Another One Goes Tonight

23

Bath has many amusing ironies. The best is the fact that thousands of tourists arrive because of the Jane Austen connection while the author herself could hardly wait to quit the place with “happy feelings of escape.” Another is that for three decades no one could bathe in Bath-because the spa water was deemed dangerous.

This was remedied in 2006 when the New Royal Bath opened. The massive glass cube a few steps across the street from the Pump Room has a clean bill of health, is stunningly modern and houses five floors of pools and treatment rooms using the warm spring water that fell as rain ten thousand years ago, is heated more than a mile below ground level, and is the source of the city’s existence.

Mind, the project had a series of embarrassing false starts. Part-funded by a millennium grant, the building was envisaged as a spectacular way of marking the year 2000, and six years later it still wasn’t open. Delays and spiralling costs made it into a battleground between the designers and the contractors while horrified ratepayers looked on. The farcical high point was the visit of the Three Tenors in 2003. Perfect timing, it was thought, for a grand opening. Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras were duly filmed beside the rooftop pool (but not in it) holding glasses of the spa water, but the champagne had to be put on ice because the wrong paint had been used and a legal injunction meant new contractors had to be brought in to do the work. Fully three more years passed before the doors were opened to the public.

Gerry Onslow, the most feared man in the West Country, wasn’t bothered about the forty-five million the building was said to have cost. He reckoned he was paying off the overspend himself. He had exclusive use of the place several evenings a week after the public had left and the doors were officially closed. How much this cost him was a secret known only to the management and Gerry, but it must have been substantial.

He always came with a team of heavies who made sure he was not interrupted. They guarded the main entrance, the changing rooms and the pool area. No one was so foolish as to enquire if they were armed.

This evening Gerry was in the Minerva pool on the lower ground floor. Although the visually exciting rooftop pool has the best views and the water temperature is the same as downstairs, the Minerva has more appeal on a chilly April evening. Another factor in Gerry’s thinking was that any evil-minded person with a long-range rifle could take a shot from the roof of the Abbey tower.

He wasn’t there to swim. This was all about easing away the stresses of a complicated week of trafficking, laundering money, making offers people couldn’t refuse and watching his own back.

He floated.

In the buoyant water, he could have been lying in bed, he was so relaxed. He filled his lungs with the warm air and treated the water like a mattress. He wasn’t built like an athlete, but fat is less dense than muscle and more helpful for floating. Gerry didn’t think of himself as fat and didn’t want anyone else to think it either, so let’s say discreetly that here in the water the laws of physics were in his favour.

Out in the middle, he felt safe. The massive trumpet-shaped white pillars rising from the turquoise pool and bearing the weight of the entire building gave a feeling of stability. He liked staring up at them and thinking about the business he supported.

So he was totally unaware of the manatee-like shape gliding underwater towards him. The first he knew of it was when something brushed against his foot.

Startled, he drew his legs up to his chest and tipped like a barrel, glimpsing the creature’s shadow below him. But he couldn’t stop himself from swallowing a pint of water before he got control of his body and managed to stand upright, with his feet on the bottom. The pool’s depth was the same throughout, only four feet six.

A smooth, oval head broke the surface within touching distance and water cascaded from it.

The manatee spoke.

“Easy, Gerry.”

“What the fuck…?”

The creature was human, but not reassuringly human. To Gerry’s eye it was uglier than any sea monster.

Yet there was just a chance this might be someone who had been allowed in by mistake.

“You shouldn’t be here. The bath is closed.”

“Not to me.”

Spoken with menace. No mistake.

A manatee would be preferable to this.

Gerry looked round for his minders. Nowhere in sight. They’d cocked up, the toerags. They would be burnt toast in the morning.

Forced to humour the invader, he said, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Peter Diamond, Bath CID.”

“Police?” Gerry shrilled. Panic set in. They must have found out about Charlie Gaskin, his so-called “oppo,” who had taken a bullet to the head last month and was now part of the foundations of a new high-rise building in East Twerton.

Peter Diamond said, “I’d have brought my warrant if it was waterproof.”

“Get outta here.”

“No thanks. I went to some trouble to get in.”

“How the hell…?”

“Hiding in a towel room for over an hour. I need a quiet chat with you and this is the ideal situation.”

“What d’you mean-‘ideal’?”

“I know you’re clean, don’t I?”

“Ha bloody ha.”

“And if your minders take a pot-shot with their handguns, they’re as likely to hit you as me, so they won’t try.”

“Who told you I was here?”

“Common knowledge. Take my advice, Gerry, and vary your routine. Shall we do this in the whirlpool?”

A feature of the Minerva was a bowl-shaped structure in the middle of the pool.

“Why should I fucking talk to you?” Gerry asked. His teeth were chattering, but not from cold.

“Because I know enough to put you away for a long time-but that isn’t in the plan if you cooperate. I want answers to questions, off the record. I have no hidden tape recorders, no wires, see?”

The policeman spread his palms and it was true. All he was wearing was a pair of baggy blue swim shorts.

There was still no help in sight. Grudgingly, Gerry waded towards the dormant whirlpool and took a position inside, with Diamond in his wake.

“Don’t panic if it starts up,” Diamond said, when comfortable. “It’s on a timer.”

“I know,” Gerry said. “I’m a regular.”

“I heard. And you have it all to yourself, as befits a man of your status. You can afford luxuries now you’re top of the heap.”

Something close to panic crept up Gerry’s spine.

“What heap?”

“Would you rather I said ‘the firm’? Or ‘the empire’? Bob Sabin called it his family, didn’t he?”

Gerry felt like saying “no comment,” but that would have confirmed he had a major crime to hide. Instead, he kept his mouth closed.

Diamond said, “Wasn’t that his name for it-family? We know the only family he truly had was his widow, Dilly, and in the end she didn’t get treated like family. I was told she got the Rottweilers and damn all else. I was talking to Larry Lincoln only the other day. Some people thought Larry was like a son to Bob, but he didn’t get much, either-just a few names of people who were late payers. You and Charlie Gaskin were the main beneficiaries, but you had power bases of your own. You were the obvious heirs.”

The mention of Gaskin-and in the past tense-was alarming. Gerry dug deep to deflect attention. “Dilly wouldn’t have wanted to take over. I don’t know how many wives Bob got through. She was the latest, the one who outlived him.”

“What happened to her?”

“She took off with her nice clothes and the bling. I don’t know where.”

“Nothing untoward happened to her?”

Gerry shook his head. “She’ll be all right. She didn’t stand in anyone’s way.”

“I’ll lay out my cards, then.”

Christ, here it comes, Gerry thought.

“I’m interested in a certain Bulgarian woman.”

“A woman?” This wasn’t in the script.

“… who contributed to your income by selling her assets, her natural assets. Are you reading me?”

“No.” Huge relief. Unless he was boxing clever, the policeman hadn’t come about the Gaskin killing. They didn’t know yet.

“The name is Maria Mikhaylova.”

Gerry’s mind was still on the buried corpse in East Twerton. “Say that again.”

“I’d rather not try. You heard it and if you say you don’t remember, you’re a liar. She was on your payroll some considerable time. She arrived here in 2010 or soon after, blonde, thirtyish, average height and build.”

“I know a thousand women like that,” Gerry said, growing in confidence. “You gotta do better than that.”

“You ought to remember this one. She scarpered.”

“When is this supposed to have happened?”

“Eighteen months to two years ago. She changed her name and got another job, but you didn’t know at the time.”

“How would I remember, then?”

“You found out eventually when the payments stopped.”

Gerry was willing to talk about Maria for the rest of the evening. “I’m a tycoon. I got more important stuff going on in my life than some girl going AWOL.”

“The reason you remember Maria is you put out a contract on her only last month. You’re a tycoon. You make the big decisions. She was found dead in the river a mile downstream from Swineford. Does that ring a bell?”

If it did, it was a warning bell. “Not really,” Gerry said.

“Don’t give me that. It’s in all the papers-not her name-but the fact that her body was found in the Avon. Was she dead already or did she drown?”

This could be trickier than it first appeared. Gerry went silent again, deciding how to react.

Diamond had spread both arms along the rim of the whirlpool. “Off the record, Gerry. I’m not about to nick you for this one. I know it won’t stick.”

So had this been shadow-boxing? Was Gaskin’s fate the charge that would stick?

Gerry felt shaky again. He didn’t like this situation. He was ready to talk about Maria. He wanted to talk about her. “What if it was an accident?”

“What indeed?”

“She was fully clothed.”

“So you do know about her.”

“Not the way you’re telling it,” Gerry said.

“Go on, then. I’m listening.”

He started talking to save his own skin. “Maria from Bulgaria was known to me, yes. If she’s the person you’re on about, she was no trouble to anyone. She had a nice house south of the river in Oldfield Park. I happen to own some property out that way and she was one of my tenants. I’m not a hundred percent sure what line of work she was in-”

“Come off it, Gerry. We both know what she did and who was running her. She absconded and you couldn’t allow that.”

“Bollocks. She was living in the flat until the day she died.”

Diamond blinked.

“That isn’t possible,” he said. “She decamped a couple of years back, like I told you. She called herself Jessie and took a job as housekeeper near Salisbury, in Little Langford. I have DNA evidence to prove it. We traced her back to Bulgaria and they checked their records. She was working in Europe as a prostitute some years and then got over here as an illegal. All this is a matter of record.”

“It’s news to me,” Gerry said. “I’m telling you Maria was living in the house I own at 22 Darwin Road and paying her rent.”

“Until when?”

“Until she fell in the river.”

“No, no, no, no.” The policeman looked as if he was about to burst a blood vessel. “What are you suggesting here-she had a double life? She was based in Little Langford, housekeeping for an old man called Cyril Hardstaff, twenty-four-hour caring. I’ve spoken to people who knew her. I’ve seen the room she slept in.”

“Have it your way,” Gerry said, trying to humour him. “We can’t be talking about the same bird.”

For that he got a glare a judge might give the public gallery after an obscenity was uttered, followed by drop-jaw uncertainty, as if the gallery was empty. “You were collecting money from her all this time?”

“Regular as clockwork.”

“This is the woman in Darwin Road?”

“Sofia Maria, I called her.”

“Why was she killed, then?”

“Obvious, ain’t it?” Gerry said. “She done it herself. Anyone else wanting to dispose of her wouldn’t choose the river.” Instantly, Gerry regretted what he’d just said. Talk of alternative disposal arrangements could easily turn to building sites.

But Diamond was off on another tack. “Have you heard of Cyril Hardstaff?”

“Not before you mentioned him.”

“He was in hock to Bob Sabin. When Bob died, Eddie Woodburn was the main man, and Larry Lincoln took over as Cyril’s debt holder.”

“That scumbag,” Gerry said. “Yeah, that figures. Lincoln was given some names to play with. Small potatoes, more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Cyril was stealing jewellery to raise the cash. Does the name Max Filiput mean anything to you?”

“No, mate.”

“Ivor Pellegrini?”

Gerry just shrugged.

Diamond seemed to have exhausted all his options. He was like a suicide bomber who has got to paradise only to find they’ve run out of virgins. “I’ve got work to do. I don’t have time to sit in a pool with you.” He splashed out of the whirlpool and swam away.

Gerry took a few long breaths, looked upwards and crossed himself.