Beau Death

12

‘This will impress you,’ John Leaman said when Diamond returned to the police office.

‘Try me.’

‘The Twerton squatters. The last people to live in the terrace, right?’

‘Go on.’

‘I had a call from the owner of the nearest corner shop and he told me one came in today and said they’d gone upmarket. They’re currently in the best squat ever, in the Royal Crescent.’

‘Never.’

‘It’s true. Some Chinese millionaire bought a house last year as an investment and had the interior upgraded and redecorated with a view to making it a centre for oriental medicine. On the day after the decorators moved out last week, the Twerton mob arrived in a van with their sleeping bags. Nobody knows how many. They’ve been moving more stuff in ever since and all the neighbours are going spare.’

‘How did they get in?’

‘Nothing forced. It seems they had a key or knew the combination. Probably paid a wedge to the decorators.’

‘They won’t be easy to shift. Were we officially informed?’

‘Uniform were told at once by the people next door, but you know how it is.’

‘Nobody wants a repeat of Stokes Croft.’

In 2011, Avon and Somerset police had attempted to evict squatters from a shop undergoing refurbishment in the Stokes Croft district of Bristol and the protest soon became a riot lasting most of the night and involving three hundred protestors. Several officers and members of the public were injured and the police were criticised for being too heavy-handed.

‘So it’s softly softly, is it?’

‘It’s a case of “police aware.”’

‘Aware, but staying away.’

‘Rightly so,’ Leaman said. ‘The 2012 act doesn’t apply because the planned use of the house is non-residential. It becomes a civil matter. The owner will need a court order.’

‘Are you sure these squatters are the Twerton people?’ Diamond asked.

‘Positive. It’s no secret.’

‘The guy the shopkeeper spoke to — do we know his name?’

‘He’s known as Tank.’

‘We must talk to him. He’ll be suspicious of our motives, but by the sound of it he’s proud of what they’ve done. We’ll let him know we’re not plotting to evict him.’

‘Won’t wash, guv. In their eyes we’re all fuzz.’

Diamond nodded. ‘Or worse. You’re right, John.’

‘And I can’t see uniform agreeing to us making contact.’

‘They don’t have to know.’

Leaman could still be shocked by his boss.

‘Which house is it?’ Diamond asked.

He’d already decided to drive up to the Royal Crescent and see for himself. The chance of making contact with the people who had actually lived in the Twerton property was too good to pass up.

Whichever way he approached the Grade I listed building in its elevated, open position, the grandeur of the concept never failed to move him. In the afternoon sunshine against a cloudless sky the sweep of the palatial terrace — actually more of a half-ellipse than a true crescent — stood for all that was best about the city he seldom praised but secretly loved.

He’d asked Ingeborg to come with him.

They stopped the car outside number one and walked the cobbled road to check the occupied house. The frontage behind the railings was less than twenty feet, so they could get close to the doors and windows without appearing too obvious. But there was no need for subterfuge because in front of the occupied house a notice in large, bold lettering was displayed on a board screwed to a post anchored in a planter:

‘They’re not new to this,’ Ingeborg said.

‘And they’re not inarticulate,’ Diamond said. ‘Let’s see if we can speak to anyone.’

He rang the bell.

A dog barked from somewhere inside.

After a few seconds there was a squeak from the flap on the letterbox and it was pushed open a fraction. A woman’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

‘Just enquiring if Tank is at home,’ Diamond said, bending low.

‘What do you want with Tank?’

‘Tell him it could be payday.’

‘Does he know you, then?’

‘He wouldn’t remember us. My name is Peter and Ingeborg is with me. Can we come in?’

‘You’re joking. First rule of the house. Residents only. Are you media people?’

‘Don’t insult me. Would Tank care to come out to collect his handout, then? We’re not trying to con our way inside.’

‘How come you know him?’

‘He was in Twerton. Look I’d love to talk about old times, but not bent double and through a letterbox. My back is starting to ache. Tell him we’ll meet him for a bite to eat.’ He turned and asked Ingeborg, ‘Somewhere nearby?’

She was quick with a suggestion. ‘The Green Bird.’

He knew exactly where she meant. ‘The Green Bird, round the corner in Margaret’s Buildings.’ To make the invitation more persuasive he added, ‘Famous for its food. Join us, if you like. What’s your name?’

‘They call me Headmistress.’

‘Should I remember you? Were you in the Twerton place that got levelled?’

‘For a short while.’

‘Come too, then, Headmistress. Say in about twenty minutes. You’ll find us at one of the tables outside. I’m the big guy in the dark suit. Inge is the blonde in a beige jacket and black trousers.’

‘You’d better not serve us with a writ, mister.’

‘We’re not bailiffs, my love. What you’ll get served is a plate of delicious cooked food. I bet you don’t get much of that where you are.’

When they’d left the crescent and were in Brock Street, he said, ‘The Green Bird is good. The table outside gives them a chance to look at us without feeling trapped. And if the other customers object to crusties, we’ll be in the fresh air.’

‘Why should anyone object?’

‘This isn’t Twerton. Unwashed people in striped woolly hats and dreadlocks may not be all that welcome.’

‘You have a mental picture already, do you?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘In the place they’re living they’ll have better showers and bathrooms than you and I do.’

‘But do they use them?’

‘We’ll find out,’ she said coolly.

‘Did I say something wrong?’

Ingeborg said, ‘If you really want to know, guv, you did.’

‘What was that?’

‘The only thing we know about these people is that they’re squatters. It doesn’t mean they stink. They’re probably forced into desperate measures.’

‘Okay. Point taken.’

‘And there’s another thing. I don’t wear beige. Beige is a turn-off.’

‘What colour’s your jacket, then?’

‘Tan.’

‘They’ll know what I mean.’

‘That’s beside the point. You tell anyone the woman with you is wearing beige and they’ll think boring.’

Chastened, he did his ham-fisted best to make up for being so crass. ‘Whatever you are — and you can be a pain — you’re never boring, Inge. In future I’ll say tan.’

The Green Bird café was only a short walk from the Royal Crescent, in a paved pedestrian-only street. The boards outside spoke of breakfast, lunch, cakes, tea and coffee. ‘Let’s get something on the table before they come,’ he said after a look in the window. ‘Fancy some cake?’

‘Is this on expenses?’

‘It’s work, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll have the polenta cake and a coffee, then. Should we have a Plan B?’

‘Why?’

‘In case they don’t like the look of us. It works both ways.’

She was right. He’d made crude assumptions about Tank and the Headmistress. The job sometimes drained him of humanity. More than most, he ought to have sympathy for the homeless, particularly the young unemployed. His own grandfather, once a prisoner-of-war forced to work on the Burma railway, had returned to civilian life in 1946, a pathetic shadow of the strong man he’d been. The bomb-damaged home his wife and children were in was due for demolition and they were forced to join the nationwide squatters’ movement. Tens of thousands of ex-servicemen and their families made desperate by the shortage of housing occupied army camps and any empty properties they could find. That generation of the Diamond family had moved into a block of so-called luxury flats in Kensington sharing rooms with others. Someone made the mistake of forcing the locks and all the occupiers were brought to court, but the judge took a lenient view and bound them over ‘to keep the peace’ — an irony that didn’t escape the ex-servicemen who had spent six years fighting to restore the peace. Eventually the family were given a prefab. The fact that it was constructed of asbestos-cement sheeting was another story. They had survived.

So Ingeborg was justified in reminding him that squatters were people driven to desperate measures. This lot had been turfed out of Twerton. It was immaterial that they’d ended up in the finest address in Bath. You went where you heard of a place that was empty and where there was a way in without forcing the locks.

Two coffees and two slices of cake later, Ingeborg asked him, ‘Could that be them, do you think?’

A couple with a black greyhound were staring into the window of an art gallery across the street. Both looked about forty and were dressed casually, but not scruffily. No dreadlocks and no striped woolly hat. The woman was about six inches taller than the man.

‘I doubt it,’ Diamond said.

‘They’re not looking at the artwork. They’re studying our reflection.’

‘Can’t see why anyone would call him Tank.’

‘For a joke. Like some big men get called Shorty. She doesn’t look to me like a headmistress. Anyway, they’re deciding whether to come over.’

The right decision was made.

‘Try not to show surprise at anything I say,’ Diamond said without moving his lips.

The couple arrived at the table and it was definitely the voice of Headmistress that said, ‘You must be Peter and Ingeborg.’

Diamond was on his feet, hand outstretched, but Tank didn’t offer his. He didn’t look friendly either. ‘You told her you knew me. I’ve never seen either of you before.’

‘Didn’t I make it clear?’ Diamond said. ‘I know of you. You lived in the place at Twerton that got demolished and now you’re at a much better address. Why don’t you join us and have something to eat? It’s a good menu.’

‘What do you want?’ Tank said. ‘We don’t have any spare rooms.’

He thought they were homeless.

Diamond managed to keep a straight face by not looking at Ingeborg. In her fashionable tan jacket this would test her social conscience. ‘We’re not asking for rooms. It’s not about the Royal Crescent. We’re interested in the Twerton gaff and what happened there. I’ll pay good money.’ Diamond felt in his back pocket and placed a twenty-pound note on the table.

Tank eyed the money as indifferently as if he was playing poker.

‘Buy the dog some food,’ Diamond said.

With nice timing, the greyhound sniffed at his leg and he offered the back of his hand to a warm, wet tongue. Deciding they were friendly, the dog rested its long jaw on Diamond’s thigh and eyed him beguilingly.

People and their pets. The squatters exchanged a look and sat down.

‘They do an all-day breakfast,’ Diamond said.

Headmistress said, ‘He’ll have one. A sandwich will do me. Coffee for both. I’ll go in and see what they have. Would you keep an eye on the dog? I don’t trust Tank.’ She handed Diamond the greyhound’s lead.

‘Order a breakfast for me, too,’ Diamond called after her. ‘We’re paying.’

She asked Ingeborg, ‘How about you?’

Ingeborg said she was okay with the cake she’d already got.

‘What do you want from us?’ Tank asked for the second time. He looked even smaller when seated, olive-skinned, probably of mixed race, with a smooth, neat-featured face that gave nothing away.

Diamond shrugged. ‘I told you already.’

‘What is it about Twerton?’

‘You must have heard about the skeleton.’

‘Nothing to do with us.’

‘You never looked in the loft all the time you were there?’

‘There was no way in. If there ever had been, someone must have sealed it and done a good job of rendering. You’re police, aren’t you?’

Diamond didn’t deny it. ‘Dealing with a bigger matter than your squat. I was hoping you might help us identify the guy.’

Tank stared back at Diamond with calculation. ‘He was dressed in old-fashioned clothes, wasn’t he?’

‘Not entirely. The underwear was modern.’

‘Has that been in the papers?’

A nod.

‘We don’t read them. You’re not seriously suggesting we knew him?’

‘I’ll take you at your word, you didn’t. How long were you occupying the house?’

‘Two years and a bit.’

‘How many of you?’

‘People came and went, maybe fifteen or twenty in all that time. They found somewhere they liked better and moved on.’

‘Were you there from the beginning?’

‘I was, yes. The whole terrace was declared unfit for human habitation. There’s always a delay before the bulldozers move in. We were in the same day the previous tenant moved out.’

‘Did you know who it was?’

‘I didn’t meet him, if that’s what you’re asking. He was Polish or something. Letters arrived with names we couldn’t speak.’

‘No family?’

‘No kids. There was a woman and an old guy who slept downstairs. He could have been the father of one of them.’

‘Do you know how long they lived there?’

‘Couldn’t tell you.’

Headmistress returned from placing the order. She’d brought a tray with coffees and a dog bowl filled with water. ‘We should come here more often.’

Tank said to her, ‘Before you say anything else, these people are dicks.’

‘What the fuck...?’

‘Avon and Somerset’s finest,’ Diamond said, untroubled, ‘but as I keep saying we’re looking for information about the Twerton gaff. The Royal Crescent will be someone else’s problem.’ He asked Ingeborg if she had a paper tissue. His trouser leg was damp where the dog had rested its muzzle. He mopped up and turned back to Tank. ‘The old guy you mentioned. Did you actually see him?’

The ghost of a smile crossed Tank’s lips. ‘Are you thinking they left him behind in the loft?’

‘It’s worth asking.’

‘He died. There was a funeral. They carried him out in a box.’

‘You kept an eye on them, then?’

‘On the house, while we waited for them to move out. Getting a squat is all in the timing.’

‘Was anything left behind?’

‘What do you mean — curtains, carpets and fittings? We didn’t sign a contract.’

‘Any idea what the man did for a living?’

‘He was in the building trade. Had a rusty white van parked outside.’

‘Did the woman go out to work?’

‘Yes. Don’t know where, though.’

Headmistress said, ‘School meals service. I used to see her in the kitchen at Oldfield Park when we collected the lunches for our kids.’

‘So you really are a headmistress?’

She laughed. ‘Supply teacher. That’s just a name the others call me.’

‘You said you “used to” see her.’

‘She left before he did. Probably made the money she wanted and went back to Warsaw or wherever. A lot of the East Europeans come here just for the wages. It’s big bucks compared to what they can earn back home.’

‘And you said the man was a builder.’ Diamond was thinking about the expert job that had been done to seal off the loft. ‘Did he leave the country as well?’

‘Must have,’ Tank said tight-lipped.

‘I don’t think so,’ Headmistress said. ‘I see his van around still. I saw it in Manvers Street yesterday turning into the old police station. I reckon he’s found work there. The university took over the building and they’re having all sorts of work done on it.’

Manvers Street.

Diamond glanced at Ingeborg, who had raised an eyebrow.

Their former workplace, much derided in its day but regarded now as a lost home-sweet-home. What a cruel twist of fate if a murder suspect was employed there knocking the guts out of the old place.

‘How do you know the van?’ Diamond asked Headmistress.

She was getting looks like guided missiles from Tank, but she wouldn’t be silenced. ‘By the rust marks. He’s bumped it a few times. There’s no writing on the side, if that’s what you’re asking. With a name as long as his, you’d need a van twice the size to get it all on.’

‘You wouldn’t remember the name?’

‘You’re joking. It began with a W and ended with a Z with about fifty letters in between.’

‘She’s making this up,’ Tank said.

‘Slight exaggeration,’ Headmistress said. ‘It was more like fifteen. And his first name was easy to remember. Jerzy.’

Tank turned towards her accusingly. ‘How do you know that?’

‘It was on the letters that came for him. Jerzy, kind of warm and cuddly, I thought.’ She gave him a mocking smile.

Diamond said, ‘I’m thinking you knew these people better than you’ve made out. Was there an arrangement when you took it over as a squat? Did you get a copy made of the front-door key?’

She was about to respond when Tank gave her such a nudge that she slopped coffee over the twenty-pound note still on the table. She picked it up, shook it and handed it to Tank.

‘Shouldn’t have asked,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m not the least bit interested in how you got in, believe me. Whatever you did is history now.’

Ingeborg said, ‘I think the food is arriving.’

‘And when we’ve eaten,’ Diamond said, ‘we’ll walk the dog. I’d like you to come with me to Manvers Street and see if Jerzy is there.’