It was a casual arrangement and when weeks went by I thought she must have made other plans. The next thing I heard was when her father phoned. He seemed to believe she’d been coming straight to Exeter. He was very upset when I told him she wasn’t with us.’

‘It seems she planned a visit to Bath without telling him. Do you know if she had friends there?’

‘Nobody I heard of. If they were friends from Yokohama, I’d know. We all keep in touch. There are three in Sheffield, two in Bangor, one in Cambridge.’

‘Do you visit any of them yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s too far on a bike. That’s my transport.’

‘You don’t drive?’

‘No.’

If this was true – and it was an instant response, spoken without sign of evasion – one crucial question was settled. She hadn’t driven to Bath with a body in the back. ‘You’ve known Mari a long time?’

‘We went through school together in Yokohama.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Very good company. She was open and truthful. Laughed a lot. I was looking forward to seeing her again.’

‘We need to get a picture of her as a personality, likes and dislikes, that kind of thing.’

‘There was the music, of course,’ Taki said. ‘She was passionate about that. Serious music. She didn’t have time for modern pop.’

‘When you say passionate …?’

‘I mean it. She’d travel to concerts in other cities. Her bedroom was full of posters of famous musicians, just like some girls go crazy over rock stars. She had a really top-class sound system and hundreds of CDs. Music was her main thing when we were going through school.’

‘Did she play an instrument?’