Beau Death

13

It was a well-fed but far from friendly party that progressed down the sloping streets towards the former police station. Diamond, at Tank’s side, was remarking on changes to the city scenery he’d noticed over the years he’d served there, but the squatter didn’t join in. To him new buildings were opportunities. A short way behind, Ingeborg and Headmistress were in debate about the rubbish problem in the streets. Only the dog was at ease, loping ahead with the light-footed agility of the breed.

Billboards had been erected around the decommissioned police station.

‘It wasn’t a bad old place,’ Diamond said with an upsurge of nostalgia. ‘Do you know how much Bath University paid for this prime site? A mere seven million. I hope they’re not demolishing it entirely.’

‘Why?’ Headmistress asked.

‘It was twenty years of my life.’

‘Move on,’ she said.

‘We have. We moved on to Emersons Green and I flog thirteen miles along boring roads each time I drive there.’

Ingeborg cut short the rant by asking the others, ‘Where did you see Jerzy’s van go in?’

‘The site entrance up ahead.’

‘Let’s check.’

No one was on the gate but there was a sign about unauthorised persons and hard hats that the quartet ignored. Headmistress did take the precaution of using the braking mechanism on the dog lead to put the greyhound on a shorter leash.

Two large skips loaded with rubble stood as objects of reproach in front of the old police station.

‘Even the asphalt has gone from the forecourt,’ Diamond said in a hurt voice.

‘Contractors’ parking up ahead,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Is that where the van might be?’

A row of vehicles included two silver vans, but no white ones with rust marks and dents. A man was sitting inside the cab of a small truck, so Diamond asked him if a Polish guy called Jerzy was on site.

‘What’s his trade?’

‘Some kind of builder. Drives an old white van.’

‘Never heard of no Jerzys here.’

Ingeborg said, ‘You might know him as Yurek.’

‘Yurek? Why didn’t you say? A sparky called Yurek is round the south side working on the lift. He was when I last looked, anyway.’

They were already moving on when the man called after them, ‘Are you lot supposed to be on site?’

They ignored him.

‘Where did that come from?’ Diamond asked Ingeborg.

‘Yurek? It’s a nickname for people called Jerzy.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Friend of a friend.’

‘I thought you said Yorick.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘The skull in the gravedigger scene.’

She smiled. ‘What is it with you and skulls, guv?’

Headmistress added, ‘You should get out more.’

The staircase Diamond had used daily for twenty years had gone and was replaced by an external lift shaft. He gave it the sort of look a polar bear gives a snowmobile. ‘They wouldn’t want the students getting tired climbing all those stairs.’

One side of the shaft was open. Two men in hard hats and overalls were at work on the looped cables below the lift car.

‘We’re looking for Yurek,’ Diamond called out.

One of them turned his head. ‘What for?’

‘Are you Yurek?’

‘I’m busy right now, mate.’ A trace of East Europe came through.

‘We’re police.’

‘All of you?’

‘Two of us. Step outside and I’ll tell you what it’s about. You’re not in trouble.’

‘I will be if we don’t finish job tonight.’ He said something to the other man and emerged from the space. ‘Make it quick, mate.’

Diamond showed his ID.

Yurek, or Jerzy, was a slight man in his fifties with flecks of grey in his eyebrows. The eyes were blue, deep-set and intelligent. He looked at Tank and said, ‘Twerton, three years ago, right?’

Tank nodded.

Diamond and Ingeborg needed to speak privately to Jerzy. Tank and Headmistress took the dog to look at the other side of the building.

‘I know what this is about,’ Jerzy said. ‘Saw it on news. Skeleton in loft. Same fucking house.’

‘We’re trying to trace all the previous tenants,’ Diamond said. ‘You were there until it was condemned and the council took over.’

‘Whole sodding terrace condemned. Nothing wrong with it. Someone saw chance to turn profit. Walls would have stood for years. I was forced out.’

‘That’s you and your family?’

‘Just me.’

‘I thought there were others.’

‘You mean my woman and her old father? He died. And she pissed off back to Poznan.’

‘How long were you living in the house?’

‘Ten, eleven years, easy. Low rent suit us fine. Wasn’t luxury. Toilet in back yard.’

‘Do you know who owned the terrace?’

‘Some company. I deal with agency in Oldfield Park. Up Your Street. Fucking useless, they were. Not there any more.’

‘While you were living in the house, did you do any work on it?’

He hesitated, becoming wary. ‘What you saying? Anything needed doing, agency supposed to fix.’

‘Yes, but you’re a professional. You can fix things yourself.’

‘Like change light bulbs? I did that, sure. Anything else — their responsibility. Supposed to be.’

‘I was thinking of the roof. An old building like that. Tiles must have needed replacing.’

Jerzy looked at him as if he knew where this was leading. ‘Never went up there. Well built. Workmen’s houses, but well built.’

‘You wouldn’t have needed to go in the loft?’

‘No access.’

‘Wasn’t there a water tank up there?’

‘Water was from spring into catchment chamber outside. Storage tank in kitchen. No upstairs plumbing. We use old tin bath.’

‘So you lived there all that time without knowing what was in the loft?’

‘My woman wouldn’t stay one minute if she knew.’

The answers Diamond was getting may have been brief, but they sounded convincing. The real problem was that nothing new had emerged. ‘Who lived there before you did?’

‘Some guy on his own. Never met him. House was empty six weeks before we started renting.’

‘Lived alone, did he? How long had he been there?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Was he old?’ Diamond was thinking back to the few things he’d learned about the skeleton in the loft.

Showing his contempt, Jerzy vibrated his lips softly and looked away.

Diamond was starting to understand the difficulties John Leaman had faced when trying to compile a record of the tenancy. ‘Didn’t anyone mention this man’s name?’

‘Did once. Didn’t mean much to me.’

‘What was it?’

‘I forget.’

‘Try and remember.’

‘Something English, like Harry.’

‘Harry who?’

‘Or Bert.’

Ingeborg smiled. You had to, or you’d weep. Jerzy was the witness to make you think about jacking in the job.

‘So whatever his name was, he was probably English. Any clues what he did for a living?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If Harry or Bert had a trade, like you, he might have left some of his bits and pieces around the house.’

‘Bits and pieces?’

‘In your case, it might have been fuses, or cable-cutters or pliers.’

Bad example. Jerzy stared at Diamond in reproach. ‘I don’t leave nothing lying about. I have tool box. Each pair of pliers has slot in box. I take with me when I move to new place. My living, get it?’

Patience, Diamond told himself. This isn’t good for the hypertension. ‘What I’m getting at is this. Whenever I move into a new place there are signs of the people who were there before me. Small things, maybe, down the back of the sofa or between the floorboards. A receipt, a button, a few coins if you’re lucky. You come across some little item and it’s a link with the previous tenants.’

Jerzy frowned and shook his head. As well as having a poor memory he lacked curiosity, let alone observation skills.

‘You said you heard the guy’s name once, so you must have talked to somebody about him. The agency?’

‘No.’

‘A neighbour, then, or someone who called at the house, like the postman or a meter reader.’

‘You think so?’ It sounded like a challenge Diamond wasn’t going to accept.

‘And they didn’t say any more about him, whoever he was?’

‘They could have talked to my woman.’

‘Ah.’

‘Her English better than mine.’

‘And she’s back in Poland now?’

A nod.

‘She didn’t learn anything else about those tenants?’

‘Don’t know. Wasn’t interested.’

‘Are you still in touch with her?’

‘No, mate. Don’t I say already?’

‘Say it again.’

‘Back in Poland.’

Through gritted teeth, Diamond said, ‘Why? Why did she leave?’

‘She dump me, don’t she, after her dad die? I put up with smelly old man sleeping in my living room all those years. Soon as he is gone, so is she. Fucking fated, that house. Bad.’

Ingeborg immediately picked up on the last remark. ‘What did the house have to do with it?’

‘Dead man in loft.’

‘But you didn’t know that.’

‘Do now. Makes sense, don’t it, all the shit that went wrong? Rows we had. Old man and his bronchitis. Her leaving. It was house. Everyone touched by evil.’

This had strayed into the realm of gothic horror and Ingeborg wasn’t having it. ‘You can’t say that. Just because you had some bad experiences—’

‘Wasn’t just me. What about guy who lived there before me?’

Diamond butted in again. ‘This is who we’ve been on about for the past ten minutes. What about him? Go on.’

‘His woman left him, just like mine did.’

‘You didn’t tell us that.’

‘You don’t ask.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Diamond said.

Ingeborg, staying cool, said, ‘Tell us what you know, Jerzy.’

‘Well, we hear there is woman living with him and she can’t stick it so she walk.’

‘You can’t say who told you this?’

‘My woman, I expect. And she’s—’

‘Back in Poland. You told us.’

Jerzy grinned. He had a sense of humour.

‘But you still can’t tell us who they were, these people, or anything else about them?’

‘I told you name.’

‘You told me two names, Harry or Bert.’

‘Harry is more like. I think Harry.’

‘Okay, we’ll go with Harry. Did he keep the house nice?’

‘It was okay.’

‘The little garden at the back? Did he grow anything?’

‘Forget-me-nots.’

There was a pause while Diamond and Ingeborg decided whether this annoying man was winding them up. It seemed he wasn’t.

‘Bloody things came up each spring. Like weeds, aren’t they? I take spade, get rid of fuckers.’

That figured, Diamond thought.

‘Then I grow potatoes.’

At this point Diamond decided he didn’t want to hear about the potatoes and it was unlikely anything else would emerge. The unwanted forget-me-nots had summed up the interview. ‘We’re leaving now,’ he told Ingeborg.

On the walk back to the car after they’d left Tank and Headmistress exercising the dog in Queen Square, Ingeborg said, ‘What did you make of all that, guv?’

‘Not much,’ Diamond said. ‘There wasn’t much.’

‘A wasted afternoon?’

‘You never know. Some of it could be helpful.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the two women who lived in the house both walking out on their men. Didn’t that strike you as strange?’

‘Not in the least,’ she said. ‘A tin bath in the kitchen? I wouldn’t have stuck it for love nor money.’

He grinned. ‘A hundred years ago most of the population scrubbed up in front of the kitchen sink. Bath night was a luxury.’

‘This wasn’t a hundred years ago. It was in living memory. It’s primitive.’

‘One ended up in Posnan,’ Diamond said, still thinking about the two fugitive women. ‘I wonder what became of the other?’

‘Living with Harry?’

‘Or Bert.’

‘Are you thinking she’s dead?’

Some thoughts need time to mature. The tenants before Jerzy may well have been there during the crucial 1989 to 1995 slot and may have known the dead man. ‘Put it this way: I’d like to be reassured that she’s still alive.’

‘He couldn’t be sure about names so how would we find out?’

‘By digging.’

‘Digging in the backyard?’

‘I don’t mean literally.’

‘Why not?’ she said in all seriousness. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time an unfortunate woman has gone missing and been killed and buried by her so-called lover.’

He weighed the suggestion. Typical of Ingeborg to come up with the wronged-woman scenario. They’d only just heard of the existence of this lady and already she was cast as a murder victim. Yet Inge’s intuitions were never wholly unfounded. The house was already a murder location.

Stay within the bounds of reason, he told himself. The corpse found at the address hadn’t been buried. The fact that an unknown woman had lived there at one time and then left was a far cry from proving she was murdered and buried there. People walk out on their partners every day of the week. Stronger evidence would be needed to justify the man-hours expended on a dig. Headquarters wouldn’t wear it.

And yet...

‘It’s a building site now,’ he said.

‘A crime scene,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Technically, yes, but it’s been levelled. Loads of stuff has been taken away.’

‘The ground could still be holding evidence,’ she pointed out. ‘All we’ve done up to now is a fingertip search. If we leave it to the builders, they could be laying foundations any time, spreading concrete or driving in piles. We’d need to move fast.’

‘This is too speculative,’ he said.

‘Okay, forget about the woman if you want to,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Think about your crime scene. Isn’t that what you taught me to treat as hallowed ground? That small piece of garden is all we have left to explain a really bizarre case of murder.’

‘It was ruined before we knew we were dealing with murder. It’s flattened now.’

‘Under the surface. Who knows what may be buried there? Is it still cordoned off?’

A chill of guilt went through him. He couldn’t answer. He hadn’t been back. He stood still, lost for words.

Ingeborg wasn’t sparing him. ‘We don’t have any idea who the killer of the man in the loft was except he used the place to hide the body. Chances are he lived there as a tenant. You can’t live in a place without leaving evidence of yourself. Who knows what might turn up if we do a dig?’

‘You seriously think there’s a body there?’

‘Aren’t you listening, guv? I’m talking about stuff he may have discarded. An empty cigarette packet, a lottery ticket, a teaspoon, a glove, a hairclip, a foreign coin. It helps build a picture of who was living there. I don’t need to tell you this.’

She was right. His mindset was all wrong. He’d given so much mental energy to learning about Beau bloody Nash that basic procedures had been neglected.

‘I’ll clear it with Georgina.’

‘As soon as we get back?’

‘Soon as.’

But Georgina wasn’t in Concorde House. She was visiting some people in Charlcombe, Diamond was told by her personal assistant.

‘Is she expected back today?’

‘She didn’t say. She wasn’t in uniform.’

‘Unusual.’

‘Yes, she was looking really smart in the sort of blue the Queen sometimes wears. Heels, too. And she’d had her hair done again.’

‘I’m sorry I missed that.’

He asked to be informed if Georgina returned that day, but it sounded unlikely. In her absence he couldn’t authorise the dig, so he asked Ingeborg to drive out to Twerton and make sure the builders weren’t already corrupting the crime scene. ‘If it isn’t already sealed off, get it done. With luck, we’ll have a busload of bobbies out in the morning with spades and sieves.’

He called Halliwell and Leaman to his office. ‘Thanks to the Marks and Spencer lady we have a time frame. The Y-fronts first went on sale in 1989 and were replaced by another line in 1995. Allowing that some guys keep their underwear going for several years, we agreed that the outside limit is 2005.’

‘Too big,’ Leaman said with his customary plain speaking.

‘What do you mean — too big? The Y-fronts?’

‘The time frame. Sixteen years in a place where lodgers came and went like tube trains. Can’t we cut it down more?’

‘How do you propose to do that?’

‘A probability graph.’

‘A what?’

‘The early nineties, when pants like that were on sale everywhere, must be more likely than 2000 or after.’

‘Okay,’ he said, dazed by the reasoning.

‘As the time goes on, the probability declines. It’s a distribution curve and it falls away after 2000.’

‘I get it now, John.’

‘But can we agree on it?’ Leaman insisted. He could be so exacting.

‘No argument.’ Diamond said to shut him up. ‘You were looking at dates, Keith.’

‘Was I?’ From the frown on his face, Halliwell was trying to picture a distribution curve.

‘Come on. Dates when the city may have put on some kind of event involving Beau Nash.’

‘Right. 1974, three hundred years after he was born.’

‘Too far back. The pants weren’t in production then.’

‘The other likely dates were the millennium and the Queen’s jubilee.’

‘Unlikely,’ Leaman said.

‘What?’

‘We just agreed 2000 and 2002 are both towards the end of our time frame, so you can’t call them likely. To my recollection nobody dressed as Nash for either.’

The blood pressure was rising. ‘All right,’ Diamond said. ‘Here’s a better suggestion. The Beau Nash Society was meeting regularly right through those years and the president always dresses the part. He’s known as the Beau.’

‘You think our victim was one of their presidents? Wouldn’t they have noticed if he suddenly went missing?’

‘In the suit,’ Halliwell added.

‘It’s a line of enquiry,’ Diamond said, undermined by the reactions of his colleagues. ‘Don’t stamp on it before we even get it running. These people meet regularly and some of them are pretty high-powered. The current Beau is Sir Edward Paris, the property tycoon. You and I met him in the Archway café.’

‘Him?’

‘Him.’

‘He looked in good health when we saw him.’

‘Be serious, Keith.’

‘Why would anyone as well-off as that end up dead in a loft in a Twerton terraced house?’

‘If I knew the answer to that,’ Diamond said, ‘this case would be done and dusted. Let’s investigate and find out. I’ve met one member, Estella Rockingham, a writer. She’s been helpful but she only joined recently. She wouldn’t know what was going on in the 1990s.’

‘Who would?’

‘Our friend Sir Edward, for one.’

‘Where does he hang out?’

‘The society meets at a place in the Circus, but unless either of you fancies dressing up in a frock coat and breeches, we won’t get past the door.’

‘They can’t bar us,’ Leaman said.

‘I don’t want to muscle our way in. It’s no basis for an interview. I’d rather speak to him in his home.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘I’m told it’s a large modern house out at Charlcombe.’ He stopped and slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Did I just say Charlcombe?’