Skeleton Hill

34

‘I’ve worked with Chaz,’ Diamond told Paul Gilbert on the drive back. ‘He’s a good copper.’

I‘Disappointment to his father.’

‘I expect he got pissed off being shouted at.’

‘He’d get some of that in our job, too.’

‘But not from his old man. There’s a difference.’ He reached for his mobile phone. The thing had its uses after all. He might even get to like it one day. ‘Let’s see if he’s at work this morning.’ Getting through to Bristol Central meant first calling Septimus at Bath for the number: an opportunity to get another opinion on Sergeant Chaz McDart. Salt of the earth, Septimus affirmed, a good colleague and a man you could depend on.

‘Then why isn’t he in your team at Bath?’

‘Because I needed someone to look after the shop.’

The switchboard operator confirmed that Chaz was in and asked if Diamond wished to speak to him.

‘Not over the phone,’ he said. ‘Tell him him I’m on my way to see him.’

Up to now, Paul Gilbert had been a model of tolerance, driving at the slow speeds Diamond preferred and acting as the sounding board for the big man’s theories. Suddenly a manageable trip was being extended into a grand tour. ‘To Bristol? Now?’

‘Junction nineteen,’ Diamond said. ‘I didn’t fix a time. You don’t have to put your foot down.’

They were on the long stretch between 16 and 17. Gilbert gritted his teeth and said no more about it.

There wasn’t much for Diamond to see outside the window. Pleased that so much could achieved from inside a car, he continued to hold the mobile in his hand. He’d come a long way to mastering the little monster, dialling the numbers with his thumb, like the teenagers did. Soon he’d progress to texting… Soon? Who am I kidding? he thought. Eventually, perhaps. Toying with it, he pressed the menu key and found the phone book. Not many names were listed.

He’d try Ingeborg and see if she’d got to her event in good time. She’d almost certainly be waiting around for her two minutes of action.

He highlighted her name and pressed the key.

It rang a few times and a recorded voice, not Inge’s, asked him to leave a message.

‘Funny,’ he said to Gilbert. ‘I called Ingeborg and she isn’t answering.’

Gilbert gripped the wheel a little harder.

‘I said Ingeborg isn’t answering.’

‘She’s at the jousting, or whatever it’s called,’ Gilbert said. The longer this journey went on, the more this young man was sounding like one of the more cynical veterans of the murder squad.

‘Better not be jousting. I don’t want her knocked off the horse.’

‘She’s more likely to knock the other guy off.’

‘She’s just a recruit.’

‘They’ll go easy on her, then.’

‘I don’t know. Dave Barton is in charge. Not sure I trust him.’

‘The blacksmith who found the leg bone?’

‘He’s her commanding officer. I wonder why she doesn’t answer.’ He tried again, with the same result.

‘I expect she’s wearing gauntlet gloves,’ Gilbert said.

He had to think about that. ‘Difficult to use the phone. Good point.’

‘And she wouldn’t want her mobile going off. It’s not very Civil War, is it?’

That also made sense to Diamond. He told himself not to fret.

Another mile of green hills went by.

‘Which way is Farleigh Hungerford from here?’

‘Your side,’ Gilbert said. ‘Fifteen to twenty miles from the next exit. You’re not worried about her?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Barton isn’t a serious suspect any more, is he?’

‘No. He’s in the clear.’ Shielding the phone from Gilbert’s view, he tried one more time, pretending he was adjusting the safety belt. Still the recorded message.

A disturbing thought was forming. All along, Septimus had clung to his theory that Dave Barton was the killer. Even after the interrogation, Septimus remained suspicious. The new witness, Bert Pope, the roundhead who had watched the lager being hidden and gone back and dug it up, had appeared to confirm Dave’s story and prove Septimus wrong.

But had he?

The version Septimus had relayed to Diamond was that Bert Pope had seen ‘the soldier in royalist red’ burying the six-pack.

They’d assumed the soldier was Dave. It now struck Diamond that he could equally have been Rupert.

Septimus could yet be right.

‘We’ll take the turn to Farleigh,’ he told Gilbert.

‘I thought we were going to Bristol.’

‘Farleigh Hungerford Castle. And put your foot down.’

Gilbert grasped that this must be an emergency. He steered into the fast lane and powered forward at a heart-stopping rate while Diamond, averting his eyes, called Septimus again and told him his concerns.

All Septimus could find to say was, ‘Oh, man,’ several times over.

‘So we’re on our way to Farleigh Castle,’ Diamond told him. ‘Put out a call. Get some manpower there. He’ll be armed with a sword at the very least. If he suspects Inge is police I don’t like to think what could happen.’

‘I’ll come myself,’ Septimus said.

‘Quick as you can, then.’ He looked up and spotted the sign for Junction 17. ‘We’re ten to fifteen minutes off.’

This was wildly optimistic, given the amount of slow, heavy traffic on the road. Paul Gilbert added to the suspense by steering with one hand and keying FARLEIGH into the Sat-Nav.

‘Couldn’t I do that?’ Diamond said, and got no answer. On reflection, he didn’t need one. His technophobia would have meant reaching across and getting it wrong several times over. Instead, he said, ‘Don’t you know where it is?’

‘I want the quickest route.’

The machine asked DO YOU MEAN FARLEY?

Gilbert persuaded the microchip that his first choice was correct. They took the Chippenham by-pass and then diverted briefly to the A4 before turning onto a B road at Corsham.

‘It’s taking us through Bradford on Avon,’ Diamond said. ‘That’s a bottleneck any day of the week.’

‘Tell me how to avoid it,’ Gilbert said through his teeth.

There were ways, but they would add desperate minutes.

There were ways, but they would add ‘I’d better shut up,’ Diamond said.

Gilbert didn’t comment.

Winding roads, steep hills, tractors crossing: they suffered it all. Mercifully Bradford didn’t delay them by much. Once they were through the little town the system brought them onto ever narrower lanes.

‘We must be close now.’

‘Thank God for that.’

Ahead were flags and the two ruined towers of the castle, stra-tegically positioned above the River Frome. They crossed over two small bridges. Cars were being diverted down a slope into a temporary park in a field.

‘We don’t have time for that,’ Diamond said. ‘Put me down here.’

A police patrol car came from the opposite direction with its blue beacon lights flashing. Diamond was already scrambling up a grassy bank into the area below the castle where the crowd had gathered. Things were being said over a public address system, but he was too concerned to stop and listen. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled. In the roped-off area where the display should have been taking place was an ambulance with the doors open and someone was being stretchered inside.

‘What happened?’ he asked the first person he met, a man with two children.

‘One of them copped it,’ he was told. ‘Fell off the horse and didn’t move. Looked serious from here.’

He ran on towards the ambulance. An official tried to stop him crossing the rope. ‘Police,’ he hissed.

The ambulance doors had closed before he got there.

‘Who is it?’

‘Sorry, mate,’ the paramedic told him. ‘We’ve got an emergency here. Talk to the police.’

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.

‘Guv, what are you doing here?’ It was Ingeborg, unhurt, radiant in her royalist uniform.

His relief was overwhelming. He would have hugged her if she hadn’t been holding the reins of a large black horse. ‘I thought that was you in the ambulance,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Sure. I told you I can look after myself. It was Dave who bought it, poor guy.’

‘Dave Barton?’

‘He lost his balance and came off his horse very awkwardly. He seems to have knocked himself out.’

‘Was he in a swordfight, then?’

She nodded. ‘The roundheads were down on numbers, so he was asked to switch sides. Anyone in the crowd will tell you I never even made contact. I swung my sword and he ducked and that was it.’