Skeleton Hill

27

Before ten next morning, DC Paul Gilbert called the incident room and asked to speak to the boss. There was such a rasp of excitement in the young man’s voice that Diamond moved the phone away from his ear and still heard everything. ‘Guv, I’m at Lower Swainswick with a lady by the name of Mrs Jarvie. She worships at St John’s in South Parade. She had Nadia as a house guest for two weeks in 1993. It’s proof positive that she came to Bath.’

Diamond wasn’t immune to excitement himself. His voice gave nothing away, but his arms and legs were prickling. All the years of experience didn’t suppress the adrenalin surge that came with a discovery as big as this. ‘What’s the address? I’ll come now.’

Lower Swainswick is a one-time village long since absorbed by Bath’s urban sprawl, on rising ground to the north-east. He kept telling himself to think about his driving as he headed out along the London Road and between the lines of parked cars in the built-up streets of Larkhall, but of course the reason for the trip kept breaking his concentration. This was it. The timing was right – 1993, nicely inside the time span Lofty Peake had given for the death of the skeleton woman. And it fitted what he’d learned in London about the Ukrainian call girl who’d made her escape to the West Country. This local landlady sounded like a terrific find. With any luck she’d finger Nadia’s murderer.

Paul Gilbert’s car was outside a cottage in Deadmill Lane that was almost entirely covered in clematis. The young constable himself came to the door – the man of the hour, in Diamond’s estimation.

He was a shade less triumphant than he’d sounded on the phone. ‘I’d better warn you, guv. She’s elderly – well, very old, in actual fact – only I feel sure she’s all there mentally.’

‘That’s okay, then.’

‘She’s also deaf.’

‘I can cope with that. Are you going to let me in, or do you want to go over her entire medical history?’

A sheepish smile from Gilbert. He reversed a step and started to lead the way in. Remembering something else, he turned and started up again. ‘Incidentally, I haven’t told her what happened to Nadia.’

‘If you know for sure, I wish you’d tell me,’ Diamond said.

He hadn’t got far when his eyes started to water. The cottage reeked of cat pee. Or was it curtains in need of laundering?

‘Pongs a bit.’

‘You get used to it,’ Gilbert said, leading the way through a short passage into a back room where the old lady evidently sat by day and slept by night. She was out of bed, dressed in a pink cardigan and blue tracksuit trousers and seated in a rocking-chair with a large white cat on her lap. Two tortoiseshells perched on the windowsill and a sleeping Persian had the eiderdown to itself. The odds had lengthened against the curtains as the source of the odour.

Paul Gilbert hadn’t exaggerated. Mrs Jarvie was very old. She looked halfway to heaven already. The chalk-white skin hung in overlapping folds under the eyes and below the jaw.

Gilbert introduced Diamond and the only reaction this prompted was some adjustment to the hearing aid. At least she could move her hands.

‘He wants to ask you about Nadia,’ Gilbert shouted.

The old lady opened her eyes and spoke, and it was only to say, ‘You don’t have to shout.’

‘Nadia,’ Gilbert shouted again. To Diamond he said, ‘I don’t think the hearing aid works.’

Mrs Jarvie said, ‘I was ninety-six in July.’

‘It takes an effort,’ Gilbert said to Diamond, ‘but it’s worth it.’ He moved closer. ‘Nadia, the Ukrainian girl.’

‘Are you asking about Nadia again?’ she said. ‘I told you all about her.’

‘You said she was here in 1993. Is that right?’

‘I gave her the spare room,’ Mrs Jarvie said. ‘She wasn’t with me very long. She was easier than some of my guests because she spoke good English.’

‘How do you know it was 1993?’ Confirming which year Nadia came to Bath was fundamental to the enquiry and couldn’t be bypassed, so after getting a blank look he nodded to Gilbert to come in with his toastmaster impression.

This time the message seemed to get through. ‘I had my eightieth birthday the weekend before she came. I particularly remember giving her a piece of my birthday cake and a glass of sherry when she arrived.’

‘So which year were you born?’ Diamond asked, not entirely convinced.

No reaction at all.

Gilbert rose to the challenge again.

‘I just told you,’ Mrs Jarvie said with a sigh, as if all the aggravation was coming from the visitors. ‘I’m ninety-six. If I get to a hundred I get a telegram from the Queen.’

‘Yes, but which year?’

‘Guv,’ Gilbert said.

Diamond looked to where the young DC was pointing. On a wall above the bed was a framed sampler in needlework with the letters of the alphabet and under it the words Bless this house. Julia Mary Jarvie, born 23rd July, 1913.

The mathematics checked. Somebody up there had pity on us, Diamond thought. Bless this house and bless you too, Julia Mary Jarvie. We’ve got a date to work to.

The old lady had noticed what they were looking at. ‘I worked that when I was only eight years old.’

‘Marvellous. Would you tell us about Nadia?’

‘Who?’

He raised the decibels. ‘The Ukrainian.’

‘Is it? I hardly ever go outside, and neither do the cats. They hate getting wet.’

This would not have been an easy process for a patient man, and Diamond wasn’t that. Gilbert stooped close to the old lady’s ear and repeated Nadia’s name with more success.

‘She was a refugee. What do they call them now?’

‘Asylum seeker?’

‘She didn’t have anything except the clothes she was wearing. I took her in as a Christian duty.’

‘For the church?’

‘Father Michael was always asking me to take in homeless girls. He’s crossed the River Jordan now.’

‘Popped his clogs,’ Gilbert explained in an aside, in case Diamond had missed the meaning.

Mrs Jarvie continued: ‘I must have had more than a dozen staying here over the years. Do you want to know about the others?’

As one, her visitors raised their palms to discourage her.

Diamond said to Gilbert, ‘Ask her if Nadia said anything about herself.’

This was a complex question for someone who heard about one word in five and didn’t always get that right, but this time there was a result.

‘She was working in London before she came here, but she didn’t like it there. Someone told her Bath was nice. Well, it is, isn’t it?’

‘Did she talk about her life in the Ukraine?’

She lowered her eyes and stroked the cat. ‘It was all very sad. She didn’t remember her mother and father. She grew up in an orphanage and when she got to sixteen a man came and took her away.’

This tallied closely with Vikki’s information. Any lingering doubt that they were speaking of the same Nadia could safely be dismissed. He listened keenly to every word.

‘He was a stranger, she said, and she had to go to work for him. She didn’t tell me what kind of work it was, but I had my own thoughts about that.’

‘Prostitution?’

‘Did you say streetwalking? I’m afraid it was something of the sort. As I was telling you, they sent her to London. I don’t know how long she was there before she ran away and made her way to Bath. Through God’s abundant mercy she found our church. We try and help lost souls.’

‘But she didn’t stay long.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

Gilbert did his shouting again.

‘No, she didn’t stay,’ she said. ‘She went off one afternoon and I didn’t see her again. To tell you the truth, it upset me. She could have told me if she was unhappy here. Sometimes I wonder if it was the cats that put her off. I don’t think she was comfortable with them.’

Diamond could sympathise, yet he managed a sweeping gesture that was meant to reassure. ‘Did she say where she was going?’

To his great relief, she seemed to tune into his voice, or he was pitching it at a better level. ‘I just told you I have no idea.’

‘While she was staying, did she ever speak of people she knew in Bath?’

‘Never.’

‘Did she bring anyone back to the house?’

‘Men, do you mean?’

‘Anyone at all.’

She shook her head. ‘She was no trouble at all while she was here. She was never late coming home, except for the day she left altogether.’

‘Which day was that?’

‘You want to know which day? You’re asking for the moon. How would I know one day from another after all these years?’

He glanced up at the sampler. ‘It must have been some time after your birthday on July 23rd.’

‘The beginning of August, then. Or thereabouts.’

‘You’ve no way of telling? You don’t keep a diary?’

‘A diary – with all the shopping and cooking and cleaning and gardening as well? When you have a house guest you don’t have time for anything else.’

He sensed that he probably was asking for the moon, so he got her back on track. ‘What did you do the night she left?’

She was still tuned in. ‘I went to bed at my usual time, thinking she’d soon be coming in. I slept upstairs in those days. I had the front room and hers was the back. She could have got in if she’d wanted. She knew I keep a spare front door key under the flowerpot beside the front door. In the morning I found the door of her room still open and the bed hadn’t been slept in.’

‘Were her things gone?’

‘What things? She didn’t have any things of her own. She used my towels, my face flannel, even my shampoo and soap. And her clothes were given by the church.’

‘Did you report it? Speak to Father Michael? Call the police?’

‘It’s a pity she didn’t find a little job. They say the devil finds work for idle hands. I do hope she didn’t go back to her old way of life.’

He had to repeat his question.

‘Report it? Not for some time. I thought she might come back, you see, and it would have seemed inhospitable if I’d reported her missing. In the end I think I told someone at the church, but by then she’d been gone a few weeks and no further action was taken. With people like that, who arrive out of the blue, you never know when you’re going to lose them again. Would you like to see a picture of her?’

A picture? Would he just?

‘There’s a wooden box under the bed.’ She turned to Gilbert. ‘See if you can reach it, young man. Pay no attention to anything else you might see there.’

Gilbert delved underneath and pulled out a dusty rosewood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The cat on Mrs Jarvie’s lap was forced to move.

‘Now would you hand me my magnifying glass from the bedside table?’ She opened the box. It was stuffed with letters and photos. ‘The picture I’m looking for should be here somewhere.’

This, Diamond reflected, gritting his teeth, could take some time. Cultivate patience, you hothead. To get an image of Nadia will be momentous.

She didn’t take long. ‘Here we are. This was snapped in the garden by my neighbour, Mrs Brixham, now gone to paradise like Father Michael, poor soul. That’s Nadia with me preparing runner beans for dinner. It was such a nice day we sat outside. She had a lovely smile.’ She handed the photo across.

Although the 6 x 4 colour print had faded, the focus was sharp enough to provide a clear image. It showed a slightly less decrepit Mrs Jarvie beside a young woman on a garden seat. They had kitchen knives in their hands and a saucepan between them.

For Diamond this was a moment to set the pulse racing, the chance to see the face of the young woman whose tragic history he’d been investigating. In the picture she appeared untroubled, no doubt relieved that she’d found this safe haven. She was giving a wide smile to the camera, holding up a bean in her left hand to show what the picture was about. Her hair was blonde and long enough to have been drawn back, gathered and held in place with combs. She was wearing little or no make-up. He noted that she was wearing the expected jeans and a T-shirt. Her face was East European in shape, a fraction too broad to be conventionally pretty, but the smile caught a moment of happiness that gave life to the fading image, a point of contact that moved Peter Diamond more than he’d expected. No doubt he was indulging in sentiment he would have ridiculed in anyone else, yet he felt Nadia’s personality lived on in the photo, a young, laughing woman putting her grim past behind her without knowing she had only a few days left.

That photo said more than any e-fit would have done.

‘May we make a copy of this?’

No response.

Moved by what he’d just seen, he’d lowered the pitch of his voice. A second attempt got through.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ the old lady said, frowning. ‘I don’t want it getting into the newspapers.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m wearing an apron, that’s why.’

‘We’ll cut you out of it. We only want Nadia’s head and shoulders.’

‘I can’t think why.’

He wasn’t going to enlighten her at this juncture. ‘We’d like to find out what happened to her. Nobody has seen her since this was taken.’

‘I hope she’s all right. She was no trouble to me.’

They left after replacing the box under the bed and allowing the white cat to reclaim its prime position.

‘Top result, Paul,’ Diamond said, his heart still pumping at a higher rate. It was rare for him to show emotion to a colleague, but he closed a hand over Gilbert’s shoulder. ‘Full marks for this. Now let’s see if the photo jogs some memories.’

There is a stage in every lengthy investigation when the team needs palpable proof of progress. Personally, he’d stayed positive, though he was pretty sure there had been murmurings in the incident room about the lack of suspects. The circumstances had made this case an unusual one. Generally you know from the outset what has happened and why. Most of the team’s efforts up to now had been centred on understanding the basics, the nature of the crime. All of that was about to change.

He was humming to himself as he returned to the car.

Hard facts had emerged at last. In London he’d found a name for the skeleton victim and confirmed her nationality and her way of life. And now thanks to Mrs Jarvie he’d discovered the year and the month Nadia had come to Bath and gone missing. Better still, he had the photo in his pocket. He could show everyone what this tragic young woman had looked like in life. The headless skeleton had been reconstructed into a real person.

In this heightened mood, he let his thoughts race on from the facts to their interpretation. Nadia had tried to flee from the hell of prostitution at a time when violence had taken over. Murder was already being done. The vice barons would have thought nothing of ordering another killing. It looked increasingly as if she had been followed to Bath by some hit man and executed, most likely as a deterrent to any other working girl who had plans to escape. The decapitation after death seemed to signify a professional killing. Your average small-time murderer hasn’t the stomach for mutilation.

Thinking of small-time murderers, he was forced to admit that the latest developments rather undermined the theory that Nadia’s death and Rupert’s were connected. If Nadia’s was an organised crime ordered by professionals then Rupert’s had the hallmarks of a local affair, a casual killing. Did it matter any more? Probably not. Linking them had been convenient at the time, a way of making sure both enquiries were controlled from Bath. Georgina might complain when the cases were solved and the dust settled, but the world would have moved on.

He drove back to Manvers Street deciding on priorities. The first step was to get Nadia’s face onto posters, into papers and on television. He’d tell John Wigfull to drop everything he was doing and get the job done fast. After sixteen years was it too much to hope that someone in Bath remembered seeing the girl with her killer? She had left the cottage in Lower Swainswick on an afternoon early in August, 1993. Too long ago? Never underestimate the power of an image.

To his credit, Wigfull didn’t demur. He saw the sense in blitzing Bath (Diamond’s words) with the picture. It wasn’t the highest quality, he said unnecessarily, but fortunately his photographic expert enjoyed a challenge.

‘No touching up,’ Diamond warned him. ‘I don’t want any distortions.’

‘That doesn’t happen these days,’ Wigfull took pleasure in telling him. ‘You’re way behind on the technology.’

Next on the list of priorities was a call to Charing Cross Hospital. He was given the encouraging news that Keith was breathing normally now and had been allowed out of bed. There was no reason why he shouldn’t make a full recovery in a few weeks.

Then a call to Louis Voss. ‘I still need help,’ he said when he’d summarised what he’d learned from Mrs Jarvie. ‘Weren’t you working with the vice squad in 1993?’

‘I did six years of it,’ Louis said before introducing a cautionary note. ‘I know what you’re going to ask. You think Nadia was murdered to order and the order came from here. You want names. Sorry to disappoint, but you’re on a loser, matey. I won’t say the vice barons are faceless, but they make damned sure you can pin nothing on them.’

‘But you know who they are?’

‘It’s organised crime, Peter, big business. We don’t get near them. We never had the resources to hook a big fish. The trouble with prostitution is that there are no victims.’

‘Rubbish,’ Diamond said. ‘Thousands of women are trafficked. I’ve seen girls beaten up by ponces. If they’re not victims, who are?’

‘Okay, I could have put it better. Prostitution works through private transactions, like the drugs trade. Try going to court and you find the sellers and the users are equally unwilling to testify. For me, the vice squad was a reality check. I started out thinking we could make a difference. Some chance. There’s no pressure to act except from local residents who complain about kerb-crawlers, and they’re not the people with influence. Basically, we turned a blind eye to most of what was going on unless it got really ugly. Occasionally we put away a vicious ponce for a couple of years, and raised a cheer. For how long? Before the case came to court another brute was running the show. We never got near the head honchos.’

‘You’re saying I should let some hired assassin get away with murder on my patch?’

‘I’m saying if he was any good at his job you won’t find him. More frustrating still, you won’t get the guy who hired him.’

‘That’s as cynical as anything I’ve heard in the police.’

‘Cynical and true. But let me give you something else to chew on, country boy. I know how the sex industry works in London. At the time you’re speaking of, the Wall had come down and London was awash with classy foreign girls willing to turn tricks. Remember the old saying about no one being indispensable? Your Nadia will have been replaced overnight and forgotten. One little whore making a run for freedom was never worth pursuing to Bath and killing.’

Put like that, the argument was difficult to challenge. There had always been give and take with Louis. That was their way with each other. Deep down, Diamond had a strong respect for his old friend’s wisdom. He remembered hearing something similar from Vikki about the girls being treated as money-makers, like fruit machines, and getting replaced. ‘If you’re right, it means she came to Bath and in a matter of days met someone local who not only murdered her, but removed the head so that we wouldn’t identify her.’

‘So right,’ Louis said. ‘What was it Sherlock Holmes said about the smiling and beautiful countryside and its dreadful record of sin compared to London?’