Another One Goes Tonight

16

One thing Diamond had learned in life was not to feel sorry for himself. Rage against the gods by all means, but don’t have anything to do with self-pity. It’s toxic. His back was sore, he hated the new office, the IPCC people were on the prowl and his own deputy was losing confidence in him, but would he let it drag him down?

He was too busy for that.

The funeral bash-as he thought of it-in Cavendish Crescent in May 2014 had become a pivotal event in this case. Max’s cleaner, Mrs. Stratford, had talked of mayhem and insanity when the mourners were given the green light to help themselves to the railway items. Some exaggeration, there. Coffee had been spilt, Jessie’s skirt stained. But it had created a distraction. Maybe an opportunity for Cyril-who wasn’t interested in railways-to go looking for more valuable items.

Miss Hill, the solicitor, had presided over the funeral.

He called her on her direct line.

“Thanks for the valuation photos. You’ve been a splendid help already.”

“What do you mean-already?” she said. “I do have other matters to attend to.”

“And I won’t delay you long. You made the arrangements for Massimo Filiput’s funeral, you told me.”

“He had no family. We have a duty of care for our clients, even after death.”

“Admirable-and I understand you attended in person, not just the funeral but the reception afterwards.”

“How do you know that?”

“I spoke to someone who was there, his home help, Mrs. Stratford.”

The name worked like a bunch of flowers. “A bright young woman. She gave me considerable assistance before and after the funeral. She knew where things were in the house.”

“Did she help you contact people?”

“She found his address book. I sent the details to just about everyone in it, but only a handful turned up, mostly elderly men.”

“The railway enthusiasts. This is what I was coming to. I’d like to meet them, those who are still alive.”

“You might be disappointed. They don’t have much conversation apart from steam trains.”

“I’m prepared for that.”

“This may be unkind, but I believe the only reason most of them came was to find out what would happen to his collection. I said I needed to dispose of a stack of worthless posters and magazines and they cleared the lot like locusts.”

“One of the mourners-Cyril Hardstaff-wasn’t part of that lot.”

“Yes, an old teaching colleague from Wiltshire College. Much more balanced. He spoke so warmly on the phone of Mr. Filiput that I invited him to give the eulogy and I’m glad I did. He was excellent. You should meet him.”

“Too late,” Diamond said. “He died suddenly six weeks ago.”

“Oh my word. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I wanted to check with you whether Mr. Filiput made any provision in his will for Cyril.”

“No. Everything was put up for sale and the entire proceeds went to the railway museum. I thought I told you this.”

“I needed to be certain. Between ourselves, Miss Hill, I was at Cyril’s cottage yesterday and I gave some assistance to his niece, who was clearing the place. We found a gold necklace that formerly belonged to Olga Filiput, the serpent necklace from those probate pictures I requested from you.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath.

“That’s difficult to believe.”

“I’m sorry. I promise you it’s true. It was in a velvet bag, hidden in a mattress. I suspect he stole it. I’m telling you this in confidence because I know I can rely on you.”

“I took him for a gentleman, an absolute gentleman.”

“Also a compulsive gambler under pressure to repay large debts. You wouldn’t know about that.”

“Oh my word.” An expression that in Miss Hill’s scale of shocks wasn’t far short of a major earthquake.

“If he saw something as valuable as the necklace, the temptation would be too much.”

“This is so unexpected.”

“Yes. Do you know where the jewel collection was kept?”

“Upstairs in the bedroom that was originally Olga’s.”

“In a safe?”

“In an antique tallboy.”

“With locking drawers?”

“No.”

“Could Cyril have gone up there while the reception was in full swing?”

“There was nothing to stop him or anyone else. I didn’t think security was necessary at a post-funeral gathering.”

“He may have sneaked out while the railway people were scrambling for the posters.”

“Mr. Diamond, this is so unlikely. He was the most charming man you could wish to meet.”

“I heard exactly those words from two other ladies.”

“Is it possible Max made him a present of the necklace while he was still alive?”

“A generous thought,” he said, “but why should he? I wouldn’t give away items that belonged to my late wife. Handing them to another man you play Scrabble with? It’s unlikely.”

She was still grappling with what he’d told her. “Are you suggesting he stole the other pieces of jewellery as well?”

“Very likely. He may not have taken everything at once. Remember he was a regular visitor, and even Max had a vague idea that things were missing.”

“But how could anyone give such a wonderful eulogy in the knowledge that he’d behaved as badly as that?”

“There’s an old saying: debtors are liars.”

“Oh dear, you make it sound all too possible. We’ll need to inform the sole legatee, the railway museum.”

“Not yet,” he said quickly. “Not while we’re still investigating. We’ll see what else we can recover.”

“There are legal issues, now I think about it.”

“Take your time over the fine points of law, Miss Hill. The museum can afford to wait. And there is another favour I must ask.”

“What’s that?” Her voice was an octave higher.

“Just a formality. I need the names and contact details of everyone who attended the funeral.”

“I can see to that. But you will be discreet?”

“Never more so. This is strictly sub judice as far as I’m concerned. It’s all conjecture, isn’t it?”

The official work of CID demanded his attention for the rest of the morning. John Leaman had been interviewing the church-roof robbers and now wanted to extend the enquiry by pulling in the scrap-metal merchant they did business with. Paul Gilbert was dealing with a poison-pen case, local councillors complaining about obscene letters. Both Leaman and Gilbert made clear in their different ways that they were feeling sidelined. He’d never been one for nurse-maiding his team, but they had a point. His priorities were elsewhere and it was all too obvious. He sat down with them both and forced himself to show more interest.

By lunchtime, Halliwell had the glazed expression of an election teller after an all-night count.

“No success with the care agencies?” Diamond said.

“Do you know how many there are, because I don’t and I’m only up to the letter C. Comfort Care, Candlelight, Calm and Caring, Care Matters, Call Us, Clearway, Coming to You, Come What May, Cat’s Whiskers-”

“Is that a care home? Sounds more like a cattery.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m in need of care myself.”

“Let’s get lunch.”

Ingeborg had phoned in and made her peace with Diamond. She was working from home.

“Unlike her,” Halliwell said. “She likes the buzz of the office.”

“She’s still hoping to find something from Pellegrini’s computer,” Diamond told him. “She can concentrate better.”

“I would have given up by now.”

“You’re not a quitter, Keith. I have every confidence you’ll reach D for Day Care before you draw your pension.”

They were in the Lock Keeper, one of the two Keynsham pubs they’d decided was worth the short drive. In the summer, the beer garden overlooking the Avon would be good, but today in a north wind and with sleet pinging against the windows, everyone was inside except a couple of desperate smokers.

Diamond picked up the previous conversation while waiting for his burger and chips. “The good thing about modern technology is that you can do more than one thing at a time.”

“Such as?” Halliwell asked, frowning. He’d known his boss long enough to suspect something lay behind the statement.

“Your research into care agencies. You can do it on a laptop anywhere you like.”

“If you have wifi.”

“This afternoon you’ll be joining me on a mission to Frome. Nothing to stop you using the laptop in idle moments.”

“Frome? What for?”

“Miss Hill sent me the guest list for Max’s funeral. There are two members of the GWR group we haven’t caught up with-the only two who aren’t dead or brain dead. Jake and Simon Pool.”

“Brothers?”

“No. They’re married and they live in a signal box.”

The driving rain and sleet kept the wipers working at double speed most of the way down the A30 and Diamond was repeatedly telling Halliwell to slow down.

“Do you know where this signal box is?”

“Beside the railway.”

“I can work that out for myself,” Halliwell said, under stress. “Which side of the town?”

“I phoned ahead to find out.”

“So do I head left or right?”

“It’s not simple. I was given a potted history. Originally there were four boxes. It was a busy junction, with trains serving the Somerset coalfield as well as the passenger routes. This one is known as Frome Middle.”

“Yes, guv, but where is it?”

“We’d better ask at the station.”

No one at the station seemed to have heard of the place, but when Diamond mentioned it was in use as a house occupied by a gay couple, everyone knew. It was a reconstructed signal box a mile out of town.

They found it without more difficulty along a stretch of disused track, a smart, two-storey building with red bricks to halfway and a wooden superstructure painted in the chocolate and cream colours of the GWR, all topped with a pitched, tiled roof and chimney. The name was displayed in brown lettering. Above this, a long row of brave, buffeted daffodils in window boxes made a stirring sight on this dismal day. End-to-end windows upstairs are a necessary feature of a signal box home.

The small garden had more daffodils and some late snowdrops. Railway sleepers had been used to make the raised flowerbeds.

Halliwell parked beside a Toyota on the gravel.

The door at ground level didn’t look like the official entrance, so they went up the stairs and were greeted by an open door and a booming, “Come in, whoever you are. Heard you coming.”

A large man, rather too large for a signal-box existence, showed them inside. Probably not much older than Diamond, he was positively youthful by comparison with the rest of Pellegrini’s friends. He was in a T-shirt, jeans and carpet slippers. The room was invitingly warm. “I’m Jake Pool and my other half, Simon, is downstairs making tea. You are the police, I take it?”

Diamond explained who they were. “I expect everyone asks you: did you build this yourselves?”

“Yes, it’s a cheat, I’m afraid, only a replica. The 1875 building was demolished in 1933 when they made major changes and opened a new line between the junctions at Clink Road and Blatchbridge so that the expresses and much of the goods traffic could bypass dear old Frome Station. If you want to see a genuine version, go to Didcot Railway Centre. In 1983, when we were rather more spry than we are now, we helped remove the box at Frome Mineral Junction and rebuild it there with the original materials. And already I see your eyes glazing over, so I’ll spare you further suffering.”

Difficult to follow up a remark like that. “I don’t know about you,” Diamond said to Halliwell for politeness’s sake, “but I’ve never been in a signal box before.”

“It’s an experience,” Halliwell said.

“We’re juvenile enough to like it,” Jake Pool said. “Everything you see in here except the sofa beds is ex-railway. We didn’t have room for the signalling equipment, more’s the pity. The kitchen, shower and loo are downstairs, which originally would have housed the interlocking mechanism, the signal-wire wheels and the point-drive cranks. Speaking of cranks, I’ve been called one myself for going on about railway engineering. I’d better shut up. Please take a seat on the first-class upholstery from the Cornish Riviera express.”

“There’s someone at the door.”

“That’ll be Simon with the tea. We keep saying we should have built interior stairs. It’s no fun having to go outside in weather like this. Would you mind letting him in?”

Halliwell opened the door to a small windswept man holding a tray of tea things.

“Has he been boring you?” Simon asked. “Relief is at hand.” He set the tray on a polished table that was probably from some Pullman dining car. Neither visitor enquired.

“The crockery is genuine GWR from the 1940s,” Jake said, “now becoming rare.”

“But the tea is Lipton’s English Breakfast,” Simon said. “I’m not sure which brand they used on trains in those days. And the scones aren’t 1940s either. I made them myself this morning. I must have had a premonition we’d have visitors.”

“Or that the law would catch up with us eventually,” Jake said with a grin. “Do make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen.”

Cream tea in a signal box. Policing is never predictable.

“You must have heard about Ivor Pellegrini’s accident,” Diamond said when the cups were filled. “We’re following up. He’s still in a coma unfortunately, so he can’t tell us what he was doing out so early on his tricycle.”

“Poor fellow, yes,” Jake said. “We were shocked when we heard. Our little branch of the Great Western Society has suffered terribly over the past two years.”

“We’re the only members still standing,” Simon added. “There were seven of us at one stage. I know we’re getting on in years, but four deaths and an accident is a bad run, to say the least.”

“You meet in each other’s houses and discuss the great days of steam, we were told.”

“And there’s the occasional excursion. It’s as harmless as the girl guides. I can’t think why the gods decided to inflict such losses on us.”

“The deaths were natural, weren’t they?”

“Yes, but so many. The latest was only last May.”

“Max Filiput?”

“I can see him sitting in that chair where you are now, a grand old boy, over ninety,” Jake said. “He looked forward to coming here when it was our turn to host the meeting. It was the experience he came for.”

“And my sausage rolls,” Simon said.

“You went to his funeral,” Diamond prompted them.

“As fine a send-off as I can remember. Good hymns, nice music and the man who gave the eulogy really had done his homework and yet managed to work in some amusing asides. He wasn’t a railway buff either.”

“He and Max once taught together at that big college in Salisbury,” Jake said.

“I know who you mean. His name was Cyril,” Diamond said. “Cyril Hardstaff. I learned this week that he, too, has died.”

They almost dropped their precious teacups.

“I find that incredible,” Jake said.

“Extraordinary,” Simon said.

Jake shook his head. “He was in sparkling form at the funeral, regaling us all with his stories. Witty, fully in command, unlike poor old Max.”

“You can’t be witty from inside a coffin,” Simon said.

“That isn’t what I meant. Max was definitely losing it towards the end.”

“But he still hosted the meetings. I wouldn’t call him senile, just absent-minded at times, and that’s understandable at the end of a long life. Do you want more cream on that scone, officer?”

“It is rather good.” Diamond scooped up some more. “Getting back to the funeral, I believe the solicitor, Miss Hill, made some kind of announcement when you all went back to the house.”

“She indicated, without precisely saying so, that no one present stood to benefit from Max’s will and it later emerged that he’d left everything to the National Railway Museum.”

“Is that Didcot?”

“No, York. And then she told us there was a stack of paper items of no great value that Max had stipulated could be shared among his railway chums. We were welcome to help ourselves to any of them if we desired. If we desired? When you issue an invitation like that to a group of fanatics like us, you’d better stand back. The next half-hour was not dignified.”

“Did you find anything?” Halliwell asked.

“Several fascinating items.”

“And who was involved?” Diamond asked. “Both of you, obviously, and Ivor Pellegrini. Was he in the thick of it?”

“Naturally,” Jake said. “Ivor is as keen as we are. He was so eager that he elbowed some lady and tipped coffee over her skirt. I’m sure he made an apology, but he wasn’t distracted for long.”

“If you were sifting through the papers, I don’t suppose you noticed what the others were up to-the people who weren’t collectors.”

Simon laughed. “It’s just a blur.”

“You can’t tell me if anyone left the room?”

“I can tell you two of the ladies went off to the kitchen to see what they could do about the coffee stain.”

“I don’t know why you’re asking,” Jake said. “Any of us could have slipped out and probably did. The bathroom is upstairs. We know, because we’ve been to the house often enough for our meetings.”

“The meetings, yes,” Diamond said, willing to shift direction. “And you’ve also been to Mr. Pellegrini’s house?”

“That’s the arrangement. We take it in turns.”

“Where does he play host-in his workshop?”

“Have you seen inside?” Simon asked.

Diamond didn’t exactly tell a lie. “I can’t say I have.”

“We’re green with envy.”

“Was he the founder of your club?”

“It’s not really a club,” Jake said. “Just a gathering of like-minded people. We’re an unofficial branch of the Great Western Society, not affiliated in the way some of the bigger branches are. We don’t have the numbers.”

“We were never enough to form a branch,” Simon added.

“More like a twig,” Jake said, “and a thin twig at that.”

“Who started it?”

“We’re an offshoot of the Bath Railway Society. That’s how we met. They’re interested in railways generally and some of us were looking for a more focused approach.”

“Focused on the GWR?”

“We’re anoraks and proud of it,” Simon said. “Jake and I first met as teenagers collecting train numbers on Paddington Station. Did you know that the term ‘anoraks’ was first used about train-spotters? The anorak is the perfect garment for standing on the most exposed bits of draughty station platforms, your large pockets filled with notebooks, your ABC of locomotives and, of course, your sandwiches. So that’s us, glad to be gay, ardent to be anoraks.”

Jake smiled. “But the rest of the world thinks we’re barmy.”

“Not by my reckoning.” Diamond was trying to find a way of asking about the cremation urns without revealing that he’d seen them himself. “Mind you, we had our doubts about your friend Ivor.”

“Why was that?” Jake said. “He’s the sane one. You don’t want to be put off by the clothes he wears.”

“It wasn’t the clothes. It was a remark he made about hops when he was stopped by a police car.”

“HOPS-the electrification project?”

“We didn’t know that at the time.”

“He was probably on his way to watch them at work with their special factory train.”

“That wasn’t the only strange thing he said. He had a plastic pot in his saddlebag that he claimed contained the ashes of his late wife, Trixie.”

“Is that so?” Jake’s attention switched to Simon. “Have you topped up the teapot?”

A clear attempt to get over an awkward moment.

Diamond didn’t hold back this time. “To cut to the chase, gentlemen, we’ve done our research. His wife wasn’t cremated. She was buried. The urn must have contained the ashes of someone else. Your friend Ivor was on his way to scatter them secretly somewhere along the railway.”

Neither of their hosts said anything.

“It’s not a criminal offence,” Diamond added, “but Network Rail wouldn’t look kindly on it. Was such a thing ever discussed at your meetings?”

“I’d better boil some more water downstairs,” Simon said.

“No you don’t,” Diamond said, gesturing to him to sit down. “I want an answer from you.”

“About the scattering of ashes?” Simon said, as if he hadn’t understood. He turned to Jake. “Do you have any memory of this?”

“We’re not the transport police,” Diamond said. “No one’s in trouble. I’m only trying to confirm what Ivor was doing that night.”

Jake had been staring into his cup as if he wished he could dive in. Now he looked up. “There is an understanding between us that when our time comes and we are cremated, someone will unite our remains with the railway we love. Up to now, this service has been performed by Ivor. I expect the ashes were those of Max. While HOPS is in progress it’s not unreasonable for a railway enthusiast to be out and about at night.”

“Ivor did the same for the three who died previously?”

“He did.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. It’s clear you put a lot of trust in him.”

“He’s a great guy, the mainstay of the group. This accident is catastrophic.”

“I’m getting the picture of a group of people sharing an interest so strongly that you thought nothing of inviting them all to your homes. It’s all very cosy. But in any group there are going to be differences of opinion, misunderstandings, even the occasional flare-up. I don’t suppose your lot were any different.”

“What are you getting at now?” Jake asked.

“You spoke about Max losing it towards the end. He had some fine antiques and jewellery in that house in Cavendish Crescent. Was there ever any talk of things disappearing?”

“Hold on a minute,” Jake said, colouring noticeably. “Don’t get me wrong. Losing his concentration, not his property.”

“Some items did go missing,” Diamond said.

“Railway items?”

“Pieces of his late wife’s collection of antiques and jewellery.”

Jake swung to Simon in surprise. “Did you ever hear him speak of this while we were there?”

Simon shook his head. “I’m appalled if it’s true.”

“I’m afraid it is,” Diamond said, “and Max was troubled enough to mention it to his doctor.”

“Did he suspect any of us?”

“He didn’t name anyone.”

“And are you suggesting things were taken at the funeral?”

“It was the last opportunity the thief would have.”

“But there were other people present. Neighbours, his cleaning lady, the solicitor.”

“His old friend Cyril,” Jake said. “And the woman who came with him. Don’t just point the finger at us railway buffs. If we wanted to steal anything, it wouldn’t be jewellery. It would be a locomotive name-plate.”

Diamond believed him.