The Secret Hangman

15

B athford has about eight hundred houses. ‘That’s a mere fifty each,’ Diamond told his team, assembled in the Crown car park at eight thirty next morning. He wanted to be positive from the start. ‘No challenge at all. DI Halliwell will tell you the streets you are covering and issue you with a mugshot of Danny Geaves. You ask if they’ve seen him around the village over the past ten days. And — this is important — if they have, you find out if he was seen with anyone else. Report every sighting to me at the first opportunity.’

Wonderful the difference a night’s sleep can make. They listened without a murmur, picked up their streetmaps and mugshots and moved off briskly as if house-to-house was as good as a pub crawl. And results started coming in almost at once. A stranger in a village stands no chance of staying undercover. Five sightings were reported in the first hour. Diamond spoke to each witness himself. By their accounts Geaves had been in the area for about a week to ten days, mostly on the southern outskirts in the area where the postman had seen him. One woman complained that two of her chickens had been taken, and not by a fox. (‘How do you know a fox didn’t take them?’ ‘Because I’ve never come across a fox with size-nine footprints.’) No one could say where Geaves was spending the nights. And no one had seen him with Delia, or any other woman.

Diamond looked up the steep ascent of Bathford Hill. ‘What’s up there?’

‘The church.’

‘Past it, I mean.’

Halliwell had the map open. ‘Farleigh Rise, where we were yesterday.’

‘To the right.’

‘Mountain Wood. There’s a footpath.’

‘And what’s that tower thing at the top?’

‘Browne’s Folly, it says.’

Jutting above the foliage was this lone grey building with a flat Italianate roof and arched windows.

‘I didn’t notice it yesterday.’

‘We were on the other side. Am I wrong, or have you just had an idea, boss?’

After the house-to-house was completed, and lunch eaten, Diamond led his little army up the hill. One of them had grown up in Bathford and was able to make the stiff climb more bearable for everyone by relating the history. A quarry owner called Wade Browne had built the tower in 1848. The official story was that he was a public-spirited man who gave employment to local workers in a time of depression. In the more cynical version he was a self-admirer who wanted a memorial as impressive as William Beckford’s tower on Lansdown. Probably there was truth in both.

Twice Diamond called a halt to admire the scenery, as he put it. ‘You can probably see the way my mind is working,’ he said to Halliwell between gasps.

‘Yes, but could he get inside the tower, guv?’

‘A desperate man can get inside anything.’

On the ridge of the hill the going got easier. The tower was about fifty feet high and Browne’s initials and the date 1848 were on a plaque over the door. Unfortunately the door was made of iron, and locked, and there was no sign of a forced entry. The only windows were at the top, out of reach of anyone except Spiderman.

The searchers stood at a distance and looked on while Diamond slowly circled the building. Good thing he couldn’t hear what was being said about follies.

Halliwell went over and said in confidence, ‘We marched them up to the top of the hill. What now, guv?’

‘Ask that local lad to come over.’

The constable looked nervous, as if fearing something he’d said had been overheard by the detective superintendent.

‘What’s your name?’ Diamond asked.

‘PC Flint, sir.’

‘And you grew up in Bathford?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You must have come up here a few times.’

‘Years ago, I did, sir. I knew it as the pepperpot. That was the local name.’

‘Did you ever see inside?’

‘Being kids, we were curious, like. In those days the door was off its hinges.’

‘And what’s it like in there?’

‘Nothing much to see. Stone steps going round the inside walls to the top. We climbed up them. The rail was broken in places. There was a wooden viewing platform up at the top once, built across two iron girders, but it had all rotted when I looked in. There were bits of it at the bottom. Old rubbish and all sorts.’

‘Not a good place to hole up in?’

‘Definitely not. Damp, cold and nowhere to lie down. Mind, they tidied it up since and repaired the roof, and the door, of course.’

‘And made it secure. Who would have the key?’

‘The Wildlife Trust people. It’s all part of the nature reserve.’

‘Where do we find them — in the village?’

‘I think their office is in Bath.’

Diamond’s options were running out. ‘As a local man, Flint, if you were on the run and wanted a place to hole up, where would you go?’

Flint gave it some thought. ‘An empty house, sir?’

‘Where the neighbours would spot you soon enough. They haven’t. I don’t think he was in a house.’

There was a longer pause.

‘The only other hidey-hole I can think of is the caves, sir.’

This was more promising. ‘There are caves up here?’

‘Underneath us. This is quarrying country. The hill is riddled with them. At one time it was all linked up with Monkton Farleigh mine.’

‘I know about Monkton Farleigh.’ The vast subterranean stone workings there had been used in the war to store munitions and the place had since been opened as a tourist attraction, with rides on the underground tramway.

Flint added, ‘The Browne’s Folly quarries were just as well known in their day. There are entrances all along the Pepperpot Trail.’

‘Come again.’

‘The path along the ridge. We’re on it.’

‘Show me, then.’

PC Flint strode out, puffed up with his importance on the team.

‘Don’t stand there like a load of bollards,’ Diamond yelled to the rest of them. ‘We’re on the Pepperpot Trail.’

The little path led south, towards Warleigh, and the views of the city testified to the height they had climbed.

‘Caves up here?’ Diamond said. ‘I find that hard to credit.’

‘You have to look out for them. Some of the entrances are overgrown,’ Flint said. After just a few minutes of walking he stopped and said, ‘Through there.’

Half hidden by a crop of nettles was a dark hollow that plunged deep into the hill.

‘Is that it?’ Diamond said. ‘It’s got a grille over it.’

‘That’s for protection, sir.’

‘Protecting stupid people like us from getting inside.’

‘Protecting the bats.’

‘Bats?’ The word impacted in Diamond’s brain.

‘They nest in there, don’t they?’ Flint said. ‘Ten or twelve species, I was told. The grille is big enough for them to fly in and out. The trust does its best to stop them being disturbed.’

Diamond wasn’t too concerned at this stage about the welfare of bats. He went closer and took a grip on the grille. It was very secure. ‘Our man had a picture of a bat in his room. He must have known about these caves. There are other entrances, you said?’

‘Four or five.’

‘Let’s look at the others.’

At first sight the next cave entrance was just as secure. But when Diamond shook the bars there was some movement. He pulled sharply and the whole thing came away from the rock. ‘Someone had this out and replaced it,’ he said, laying the grille on the ground.

He ducked and looked inside — except that looking wasn’t any use. Couldn’t see a thing. Just felt the chill. Then he was aware of something soft against his foot. In a cave? He gave a yelp and stepped away. Backed out into the daylight and asked with a transparent attempt at dignity if anyone had a lighter.

The only smoker in the party had a rare boost to his self-esteem.

With more caution, he tried a second time. The flame made the experience easier to endure. Nothing was moving on the floor, which was a relief. He was not overfond of things that lived in caves. He could see the soft object he had touched: a folded blanket. There were candles, some spent matches and a plastic bottle of water. There was an inflatable pillow.

He stepped outside and said to Halliwell, ‘We may have found his sleeping quarters. Ask the men in white suits to do a job in there.’

While Halliwell was phoning for the crime scene investigators, Diamond prowled around outside. ‘You lot make yourselves useful,’ he told the team. ‘There’s got to be the remains of a fire around here.’

They soon discovered it, not twenty yards from the cavern entrance. Of even more interest, in the embers, along with chicken bones and orange rind, were some fragments of newspaper, and even though it was scorched almost black, they could see that it was the Saturday edition of the Daily Mail, the day before Danny Geaves’s body was found suspended from the viaduct.

Diamond stayed kneeling and presently picked out a piece of cardboard about three inches by four. Just visible under the scorch-marks was an embossed design of a coat of arms.

‘Now we know what happened to his passport,’ he said. There were other printed papers too far gone to be recognisable, but forensic scientists can do amazing reconstructions.

‘So — assuming this was Danny — he quits his comfortable cottage in Freshford to live in a cave. He takes his personal papers with him and makes a bonfire of them at some stage. He strangles Delia in Bath and rigs it up to look like a suicide. Three days later, he hangs himself. What’s it all about, Keith?’

‘Mental breakdown?’

‘Possible. The balance of his mind was disturbed, as they used to say when a nutter was sent to Broadmoor. Has anyone mentioned previous mental problems? Amanda didn’t.’

‘I can check.’

‘Do that. Even if it’s true, we still have another mystery. Where was Delia on the two nights before her death? She didn’t come home. I can’t believe she was sleeping in this horrible cave with Danny. It knocks my theory on the head.’

The CSI team arrived within the hour and were set to work in and around the cave. Diamond showed them the site of the bonfire. The senior man said, ‘I notice your fingertips are black, sir.’

‘And?’

‘Would you, perhaps, have done some rooting in the fire already?’

Diamond gave him a look like a cat accused of chasing birds. ‘Don’t come onto me as if I contaminated the scene. If I hadn’t done some rooting I wouldn’t know there was a passport and I wouldn’t have called you out.’

‘No offence. I just need to know what we’re dealing with.’

‘Right. And I suppose it will take days before I hear from you.’

‘If you want the job done properly.’

He left them to get on with it.

In a more upbeat mood, the search party descended the hill. The mission had been a success. In the van on the return to Manvers Street, Diamond discussed the day with Halliwell.

‘I’ve been thinking about your theory.’

‘Which theory was that, guv?’

‘Nervous breakdown. It’s too easy.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘There was planning involved. Cool, deliberate planning.’

‘Madmen can plan stuff.’

‘I know. I just want to dig around. I’d rather you didn’t mention the nervous breakdown to Georgina.’

‘Why is that?’

‘She’ll jump at it. She wants this whole thing sorted, so she can go to choir practice and tell her friend Amanda she’s completed the job.’

‘And you believe there’s more to it?’

‘I looked inside that cave. It wasn’t a nice place to spend one night. We now know Geaves was sleeping rough for about a week, at the end of which he was found hanging. About a week, Keith. That takes it back to before Delia was murdered, so he didn’t go into hiding as a result of the murder. Why did he quit his comfortable house in Freshford to act like a fugitive in Bathford? I think he was afraid. Terrified.’