Detective Chief Inspector Edward Hare glanced up at the clock mounted on the wall opposite his desk just as the minute hand hit the half-hour with a sonorous click that seemed to announce it no longer had the strength to climb back up to the twelve.

He was working late, sitting in his office in Waterbeer Street, in the building that had housed Exeter’s police force for seventy years. The rain was pattering down the window, throwing dark shadows, like tears, on the wall opposite. He liked this room, with its dark, cosy feel, the books on the shelves, a sense of everything in its right place. He was going to miss it.

Although it hadn’t yet been announced, the entire department was being moved to the east of the city, to the more modern surroundings of Heavitree. It seemed to Hare that the pace of change had become ever faster since the end of the war and although he had tried to attune himself to it, he was still a little sad. The police station in Waterbeer Street was unique. It reminded him of a Bavarian railway station or perhaps a folk-story palace, with its grey bricks, narrow windows and circular towers. His own office was in a corner underneath a roof shaped like a wizard’s hat with views all the way down to Walton’s Food Hall, which had opened soon after he’d started. He’d seen designs for the new building: as drearily modern and utilitarian as he might have expected. Of course, it would be better equipped. The electric lighting might not leave you with eye strain. But he was glad he wouldn’t be going there.

After thirty years in the job, aged fifty-five, he was retiring. He should have been able to look back on a career that had taken him from police constable to detective chief inspector with some degree of satisfaction. And yet he couldn’t avoid a sense of failure. He knew that his superiors considered him reliable, hard-working, a safe pair of hands, but what did all these epithets add up to? Simply, that he had never shown the promise of his early years. He would have a leaving party. There would be a few glasses of wine, cheese on sticks, a speech and the presentation of a clock. And then it would all be over. He would be gone.

With a sigh, he put his glasses back on and returned to the papers he had been studying. He was preparing for a court case that was about to take place in the same building – the police station and the court were neighbours – and as this would be his last appearance he wanted to be fluent, in command of the facts.

The telephone rang.

His first reaction was one of surprise. Who would be calling him at this late hour? He assumed that it must be Margaret, his long-suffering wife, wondering where he was, and he snatched up the receiver to explain. The voice at the other end quickly put him right. It was the assistant chief constable.

‘Good to catch you, Hare. You’re working late.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut into your evening. There’s been a murder, in the village of Tawleigh-on-the-Water. Do you know it?’

Hare knew the name vaguely. It was more than forty miles away, over on the west coast of Devon. He guessed that the victim had to be someone important. The assistant chief wouldn’t be contacting him otherwise.

‘I can’t say I’ve ever been there, sir,’ he said, although it occurred to him that perhaps he had, once, with his wife and the girls, on a beach holiday. Or had that been Instow?

‘There’s an actress. Name of Melissa James. She’s been found strangled in her home.’

‘Was there a break-in?’

‘I don’t have the details yet. The local police called it in and I’m passing it over to you. I want you to get on to it with immediate effect. Melissa James was very well known and the press are going to be all over it.’

‘Sir, you are aware that I’m leaving the force next month?’

‘Yes – and I’m sorry to hear it. We’ll just have to hope it’ll focus your mind. I need a result, Hare, the sooner the better. I don’t go to the cinema much myself but apparently Miss James was quite a star. We can’t have high-profile residents being bumped off. It gives the county a bad name. I want you to report directly to me.’

‘Whatever you say, sir.’

‘I do say! This might be just what you need, Hare. Things have been a bit quiet at your end for quite a while. It might allow you to bow out in style. Good luck!’

The phone went dead.

As he set down the receiver, Hare reflected on what his superior officer had just said. He was probably right in every respect. He had actually seen several of Melissa James’s films, including the one she had made locally. What was it called? Hostage to Fortune. He had taken his wife and although he had found the plot rather contrived, there had certainly been something special about her performance. Given her profile, it would certainly reflect badly on the force if her assailant was not quickly brought to justice.

It might also be exactly what he needed: something to make his children proud of him. It would be nice to see his name in the headlines for once. The press nearly always ignored him, being more interested in the criminals he had arrested.

He leaned forward, picked up the phone and dialled. He’d get someone in the car pool to drive him over to Tawleigh, but first he needed to call his wife and tell her to put the supper back in the oven. There would be no time for dinner. He would be staying overnight in Tawleigh and he needed to pack.

FIVE

THE LUDENDORFF DIAMOND

Atticus Pünd adjusted his bow tie, at the same time taking the opportunity to examine himself in the bathroom mirror. He was not by nature a vain man but he had to admit that he was pleased by what he saw. He was, all in all, in remarkably good shape. He was slight but he was healthy, not showing his age, which was all the more remarkable considering the experiences he had been through. He had survived the war and much worse, and although there had been times when he thought he would never again see the light of day, he had come out of it unharmed and more successful than he could have imagined.

He could not help smiling and, as if in agreement, his reflection smiled back. It helped perhaps that he had lost his hair when he was quite young. There were no telltale wisps of grey to give his sixty-two years away. He owed his Mediterranean complexion to the Greek blood that ran in his veins, even though he had been born and lived most of his life in Germany. It was strange, really. He had been a foreigner from the day of his birth and here he was, living in London, still an outsider. But that also suited him. He was an investigator, a detective. He owed his living to communities of people he had never met before and would never meet again, always working from the outside in. It was both a profession and a way of life.

Were there fresh lines at the corners of his eyes? He reached out for his wire-frame spectacles and put them on. He had not slept well the night before and he was beginning to think that he had made a mistake in the choice of his new bed and its ‘Airfoam’ mattress. ‘You fall asleep on a foamy cloud of tiny air cells’, the advertisement had promised, but he should not have trusted it. He had slept alone since his wife had died and it was at night that he missed her most, lying there surrounded by so much space. What he needed was something smaller and simpler, a bed like the one he had slept on at school. Yes. The thought appealed to him. He would mention it to Miss Cain the next day.

He glanced at his watch. It was ten past six. He had plenty of time to walk over to Gresham Street; he wasn’t expected until seven o’clock. Very unusually, Pünd had agreed to give a speech. Writing about his work was one thing, but talking about it, perhaps giving away confidences, was quite another. That was the trouble. In his experience, people were never interested in the abstract theory of detective work – which was the subject of his still unfinished book, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation. They wanted the sensational details: the bloody fingerprint, the smoking gun, the killer going about his work. Pünd had never seen murder as a game, not even as a puzzle to be solved. His work was an examination of humanity at its darkest and most desperate. You could not solve crime unless you understood its genesis.