Skeleton Hill

25

Forced this time to do his own driving, he headed out of London in the slow lane of the M4 at a rate that required everyone else to overtake, even old ladies in rusty Minis. For much of the journey he was reflecting on the shooting of Keith, questioning his own motive in sending him to deal with Vikki whilst taking Andriy for himself. He’d let Keith talk him out of his first intention, which was to go to Marchant Road. He couldn’t even argue that it had been about dividing forces according to risk. The decision had been taken on nothing more serious than Keith’s offer to cope with another house visit, another chorni khlib and kvas welcome. Up to then, Vikki had seemed the softer option and, being the guv’nor, he would have taken it as his right – in which case, his conscience would still have plagued him. Face it, Peter Diamond, he thought, either way, you’re a selfish bastard.

As another exit sign came up, he forced his thoughts to the challenges still to come, primarily his next skirmish with Georgina. She was certain to hold him responsible for the shooting of Keith and she might well think an enquiry was required. Diversionary tactics were called for.

At Membury services he stopped to fill up and let the team know he was returning. Ingeborg took the call. She ought to have been impressed that he was using the mobile. It merited at least a ‘cool’. But no, she was completely focused on Keith.

‘He’s still in the world of the living,’ he told her and then the demon inside made him say, ‘I saw him this morning, happy as a pig in shit.’

‘No kidding?’

‘We’ll have to drag him out of there if you want to see him again. The nurses are real babes.’

‘Swell,’ she said flatly, her concern for Halliwell on the wane. ‘Last night you sounded seriously worried.’

‘Tired, I expect. The good news is that we have a name to work with.’ He told her about Nadia Berezan. ‘Do what you can on that miraculous computer of yours to see if there was ever a woman of that name in Bath or Bristol.’

‘Wouldn’t she have changed her name?’ Ingeborg said. ‘I would, if I was on the run from the mob.’

‘Not so simple as you think, Inge. She’d need proof of identity if she was applying for benefits, as she’d surely need to. A false passport is expensive and takes time to acquire, even if you know where to go for one.’

‘I guess.’

‘We have to work with what we’ve got. Or rather you have to work with what I’ve got.’

‘Can’t argue with that, boss.’

‘How’s it going in the incident room? The Bristol boys behaving themselves?’

‘They’re trying to reconstruct Rupert’s last few days on Lansdown, looking for more witnesses.’

‘It sounds the way to go. And you? Have you successfully infiltrated the Sealed Knot?’

‘I don’t know about that, guv. I’ve started my basic training as a foot soldier. So far it’s as exciting as the girl guides. Learning the rules and how to carry a pike. Lesson Three is tonight. We’ve been promised some swordplay.’

‘Where do you meet? I’m tempted to sneak in and have a peek.’ ‘I’m not telling.’

‘I must get on the road again. By the way,’ he threw in casually, ‘is Georgina on the premises?’

‘She was here at the crack of dawn this morning, extremely uptight about Keith. She said she was going to phone the hospital. She thought it best if all of us didn’t pester them with calls.’

‘Sensible.’

‘She’ll be over the moon to hear he’s recovering so well. I’ll tell her as soon as I’m off the phone.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

There was a pause. He could almost hear her trying to work it out. ‘Don’t you want her to know?’

‘Keep her guessing a bit longer. Sympathy sits better with Georgina than good news.’

He resumed his sedate drive and eventually left the motorway at Junction 18, south on the A46, the busy route over the rump of the Cotswolds and down into Bath. Only he wasn’t ready for the city. After Dyrham Park he detoured right, onto a road known as Gorse Lane that links to Lansdown. All the intensity of London and the Ukrainians had left him needing to reacquaint himself with the source of the mystery.

This was a grey, bleak morning and the place names fitted the conditions. Somewhere to his left was Cold Ashton. Looming on the right, Freezing Hill, where the royalists had unwisely formed their battle array in 1643. Ahead were Hanging Hill and Slaughter Lane. He chugged up the steep north scarp of Lansdown and pulled in at the potholed stopping point for the Grenvile Monument. He had it to himself.

Outside, a keen north-easterly chilled the flesh. He wouldn’t linger long, just enough to stretch his limbs and remind himself of the terrain that had hosted two unexplained murders. The monument didn’t interest him. He wanted the view of the vast limestone plateau. In the foreground lay the battlefield where two great armies had clashed; and where, centuries later, ten thousand had come to watch the first big re-enactment. On the other side the ground plunged into a partly wooded area where the skeleton had been buried. Away in the distance, two miles along the road, the gilt lantern top of William Beckford’s Tower marked the graveyard where Rupert Hope had been found.

Between the murder sites lay all those places for recreation: the racecourse, the golf club, sports pitches and the setting for Lansdown Fair and its modern incarnation, the car boot sale. The down didn’t have bad associations for everyone. For some it held good memories, outsiders coming in at fifty to one, match-winning goals, holes in one, bargain buys, conquests of every sort. For Peter Diamond it was an adversary; dispiriting, tormenting, defying his attempts to get a rational explanation of two violent killings. He was convinced that the truth of the mystery was here, waiting to be discovered.

Beginning to shiver from the cold, he took a long look at the panorama from the battlefield to the tower. Mainly turf, but with clumps of trees, and the occasional building, the ground was un -remarkable, the sort of country you drove through unthinkingly. Yet it had endured since the Jurassic period some 150 million years ago, when a warm, shallow sea covered all of this and deposited the limestone, the source of Bath’s prosperity. This ancient hill was the silent witness he couldn’t question. He’d hoped that being here would inspire him with a sudden crystal clear revelation, but there was none.

‘Bugger you, Lansdown,’ he said out loud.

Georgina awaited.

Instead of calling at the incident room he trudged upstairs to her office, bent on getting the worst over first.

‘Come.’

The door was open and she was standing in front of her desk with her arms folded. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough, the Queen on the wall looked over her right shoulder.

‘You’re back.’

‘That’s the size of it,’ he admitted.

‘What on earth happened to result in Keith Halliwell being shot?’

He gave her his version.

‘Didn’t anyone know it was a house of ill fame?’

A phrase he hadn’t heard in many years. Where had she got that? In the dorm at her posh girls’ school secretly reading the News of the World? ‘We were operating alone at that stage. We didn’t have the local police to ask.’

‘You used to be in the Met. Wasn’t Barnes a part of your old beat?’

‘Many years ago, ma’am. It was probably a respectable house in those days. We were given the address by a churchwoman.’

‘Who’d been duped, as you were.’

Stung by that, he said, ‘Even if we’d known it was a – er – house of ill fame, I wouldn’t have expected anyone to pull a gun on Keith. No way could we have predicted anything like that.’

‘How is he now? Have you seen him?’

He was more reserved than he’d been with Ingeborg. ‘He’s off the critical list.’

‘That much I found out myself by phoning the hospital. They seem to think he’ll be unable to work for several weeks.’

‘With a bullet through his middle, I expect so.’ He added, making it sound like a throwaway line, ‘Good thing we can cover for him.’

Georgina seized on it at once. ‘I don’t know how. He was one of your SIOs, a key person in the investigation. How can you possibly replace him?’

‘I’ll do it myself.’

She took a sharp, audible breath. ‘I don’t think so, Peter.’

He waited for the broadside.

‘We agreed you were CIO, an executive role. You don’t seem to appreciate what it is to be a senior policeman. You shouldn’t have gone to London at all. Your place is here, at headquarters, supervising both arms of the investigation.’

‘The trip was arranged through a contact of mine. I had to be there.’

She ignored that. ‘This has all worked out very conveniently for you, hasn’t it? From the beginning you wanted to run both inquiries yourself. You managed to get the Rupert Hope case brought back from Bristol on very dubious grounds.’

‘With your blessing,’ he put in.

‘With my compliance. You shoehorned our Bristol colleagues into the same incident room as the skeleton inquiry.’

‘Only because you wouldn’t provide a second room.’

‘And now you want carte blanche to roll up your sleeves and go to work on the case.’

‘Someone has to do it, ma’am.’

‘What about John Leaman?’

‘He’s needed to take care of all the other stuff that comes up, knife crime, drugs, domestics.’

‘You’ve got an answer for everything.’

He nodded, and he’d let Georgina have the last word. All in all, he’d come out of it better than he expected.

Downstairs, the team were excited at the possibility that the skeleton had an identity at last. Ingeborg was checking every database she could think of. Others were on the phone trying to prise information from the benefits office, medical practices and women’s refuges. Each hoped to be the one who shouted, ‘Found her!’

All this energy lifted Diamond’s spirits. ‘Ukrainians are strong church-goers,’ he said, airing his new-found knowledge. ‘She may have gone to one of the churches here and asked for help.’

‘But which?’ Ingeborg said. ‘There’s no Ukrainian Orthodox church in Bath that I know of.’

‘Catholicism is strong over there. She might have looked for a Catholic church.’

DC Paul Gilbert, the rookie in the team, piped up, ‘St John’s in South Parade, or St Mary’s in Julian Road.’

‘Are you a Bible-basher?’

‘No, guv. I just happen to know.’

‘Your job, then. Seek and ye may find.’

From across the room one of the Bristol detectives said out of the side of his mouth, ‘Thus spake the Lord.’

Diamond didn’t hear. He was looking over Ingeborg’s shoulder, trying to make sense of what was on the screen.

‘Just thought I’d check the churches,’ she said. ‘He’s right. St John’s and St Mary’s.’

‘Worth a go,’ he said. ‘You’re a young woman. Put yourself in her situation. She manages to escape from a vice ring in London. She’s unlikely to have much money. Gets on a train at Paddington and ends up here. The first question is why – what’s the attraction?’ ‘Why did any of us end up here? It’s a nice place to live.’

‘She was desperate. I doubt if she was making that kind of choice.’

‘She knew someone, then. She planned to join them, thinking they might help her get a new start.’

‘That’s more like it.’

‘But I’ve tried looking for Ukrainians in Bath, and found nobody. I expect some came, but there’s no record of it.’

‘This is where the computer lets you down,’ he said. ‘It stores all those gigabytes of data, but if someone hasn’t kept a record of what you want, it’s no help. People who stay with friends don’t get on computers.’

She laughed. ‘Good thing. It would lead to no end of trouble.’

‘But you know what I’m getting at? You put a lot of faith in this as an information tool but nothing has yet been devised that gets even close to word of mouth. We’re going to have to get out there and ask people questions.’

‘About something that happened twenty-odd years ago? Are memories that reliable?’

‘Nadia was different. How many Ukrainians have you and I met? I’m sure I’d remember.’

‘True.’

‘I have a description from Vikki. Average height. Blue eyes, widely spaced, straight nose, even teeth, good legs, straight, long hair that could have been any colour because she changed it often.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, guv,’ Ingeborg said, ‘but half my friends look like that. An e-fit might work better.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘It depends how good Vikki’s memory is and if she’s willing to do it.’

‘I promised to leave her alone in return for the information I’ve just given you.’

‘We’re not asking her to incriminate herself.’

‘I’ll ask Louis if he can fix it. Personally, I never had much faith in photofits and e-fits aren’t much better. They all look like extra-terrestrials to me.’

‘It’s something to show. The public respond to visual images.’

‘I’ll get it organised.’ He got back on track. ‘Any other reason she might have chosen Bath?’

‘She heard about it from one of the punters?’

He snapped his fingers. ‘Good thought, Inge. Here’s a scenario. The guy lives here and visits London on business. Likes to have sex when he’s away from home and gets to know Nadia. He’s rich and treats her kindly. She thinks if she can find him he may set her up, but it doesn’t play like that. He has a wife and a career and a respectable life here. When she traces him, he gets in a panic. He agrees to meet her late one night on Lansdown and kills her.’

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Difficult to prove. How would we ever find him?’

A voice behind said, ‘And where’s the connection with Operation Cavalier?’

He turned to find Septimus had crossed the room.

‘Rupert Hope,’ Septimus said, as if memories needed jogging.

Diamond was at his best when a little bluffing was necessary. He hadn’t forgotten how important it was to keep both strands of the enquiry linked if possible. ‘For businessman read lecturer. Rupert was around in the early nineties, wasn’t he?’

‘But making regular trips to London?’

‘Researches. The British Museum. The Imperial War Museum. The British Library.’

Septimus grinned. ‘Quick thinking.’

‘It’s only a theory. How’s your side of the investigation going?’ ‘We’ve been working on the days between the re-enactment and his death. We traced a few more witnesses, dog-walkers and car-booters. They all agreed he was acting strangely.’

‘From the blow on the head?’

‘It sounds like it. He could talk, but he had no idea who he was, or what to do, except he stole food when he was hungry. He slept rough and wandered about the down until his killer caught up with him and finished him off.’

‘You’re assuming both attacks came from the same individual?’ ‘It’s the most likely explanation. Similar injuries.’

‘And in each case the attacker didn’t leave the weapon lying about nearby. Is the search of the cemetery complete?’

‘All done. A few objects were picked up and sent for testing, but the result was negative. I think the killer was smart. He took the weapon away with him.’

‘We’re still talking about a blunt instrument, right?’

‘Something clean, that left no traces in the head wound. Heavy enough to split the skin and dent the skull, but not to cleave it. Yes, blunt is right.’