The Last Detective

Chapter Six

HE PHONED JACKMAN AT THE university the next morning – disregarding his own judgement that it was unwise to get involved. The slender possibility that Dana Didrikson was innocent of murder impelled him to pass on an idea that had come to him in the small hours. 'Look, I've remembered something that could possibly have a bearing on the case. I'm passing it on to you because I believe it might bring out the truth, but I don't want you mentioning my name to the lawyers, or anyone else, do you understand?'

'What is it?'

Jackman was too eager for Diamond's peace of mind.

'You guarantee to keep me out of it?'

'Absolutely.'

'It concerns Mrs Didrikson's car.'

'Go on.'

'You said the forensic tests established that your wife's body had been placed in the boot of the Mercedes, right? The assumption is that Mrs Didrikson drove with it to the lake. When I interviewed her some days ago, she told me she had to keep a log of every journey.'

'A log?' Jackman picked out the word and repeated it without yet understanding its significance.

'It was a company car. The mileage showing on the gauge had to be written in the book each time, even for private trips. Get hold of that log, and you can find out what use she made of the car on Monday, 11 September and the days immediately after. If someone else used the car to transport the body from Widcombe to Chew Valley Lake, that's a round trip of thirty miles. It must show up in the figures.'

'Jesus Christ, you're right!' Jackman paused and then, sensing a catch, said with less buoyancy, 'But what if it doesn't show?'

'It has to. The only way a journey of that length could be wiped from the record is by falsifying the log… either inventing a trip to some other place, or making it appear part of a longer run. The point is, she would have noticed if there was a bogus entry.'

'True.'

'And if she falsified the log herself, it should be simple to check. One way or the other, you'll know.'

'Yes.' The enthusiasm was ebbing from his voice.

'Do you follow me, Professor?'

'Thank you, yes. I'll be in touch.'

'There's really no need.' Some people are afraid of the truth, Diamond thought. He put down the phone and looked for something else to do. It was a problem having so much time to fill.

Almost a week passed before Jackman phoned the bar one evening at a moment when it was under siege from the disco clientele.

'Who is this?'

'Greg Jackman. I've blown it.'

'What? I can't hear you.'

'The mileage log. I've really screwed things up for Dana.'

'Listen, this isn't a good time. People are lining up in front of me here.'

'Shall I come over?' Jackman asked, his agitated state obvious in his tone.

'No, it's too damned busy.' Diamond put his hand over the mouthpiece and promised two tattooed customers with punk haircuts that he would serve them directly. Then he told Jackman, 'I'll be on the go until closing.'

'Come to the house, then.'

'When do you mean – tonight?'

'Thanks. I'll be waiting.'

He'd meant to protest, not acquiesce. With so many people crowding the bar, he hadn't time to make himself better understood.

After the last customers had been persuaded to leave, and the doors were bolted, he thought of phoning Jackman again, then dismissed the thought. It wouldn't put the man off. The desperation behind the voice wasn't going to recognize that people were entitled to their sleep.

It was after midnight when he drove up to John Brydon House. Jackman came to the steps and put a hand on his upper arm like a despairing relative receiving the doctor on a visit.

'I really appreciate this.'

Diamond's heavy evening had left him bereft of cordialities. He said grouchily, 'I don't know why I came. I've damn all to tell you.'

They went inside. The interior was cold. Presumably the heating had gone off and Jackman had been too distracted to notice.

'You'll have to forgive the state of the place,' Jackman explained. 'You people… Sorry, let me start again. The police left it in a hell of a mess and I haven't straightened it out yet.'

'They must have been looking for the Jane Austen letters.'

'They needn't have troubled. I already searched the house from top to bottom. My files are going to take months to sort out again.'

The piles of books on the living room floor and the pictures removed from the walls didn't trouble Diamond; he'd seen searches before. Authorized them. He picked up a replica T'ang horse from an armchair, deposited it on the floor and sat down heavily, still in his raincoat. 'I'm not staying long.'

'Coffee?'

'Let's get to the point. It's the car log, is it?'

Jackman nodded.'It's missing.'

'It should have been in the car.'

'Well, it wasn't. The police files contain no reference to it. I checked with Dana's solicitor. He said if it had been there, a copy would have been included in the file that was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service and made available to the defence.'

True.'

'There's nothing – no reference to a log. Mr Siddons -the solicitor – has spoken to Dana. She insists that she always kept the log in the glove compartment of the car.'

'It was there the last time she drove the car?'

'The day you took her in for questioning.' No imputation of malpractice was discernible in Jackman's words. His own conduct preoccupied him. 'I was so concerned when I heard it was missing that I did the dumbest thing. At the time I didn't appreciate how damaging it could be. I went down to the police station and demanded to see Chief Inspector Wigfull. Did it off my own bat, without telling Siddons. I asked Wigfull if the police were holding the log.'

Diamond winced. 'That was unwise.'

'I mean, I didn't accuse him of perverting the course of justice, or anything like that. It was all very civilized. I told him Dana insisted the log had been in the car. He said it hadn't been found.'

'John Wigfull wouldn't tell you that if it wasn't true,' said Diamond in all sincerity. His former assistant was too much the police college man to sully his career with misleading statements.

Gregory Jackman drew no comfort from the assurance. He emitted a long, tremulous sigh that signalled more alarming depths in his confession. He was standing stiffly in front of a white, denuded bookcase like a convicted man lined up for mugshots.

'I made a blinding error by drawing it to their attention – handed a trump card to the prosecution. Siddons is incensed. He says they might have missed the significance of the bloody log. Now they'll seek to suggest that Dana destroyed it.'

The gravity of what had happened came home to Peter Diamond. Almost certainly the disappearance of the log would now be used against Dana Didrikson.

He asked precisely what she had told her solicitor.

'She's adamant that she never took the log out of the car except on the last day of each month when it went in for checking at the Realbrew office. She always got it back the next day. She's telling the truth. I know it.'

'Does she remember any discrepancies?'

Jackman shook his head slowly. 'She doesn't. She says it was up to date. The last entry would have been the day you arrested her.'

'Invited her for questioning,' Diamond corrected him. 'Was it all written in her own hand?'

'Yes.'

'She's positive?'

'Utterly.'

'So we must expect her to say so in court.' He took a grip on the chair-arms. 'I'm not surprised your Mr Siddons is busting a gut.'

Jackman looked about him as if he wanted to pace the floor, a feat rendered unlikely by the chaos of books and ornaments.

Diamond, meanwhile, was searching his own soul. 'I take a share of the responsibility,' he admitted. 'I started this hare.'

And should have seen where it was leading, he went on to tell himself. Dana Didrikson would have been better off if the log had never been mentioned. The prosecution were sure to question her about it now, and the more she insisted that it had been properly kept, the stronger would be the implication that she had destroyed it.

A sense of guilt oppressed him, adding to his burden of self-reproach.

'I could do with a coffee after all, if you don't mind.'

While Jackman was busy in the kitchen, Diamond brooded in the armchair. The probability was strong that Dana Didrikson was the killer, but to treat her guilt as a certainty was a cop-out. His interference had stacked the odds more heavily against her. If he could think of something to redress the balance, he had a moral duty to mention it.

Yet when Jackman returned with the coffee, nothing of comfort was said by either man. At Realbrew Ales next morning, he started to expiate his error. 'No,' he told the receptionist, 'I don't have an appointment. On a visit like this it isn't the practice to announce that we are coming. Kindly inform the Managing Director – Mr Buckle, if that is he – that he has a visitor.'

'I'll see if he's free. Your name, sir?'

'Diamond.'

'And what shall I say you have come about, Mr Diamond?'

'Taxation.'

It worked. She mouthed an 'Oh', pressed a button on the intercom and spoke into it with her hand cupped over her mouth and her eyes on Diamond as if he were pointing a gun at her.

While waiting to be shown upstairs, he pictured the panic in the manager's office. From all he had heard of Stanley Buckle, his relationship with the tax authorities was likely to be precarious.

'You'll have to bear with me, old chum,' were Buckle's first words when the confrontation came. 'I'm supposed to be in Bristol for a meeting in twenty minutes, and you know what the bloody traffic is like.'

He got up from behind his desk and shook Diamond's hand, clearly resolved to disarm the threat if at all possible. The hand was warm and damp. Shorter than Diamond had pictured him, neat-featured, with slicked-back, receding black hair, Buckle beamed benignly and gold gleamed at the edge of his mouth. His choice of clothes was about right for a wheeler-dealer with a spread of business interests… fawn-coloured suit with brown shirt and a pale yellow silk tie that was probably called champagne-coloured by the fashion house it came from. A rosebud was in his lapel.

'I won't detain you long,' Diamond promised.

'Tax matter, is it?'

'It's not unconnected.'

'Nothing personal, I hope?' A smile.

Diamond shook his head. He could be amiable, too. 'Strictly business. I believe you have extensive business interests in the West Country, Mr Buckle.'

That's putting it strongly,' said Buckle. 'I do a bit of importing in addition to my work here.'

'Importing what?'

'Novelty goods, cheap toys – that sort of thing. I supply quite a number of toyshops and stationers with items from the Far East.'

'Japan?'

'Hong Kong and Taiwan principally.'

'You ship the goods over and distribute them?'

'Yes. It's concentrated in Bristol and Bath. I charge the Value Added Tax. It all goes through the books.'

'Is it a good living?'

'I get by.'

'I heard that you have a large house in Clifton.'

'So what? There's no law against it.'

With what he intended to appear as the air of an inspector, Diamond whipped a buff folder from the briefcase he was carrying. From it he produced the Guide to Value Added Tax that he had picked up that morning from the VAT office in Ham Gardens House. 'You've studied this, Mr Buckle?'

A wide, defiant grin. 'Next to Charles Dickens, it's my favourite reading. Have a seat.'

The seats – apart from Buckle's vast executive chair -were fashioned out of beer-kegs. Diamond lowered himself on to one, and found it inadequate. 'So you do your own returns?'

'Actually no, squire. I have an accountant. Want me to give him a call?'

'Not just now. I presume you keep tabs on the figures anyway.'

'Figures in which sense?' Buckle punctuated this with a wink.

The input tax. Mileage of all the vehicles in use by the company.'

Buckle became more serious, adjusting the knot of his tie and trying to make it seem a confident gesture.

'I think you'll find that our returns are accurate.'

'Do you keep a record, sir?'

'Naturally.' He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a red ledger book. 'It's all in here. Every Realbrew vehicle is listed.'

Diamond held out his hand for the book. His hopes were dashed the moment he opened it. The mileage was in monthly totals. As evidence, it was no help at all. He went through the formality of asking how the figures were supplied and heard about the mileage logs kept by each driver.

'And when the logs come in, do you photocopy them?'

'No. I don't believe in paperwork for its own sake.' Buckle made a pistol of his fingers and pressed them to his head in a mime of suicide. 'Now tell me it's obligatory.'

Diamond opened a page of the ledger fully in front of him. 'The Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.6 Automatic Saloon.'

'Which one? The company owns two. One is for my personal use and the other is driven by the company chauffeur.'

'Two cars of the same model?'

'Bought at the same time. It all went through the books quite properly and I keep my own log religiously. You're welcome to examine it if you wish.'

'Yes, please. And the other…?'

'… should be with the other vehicle which – unfortunately – is not on the premises at the present time. If you'll excuse me a moment…" He called someone on the intercom and asked them to fetch the log from his car.

'The other vehicle, the one the chauffeur drives,' Diamond said. 'Is that the one being held by the police?'

Buckle's eyes snapped into sharper focus. 'You're bloody well informed.'

'It's public knowledge, sir. I can examine the log for that car at the police station – is that what you're telling me?'

'Not really,' answered Buckle. 'I gather it's gone missing. The Old Bill were on to me about it. They wanted to know if the log was on the premises here. There was no reason why it should have been. The system is that the books are kept in the cars and checked at the end of each month. The job never takes more than a day.'

'Your chauffeur's in trouble, I understand,' Diamond ventured.

'To borrow a phrase of yours, it's public knowledge,' Buckle said smoothly.

Equally smoothly, Diamond asked, 'Is she guilty?'

'I should think so. She was in pretty deep with the dead woman's husband. Mind, I'm not faulting her as an employee. She was a good driver. Reliable.'

Diamond felt a gut contempt for this man. He was finding it hard to subdue. 'She drove the one car, did she?'

'Just the one. She never used mine, if that's what you're asking.'

'It wouldn't have mattered if she did,' Diamond pointed out, 'seeing that they're both company cars.'

'True. But mine is exclusively for my own use.'

'And did you ever have reason to drive the chauffeur's car, sir?'

'Never. I had my own. Look here, if there's any suspicion that I'm on the fiddle in some way, you'd better come out with it.'

'I'm more interested in Mrs Didrikson,' Diamond candidly answered. 'You said she was reliable. Was she at work on the day of the murder?'

'She took the day off, but I don't see what this has to do -'

Diamond overrode the protest. 'And the next day? Was she at work the next day?'

'She was late. When she got in about half past ten she looked to me as if she'd been up all night. I didn't go to town on her. With a chauffeur as dependable as Dana, you know there had to be a damned good reason. I've told all this to the police.'

And Diamond could imagine what John Wigfull had made of it. Stanley Buckle was going to be a formidable witness for the prosecution, apparently believing the best of his chauffeur, while disclosing facts that were open to the worst interpretation.

'Who exactly are you?'

Diamond was saved from replying by a secretary who brought in a small black book. 'The log?' he said, holding out his hand. Thank you, my dear.'

All the entries were in one hand, presumably Buckle's. The book was fully up to date and appeared to have been kept as meticulously as Buckle had claimed. The monthly totals tallied with the office ledger. On the critical day of 11 September two short journeys of nine miles were entered, and the same on 12 September.

Diamond thanked Buckle, said he would delay him no longer and left. On the way out, he looked for Buckle's Mercedes in the car park. It was parked in the space reserved for the managing director. The mileage on the clock matched the latest figure in the book.

His morning's work had come to nothing. The case against Dana Didrikson looked stronger still.