Skeleton Hill

39

On the other side of the observation window Diamond asked where Septimus was. The shrewd DI from Bristol was the obvious choice to have beside him for the second interview. John Leaman said Septimus was using his computer in the incident room.

‘Doing what?’

‘Checking stuff from way back, he told me.’

‘Ah. Should have remembered. A task I set him.’

‘Do you want me to fetch him, guv?’

‘He’ll come when he’s ready.’ He looked around the room to see who else was there. Paul Gilbert was in the back row cradling a mug of coffee. ‘You made it, then. Did Duckett actually appear?’

Gilbert shook his head. ‘There’s a lad from uniform guarding the site.’

‘Bit of luck came your way?’

‘Charlie Smart came over to check up on me and I borrowed his phone.’

‘Good initiative. You slipped my mind, I have to admit. Have you had supper?’

‘Not yet, guv.’

Diamond took a fiver from his back pocket. ‘For you. I meant it, about the bangers and mash. You did well today.’

There was an awed silence. Such generosity from the main man was rare.

‘Inge did well, too,’ Leaman said.

‘Putting a witness in hospital?’

‘Fortunes of war,’ Leaman said. ‘She could have been the one who was hurt.’

‘Okay. Inge gets supper, too.’ He felt in his pocket again and peeled off another note.

Amazing.

‘Nice to know the front line people are appreciated,’ Leaman said. ‘The boys in the back room may get a chance to shine some time.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Diamond said. ‘All right, team. It’s supper for everyone when this job is done.’

‘Me included?’ a voice behind him said.

He swung round in surprise. Georgina had come in.

‘I thought it was your choir night, ma’am.’

‘I heard there was singing in prospect here.’

‘It hasn’t begun yet, unfortunately.’

Not long after, Septimus appeared with a piece of paper in his hand.

‘Was I right?’ Diamond asked him.

A nod. ‘It took some finding.’

The two of them took their places in the interview room, Sir Colin Tipping now occupying the seat his daughter had, with an elderly pin-striped Bath solicitor at his side.

‘We’ll begin with the game of golf,’ Diamond said after Septimus had spoken the formalities for the tape.

Tipping rubbed his hands. He had a confident smile. ‘What a splendid idea.’

‘I’m referring to the game you were playing with Major Swithin on July seventeenth, the date of the battle re-enactment.’

‘That’s put me on the spot straight away. We play almost every day. If you’re asking the score, I doubt if I can recall it, but I’m usually the winner.’

This would be his defence then, making light of the interview in his jocular style. Better than silence, Diamond thought. ‘You’ll recall this one because the major took a call from his wife.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Agnes never lets the poor fellow off the leash.’ He turned to his solicitor. ‘Don’t you agree that pocket telephones are the curse of the modern age? One sounded off at morning service in the Abbey the other day. Colonel Bogey in the Bishop’s sermon. It isn’t on.’

Diamond kept to his brief. ‘What Mrs Swithin had seen through her binoculars was two soldiers in royalist uniform up to their elbows in earth by the fallen oak tree your society has vowed to protect. They unearthed a bone, a human bone that they reburied. The major tells me he shared this information with you, as a fellow member of the Lansdown Society.’

‘Do you know, I sometimes think Agnes Swithin suspects Reggie of being with some floozy when he’s out of her sight? She finds these silly pretexts to call him unexpectedly.’

‘Except you didn’t treat this as a silly pretext. You completed the round – it was almost through when you took the call – and broke with your usual habit of a drinking session afterwards in the clubhouse. You made some excuse about an appointment and left immediately.’

‘Doesn’t sound like me. At my age you don’t do anything immediately.’

‘I spoke to the major at his home this evening.’

‘He said I left without having a drink? Or without buying one?’ He grinned at his solicitor.

‘You had reason to be alarmed about what you’d heard, and we’ll deal with that presently. You’re going to tell me you got in your car and drove to the battlefield on behalf of the Lansdown Society, to check the tree, which was supposed to be off limits to the Sealed Knot.’

The solicitor raised a finger. ‘Have a care, superintendent. You know very well you shouldn’t put words into my client’s mouth.’

‘Did I get it wrong?’ Diamond said, pretending to be mystified. ‘Did he go there for another purpose?’

Tipping looked from one to the other. Suddenly the questioning had turned serious and he was uncertain how to proceed. ‘What if I tell you I didn’t go there at all?’

Diamond countered with, ‘What if I tell you we have a sighting of your car at the side of the road?’ Actually they hadn’t, but if Tipping wanted to trade in speculation, so could he.

‘All right, I was testing you out. Your first assumption was correct, old boy. I take a particular interest in that tree. It’s treasure trove to a botanist, host to one of the rarest lichens in Great Britain.’

‘It isn’t,’ Diamond said. ‘And I doubt if it ever was.’

Tipping took a sharp, surprised breath that he was forced to account for. ‘What’s this? A policeman with some knowledge of botany? I think he’s about to tell us lichens don’t grow on trees.’ He shook with amusement.

‘I’m quoting one of the Lansdown Society. Your botanist member, Charlie Smart, told me the only lichen on that fallen oak is a common variety found everywhere.’

‘Charlie hasn’t been with us long. Probably doesn’t know where to look.’

‘Neither does the British Lichen Society, it seems. They have no record of it on Lansdown. Could you be mistaken?’

A climbdown was called for. ‘I’ll look pretty damn silly if I am. The identification was done years ago by one of our members who passed on. Let’s hope the rare lichen didn’t hop the twig as well.’ He chanced a smile at Septimus and got a cold stare in return. ‘Why don’t we talk about something we all know more about?’

Diamond nodded, encouraged not from scoring a point, but from teasing out a major admission from the suspect: he’d defi-n itely visited the tree. ‘We’ll turn to Rupert Hope, then – one of the men Mrs Swithin saw unearthing the bone, a history lecturer with an interest in the Civil War. That bone could have been of historical interest if it belonged to a soldier in the real battle. Although Rupert agreed to put it back in the soil, he appears to have gone back secretly after everyone left the field. He thought he’d made a find, you see.’

‘We’re in the realm of speculation again,’ Tipping said, more to his solicitor than Diamond. ‘They don’t have a clue what happened. “He appears to have gone back secretly.” That’s a stab in the dark, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Does it matter to you if we get it wrong?’ Diamond asked.

‘It does if you’re accusing me of crimes I didn’t commit.’

‘You’re ahead of me. I haven’t accused you of anything. We know Rupert was attacked that evening because he didn’t return to his car. He’d changed out of his battle armour. He was struck on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but he was left for dead. He wandered Lansdown in a confused state, suffering memory loss, for over three weeks. Then he was hit again, fatally.’

‘Nothing to do with me, old chum.’

‘You carry a blunt instrument in your car. In fact, you have a selection of them – your golf clubs.’

‘Is this a joke?’

Diamond turned to Septimus and nodded.

‘What on earth…?’ Tipping said, as the colour rose in his cheeks.

Septimus had stooped down and lifted a bag of golf clubs.

‘The nerve of it. Those are mine,’ Tipping said.

His solicitor leaned close and spoke to him in an undertone, no doubt informing him that the police are permitted to enter and search the house of a person detained for a serious arrestable offence.

It was a lightweight bag of the sort golfers without caddies can carry themselves. Septimus unzipped the top.

Diamond asked him to count the clubs.

‘Thirteen.’

‘Unlucky for some,’ Diamond couldn’t resist saying. ‘According to the laws, which I’ve checked, you’re allowed a maximum of fourteen. A dedicated golfer such as yourself won’t carry fewer. Where’s the missing club, Sir Colin?’

For the first time, he didn’t have an answer.

‘I expect it’s a heavy one,’ Diamond said. ‘An iron, going by the shape of the injuries to the dead man’s skull.’

‘Are you accusing my client of murder?’ the solicitor asked.

‘I haven’t yet,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m waiting to hear what he did with the fourteenth club.’

There was still no response from Tipping.

‘If you are,’ the solicitor said, ‘I must insist on an adjournment.’

‘Painful as it must be to a golfer to destroy one of his clubs,’ Diamond said, ‘that seems to have happened here. I don’t see how he could have lost it.’ He thanked Septimus and told him to put the bag aside. ‘Rupert survived one crack on the head, but the second really did for him. Why the delay? For a few days he was missing. Then he was seen trying car doors; foraging, in effect. The amnesia had set in. He didn’t even remember his own name. The danger for his killer was that Rupert’s memory would come back. Worse, he’d taken to sleeping in the gatehouse, a short distance from Beckford’s grotto.’

‘Beckford’s what?’ the solicitor said.

‘An underground tunnel with a secret of its own that your client knows all about.’

Tipping gripped the desk with both hands and still said nothing. All the colour had drained from his face.

‘It’s a matter of record that Rupert Hope was hit from behind and killed in the cemetery near the tower. He’d found an under-rug last seen strapped to the racehorse Hang-glider’s back. We’ve done the tests. This afternoon we went into the grotto and found the remains of the horse. Are you listening, Sir Colin?’

A nod. All the fight had gone out of him.

‘I’ve interviewed your daughter and discussed how it was done. You couldn’t have managed it alone. Each of you brought your professional skills to the job. In your case, it was knowing the existence of the grotto. You’re a chartered surveyor dealing in major civic works. DI Ward, would you take over?’

Septimus was ready. ‘In January, 1991, a section of the Lansdown Road collapsed near Beckford’s tower, due to subsidence. A survey of the immediate area was commissioned.’ He took from his pocket the printout he’d shown Diamond and passed it across the table. ‘From the council planning department website. You’ll see that C. Tipping and Associates carried out the survey. You identified nineteenth century excavations as the cause, an exploratory dig for the grotto. The tunnel itself was a short way off and you located that as well. Two years later, this knowledge would come in useful. Disposing of a dead racehorse can be a problem.’

‘That was your contribution,’ Diamond said. ‘Davina supplied the veterinary skills, obtained a horse-trailer and drove it to the races the night Hang-glider was paraded there. You knew McDart would be in the owners’ and trainers’ bar until late. You saw that the stable lad had returned from the horsebox. You went there, broke in and transferred the horse to the trailer. But there was an unforeseen problem in the shape of Nadia, a young woman waiting by the trailer in hope of getting a job with McDart. She would have ruined the scam. She had to be disposed of, and quickly. Correct me if I’m wrong. You held her and Davina killed her with the bolt gun and you bundled the body into the back seat of the Land Rover before driving off with the horse.’

‘No comment,’ Tipping said.

‘We insist on an adjournment,’ his solicitor said.

‘No,’ Tipping said in an abrupt change of tactics. ‘Let’s nail this now for the bullshit it is.’

‘I’m advising you not to say any more.’

‘They can’t stitch us up like this. There’s no motive, for Christ’s sake. Why would I go to all this trouble to destroy my own horse when I was on the brink of the biggest deal of my life? I lost a fortune when that horse was stolen.’

Diamond refused to be sidetracked. He was telling it his way. ‘With the horse in the trailer and the dead woman in the Land Rover you drove to the grotto, right into the field and up to the entrance. Davina used the stun gun on the horse and you reversed the trailer to the steps and let it roll inside and out of sight. That was enough for one evening. The next night, working together, you buried Nadia’s body in a place you knew, the hole left by the fallen oak’s root system, first removing the victim’s head. Why? Because the bolt-hole in the skull would have revealed the form of death and led us to suspect a slaughterman or a vet. I expect your daughter carried out that necessary task and also disposed of the head. Murder is gruesome, however clinically it is done.’

‘You’ve missed the point,’ Tipping said. ‘We had no motive.’

‘The motive in both cases is the same. These unfortunate people strayed into your danger zone. The only thing you had against them was that they would give you away. With the help of the Lansdown Society you kept watch on the burial site and you were compelled to act when Rupert returned there. He survived one clubbing and had to be given another. The attempt to dress up his killing as accidental was pretty inept. I suppose you hoped we’d think he’d died in a brawl. I won’t pretend it was easy to track you down. Casual killings of strangers are the hardest of all to investigate.’

‘Have you finished?’ Tipping said. For all the revelations, he’d recovered some of that air of infallibity. ‘We’ll award you A+ for invention and B for effort, but I’m afraid you fail on the argument. You could have saved us all a lot of time if you’d addressed the simple fact I raised just now. I had no reason to kill my horse. Quite the reverse. He was going to make me very rich indeed.’

‘You’re talking about your motive for killing the horse?’

‘The penny drops. Yes, Mr Diamond. We’re on tenterhooks to hear your theory on that.’

Diamond locked eyes with him. ‘I’m not giving you that satisfaction.’

‘So this great hypothesis comes tumbling down.’

‘No. It’s as safe as any house you ever surveyed. Charge him with murder, Septimus.’