Skeleton Hill Read Free Page B

unforgiving eyes. The man had once been Head of CID Operations.
    ‘John Wigfull, for all that’s wonderful. I thought you’d long since left the madhouse and gone back to Sheffield, or wherever it is.’ Diamond placed his tray on the table.
    Chief Inspector Wigfull had been given extended sick leave three or four years ago after receiving a head injury and being left for dead in a cornfield near Stowford. He’d spent almost a week unconscious in Bath’s Royal United Hospital.
    Wigfull didn’t move. There was no handshake, let alone a hug. They’d never been that friendly.
    ‘They brought me back as a civilian,’ he said.
    ‘You were always good at paperwork,’ Diamond said, and it wasn’t meant as an insult. No one had ever come near to Wigfull in filing and form-filling. ‘What will you be doing?’
    ‘I’m the new media relations manager.’
    ‘Are you, indeed? I should have realised when I saw you reading the Sun .’ He popped a chip into his mouth. ‘So I can look forward to you keeping the press boys off my back.’
    ‘That’s not the idea at all,’ Wigfull said. ‘In the modern police we encourage openness.’ He’d always had this talent for making Diamond feel he was one of a dying breed.
    ‘You feed them stories, do you? We’ve had some juicy ones since you were here.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’
    ‘Like the crossbow killer we called the Mariner. And the Secret Hangman. You could have made something of those.’
    ‘I don’t “make something”, as you put it. I communicate facts.’
    ‘Too right you do’
    ‘In the past we haven’t maximised our use of the media,’ Wigfull said, and the phrase could have come straight from his job interview. ‘It’s a two-way process. There’s potential for information-gathering from the public.’
    ‘Like the old Wanted posters?’
    Wigfull looked puzzled, then pained. ‘We’re more sophisticated.’
    ‘ Crimewatch ?’
    ‘We’re in the twenty-first century. My brief is to make the police more approachable.’
    ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of giving out my phone number?’
    ‘Not at all, but I may at some point arrange for you to be interviewed by a magazine or newspaper.’
    ‘You’re joking. What about?’
    ‘About you – as a human being. They’ll do a full page profile.’
    Diamond frowned. ‘You can stuff that.’
    ‘You are a member of the human race.’
    ‘Yes, and I value my privacy.’
    ‘Don’t look so worried, Peter. You’re not top of my list. Not even halfway up, in fact.’
    A putdown calculated to injure Diamond’s pride, and it succeeded. ‘What’s the matter with me? Okay, you don’t have to answer that question.’
    ‘The interviews are only one of many innovations I’m making.’
    Diamond lifted the top from the burger and and poured on some ketchup. He wished he’d sat with someone else.
    ‘I’m feeding titbits to the media as well,’ Wigfull added. ‘Human interest stories like the missing cavalier.’ He spoke the last two words in a throwaway tone, as if Diamond should have known all about it.
    ‘What’s that – an oil painting?’
    ‘Please.’
    ‘A dog, then?’
    ‘Dog?’
    ‘Cavalier King Charles spaniel.’
    ‘It’s what I said – a missing cavalier. You won’t have heard of this because it hasn’t come to CID. There’s no crime that we know of . . . yet.’
    ‘But it could come to pass?’
    ‘When I release the facts to the press there’s a chance they’ll take up the case and someone will know something.’
    ‘Go on, then.’
    ‘Two weekends ago they re-enacted the Civil War Battle of Lansdown.’
    ‘Missed it.’
    ‘You would, when all you think about is rugby and old films. The real thing was in 1643 and they had a major muster three hundred and fifty years on, in 1993.’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A muster. That’s the term they use. It made a very colourful spectacle, I’m told. There are societies like the Sealed Knot who take it very seriously.’
    ‘Pathetic,’ Diamond said.