Upon A Dark Night

One

A young woman opened her eyes.

The view was blank, a white-out, a snowfall that covered everything. She shivered, more from fright than cold. Strangely she didn’t feel cold.

Troubled, she strained to see better, wondering if she could be mistaken about the snow. Was she looking out on an altogether different scene, like a mass of vapour, the effect you get from inside an aircraft climbing through dense cloud? She had no way of judging; there was just this blank, white mass. No point of reference and no perspective.

She didn’t know what to think.

The only movement was within her eyes, the floaters that drift fuzzily across the field of vision.

While she was struggling over the problem she became aware of something even more disturbing. The blank in her view was matched by a blank inside her brain. Whatever had once been there had gone. She didn’t know who she was, or where this was happening, or why.

Her loss of identity was total. She could recall nothing. To be deprived of a lifetime of experiences, left with no sense of self, is devastating. She didn’t even know which sex she belonged to.

It called for self-discovery of the most basic sort. Tentatively she explored her body with her hand, traced the swell of her breast and then moved down.

So, she told herself, at least I know I’m in that half of the human race.

A voice, close up, startled her. ‘Hey up.’

‘What’s that?’ said another. Both voices were female.

‘Sleeping Beauty just opened her eyes. She’s coming round, I think.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Have a look. What do you think?’

‘She looks well out to me.’

‘Her eyes were definitely open. We’d better call someone.’

‘I wouldn’t bother yet.’

‘They’re closed now, I grant you.’

‘What did I tell you?’

She had closed them because she was dazzled by the whiteness. Not, after all, the whiteness of snow. Nor of cloud. The snatch of conversation made that clear. Impressions were coming in fast. The sound quality of the voices suggested this was not happening in the open. She was warm, so she had to be indoors. She had been staring up at a ceiling. Lying on her back, on something soft, like a mattress. In a bed, then? With people watching her? She made an effort to open her eyes again, but her lids felt too heavy. She drifted back into limbo, her brain too muzzy to grapple any more with what had just been said.

Some time later there was pressure against her right eye, lifting the lid.

With it came a man’s voice, loud and close: ‘She’s well out. I’ll come back.’ He released the eye.

She dozed. For how long, it was impossible to estimate, because in no time at all, it seemed, the man’s thumb forced her eye open again. And now the white expanse in front of her had turned black.

‘What’s your name?’

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t use her voice.

‘Can you hear me? What’s your name?’

She was conscious of an invasive smell close to her face, making the eyes water.

She opened her other eye. They were holding a bottle to her nose and it smelt like ammonia. She tried to ask, ‘Where am I?’ but the words wouldn’t come.

He removed the thumb from her eye. The face peering into hers was black. Definitely black. It wasn’t only the contrast of the white background. He was so close she could feel his breath on her eyelashes, yet she couldn’t see him in any detail. ‘Try again,’ he urged her. ‘What’s your name?’

When she didn’t answer she heard him remark, ‘If this was a man, we would have found something in his pockets, a wallet, or credit cards, keys. You women will insist on carrying everything in a bag and when the wretched bag goes missing there’s nothing to identify you except the clothes you’re wearing.’

Sexist, she thought. I’ll handbag you if I get the chance.

‘How are you doing, young lady? Ready to talk yet?’

She moved her lips uselessly. But even if she had found her voice, there was nothing she could tell the man. She wanted to ask questions, not answer them. Who was she? She had no clue. She could barely move. Couldn’t even turn on her side. Pain, sharp, sudden pain, stopped her from changing position.

‘Relax,’ said the man. ‘It’s easier if you relax.’

Easy for you to say so, she thought.

He lifted the sheet and held her hand. Bloody liberty, she thought, but she was powerless. ‘You were brought in last night,’ he told her. ‘You’re being looked after, but your people must be wondering where you are. What’s your name?’

She succeeded in mouthing the words, ‘Don’t know.’

‘Don’t know your own name?’

‘Can’t think.’

‘Amnesia,’ he told the women attendants. ‘It shouldn’t last long.’ He turned back to her. ‘Don’t fret. No need to worry. We’ll find out who you are soon enough. Are you in much pain? We can give you something if it’s really bad, but your head will clear quicker if we don’t.’

She moved her head to indicate that the pain was bearable.

He replaced her hand under the bedding and moved away.

She closed her eyes. Staying conscious so long had exhausted her.

Some time later, they tried again. They cranked up the top end of the bed and she was able to see more. She was lucid now, up to a point. Her memory was still a void.

She was in a small, clinically clean private ward, with partly closed Venetian blinds, two easy chairs, a TV attached to the wall, a bedside table with some kind of control panel. A glass jug of water. Facing her on the wall was a framed print of figures moving through a field of poppies, one of them holding a sunshade.

I can remember that this painting is by Monet, she thought. Claude Monet. I can remember a nineteenth-century artist’s name, so why can’t I remember my own?

The black man had a stethoscope hanging from his neck. He wore a short white jacket over a blue shirt and a loosely knotted striped tie. He was very much the junior doctor wanting to give reassurance, in his twenties, with a thin moustache. His voice had a Caribbean lilt.

‘Feeling any better yet?’

She said, ‘Yes.’ It came out as a whisper.

He seemed not to have heard. ‘I asked if you are feeling any better.’

‘I think so.’ She heard her own words. Think so. She wanted to sound more positive. Of course if her voice was functioning she had to be feeling better than before.

‘I’m Dr Whitfield,’ he told her, and waited.

She said nothing.

‘Well?’ he added.

‘What?’

‘We’d like to know your name.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’re a mystery. No identity. We need to know your name and address.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can’t remember?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Anything about yourself?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How you got here?’

‘No. How did I get here?’

‘You have no recall at all?’

‘Doctor, would you please tell me what’s the matter with me?’

‘It seems that you’ve been in an accident. Among other things, you’re experiencing amnesia. It’s temporary, I can promise you.’

‘What sort of accident?’

‘Not so serious as it might have been. A couple of cracked ribs. Abrasions to the legs and hips, some superficial cuts.’

‘How did this happen?’

‘You tell us.’

‘I can’t.’

He smiled. ‘We’re no wiser than you are. It could have been a traffic accident, but I wouldn’t swear to it. You may have fallen off a horse. Do you ride?’

‘No… I mean, I don’t know.’

‘It’s all a blank, is it?’

‘Someone must be able to help. Who brought me here?’

‘I wish we knew. You were found yesterday evening lying unconscious in the car park. By one of the visitors. We brought you inside and put you to bed. It was the obvious thing. This is a private hospital.’

‘Someone knocked me down in a hospital car park?’

He said quite sharply, ‘That doesn’t follow at all.’

She asked, ‘Who was this person who is supposed to have found me?’

‘There’s no “supposed” about it. A visitor. The wife of one of our long-term patients. We know her well. She wouldn’t have knocked you down. She was very concerned, and she was telling the truth, I’m certain.’

‘So someone else knocked me down. Some other visitor.’

‘Hold on. Don’t go jumping to conclusions.’

‘What else could have happened?’

‘Like I said, a fall from a horse. Or a ladder.’

‘In a hospital car park?’ she said in disbelief, her voice growing stronger as the strange facts of the story unfolded.

‘We think someone may have left you there in the expectation that you would be found and given medical attention.’

‘Brought me here, like some unwanted baby – what’s the word? – a foundling?’

‘That’s the general idea.’

‘And gone off without speaking to anyone? What kind of skunk does a thing like that?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s better than a hit-and-run. They just leave you in the road.’

‘You said this is a private hospital. Where?’

‘You’re in the Hinton Clinic, between Bath and Bristol, quite close to the M4. Do you know it? We’ve had car accident victims brought in before. Does any of this trigger a memory?’

She shook her head. It hurt.

‘You’ll get it all back soon enough,’ he promised her. ‘Parts of your brain are functioning efficiently, or you wouldn’t follow what I’m saving. You can remember words, you see, and quite difficult words, like “foundling”. Did you go to school round here?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Your accent isn’t West Country. I’d place you closer to London from the way you speak. But of course plenty of Londoners have migrated here. I’m not local either.’ He smiled. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed.’

She asked, ‘What will happen to me?’

‘Don’t worry. We informed the police. They took a look at you last night. Made some kind of report. Put you on their computer, I expect. You can be sure that someone is asking where you are by now. They’ll get a report on a missing woman and we’ll find out soon enough. Exciting, isn’t it? Not knowing who you are, I mean. You could be anyone. A celebrity. Concert pianist. Rock star. Television weather girl.’

The excitement eluded her. She was too downcast to see any charm in this experience.

Later they encouraged her to get out of bed and walk outside with one of the nurses in support. Her ribs felt sore, but she found no difficulty staying upright. She was functioning normally except for her memory.

She made an effort to be positive, actually summoning a smile for another patient who was wheeled by on an invalid chair, some poor man with the sallow skin of an incurable. No doubt the doctor was right. Memory loss was only a temporary thing, unlike the loss of a limb. No one in her condition had any right to feel self-pity in a place where people were dying.

Before returning to her room, she asked to visit a bathroom. A simple request for a simple need. The nurse escorting her opened a door. What followed was an experience common enough: the unplanned sighting in a mirror of a face that turned out to be her own, the frisson of seeing herself as others saw her. But what made this so unsettling was the absence of any recognition. Usually there is a momentary delay while the mind catches up. This must be a mirror and it must be me. In her case the delay lasted until she walked over to the mirror and stared into it and put out her hand to touch the reflection of her fingertip. The image was still of a stranger, a dark-haired, wide-eyed, horror-stricken woman in a white gown. She turned away in tears.

In her room, Dr Whitfield spoke to her again. He explained that her condition was unusual. Patients with concussion generally had no memory of the events leading up to the injury, but they could recall who they were, where they lived, and so on. He said they would keep her under observation for another night.

The loss of identity was still with her next morning. One of the nurses brought her a set of clothes in a plastic container. She picked up a blue shirt and looked at the dirt marks on the back and sleeves. It was obvious that whoever had worn this had been in some kind of skirmish, but she felt no recognition. Jeans, torn at the knee. Leather belt. Reeboks, newish, but badly scuffed. White socks. Black cotton knickers and bra. Clothes that could have belonged to a million women her age.

‘Do you want me to wear these?’

‘We can’t send you out in a dressing gown,’ said one of the nurses.

‘Send me out?’ she said in alarm. ‘Where am I going?’

‘The doctors say you don’t need to be kept in bed any longer. We’ve kept you under observation in case of complications, but you’ve been declared fit to move now.’

‘Move where?’

‘This is a private hospital. We took you in as an emergency and now we need the bed for another patient.’

They wanted the bed for somebody who would pay for it. She’d been so preoccupied with her problem that she’d forgotten she was literally penniless.

‘We’re going to have to pass you on to Avon Social Services. They’ll take care of you until your memory comes back. Probably find you some spare clothes, or give you money to get some.’

On charity. She hated this. She’d hoped another night would restore her memory. ‘Can’t I stay here?’

She was collected later the same morning by a social worker called Imogen who drove a little green Citroen Special with a striped roof. Imogen was pale and tall with frizzy blonde hair and six bead necklaces. Her accent was as county as a shire hall. ‘I say, you were jolly fortunate landing up there,’ she said, as they drove out of the hospital gates. ‘The Hinton is the clinic to get yourself into, if you’re in need of treatment, that is. I don’t like to think what it would have cost if you hadn’t been an emergency. What’s your name, by the way?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Still muzzy?’

‘Very.’

‘I’ll have to call you something. Let’s invent a name. What do you fancy? Do you object to Rose?’

The choice of name was instructive. Obviously from the quick impression Imogen had got, she had decided that this nameless woman wasn’t a Candida or a Jocelyn. Something more humble was wanted.

‘Call me anything you like. Where are you taking me?’

‘To the office, first. You’ll need money and clothes. Then to a hostel, till you get yourself straight in the head. They told me you cracked a couple of ribs. Is that painful? Should I be taking the corners extra carefully?’

‘It’s all right’

The doctor hadn’t strapped up the damaged rib-cage. Apparently if your breathing isn’t uncomfortable, the condition cures itself. The adjacent ribs act as splints. Her sides were sore, but she had worse to worry over.

‘I’m an absurdly cautious driver, actually,’ Imogen claimed. ‘Do you live in Bath, Rose?’

Rose. She would have to get used to it now. She didn’t feel like a flower.

‘I couldn’t say.’

She thought it unlikely that she lived in Bath, considering it made no connection in her mind. Probably she was just a visitor. But then she could think of no other place she knew.

They drove past a signpost to Cold Ashton, and she told herself it was the sort of name you couldn’t possibly forget.

‘Ring any bells?’ asked Imogen. ‘I saw you looking at the sign.’

‘No.’

‘The way we’re going, down the A46, you’ll get a super view of the city as we come down the hill. With any luck, some little valve will click in your head and you’ll get your memory back.’

The panorama of Bath from above Swainswick, the stone terraces picked out sharply by the mid-morning sun, failed to make any impression. No little valve clicked in her head.

Imogen continued to offer encouragement. ‘There’s always a chance some old chum will recognise you. If this goes on for much longer, we can put your picture in the local paper and see if anyone comes forward.’

She said quickly, ‘I don’t think I’d like that.’

‘Shy, are we?’

‘Anyone could say they knew me. How would I know if they were speaking the truth?’

‘What are you worried about? Some chap trying his luck? You’d know your own boyfriend, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Stone the crows!’ said Imogen. ‘You do have problems.’

They drove down the rest of the road and into the city in silence.

At the office in Manvers Street, Rose – she really was making an effort to respond to the name – was handed twenty-five pounds and asked to sign a receipt. She was also given a second-hand shirt and jeans. She changed right away. Imogen put the old clothes into a plastic bin-liner and dumped them in a cupboard.

She thought about asking to keep her tatty old things regardless of the state they were in. Seeing them dumped in the sack was like being deprived of even more of herself.

In the end she told herself they were too damaged to wear and what were clothes for if you didn’t use them? She didn’t make an issue of it.

Then Imogen drove her to a women’s hostel in Bathwick Street called Harmer House, a seedy place painted inside in institutional green and white. She was to share a room with another woman who was out.

‘How long do I stay here?’

‘Until you get your memory back – or someone claims you.’

Like lost property.

Imogen consoled her. ‘It shouldn’t be long, they said. Chin up, Rose. It could happen to anyone. At least you’ve got some sleeping quarters tonight. Somewhere to count sheep. You’re luckier than some.’

Two

The bed across the room was unmade and strewn with orange peel and chocolate-wrappings. Not promising, the new inmate thought, but it did underline one thing: you were expected to feed yourself in this place. Imogen the social worker had shown her the poky communal kitchen in the basement. If she could remember what she liked to eat and how to cook it, that would be some progress. Surely if anything could jump-start a girl’s memory, it was shopping.

So she went out in search of a shop. It would be pot-luck, because Bath was unknown to her. Or was it? She may have lived here some time. She had to get into her head the possibility that her amnesia was blocking out her ability to recognise any of it.

A strange place can be intimidating. Mercifully this was not. Viewing it through a stranger’s eyes, Rose liked what she saw, disarmed by the appeal of a city that had altered little in two hundred years, not merely the occasional building, but street after street of handsome Georgian terraces in the mellow local stone. She strolled through cobbled passages and down flights of steps into quiet residential areas just as elegant as the main streets; formal, yet weathered and welcoming. At intervals she looked through gaps between the buildings and saw the backdrop of hills lushly covered in trees.

An unfamiliar city. Unfamiliar people, too. She didn’t let that trouble her. She preferred the people unfamiliar. What if she did live here and suddenly met someone who knew her? That was what she ought to be hoping for – some chance meeting that would tell her who she was. But if she had a choice, she wanted to find out in a less confrontational way. She dreaded coming face to face with some stranger who knew more about her than she did herself, someone who expected to be recognised, who wouldn’t understand why she acted dumb. Her situation was making her behave like a fugitive. Stupid.

So she was wary of asking the way to the nearest food shop. By chance she came across Marks and Spencer when she was moving through side streets, trying to avoid the crowds. She discovered a side entrance to the store. A homeless man was sleeping outside under a filthy blanket, watched by his sad-eyed dog. Her pity was mixed with some apprehension about her own prospects.

Hesitating just inside the door of the shop, feeling exposed in the artificial light, she found she was in the food section, where she wanted to be. To run out now would be ridiculous. She picked up a basket and collected a pack of sandwiches, some freshly squeezed orange juice, a mushroom quiche, salad things and teabags and paid for them at the checkout. The woman gave her a tired smile that reassured, for it was the first look she’d had in days that wasn’t trying to assess her physical and mental state. Carrying her bag of food, she followed the signs upstairs to the women’s wear floor to look for underwear and tights. She blew fifteen pounds in one quick spree. Well, no one had told her to make the money last. Outside in the street she dropped some coins into the homeless man’s cap.

She saw someone selling the local daily, the Bath Chronicle. She bought one and looked for a place to read it, eventually choosing a spare bench on the shady side of the paved square beside the Abbey. She took out a sandwich and opened the paper.

This wasn’t only about orientating herself in a strange place. If – as her injuries suggested – she had been in some sort of accident, it might have been reported in the local press.

She leafed through the pages. The story hadn’t made today’s edition, anyway.

Trying not to be disappointed, she put aside the paper and started another sandwich. People steadily crossed the yard carrying things that gave them a reason for being there – shopping, briefcases, musical instruments, library books, city maps or rucksacks, going about their lives in a way that made her envious. Seated here, watching them come and go, secure in their lives, Rose knew she was about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of self-pity. She had nowhere to go except that hostel.

Shape up, she told herself. It was stupid to let negative thoughts take over. Hadn’t everyone said her memory would soon be restored? They’d come across amnesia before. It wasn’t all that uncommon.

Even so, she couldn’t suppress these panicky feelings of what might be revealed about her hidden life. Who could say what responsibilities she had, what personal problems, difficult relationships, unwanted secrets? In some ways it might be better to remain ignorant. No, she reminded herself firmly, nothing is worse than ignorance. It cut her off from the life she had made her own, from family, friends, job, possessions.

Lady, be positive, she lectured herself. Work at this. Get your brain into gear. You are not without clues.

All right. What do I know? I’ve looked in the mirror. Age, probably twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Is that honest? Say around thirty, then. Clothes, casual, but not cheap. The shoes are quality trainers and reasonably new. The belt is real leather. The discarded jeans were by Levi-Strauss. My hair – dark brown and natural, fashionably short, trimmed close at the sides and back – has obviously been cut by someone who knows what to do with a pair of scissors. As for my face, well, they said at the hospital that I wasn’t wearing make-up when I was brought in, but it doesn’t look neglected to me. You don’t get eyebrows as finely shaped as these without some work with the tweezers. My skin looks and feels well treated, smooth to the touch, as if used to a moisturiser. The hands? Well, several of my fingernails were damaged in the accident – though I did my best to repair them with scissors and nail-file borrowed from one of the nurses – but the others are in good shape. They haven’t been chewed down, or neglected. I’m interested to find that I don’t paint my fingernails or toenails, and that in itself must say something about me.

No jewellery, apparently- unless someone took it off me. There isn’t the faintest mark of a wedding ring. Is there?

Rose felt the finger again. This was the horror of amnesia, not being certain of something as fundamental as knowing if she was married.

The injuries told some kind of story, too. Her legs were bruised and cut in a couple of places, apparently from contact with the vehicle that had hit her. The broken ribs and the concussion and the state of her clothes seemed to confirm that she’d been knocked down, but it must have been a glancing contact, or the injuries would have been more serious. The likeliest conclusion was that she’d been crossing a road and the driver had spotted her just too late to swerve. It was improbable that she’d been riding in another vehicle, or there would surely have been whiplash injuries or some damage to her face.

She walked the canal towpath for an hour before returning to the hostel, where she found a policewoman waiting. A no-frills policewoman with eyes about as warm as the silver buttons on her uniform.

‘I won’t keep you long. Just following up on the report we had. You are the woman who was brought into the Hinton Clinic?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘Then you haven’t got your memory back?’

‘No.’

‘So you still don’t know your name?’

‘The social worker called me Rose. That will have to do for the time being.’

The policewoman didn’t sound as if she would be calling her Rose or anything else. Not that sympathy was required, but there was a skeptical note in the questions. Jobs like this were probably given to the women; they weren’t at the cutting edge dealing with crime. ‘You remember that much, then?’

‘I can remember everything from the time I woke up in the hospital bed.’

‘The funny thing is, we haven’t had any reports of an accident yesterday.’

‘I didn’t say I had one. Other people said I did.’

‘Has anyone taken photos yet?’

‘Of me?’

‘Of your injuries.’

‘Only X-rays.’

‘You should get photographed in case there’s legal action. If you were hit by some driver and there’s litigation, it will take ages to come to court, and you’ll have nothing to show them.’

Good advice. Maybe this policewoman wasn’t such a downer as she first appeared. ‘Is that up to me to arrange?’

‘We can get a police photographer out to you. We’ll need a head and shoulders for our records anyway.’

‘Could it be a woman photographer?’

‘Why?’

‘My legs look hideous.’

The policewoman softened just a touch. ‘I could ask.’

‘You see, I’m not used to being photographed.’

‘How do you know that?’

It was a fair point.

‘If this goes on for any time at all,’ said the policewoman, ‘you won’t be able to stay out of the spotlight. We’ll need to circulate your picture. It’s the only way forward in cases of this kind.’

‘Can’t you leave it for a few days? They told me people always get their memory back.’

‘That’s not up to me. My superiors take the decisions. If an offence has been committed, a serious motoring offence, we’ll need to find the driver responsible.’

‘Suppose I don’t want to press charges?’

‘It’s not up to you. If some berk knocked you down and didn’t report it, we’re not going to let him get away with it. We have a duty to other road users.’

Rose agreed to meet the police photographer the same evening. She also promised to call at the central police station as soon as her memory was restored.

She was left alone.

‘Rose.’ She spoke the name aloud, trying it on in the bedroom like a dress, and deciding it was wrong for her. She didn’t wish to personify romance, or beauty. She went through a string of more austere possibilities, like Freda, Shirley and Thelma. Curiously, she could recall women’s names with ease, yet couldn’t say which was her own.

‘I’m Ada.’

Startled, Rose turned towards the doorway and saw that it was two-thirds filled. The one-third was the space above head height.

‘Ada Shaftsbury. Have they put you in with me?’ said Ada Shaftsbury from the doorway. ‘I had this to myself all last week.’ With a shimmy of the upper body she got properly into the room, strutted across and sat on the bed among the orange peel. ‘What’s your name?’

‘They call me Rose. It’s not my real name. I was in an accident. I lost my memory.’

‘You don’t look like a Rose to me. Care for a snack? I do like a Danish for my tea.’ She dipped her hand into a carrier bag she’d brought in.

‘That’s kind, but no thanks.’

‘I mean it. I picked up five. I can spare one or two.’

‘Really, no.’

Ada Shaftsbury was not convinced. ‘You’d be helping me. I’m on this diet. No snacks. Five Danish pastries isn’t a snack. It’s a meal, so I have to eat them at a sitting. Teatime. Three would only be a snack. If I was left with three, I’d have to blow the whistle, and that might be good for me. I’m very strict with myself.’

‘Honestly, I couldn’t manage one.’

‘You don’t mind if I have my tea while we talk?’ said Ada, through a mouthful of Danish pastry.

‘Please go ahead.’

‘I’ve tried diets before and none of them work. This one suits me so far. Since my mother died, I’ve gone all to pieces. I’ve been done three times.’

‘Done?’ Rose was uncertain what she meant.

‘Sent down. For the five-finger discount.’

Rose murmured some sort of response.

‘You’re not with me, petal, are you?’ said Ada. ‘I’m on about shoplifting. Food, mostly. They shouldn’t put it on display like they do. It’s a temptation. Can you cook?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll find out, I suppose.’

‘It’s a poky little kitchen. If I get in there, which has to be sideways, I don’t have room to open the cupboards.’

‘That must be a problem.’

Ada took this as the green light. ‘I can get the stuff if you’d be willing to cook for both of us. And you don’t have to worry about breakfast.’ Ada gave a wide, disarming smile. ‘You’re thinking I don’t eat a cooked breakfast, aren’t you?’

‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’

‘There’s a foreign girl called Hildegarde in the room under ours and she likes to cook. I’m teaching her English. She knows some really useful words now: eggs, bacon, tomatoes, fried bread. If you want a good breakfast, just say the word to Hildegarde.’

‘I don’t know if I’ll be staying long.’

‘You don’t know, full stop,’ said Ada. ‘Could be only a couple of hours. Could be months.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Do you like bacon? I’ve got a whole side of bacon in the freezer.’

‘Where did that come from?’

Ada wobbled with amusement. ‘The back of a lorry in Green Street. The driver was delivering to a butcher’s. He was round the front arguing with a traffic warden, so I did some unloading for him, slung it over my shoulder and walked through the streets. I got looks, but I get looks anyway. They shouldn’t leave the stuff on view if they don’t want it to walk. I’ve got eggs, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, spuds. We can have a slap-up supper tonight. Hildegarde will cook. We can invite her up to eat with us.’

‘Actually, I bought my own,’ Rose said.

‘Good,’ said Ada Shaftsbury, failing or refusing to understand. ‘We’ll pool it. What did you get?’

‘Salad things mostly.’

‘In all honesty I can’t say I care much for salad, but we can use it as a garnish for the fry-up,’Ada said indistinctly through her second Danish.

Rose’s long-term memory may have ceased to function, but the short-term one delivered. ‘It’s a nice idea, but I’d rather not eat until the police have been.’

‘The said Ada, going pale.police?‘

‘They’re going to take some photos.’

‘In here, you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve got some scars on my legs. If you don’t mind, it would be easiest in here.’

‘I’ll go down the chippie for supper,’Ada decided.

‘I don’t want to drive you out. It’s your room as much as mine.’

‘You carry on, petal. If there’s a cop with a camera, I’m not at home. We’ll have our fry-up another day.’

She gulped the rest of her tea and was gone in two minutes.

The photography didn’t start for a couple of hours, and Ada had still not returned.

Having the pictures taken was more of a major production than Rose expected, but she was relieved that the photographer was a woman. Jenny, in dungarees and black boots with red laces, took her work seriously enough to have come equipped with extra lighting and a tripod. Fortunately she had a chirpy style that made the business less of an ordeal. ‘I can’t tell you what a nice change it is to be snapping someone who can breathe. Most jobs I’m looking at corpses through this thing. Shall we try the full length first? In pants and bra studying the wallpaper, if you don’t mind slipping out of your things. It won’t take long.’

Jenny thoughtfully put a chair against the door.

‘Okay, the back view first. Arms at your side. Fine… Now the front shot. Relax your arms, dear… My, you’re getting some prize-winning bruises there. Sure you’re not a rugby player?… Now I think we’d better do a couple without the undies, don’t you? I mean the blue bits don’t stop at your pantie-line.’

Rose swallowed hard, stripped to her skin and was photographed unclothed in a couple of standing poses.

‘You can dress again now,’Jenny said. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. Whoever you are, you’re not used to flaunting it in front of a camera.’

Three

Rarely in his police career had Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond spent so many evenings at home. He was starting to follow the plot-lines in the television soaps, a sure sign of under-employment. Even the cat, Raffles, had fitted Diamond seamlessly into its evening routine, springing onto his lap at nine-fifteen (after a last foray in the garden) and remaining there until forced to move – which did not usually take long.

One evening when it was obvious that Raffles’ tolerance was stretched to breaking point, Stephanie Diamond remarked, ‘If you relaxed, so would he.’

‘But I’m not here for his benefit.’

‘For yours, my love. Why don’t you stroke him? He’ll purr beautifully if you encourage him. It’s been proved to reduce blood pressure.’

He gave her a sharp look. ‘Mine?’

‘Well, I don’t mean the cat’s.’

‘Who says my blood pressure is too high?’ She knew better than to answer that. Her overweight husband hadn’t had a check-up in years. ‘I’m just saying you should unwind more. You sit there each evening as if you expect the phone to ring any moment.’

He said offhandedly, ‘Who’s going to ring me?’

She returned to the crossword she was doing. ‘Well, if you don’t know…’

He placed his hand on the cat’s back, but it refused to purr. ‘I take it as a positive sign. If there’s a quiet phase at work, as there is now, we must be winning the battle. Crime prevention.’

Stephanie said without looking up, ‘I expect they’re all too busy watering the geraniums.’

His eyes widened.

‘This is Bath,’ she went on, ‘the Floral City. Nobody can spare the time to commit murders.’

He smiled. Steph’s quirky humour had its own way of keeping a sense of proportion in their lives.

‘Speaking of murder,’ he said, ‘he’s killed that camellia we put in last spring.’

“Who has?’

‘Raffles.’

The cat’s ears twitched.

‘He goes to it every time,’ Diamond insensitively said. ‘Treats it as his personal privy.’

Stephanie was quick to defend the cat. ‘It isn’t his fault. We made a mistake buying a camellia. They don’t like a lime soil. They grow best in acid ground.’

‘It is now.’

He liked to have the last word. And she knew it was no use telling him to relax. He’d never been one for putting his feet up and watching television. Or doing the crossword. ‘How about a walk, then?’ she suggested.

‘But it’s dark.’

‘So what? Afraid we’ll get mugged or something?’

He laughed. ‘In the Floral City?’

‘But this isn’t exactly the centre of Bath.’ She took the opposite line, straight-faced. ‘This is Weston. Who knows what dangers lurk out there? It’s gone awfully quiet. The bell-ringers must have finished. They could be on the streets.’

‘You’re on,’ he said, shoving Raffles off his lap. ‘Live dangerously.’

They met no one. They stopped to watch some bats swooping in and out of the light of a lamp-post and Diamond commented that it could easily be Transylvania.

At least conversation came more readily at walking pace than from armchairs. He admitted that he was uneasy about his job.

‘In what way?’ Stephanie asked.

‘Like you were saying, we’re not exactly the crime capital of Europe. I’m supposed to be the murder man here. I make a big deal out of leading the Bath murder squad, and our record is damned good, but we’re being squeezed all the time.’

‘Under threat?’

‘Nobody has said anything…’

‘But you can feel the vibes.’ Stephanie squeezed his arm. ‘Oh, come on, Pete. If nobody has said anything, forget it.’

‘But you wanted to know what was on my mind.’

‘There’s more?’

‘The crime figures don’t look so good. No, that’s wrong. They’ re too good, really. Our clear-up rate is brilliant compared to Bristol, but it isn’t based on many cases. They’ve got a lot of drug-related crime, a bunch of unsolved killings. See it on a computer and it’s obvious. They need support. That’s the way they see it at Headquarters.’

‘You’ve helped Bristol out before. There was that bank manager at Keynsham.’

‘I don’t mind helping out. I don’t want to move over there, lock, stock and barrel.’

‘Nor do I, just when we’ve got the house straight. What about your boss – the Assistant Chief Constable? Will he fight your corner for you?’

‘He’s new.’

‘Same old story.’ Stephanie sighed. ‘We need some action, then, and fast. A shoot-out over the teacups in the Pump-Room.’

‘Fix it, will you?’ said Diamond.

‘Do my best,’ she said.

They completed a slow circuit around Locksbrook Cemetery and returned to the semi-detached house they occupied in Weston.

Diamond stopped unexpectedly at the front gate.

‘What’s up?’ Stephanie asked.

He put a finger to his lips, opened the gate and crept low across the small lawn like an Apache. Stephanie watched in silence, grateful for the darkness. He was heading straight for the camellia, the barely surviving camellia.

With a triumphant ‘Got you!’ he sank to his knees and thrust his hand towards the plant.

There was a screech, followed by a yell of pain from Diamond. A dark feline shape bolted from under the camellia, raced across the lawn, leapt at the fence and scrambled over it. ‘He bit me! He bloody well bit me.’

Gripping the fleshy edge of his right hand, high-stepping across the lawn, the Head of the Murder Squad looked as if he was performing a war dance now.

Stephanie was calm. ‘Come inside, love. We’d better get some TCP on that.’

Indoors, they examined the bite. The cat’s top teeth had punctured the flesh quite deeply. Stephanie found the antiseptic and dabbed some on. ‘I expect he felt vulnerable,’ she pointed out in the cat’s defence, ‘doing his business, with you creeping up and making a grab for him.’

‘My own bloody cat,’ said Diamond. ‘He’s had his last saucer of cream from me.’

‘What do you mean – “your own cat”? That wasn’t Raffles.’

‘Of course it was Raffles. Don’t take his side. He was caught in the bloody act.’

‘Red-handed?’ murmured Stephanie, adding quickly, ‘A fine detective you are, if you can’t tell the difference between your own cat and the moggy next door. That was Samson. I saw the white bit under his chin.’

‘That was never Samson.’

‘Why did he bolt straight over the fence into their garden?’

‘It was the shortest escape route, that’s why.’

She chose not to pursue the matter. ‘How does it feel?’

‘I’ll survive, I suppose. Thanks for the nursing.’

She made some tea. When they walked into the sitting room, Raffles was curled on Diamond’s armchair, asleep. It was obvious he had not stirred in the past hour.

‘Incidentally…’ Stephanie said.

‘Mm?’

‘When did you last have a jab for tetanus?’

Four

Ada Shaftsbury’s breathing was impaired by her bloated physique, particularly when she moved. With each step she emitted a breath or a sigh. Climbing the stairs sounded like competitive weight-lifting because the breaths became grunts and the sighs groans. The entire hostel must have heard her come in some time after eleven.

She stood for a short while by the bedroom door, recovering. Finally she managed to say, ‘You’re not asleep, are you, petal?’

‘No.’ But ‘petal’ had hoped to be. She was exhausted.

‘I brought back a few nibbles from the pub, a pork pie, if you want, and some crisps.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Aren’t you going to keep me company?’

‘I thought you didn’t eat snacks.’

‘This is supper,’ said Ada.

‘Wasn’t supper what you went to the chippie for?’

‘That was dinner.’

‘Actually, Ada, I don’t like to eat as late as this.’

‘How do you know?’

‘What?’

‘If you lost your memory, how do you know when you like to eat and when you don’t?’

Rose couldn’t answer that. ‘What I mean is that I’m ready for sleep.’

‘You don’t mind if I have yours, then?’

‘Don’t mind at all. Goodnight.’

There was an encouraging interval of near silence, disturbed only by the smack of lips.

Then:

‘I say…?’

‘Mm?’

‘Did the photographer come – the photographer from the police?’

‘Yes.’

Another interval.

‘You want to be careful, getting in their records. You don’t know what they do with the photos they take.’

‘Ada, I’m really pooped, if you don’t mind.’

‘I could tell you things about the police.’

‘Tomorrow.’

Ada wanted her say, regardless. ‘We all have rights, you know, under the Trade Descriptions Act.’

‘Data Protection.’

‘What?’

‘I think you mean the Data Protection Act.’

‘Your memory can’t be all that bad if you can think of something like Data whatsit at this time of night. Are you getting it back?’

‘No.’ Some hope, she thought, when I can’t even get my sleep in.

Ada would not be silenced. ‘I think it’s diabolical, the way they pissed you about. That hospital was only too pleased to see the back of you and the social so-called services shove you in here and all the police do is take some photos. It’s a bloody disgrace.’

Rose sighed and turned on her back, drawing the hair from across her eyes. She was fully awake now. ‘What else could they have done?’

‘Never mind them. I know what I’d do. I’d go back to that hospital where you were dumped and ask some questions. That’s what I’d do. I’d insist on it.’

‘What is there to find out?’

‘I haven’t the faintest, my petal, but it’s all you’ve got to work on. Did they show you the place where you were found?’

‘The car park? No.’

‘Who was it who found you, then?’

‘A woman. The wife of a patient. They didn’t tell me her name.’

‘You’ve got a right to know who she is. You’re entitled to speak to her.’

‘What can she tell me? She didn’t cause my injuries. She just happened to find me.’

‘How do you know that? I might as well say it: you’re too trusting,’ said Ada. ‘They pat you on the head and tell you to go away and that’s what you do. The well behaved little woman, God help us, up shit creek without a paddle. Do they care? All they’re concerned about is the reputation of their sodding hospital. They don’t want it known that someone was knocked down in their car park. You could sue.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘So they say.’ Ada was practically beating a drum by now. ‘Listen, petal, this may get up your nose, but you’ ve got some rights here. If you want to exercise them, I’m willing to throw my weight in on your side, and that’s a pretty large offer. I’ll come with you to the hospital and sort those people out.’

‘That’s very kind, but I really don’t think-’

‘We’ll talk about this in the morning, right?’ said Ada, following it with a large yawn. ‘I can’t stay awake all night listening to you rabbiting on. I should have been in bed twenty minutes ago.’

Stephanie had fixed this. She had promised it would be done quickly and without fuss by one of her vast network of friends, a nurse who worked in Accident and Emergency at the Royal United Hospital. It was no use Peter Diamond protesting that he was neither an accident nor an emergency.

When he met the friend, he had grave doubts whether he wanted her hand on the syringe. She was mountainous.

‘How is my old chum Steph?’ she asked.

‘Blooming,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking about me?’

‘You look well enough.’ She examined the cat-bite. ‘Was it your own little kitty who did this to you?’

He said in an offended tone, as if the possibility had never crossed his mind, ‘Raffles wouldn’t hurt me. Steph reckons it was next door’s, but I have my doubts. This was a big brute. You can see that from the size of the bite.’

‘Probably on the run from a safari park,’ said the nurse with a look she probably gave men who made a fuss. ‘Slip off your jacket and roll up your sleeve.’

‘You think an injection is necessary?’

‘Isn’t that the point?’ She gave a rich, unsympathetic laugh. ‘Your tetanus jab is long overdue, according to your file. I phoned your GP.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘First, I must take your blood pressure. That must have altered since – when was it? – 1986. You seem to be rather good at bucking the system, Mr Diamond.’

‘Or saving the system from bankruptcy,’ he was perky enough to respond. ‘You need healthy people like me.’

‘We’ll see how healthy,’ she said, tying the cuff around his arm and inflating it vigorously. ‘Who took it last time?’

‘My doctor, I think.’

‘A man?’

‘Yes. Is that important?’

‘We can expect it to go up a few points. It’s always that bit higher when someone of the opposite sex takes the reading.’

He stopped himself from saying anything. He was in no position to disillusion her.

Presently she told him, ‘Too high, even allowing for the attraction factor. You’d best have a chat with one of the doctors. I’ll slot you in. No problem.’

He was going to have to assert himself. ‘I didn’t come about my blood pressure. I came for a jab.’

She picked up the syringe. ‘Which I’m about to give you.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder if there’s been some collusion between you and Steph.’

‘I don’t see how,’ said the nurse. ‘You don’t think she arranged for the cat to bite you?’

She dabbed on some antiseptic and then plunged the needle in.

‘Jesus.’

A woman in a white coat appeared in the room while he still had his finger pressed to the piece of cotton wool the nurse had placed over the injection mark.

‘Superintendent Diamond?’

He didn’t respond. Who wanted to socialise at a time like this?

‘I’m Christine Snell. I don’t think we’ve met.’

The nurse put a Band-Aid over the injection and said, ‘I’ll leave you with the patient, Doctor.’

He said to Christine Snell, ‘You’re a doctor?’

‘That’s why I’m here. How’s Steph, by the way?’

Another friend. His thoughts took a lurch towards paranoia. Steph’s friends, between them, had him over a barrel.

She said, ‘Your blood pressure is slightly on the high side. We shouldn’t neglect it. Do you smoke?’

‘No. And the answer to the next question is yes, the occasional one.’

‘So how do you cope with stress?’

‘What stress?’

‘Overwork.’

‘Underwork, in my case.’

‘Potentially even more stressful. It kills a lot of people. Have you got any hobbies?’

‘Like collecting beermats?’ said Diamond. ‘You’re trying to catch me out, Doctor. No, I don’t do anything you would call a hobby.’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘I’ll think it over,’ he conceded. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the nurse just now got an exaggerated reading.’

Her eyes widened and the start of a smile appeared.

‘Not that,’ said Diamond. ‘I was annoyed. Doesn’t that increase it? I can’t help feeling I was fitted up for this. I came here because of the cat-bite, but last night, before I was bitten, Steph was on about my blood pressure.’

The smile surfaced fully. ‘Do you know what Kai Lung said?’

‘I’ve never heard of Kai Lung.’

‘I think I have it right,’ said Dr Snell.’ ‘It is proverbial that from a hungry tiger and an affectionate woman there is no escape.” Seems rather apt, in your case.’

While Rose and Ada were waiting to speak to Dr Whitfield, a refreshment trolley came by and Ada’s hand, quick as a lizard, whipped two doughnuts off it and into her bag, unseen by the woman in charge. ‘Elevenses,’ she said in justification.

‘Does that count as a meal?’

‘It’s over two hours since breakfast.’

The breakfast the foreign girl Hildegarde had cooked to Ada’s order had been enough to fortify Rose for hours yet. She could still taste the delicious bacon.

Bizarrely, the appointments secretary was announcing something about eggs.

‘That’s you,’ said Ada.

‘Me?’

‘Rose X.’

‘Dr Whitfield will see you now,’ said the secretary. ‘Room Nine, at the top of the stairs.’

‘Stairs. I knew it,’ Ada complained.

‘You don’t have to come with me.’

‘I do. Someone’s got to fight your corner.’

The door of Room 9 stood open. Dr Whitfield got up from behind his desk to greet them. He was shorter than he looked from the level of a hospital bed. ‘Have you got it back yet?’

Rose shook her head.

‘Not even a glimmer?’

‘Nothing at all. This is my friend Ada Shaftsbury.’ Ada’s hand must have been sticky from the doughnut, because after shaking it Dr Whitfield took a tissue from the packet on his desk. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked after they were seated.

‘We’d like to speak to the lady who found me.’

Dr Whitfield was slow in responding. He made a performance of wiping his hand and letting the tissue drop into a bin. ‘I doubt if that would help.’

‘I want to know exactly where I was found.’

‘I told you. In the car park.’

‘Yes, but I’d like the lady to show me where.’

‘Not possible, I’m afraid. She doesn’t work here. As I think I explained, she’s the wife of a patient.’

Buoyed up by Ada’s substantial presence, Rose said, ‘It’s a free country. I can ask her, can’t I?’

‘I really can’t see the point in troubling her,’ Dr Whitfield said.

This was too much for Ada. She waded in. ‘Troubling her? What about my friend here? What about the trouble she’s in? Hey, doc, let’s get our priorities straight before we go any further. This is your patient asking for help. She wants a face to face with this woman, whoever she is. She’s entitled to know exactly where she was found and what was going on at the time.’

‘I don’t think there’s any mystery about that,’ Dr Whitfield started to say.

‘Fine,’ said Ada, ‘so what’s the woman’s name and address?’

‘Look, the lady in question acted very responsibly. She came straight in and got help. It was as simple as that.’

‘So what are you telling us?’

‘I’m saying I don’t want her put through the third degree. She’s an elderly lady.’

‘Tough tittie, doc.’ Ada rested her hands on his desk, leaned over it and said, ‘You think my friend would duff up the old lady who came to her rescue?’

He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Not at all’

‘Well, then?’

Dr Whitfield must have sensed he wasn’t going to win this one. ‘If it’s this important, I suppose it can be arranged. But I think it might be wise to speak to Mrs Thornton alone.’

Pointedly excluding Ada, he said to Rose, ‘I suggest if you want to meet her that you come back this afternoon. She visits her husband every day between two and four. See me first and I’ll introduce you.’

Progress at last.

‘There’s something else, Doctor.’ Rose spoke up for herself. ‘I’m puzzled about this head injury. I’ve examined my head. I can’t find any cuts or bruising.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Dr Whitfield.

She frowned, unable to understand.

‘It doesn’t follow that you had a crack on the skull at all,’ he went on. ‘You get concussion from a shaking of the brain. A jolt to the neck would do it just as easily.’

‘You mean if I was struck by a car and my head rocked back?’

‘That’s exactly what I had in mind.’

Rose prepared to leave.

‘There’s something else I should mention,’ the doctor said. ‘When you get your memory back it’s quite on the cards that you still won’t remember anything about the accident. It may be a mystery forever.’

‘I hope not.’

‘It’s a common effect known as retrograde amnesia. The patient has no recall of the events immediately before the concussion happened.’

‘I could accept that, if I could only get back the rest of my memory. This has gone on for three days already. Are you sure there isn’t permanent damage to my brain?’

He put his hand supportively over hers. ‘Nobody fully understands how the memory works, but it has a wonderful capacity for recovery. Something will make a connection soon, and you’ll know it’s coming back.’

She and Ada went downstairs and walked in the grounds. Through the trees they could hear the steady drone of traffic on the motorway.

Rose felt deeply disheartened. ‘What am I going to do, Ada?’

‘Talk to this old biddy who found you.’

‘I’m not pinning my hopes on her.’

‘She’s your best bet, ducky. Like he said, something will make a connection. Who knows what talking to her might do?’

‘Of course I’ll talk to her now it’s been arranged. All I’m saying is that I don’t expect a breakthrough. What do I do if I draw a blank with Mrs Thornton?’

‘Talk to the press and get your picture in the paper along the lines of CAN YOU HELP THIS WOMAN? With looks like yours, you’ll get some offers, but I won’t say what kind.’

‘I don’t want that.’ They strolled past some patients in wheelchairs. She told Ada, ‘I’m sorry to be a misery-guts. It’s become very clear to me how much we all rely on our memories. You’d think what’s past is finished, but it isn’t. It makes us what we are. Without a memory, you don’t have any experience to support you. You can’t trust yourself to make decisions, to reason, to stand up for your rights. My past started on Tuesday morning. That’s the whole of my experience, Ada. I don’t have anything else to work with.’

‘There’s lunch,’ suggested Ada.

Five

Meals-on-Wheels is a system as near foolproof as any arrangement can be that relies on volunteers. A couple of days before someone’s turn to deliver the meals, she (the volunteers are usually women) will be handed (by the previous person on the rota) a white box about the size of a ballot box. It is made of expanded polystyrene, for insulation, and fitted with a shoulder strap. Being so large and conspicuous when left in a private house, the box is a useful reminder of the duty to be done.

On either a Tuesday or a Thursday, at a few minutes before noon, the volunteer reports to a local school canteen where lunch is ready for serving. Piping hot foil containers are loaded into the box by the dinner ladies. The box is carried to the car. With the meals aboard, the wheels take over.

‘Now begins the tricky part,’ Susan Dowsett explained to Joan Hanks, who was about to join the Acton Turville and District team and had come along to learn how it was done. Mrs Dowsett was the mainstay of the service, one of those admirable, well-to-do Englishwomen who plunge into voluntary work with the same sure touch they apply to their jam-making. ‘They do look forward to seeing you, and most of them like a chat. Some poor ducks hardly ever see anyone else, so one does one’s best to jolly them up. The snag is that you have to ration your time, or the ones at the end of the round get cold lunches.’

‘I expect you can pop them in the oven if that happens. The meals, I mean.’

‘That’s the idea, and sometimes I’ ve done it, but old people are so forgetful. More than once I’ve opened the oven on Thursday and found Tuesday’s lunch still in there, untouched and dry as a biscuit.’ Her chesty laugh jogged the steering. She drove an Isuzu Trooper that suited her personality.

Acton Turville alone would have been a simple task: meals on foot. The ‘and District’ was the part requiring transport. Many of the recipients lived in remote houses outside the village.

‘I always start at the farthest outpost,’ Mrs Dowsett explained as they cruised confidently along a minor road. ‘Old Mr Gladstone is our first call. He’s not the most pleasant to deal with and most of them leave him till last. Get the worst over first, I always say.’

‘What’s wrong with Mr Gladstone?’

‘Hygiene. The atmosphere, shall we say, is not exactly apple-blossom. He’s none too sociable, either. I’ve known him to be downright offensive about the meals. There’s no need for that. It’s plain food, but at least it’s warm.’

‘If he doesn’t want us…’

‘Social Services insist. He won’t cook for himself, apart from eggs from the few wretched hens he keeps in his yard. Used to be a farmer. Lived there all his life, as far as I can gather, but he doesn’t seem to have any friends. Sad, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps he prefers a quiet life.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Dowsett, unconvinced.

The ‘farthest outpost’ turned out to be only a mile from the village, just off the Tormarton Road, up a track that Joan Hanks privately vowed to take cautiously in her own little car for fear of ruining the suspension.

‘You’ll need tougher shoes than those when the weather gets worse,’ Mrs Dowsett advised when they were both standing in the yard. ‘Every time it rains, this is like a mud-hole after the elephants have been by. Good, you’ve brought the box. Always bring the box into the house. It keeps the food warm. Let’s see what reception we get today.’

As they crossed the yard to the door of the stone cottage there was an extraordinary commotion from the henhouse at the side, hens crowding the wire fence.

‘Hungry, I expect,’ said Mrs Dowsett. ‘All they get is scraps, and not much of them.’

‘Poor things,’ said Joan.

Mrs Dowsett tapped on the door and got no answer. ‘This is often the case,’ she explained. ‘They don’t hear you. As often as not, the door is open, so you just go in. Try it.’

‘He doesn’t know me.’

‘Don’t let that put you off. He treats us all like strangers. Is it open?’

Joan knocked again, turned the handle and pushed. The door creaked and opened inwards just an inch or so. An overpowering stench reached her nostrils and she hesitated.

‘You see?’ said Mrs Dowsett. She called out in a hearty tone, ‘Meals on wheels, Mr Gladstone.’

Joan held her breath and pushed at the door. The interior was shadowy and the full horror of the scene took several seconds to make out. Old Mr Gladstone was inside, slumped in a wooden armchair. The top of his head was blown away. A shotgun lay on the floor.

‘Are you all right, dear?’ said Mrs Dowsett, suddenly turned motherly.

In this bizarre situation, Joan was uncertain whether the remark was addressed to the corpse, or herself. She gave a nod. She was reeling with the shock, and she needed fresh air if she was not to faint. She turned away.

‘I’d better get on the car-phone,’ said Mrs Dowsett, a model of composure. ‘Why don’t you feed that meal to the chickens? I don’t like to waste things.’

The old farmer’s death was routinely dealt with by the police. A patrol was detailed to investigate. Peter Diamond heard of it first over the radio while driving down Wellsway. Nothing to make his pulse beat faster, some sad individual topping himself with a shotgun.

He drove on, his thoughts on his own mortality. High blood pressure, it seemed, was a mysterious condition. His sort had no recognised cause, according to Dr Snell. The symptoms were vague. He might suffer some headaches, tiredness and dizzy spells. He had not. If it affected the heart, or the arteries, he might experience breathlessness, particularly at night, pain in the chest, coughing or misty vision. He had told the doctor honestly that none of it seemed to apply to him. In that case, she said, he need not alter his life-style, except, she suggested, to reduce some weight, if possible, and avoid worrying too much.

Great, he thought. Now I’m worrying about worrying.

As he had time to spare, he called at the Central Library and looked up high blood pressure in a medical textbook. They called it hypertension, a term he didn’t care for. But the author was good enough to state that if the condition caused no symptoms at all, it could not be described as a disorder. He liked that and closed the book. The rest of the article could wait until he noticed a symptom, if ever.

His hypertension level had an immediate test. Having returned the book to the shelf, he turned the corner of the stack and found himself face to face with the new Assistant Chief Constable, all decked out in black barathea, shiny silver buttons and new braided hat. Diamond managed a flustered, ‘Morning, em, afternoon, sir.’

‘Afternoon, Mr Diamond. Checking some facts?’

He didn’t want the high-ups to know about his hypertension. Not for the first time in a crisis, he said the first thing that popped into his head, and it was so unexpected that it had to be believed. ‘That’s right, sir. I’m looking for the philosophy section.’

‘Philosophy?’

‘I wanted to find out about Kai Lung, if possible. I think he must be a philosopher.’

‘Chinese?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Sorry. Can’t help. Is this an Open University course?’

A low punch. Diamond’s rival John Wigfull had got to the head of Bath CID on the strength of his OU degree. Further education was not on Diamond’s agenda. ‘No, something that was quoted to me earlier. I wanted to trace the source. It’s my lunch-hour.’

‘Good luck, then. I’m looking for Who’s Who.’

Save your time, matey, Diamond thought. You won’t make Who’s Who for at least another year.

To support his story, he strolled over to the inquiry desk and asked if they had anything on Kai Lung. A tall young man looked over his glasses and told him to try under Bramah.

Thinking Bramah sounded Indian, Diamond emphasised, ‘I said Kai Lung. I reckon it’s Chinese.’

‘Ernest Bramah. He was a fictional character invented by Ernest Bramah. the first title of several, as far as I remember. Try the fiction shelves.’The Wallet of Kai Lung was

‘Ernest Bramah?’

‘Yes, but don’t pick up one of his Max Carrados books expecting to find Kai Lung. Carrados is the blind detective.’

Diamond didn’t want to know about infirmities in his profession. ‘I’ll avoid those, then.’

He wandered over to the fiction shelves.

The hypertension definitely edged up a few points when he got back to his place of work, Manvers Street Police Station. Two of the youngest detectives were getting into a car when he drove in. The use of CID manpower was a constant source of friction. His old adversary Chief Inspector John Wigfull was in charge of CID matters, but Diamond headed the murder squad. In bleak spells like this when everyone in Bath respected everyone else’s right to exist, the squad virtually disbanded. Most of the lads were employed on break-ins and car thefts. Like anyone keen to defend his small empire, Diamond insisted that certain officers were detailed to pick the bones of the three unsolved homicides he still had on his books. He felt sure one of this pair was last given orders to work for him.

‘You’re not skiving, I trust,’ he called across.

‘No chance, Guv,’ said the less dozy of the two. ‘Incident at Tormarton. Some farmer blew his brains out.’

‘Didn’t I hear a patrol being sent to that one an hour ago? How has it become a CID matter?’

‘Mr Wigfull’s orders, Guv.’

‘Two of you? CID must be under-employed these days.’

He went up to his office and opened Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat. Concentration was difficult. John Wigfull had the nose of a tracker dog and the resemblance didn’t end there. It justified a call to his office. A sergeant answered. Chief Inspector Wigfull, it emerged, was not in. He had driven out to look at a suicide at Tormarton.

When Wigfull got back towards the end of the afternoon, Diamond – remarkable to relate – met him coming in from the car park. ‘Been down on the farm, John?’

Wigfull gave a guarded, ‘Were you looking for me?’

‘Nothing vital.’

‘But you went to the trouble of finding out where I was?’

‘Just out of interest. I’m not going to shop you if you need a break.’

‘It was police business.’

‘I know that.’

They eyed each other for a short, silent stalemate. Diamond had never been able to take that overgrown moustache seriously. He explained, ‘I spoke to Sergeant Burns. How was your farmer?’

‘In a word, high,’ said Wigfull.

‘Been dead some time?’

‘Too long for my liking.’

‘Straightforward suicide?’

‘He blew a hole through his head with a twelve-bore.’

‘Sounds straightforward to me.’

There was another interval.

‘Not so straightforward?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Without understanding how it had been done, Wigfull found himself having to fill Diamond in on the incident. ‘He was a loner. The farm, such as it is -more of a smallholding, in fact – is in a pitiful state. He was old, living frugally. It all got too much, and no wonder. You should have seen the inside of the house.’ Wigfull paused, remembering. ‘The saddest thing is that he wasn’t found before this. Nobody visited. Anything up to a week, the pathologist reckons.’

‘Who found him?’

‘Two unlucky women who take the meals-on-wheels round.’

‘He gets meals-on-wheels? Why wasn’t he found before this, then?’

‘It’s only Tuesdays and Thursdays. He may have had a visit from them last week. We’ re checking. They work to a rota. The thing is, whoever was due to call may have gone away when they didn’t get an answer.’

‘Neighbours?’

‘It’s way out in the sticks. And he discouraged visitors.’

‘Where exactly is it? North of the motorway?’

Wigfull’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t recommend a visit, Peter. The two lads I have at the scene are still wearing face-masks, helping the pathologist find all the bits.’

‘Quite a baptism for them.’

‘Yes.’

‘The shotgun?’

‘At his feet. He was in a chair.’

It was apparent that Wigfull was playing this down for all he was worth. He answered the questions honestly because his sense of duty wouldn’t allow him to lie. But he hadn’t revealed what induced him to go out to Tormarton in person. There was something else about the case, and Diamond was too proud to ask precisely what it was.

Before leaving work that night, he asked Julie Hargreaves, his second-in-command, and the one person he could depend upon, to keep an ear open in the canteen. Wigfull wouldn’t give anything away, but his officers might. Something about this business offended the nostrils and it wasn’t only the dead farmer.

Six

Mrs Thornton was a sweetie. She was well over seventy, tall, upright and so thin that she must have been suffering from chronic osteoporosis. Yet her thoughts were all of her husband David, an Alzheimer’s patient. ‘I don’t know what’s in his mind, if anything, poor darling,’ she told Rose in an accent redolent of a privileged upbringing more than half a century ago. ‘It’s very distressing. He rambles dreadfully. It’s hard to believe that he once commanded an aircraft carrier.’

Rose explained that her own brain was impaired, but temporarily, she hoped. ‘I’m trying desperately to find something that will get the memory working. Would you mind terribly if we walked over to the car park where you found me?’

They had to move slowly. Once or twice Mrs Thornton had to be steadied. This walk to the car park was an imposition, and it was clear why Dr Whitfield had been reluctant to encourage it. ‘In case you’ re wondering,’ the old lady remarked, ‘I don’t drive. I come in twice a day -afternoon and evening – on one of the minibuses. It stops outside my house in Lansdown Crescent. The drivers are so thoughtful. They always help me on and off. I get off at the gate and walk to David’s ward. It takes me through the car park, which is where I found you the other evening.’

‘Lying on the ground?’

‘Yes, over there, by the lamp-post. If I hadn’t spotted you, I’m sure someone else would have done. The car park was completely full. It always is in the evening.’

‘Was anyone about?’

‘I expect so. That’s what I was saying.’

‘But did you notice anyone in particular?’

‘Hereabouts? No. I’m afraid not, or I would certainly have told them. Someone better on his pins than I am could have got help quicker. This is the spot.’

They had reached a point between two parked cars under an old-fashioned wrought-iron lamp-post with a tub of flowers under it. The small area in front was painted with yellow lines to discourage parking. In fact, there wasn’t space for a car, but you could have left a motorcycle there.

‘When I saw you lying there, I thought you might be asleep. With all the homeless young people there are, you can come across them sleeping almost anywhere in broad daylight sometimes. Only when I got closer, it was obvious to me that you weren’t in a proper sleeping position. I can’t say why exactly, but it looked extremely uncomfortable. I thought you might be dead. I was profoundly relieved to discover that you were breathing.’

‘I suppose I was dumped there.’

‘That’s the way it looked.’

‘Thank God they left me here and not in the path of the cars where I could have been run over.’

‘Yes, it shows some concern for your safety,’ said Mrs Thornton.

‘And after you found me you came up to the ward and told someone?’

‘That’s right. The first person I saw was one of the nurses I know and she soon got organised. They’re very efficient here.’

‘What time was it?’

‘When I got help? Some time after seven for sure. At least ten minutes past. My bus gets in at five past the hour, which suits me perfectly. Visiting is open here, but they tell you they prefer you to come after the evening meal, which is from six to seven. I think most visitors co-operate.’

Rose stood and stared at the place where she’d lain unconscious. ‘It’s fairly conspicuous.’

‘It is.’

‘I mean, you’d think somebody else must have noticed, if people were driving in for the seven o’ clock visit.’

‘Well, you would,’ Mrs Thornton agreed.

‘I can only suppose I wasn’t there very long.’

Mrs Thornton said, ‘Can we go back to the ward now? I don’t suppose David knows if I’m there or not, but I like to be with him and I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you, my dear.’

Rose couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She felt guilty she’d brought the old lady out here for so little result. ‘Of course. Let’s go back.’

Mrs Thornton offered to let Rose walk ahead, allowing her to follow at her own slow pace, but Rose insisted on taking her arm. In the last few minutes the light had faded. ‘You want to be careful,’ Rose advised. She’d become fond of the old lady. ‘You won’t be all that easy to see in your dark clothes. They don’t all drive under the speed limit, especially if they’re late.’

‘Don’t I know it!’ said Mrs Thornton. ‘The other evening I was almost knocked down by some people in a white car just as I came through the main gate. I’d only just left the bus. I had to dodge out of the way like a bullfighter. Perhaps I was partly to blame for not being alert, but you don’t expect anyone to be driving so quickly in hospital grounds, unless it’s an ambulance.’

‘When was this?’ Rose asked eagerly.

‘Two or three nights ago.’

‘Could it have been the night you found me?’

‘Don’t ask. I come every evening,’ Mrs Thornton said with exasperating uncertainty.

‘Would you try and remember?’

‘One day is very like another to me.’

‘Please.’

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t last night, and I don’t think it was the night before, because I met someone on the bus who came in with me, the wife of one of the patients. It must have been Monday, mustn’t it?’

‘This white car. Was it coming into the hospital?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Thornton. ‘That was why I was caught off guard. The car was on the way out. You don’t expect a car to be leaving when everyone is arriving.’

‘You know why I’m asking?’ said Rose. ‘It may have been the car that brought me here. I can’t have been lying here very long, or someone else would have noticed me before you did. If this car was being driven away in a hurry, you may have seen the people who dumped me here. You did say there were some people in the car. More than just the driver.’

‘Well, I think so, my dear. I got the impression of a man and a woman.’

‘Anything you remember about them? Young? Middle-aged?’

‘My dear, everyone looks young to me. I think I’m right in saying that the man was thin on top – well, bald -so he was probably middle-aged. I didn’t see much of the woman, except to register that she was female. Dark-haired, I think. They simply raced through the gate and away. You could hear the car’s noise long after it vanished up the street. Do you know, it didn’t occur to me until this minute that they might have had something to do with you.’

‘Do you remember anything else about them? Or about the car? You said it was white. White all over?’

‘I think so. I’m sorry. A car is a car to me. I can’t tell you the make or anything and I certainly didn’t notice the number.’

‘Was it large? You mentioned the engine-note.’

‘I suppose it must have been.’

‘A sports car? Like, em…’ Rose cast around the rows of parked cars, ‘… like the green one over there, in shape, I mean?’

‘No, nothing like that. It was higher off the ground than that. More substantial, somehow.’ Now Mrs Thornton took stock. ‘Not particularly modern, but elegant. Have you ever seen Inspector Morse on television?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘His car-’

‘Yes! A Jag. Was it like that?’

‘No, dear. His car is red, isn’t it? Well, maroon.’

‘But the shape was similar?’

‘Not in the least. What I’m trying to say is that on the front of Inspector Morse’s car there’s a sort of emblem.’

‘The jaguar, yes.’

‘Well, this one had something mounted on the bonnet, but it wasn’t an animal.’

‘The figure of a woman?’

‘Oh, no. Definitely not a woman. A fish.’

‘A fish?’ Rose could think of no motor manufacturer who used a fish as a trademark. ‘Are you sure?’

‘That’s what it appeared to be. I only caught a glimpse.’

‘What kind of fish?’

‘I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. I’m no expert on the subject. A fish is just a fish to me.’

This was infuriating. ‘Like a shark? A dolphin?’

‘I don’t think so. Not so exotic as those.’

‘What colour?’

‘Silver, I fancy. But don’t hold me to that, will you?’

‘You couldn’t have confused it with something else?’

‘Quite possibly,’ Mrs Thornton blithely said. ‘I’m just an old woman who knows nothing at all about cars or fish.’

‘It’s so bloody frustrating, Ada,’ Rose told her companion on the way to the bus-stop. ‘There’s a fair chance that this white car was the one I was driven to the hospital in, but she can’t tell me anything about it except that she thinks it had a fish mounted on the bonnet. A fish.’

‘What’s wrong with that, petal? A fish on a car is pretty unusual.’

‘I’d say it is. Have you ever seen one?’

‘Since you ask, no.’

‘She’s very vague about it and she only caught a glimpse, anyway.’

‘Look on the bright side, ducky,’ said Ada. ‘Suppose she’d been a car expert and told you she saw a BMW five-series. You’d be no wiser, really. You could find hundreds of cars like that. If we can find a white car with a fish on it, we’re really getting warm.’

Seven

Back at the hostel a message was handed to Rose. She was to phone Dr Whitfield as soon as possible.

‘There you go,’ said Ada with a told-you-so smile. ‘Somebody cares. Just when you were saying that goddam hospital was only too pleased to be shot of you…’

‘You said that.’

Rose used the payphone in the hall.

‘How are you?’ Dr Whitfield asked.

‘No different. There’s no change.’

‘All in good time. Listen, I don’t know if this is significant, but someone was asking after you this afternoon. A woman. She phoned the clinic. She wanted to know if you’d recovered consciousness.’

Rose’s skin prickled. ‘Did she mention my name?’

‘No. She simply referred to you as the patient who was brought in unconscious on Monday evening.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She didn’t identify herself. The call was taken by one of our least experienced staff, unfortunately.’

Biting back the rebuke that was imminent, Rose asked, ‘What else was said?’

‘The girl at our end told her you’d been discharged and were being cared for by the social services.’

‘Did she tell this woman where to find me?’

The doctor said in a shocked tone, ‘We wouldn’t do that, particularly without knowing who the call was from. I’m afraid all we can tell you is that the voice sounded local. There was some of the West Country in it. It’s odd that she didn’t leave her name. None of this makes any sense, I suppose?’

‘No sense at all,’ Rose said, incensed that such a chance had been allowed to slip.

‘The caller may well get on to the Social Services and trace you that way. I wanted you to be informed, just in case. How did you get on with Mrs Thornton?’

She controlled herself enough to tell him about the white car with the fish emblem. He said he hadn’t any knowledge of such a vehicle.

‘I wouldn’t get too excited. Old people can get things wrong,’ he told her. ‘She could easily have made a mistake about the fish.’

When Rose replaced the phone her hand was red from gripping it. Through someone’s incompetence a real chance had been lost. They should have traced that call. Dr Whitfield knew it and was covering up for the hospital. He was a right ruddy diplomat. How could she believe anything he said? All these promises about her memory being swiftly restored: how much were they worth from a man who told you what he thought you wanted to hear?

Up in their room she told Ada about the call. ‘I want to strangle someone,’ she said finally.

‘Terrific,’ said Ada. ‘Just what I need to hear from the person I share my room with.’

Rose couldn’t even raise a smile.

Ada asked, ‘Who do you think she is, this woman who called the hospital?’

‘That’s the bind. I’ll never know, will I, unless she gets in touch again? She could be one of my family, or a friend, or someone I work with.’

Ada shook her head. ‘Think it through, petal. How could your nearest and dearest know you were in the Hinton Clinic? The only people who know you were in there are those pillocks who dumped you in the car park.’

Rose stared at her. Such was her anger that this simple point had not dawned on her.

Ada continued, ‘It’s my belief that this call was from the woman Mrs Thornton saw, the dark-haired dame in the car. She and Mr thin-on-top have you on their conscience. They needed to find out if you were dead.’

She had come to respect Ada’s logic. ‘You’re saying the call was from the people who knocked me down?’

‘Unless you can think of something better.’

‘Bloody hell, it’s so frustrating. And now they know I survived, will I hear from them?’

‘No chance. What does every motor insurance company advise you to do after an accident? Admit nothing.’

Rose sank her face into her hands. ‘Oh, shit a brick. What’s to be done, Ada? Where do I turn for help?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Ada.

She looked up. ‘You’re not giving up? I need your brain, Ada. Mine’s seized up completely.’

‘And I know why.’

‘Yes?’

‘You haven’t eaten for hours. You can’t think any more on an empty stomach. Me, too. Why don’t we go down to Sainsbury’s and liberate some fillet steaks?’

Rose stared at her in horror. ‘I can’t do that. I’m not a shoplifter.’

Ada’s eyes glittered wickedly. ‘How do you know?’

She stood as Ada’s lookout at the end of the chilled meat aisle, trying to give the impression she couldn’t decide between two portions of minced beef. She had one hand on a trolley containing two cartons of cereal and a bottle of lemonade. Her job was to keep watch for any member of the Sainsbury’s staff who happened to come by. She was supposed to distract them by asking where to find the maple syrup. This would compel them (customer relations having such a high priority at Sainsbury’s) to escort her to the far end of the store, leaving Ada to make a sharp exit at the other end of the aisle.

Even Rose, without any experience of this kind of crime, could tell that the strategy was flawed. Big supermarkets like this employed store detectives who weren’t dressed in uniform. But then Ada had never claimed to be an efficient shoplifter. She grabbed two packs of meat and stuffed them inside her blouse while her accomplice watched, appalled. It was swiftly done and Rose could only suppose the extra bulges wouldn’t show.

She wouldn’t fancy the steak.

She had agreed to do this only from a sense of obligation. She felt she couldn’t refuse after Ada had supported her at the Hinton Clinic. There was no risk in being the lookout, Ada had insisted. Ada Shaftsbury had never ratted on a friend, and you had to believe she was speaking the truth.

It was still nerve-racking, especially as Ada wasn’t content with two packs. She grabbed two more and moved to another aisle to scoop up some vegetables. Rose went too, squeezing the handle of the trolley to stop her hands from shaking.

The plunder continued. Some loose runner beans and a number of courgettes went under the waistband of Ada’s skirt. The fit was so tight that there was no danger of them falling through. Next, she acquired a handful of tomatoes and dropped them into her cleavage.

‘Hello.’

Rose jerked in alarm.

‘What are you doing?’

She turned around guiltily. But the voice was only a child’s. A boy of about three, or perhaps a little older, in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and blue shorts, was staring up at her.

She swallowed hard and told him, ‘Just picking out some things.’

‘What things?’

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘Are you going to buy some biscuits?’

‘I don’t expect so.’ She looked up and down the aisle. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your mummy?’

‘She’s over there.’ He pointed vaguely. She could have been any one of a dozen women waiting for service at the cold meat counter.

‘You don’t want to get lost,’ said Rose, wishing fervently that he would. She was supposed to be scouting for Ada, not humouring little boys. ‘Why don’t you go back to Mummy?’

He said, ‘I like chocolate chip cookies. I like chocolate chip cookies best.’

‘There aren’t any here,’ said Rose. ‘This is fruit and vegetables here.’

‘They’re up there. Do you want me to show you?’

‘No. I’m too busy.’

‘They have got some here.’

‘Is that so?’ she responded without enthusiasm, still trying to keep Ada in sight.

‘You got me some on the train,’ said the child. ‘What?’ She frowned at him.

‘Chocolate chip cookies. You remember.’

‘On the train?’

‘Yes. For being a good boy.’

Rose bent closer to his level. ‘What train?’

‘From Paddington. You remember, don’t you?’

She glanced back. Ada was already moving towards the exit. The plan required Rose to go at once to the end of the aisle nearest the checkouts and create a diversion by dropping the lemonade bottle and smashing it while Ada made her escape. She should have started already. This couldn’t be delayed.

She would be forced to leave the boy just as she was learning something vital.

‘There are cookies in this shop,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve seen them.’

‘What’s your name?’’ Jeremy.’

Another glance. She dared not delay any longer. Ada depended on her. She was turning the corner at the end of the aisle.

She started moving. ‘Jeremy what?’

He muttered something.

‘Speak up.’

‘Parker.’

Or was it Barker he said?

She couldn’t wait to find out. She didn’t want Ada to be arrested. She fairly raced towards the checkouts, fumbled in the trolley, pulled out the lemonade and let it drop. The bottle shattered. Splinters of glass slid across the floor in a pool of sticky lemonade.

‘Oh, God!’ said Rose with absolute conviction. One of the supervisors was at her side almost at once to tell her it was no problem.

‘I’m so sorry. It slipped out of my hand. Of course I’ll pay,’ Rose offered.

With the minimum of fuss the area was roped off and the glass swept up. She joined a queue. She looked along the length of the checkouts for Jeremy Barker (or Parker) and his mother. They were either still touring the shop, or they had slipped out. Rose decided not to linger. It was too dangerous. She paid for the few items she had, and left. Ada would be waiting for her in Green Park.

Ada liked her steaks cooked medium rare and she stood in the kitchen doorway to make sure Rose didn’t leave them too long under the grill.

‘They’d better be tender after all this trouble,’ she said.

‘Don’t complain to me if they’re not.’

Ada laughed heartily. ‘Can’t complain to Sainsbury’s, either.’

While the cooking was going on, Rose gave Ada a less frantic account of what the boy Jeremy had said.

‘Just a kid,’ Ada said thoughtfully. ‘How small did you say?’

‘Under school age.’

‘Three? Four?’

‘Four, I’d guess.’

‘You’re wondering if you can rely on a little scrap like that? They’re just as good at recognising someone as a grown-up is.’

‘He was a bright little boy. I think he was sure he knew me,’ said Rose.

‘As someone who gave him chocolate chip cookies on a train?’

‘From Paddington, he said. He had plenty of time to get a look at me. You’re right, Ada. Kids are just as observant as grown-ups. More so, if they think they can get something out of them.’

‘But did you recognise him? Watch those steaks, petal. When I said rare I meant it.’

Rose pulled out the grillpan and turned them over. The smell was appetising. She was changing her mind about eating one, even though it had been in such close contact with Ada. ‘No. I didn’t, but I wouldn’t, would I?’

‘Something’s got to click some time. What did you say his name is?’

‘Jeremy Barker. Or Parker.’

‘Pity. There must be hundreds in the phone book.’

Presently Rose lifted the pan from under the grill and asked if the steaks would do.

She scooped some vegetables into a colander. They took everything upstairs on trays and sat on their beds to eat.

Ada said, ‘Stupid of me. We should have liberated some wine. You shouldn’t eat fine steak without wine. They do a superb vintage Rioja.’

‘How do you smuggle out a bottle of wine?’ Rose asked in amazement.

‘With style, petal, and a piece of string.’

‘String?’

‘The best Rioja is always covered in fine wire netting. You thread the string through and hang the bottle under your skirt. It’s bumpy on the knees, but you don’t have to go far.’

Rose watched Ada start on her third fillet with the same relish she had shown for the others.

‘You said you couldn’t think on an empty stomach. Has this helped?’

‘It’s beginning to,’ said Ada. ‘What am I to think about – your problem?’

‘It would help.’

‘Things are becoming clearer, aren’t they?’ said Ada. ‘If that kid in Sainsbury’s had his head screwed on right, you were seen recently on a train travelling from London Paddington to Bath Spa. Some time since, you were in a tangle with a motor vehicle – and came off the worse for it. There’s a good chance it was driven by a local couple who brought you to the Hinton Clinic and later phoned to enquire if you were still in the world of the living. Their car may have had a silver fish mounted on the bonnet. Fair summary?’

‘I think you’ve covered all of it.’

‘No, I haven’t. There’s yourself. A well brought-up gel, going by the way you talk. Southern counties accent, I’d say. Certainly not West Country. Anyway, that’s a London haircut, in my opinion. True, you’re a casual dresser, but none of the stuff you told me you were wearing is off the bargain rail. It all suggests to me that you work for a living, in a reasonably well-paid job that doesn’t require grey suits and regular hours. And you’re not a bad cook, either.’

‘Thanks. But where do I go from here?’

‘We could see if the Winemart down the hill is still open.’

‘But I’ve got to be careful with my money…’ Then she saw the gleam in Ada’s eye and said, ‘No way. I’ve taken enough risks for one day.’

They finished the meal in silence.

Eight

Ada was out of bed early. She muttered something about phoning a friend and then plodded downstairs.

Rose lay awake, but without moving, disappointed that another night had passed and no old memories had surfaced. Her known life still dated from less than a week ago. And now she was putting off doing anything else. She wasn’t idle by nature, she felt sure. She hated the frustration of having no purpose for the day. She didn’t want to spend it sitting in Harmer House or aimlessly wandering the streets of Bath. She wept a little.

What an opportunity she had missed by walking away from the little boy in Sainsbury’s. She was certain in her mind that he really had seen her on the train. She should have asked him to take her to his mother. In a train journey of an hour and a half, she and the woman must have exchanged some personal information. Must have. Clearly they had been on talking terms, or she would never have bought cookies for the child. Two women of about the same age had things in common. At the very least they must have talked about their reasons for travelling to Bath.

If Ada hadn’t involved me in the shoplifting, she thought, I might be lying in my own bed this morning.

Sod Ada.

She wiped away the tears, sat up awkwardly and examined her legs. The bruises had gone from blue to greenish yellow. Her ribs still hurt, but the body was recovering. Then why not the brain?

In this chastened mood, she speculated what would happen if her memory never returned. Unless she took drastic action, she was condemned to eke out her existence in places like this, or worse, dependent on welfare handouts.

She had no skills or qualifications that she knew of. The descent into self-neglect, apathy and despair would be hard to resist. That was how people ended living rough.

The sound of the stairs groaning under pressure blended in with her mood. Then her thoughts were blasted away by a spectacle almost psychedelic in effect. At nights Ada wore an orange-coloured T-shirt the size of a tent and Union Jack knickers. She seemed to relish prowling about the hostel dressed like that, startling the other inmates.

‘I’ve got Hildegarde started on the cooking. She would have overslept. I said you’d probably want mushrooms with yours, am I right? She can’t say mushrooms, but she knows what they are now.’

Rose started to say, ‘I don’t think I-’

‘Yes, you do. Get a good breakfast inside you. We’ve got things to do.’

‘Oh, yes – like another supermarket? No thanks, Ada.’

Ada made her feel mean by announcing that she’d been on the phone to a friend who had forgotten more about cars than she or Rose were ever likely to find out. If anyone in Bath knew about silver fish mascots, it was Percy. He had promised to see them in his used car mart on the Warminster Road at ten.

The overheads at Percy’s Car Bargains were minimal. He had about eighty used vehicles lined up on a patch of gravel beside the A36 and his office was a Land Rover. Two tattooed youths were employed with buckets and sponges. They probably got paid in used fivers, with no questions asked about tax and National Insurance.

‘My dear Miss Shaftsbury, my cup overflows,’ Percy said in an accent that would not have been out of place in the Leander Club marquee at Henley. ‘You and the young lady of mystery.’

‘How do you know that?’ said Ada.

‘Well, unless I’m mistaken,’ he said, pausing to scrutinise Rose as if she might be a respray job being passed off as new, ‘you’re the one who turned up at the Hinton Clinic the other night.’

Rose felt a sudden outbreak of goose-pimples.

Ada said, ‘Percy, I didn’t tell you that on the phone.’

‘I saw it in last night’s Chronicle, my dear. “Lost Memory Mystery” or some such. There was a photo of a stunningly attractive young lady, and I thought to myself that I wouldn’t mind being introduced.’ He turned to Rose. ‘You had some injuries from a car – is that right? We’re supposed to tell the plod if we can help.’

‘I’m in the paper?’ said Rose, appalled.

Ada clicked her tongue. ‘Didn’t I tell you it was a mistake to let them take pictures?’

‘But no one asked my permission.’ As Rose was speaking, she recalled the policewoman saying that her superiors would take the decisions.

Ada explained, ‘Rose didn’t want this. She wanted to deal with her own problem.’

Percy crowed his sympathy to the entire fleet of used cars. ‘Bloody shame, my dear. You can’t trust anyone these days, least of all the guardians of the peace, I’m sorry to say. I would have told you that myself, given the chance.’

Rose sighed deeply and looked away, across the rows of cars towards the trees, trying to compose herself.

‘Percy knows exactly how you feel,’ Ada said to Rose. ‘He’s a very understanding man. The world’s most perfect gent. I haven’t told you how we met. It was at Swindon Magistrates’ Court.’

‘So it was,’ said Percy.

Ada continued to discuss her gentleman friend as if he wasn’t present. ‘I was up for shoplifting and he refused to believe I was guilty.’

‘You’re a magistrate?’ said Rose.

‘No, my dear,’ said Percy, smiling. ‘Like Miss Shaftsbury, I was waiting for my case to come up. Falsifying documents, or instruments, or some such nonsense, the sort of horse manure that is regularly dumped on a person in my profession. Well, we had an instant rapport, Miss Shaftsbury and I.’

‘Percy, I do wish you’d call me Ada. He gave me his visiting card,’ she told Rose, ‘and he offered his services to my solicitor as a surprise witness. Petal, you should have been there. It was like one of those old Perry Mason films. Percy came into court and swore blind he was with me at a tea-dance at the time of the offence. A tea-dance, would you believe? He was brilliant. He said he partnered me in the square tango and it was etched on his memory for ever.’

Rose smiled, the image of Ada at a tea-dance temporarily pushing her other troubles into the background.

Percy frowned. ‘Did I say that?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten,’ said Ada sharply. ‘It was the nicest compliment anyone ever paid me. You said dancing with me was bliss.’

‘She must be right,’ said the world’s most perfect gent. ‘I must have said it.’

‘Don’t spoil it now,’ Ada warned him. She turned back to Rose. ‘He said he was a hopeless dancer normally and this was bliss because he could tell the minute we linked arms that there was no risk of treading on my feet. He said he would remember me anywhere.’

‘Absolutely true,’ said Percy.

‘He offered to pick me out in an identity parade. He had the entire court speechless with laughter. Can you see me in a line-up? I don’t know if they believed a word of it, but they had a ball and my case was dismissed.’

‘And mine was deferred for two weeks,’ said Percy. ‘By which time I got myself better organised. Now, ladies, I’d like to invite you to sit down, but the best I can offer is the back of my Land Rover and I’m not sure if it’s such a good idea.’

‘That’s all right, love,’ said Ada. ‘If I could squeeze inside, which is doubtful, I’d be sure to bust the suspension. We’ll talk here.’

‘I can offer something very agreeable from a flask if you don’t object to paper cups.’

Ada insisted that they hadn’t come for hospitality. ‘This silver fish mascot I mentioned on the phone, Percy. Have you ever seen anything like it?’

‘On a modern car? No, I can’t say I have,’ he said. ‘Sorry to disappoint. Mascots of any sort are rare these days, with a few obvious exceptions. They were used to decorate the radiator cap originally. Like figureheads, which is what we call them in the trade. Common enough before the First World War and into the twenties and thirties. I’ve seen monkeys, dragonflies, dancers. They looked rather fetching on the front of a handsome vehicle. No offence, but the most popular by far were naked ladies. I have seen fish. But not mass-produced, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘We’re not,’ said Ada. ‘All we want is to find this car.’

Percy’s face twisted into a look of pain as he plumbed the depths of his memory. ‘There was a leaping salmon designed by a firm in Birmingham. That was silver – well, chrome – but I haven’t seen one in the last thirty years. A silver fish on a modern car… As I say, I don’t believe any motor manufacturer uses a fish. All I can suggest is that it must be something the owner had fitted.’

‘Custom made?’ said Ada.

He nodded. ‘You come across them once in a while. The most bizarre I heard of was the late Marquess of Exeter, David Burghley. He had a Roller, you know, a Rolls Royce, being one of the elite. Poor chap had terrible arthritis of the hips in middle age, which was sad considering he’d been a marvellous athlete in his time. Won the Olympic hurdles – that’s how good he was. Remember Chariots of Fire, racing round the quad at Cambridge while Great Tom was chiming noon? That was based on one of his exploits. Anyway, he made light of his handicap. Had one of the early artificial hip replacement operations in the days when the things were metal, and when it was later removed, he had the stainless steel socket mounted on the front of his Roller in place of the Spirit of Ecstasy that you see on all of them. So, you see, it can happen. Some people go to exceptional lengths to personalise their cars.’

‘You think we could be looking for something unique,’ said Ada. ‘That’s got to be helpful.’

‘If we can rely on our information,’ said Rose, thinking how old Mrs Thornton was, and wishing her witness was more dependable.

‘It seems to me,’ Percy summed up, ‘that you’ve got to look for an owner in some way connected with fish. An angler. Plenty of them in this part of the world.’

‘Or somebody called Fish?’ said Ada.

‘Pike,’ said Rose resignedly. ‘Or Whiting.’

‘Equally, this might be a chappie in the fish and chip business,’ Percy suggested. ‘It’s got all kinds of connotations when you begin to think about it. There are tropical fish-keepers.’

‘Don’t go on, Perce,’ said Ada. ‘We’ve got the point. It’s going to be easier to look for the car than work out who owns it.’

‘I’ll see if I can discover anything through the trade,’ Percy offered. ‘Ask around. That’s the way to find things out.’

They rode back to the city centre in a minibus. Before climbing aboard, Ada got the usual dubious look from the driver. She needed the width of two seats, but nothing was said and she paid the same fare as Rose.

‘He’s a poppet,’ said Ada, meaning Percy.

‘Yes.’ Rose was still weighing the morning’s developments.

‘He’ll get weaving now. He’s got all sorts of contacts.’

She responded flatly, ‘Good.’

They got off at Cleveland Place and crossed the bridge to return to the hostel, for lunch, as Ada made clear.

Neither of them paid much attention to the line of cars outside Harmer House. Parked cars fitted naturally into the scenery in Bathwick Street. Only a space in the line might have merited some interest, for in this part of the city one vehicle always replaced another in a very short time.

Ada continued to talk optimistically of Percy’s networking skills, while Rose heard without really listening.

They were passing the building next to the hostel when a car door opened somewhere near. Rose didn’t even glance towards it, so she had a shock when a hand grasped her arm above the elbow. Turning, she looked into the face of a thin, youngish, black-haired man with a forced smile. ‘Hello, love,’ he said without raising his voice. ‘You don’t have to go in there after all. I’ve come to take you home.’

‘What?’ she said, startled. She didn’t know him.

His grip on her arm tightened. ‘The car’s over there. Look lively.’ He was still grinning like a doorstep evangelist. He needed a shave, but his clothes were passably smart.

‘Who are you?’

‘Come on, love. You know me,’ he answered, tugging on her arm.

She was forced to take a couple of steps towards him.

Ada had barely noticed this going on, but now she turned and said, ‘Someone you know, petal?’

Rose’s fear came out in her voice. ‘I don’t remember.’ She told the man, ‘Let go of my arm, please.’

Ada asked him, ‘What’s this about? Who are you?’

He said, ‘Keep out of this. She’s going with me.’

‘She isn’t if she doesn’t want to,’ said Ada. ‘Let’s talk about this in a civilised way.’

Civility was not on this man’s agenda. He tugged Rose towards him, wrapped his left arm around her back and hustled her across the pavement towards the open rear door of a large red Toyota. The engine was running and someone was in the driving seat.

Rose cried out in pain from the contact of the man’s hand on her injured ribs. He leaned on her, forcing her to bend low so as to ram her into the car, at the same time pressing a knee against her buttocks. She tried to resist by reaching out and bracing her arm against the door-frame, but it was useless. Disabled by her injury, she was incapable of holding on.

She screamed.

Her face jammed against the leather of the back seat. She braced her legs and tried unsuccessfully to kick. He had grabbed her below the knees. Only her shins and feet were still outside the car and he was bundling them in like pieces of luggage.

Then Ada acted.

Excessive weight is mostly a burden, but on rare occasions it can be turned to advantage. Lacking the strength to pull the man off, Ada charged him with agility that would not have disgraced a sumo wrestler and swung the full weight of her ample hips against him. The impact would have crushed the man’s pelvis if he had not turned instinctively a moment before the crunch. The car suffered the major damage, a dent in the bodywork the size of a dinner plate. The man caught a glancing thump and was thrust sideways. He bounced against the door so hard that it was forced past the restrainers on the hinges. Ada gave him a shove in the chest. He grunted, crumpled and hit the pavement.

They couldn’t expect to hold him off a second time. Ada grabbed Rose by the belt of her jeans, scooped her out and swung her across the pavement towards the entrance to the hostel. ‘In the house, quick!’ she gasped.

Rose needed no bidding. She dashed inside and upstairs. Behind her, Ada stood between the stone gateposts ready, if necessary, to do battle again.

There was no need. The man picked himself up, crawled into the car and gasped something to his driver. They were on the move with the door still hanging open. It was unlikely if it would shut or if they cared.

‘Take me a while to get my breath back,’ Ada said when she rejoined Rose upstairs. She slumped on her bed.

Rose thanked her. She was stretched out fighting for breath herself.

They lay like that for some time, recovering.

‘What was it for?’ Rose said eventually. ‘What was he going to do with me?’

‘I wouldn’t put money on a candlelit supper,’ said Ada.

‘Yes, but…’

‘If he’s really your bloke, you’re better off without him until he calms down a bit.’

‘My bloke? He isn’t my bloke,’ Rose shrilled. She was appalled that Ada should think it a possibility. ‘I’ve never laid eyes on him.’

‘How do you know, petal?’

She said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t keep saying that to me, Ada. Look, I’m really grateful for what you did down there. I am, honestly. But if you think that gorilla had anything to do with me, you can’t have much an opinion of me.’

‘He must have had something to do with you, petal,’ persisted Ada. ‘Okay, he didn’t treat you like precious goods, but he knew what he wanted. He was waiting there for you.’

‘How did he know? Oh,’ she said, answering herself, ‘the paper. It was in the bloody paper. I suppose it said I was staying here.’

‘Even if it didn’t, any guy with half a brain could find out,’ said Ada. ‘There aren’t that many hostels in Bath for drop-outs like you and me.’

‘He started by calling me “love” and telling me he was taking me home,’ Rose recalled. ‘Trying to sweet-talk me into going with him.’

‘Optimist,’ said Ada.

‘Bastard,’ said Rose. ‘One look at him told me he was phoney. That horrible grin. What is he – a maniac? He was trying to abduct me, Ada.’ the word sounded positively Victorian and the moment she spoke it she expected Ada to mock, but she didn’t.Abduct:

‘No argument, petal, but I wouldn’t put him down as a nutter. He had a driver in that car. Nutters are loners. They don’t hunt in pairs.’

‘It’s not unknown.’

‘This wasn’t a casual pick-up. These two were organised. They must have been waiting there some time.’’

Rose shivered. ‘That’s ugly.’

‘Sinister.’

‘Why, Ada? Why would anybody want to snatch some unfortunate woman who loses her memory and gets her picture in the paper?’

There was a longish pause from the other bed while Ada weighed the possibilities. Up to now, her advice had always been sensible except when it touched on kleptomania. ‘If it was one bloke, I’d say he was after the usual thing. Two makes it different. There’s got to be advantage in it. Money.’

‘Kidnapping?’

‘Here’s one scenario. They – or someone they work for – saw your picture in the paper and recognised you. Let’s say you come from a wealthy family. They could demand a good ransom. You’re an easy target.’

‘If my face is so well known, why didn’t my own people come and find me?’

‘Maybe they will. Let’s hope so.’

Rose said, ‘I’m going to go to the police. What happened just now was a crime, Ada. They could easily try again.’

Ada’s reluctance to have any truck with the police was well known. she said dismissively, ‘That’s your decision, petal.’

‘Well, I can’t bank on you being there to beat off the opposition next time,’ Rose pointed out.

‘Is that what you think the fuzz will do? Supply you with a personal bodyguard?’

‘No, but at least they’ll pursue these thugs who attacked us. I can give them a description.’

‘What description?’ said Ada, becoming increasingly sarcastic. ‘Some white guy between twenty and thirty, average height, with black hair, a grey suit and stubble, accompanied by someone else of uncertain age, height and sex, who can drive a car. I’m sure they’ll comb the West Country looking for those two.’

‘We know the colour of the car.’

‘We know it was a Toyota, but I could point you out a dozen red Toyotas without walking five minutes from here. I didn’t take the number – did you?’

Rose shook her head. ‘But someone else might have noticed them waiting.’

‘And taken the number?’ Ada heaved herself into a sitting position. ‘Listen to me, dreamer. All you have to do is change your address. Those goons won’t know where to look for you.’

‘How can I do that? I don’t have any money.’

‘But I have chums. I could find you a squat.’

One stage closer to sleeping rough. Rose didn’t care for that one bit. ‘I’ll think it over,’ she said.

‘Feel any better now?’ asked Ada.

‘I’m not shaking so much, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Good. Let’s eat. It’s okay…’ Ada held up her hands in mock self-defence. ‘…we don’t have to go to the shops. I have a stack of pork pies in the fridge.’

Nine

Ada was right about one thing. To move out of Harmer House was Rose’s top priority now. She had no liking for the place. She wanted to leave right away; but not to enter a squat, as Ada had suggested. She would ask Avon Social Services to relocate her. She called their office to make an appointment, and was told that Imogen was in court. The earliest she could manage was next morning.

After an uneventful night, she walked alone all the way down to the office in Manvers Street, nervously eyeing the stationary cars she passed, yet feeling better each step of the way for showing some independence. She was not ungrateful to Ada, who had offered to come in support, but this time it would not have been wise. Ada knew everyone at Social Services and boasted that she could get some action out of ‘that lot who never get off their backsides except to switch on the kettle’- an approach that might have achieved results, but not the sort Rose hoped for. Besides, her own experience of Imogen was fine; she couldn’t fault her. She had thanked Ada warmly and said she felt this was one matter she had to sort out for herself.

But she was reminded of Ada’s remark when Imogen, seated in the office, said it was one of those days that sapped her energy. ‘It’s so heavy again. The air isn’t moving.’

And neither are you, blossom, Rose found herself thinking as if by telepathy.

‘Shall I make coffee?’ Imogen suggested.

Rose told her not to trouble. She gave her account of the incident outside Harmer House.

Imogen became more animated, fingering her beads and saying, ‘That’s dreadful. Deplorable. What a brute. We can’t have that happening to women in our care. You didn’t know the man?’

‘I hope not,’ Rose answered. ‘I really hope not.’

‘You poor soul,’ said Imogen. ‘You still haven’t got your memory back?’

Rose shook her head.

‘What a bind.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Look, there’s got to be something wrong here,’ said Imogen, shifting the emphasis in a way Rose was unprepared for. ‘They were very confident at the hospital that you’d be all right in a matter of hours.’

‘Well, it hasn’t happened.’

‘Harmer House was just an arrangement to tide you over. There was no intention you should become a resident there.’

‘Can you find me somewhere else, then?’

‘I can certainly try. More important than that, I think we should get some fresh medical advice, don’t you?’

This wasn’t what Rose had come for, yet she had to agree it was sensible.

Imogen picked up the phone and proved her worth by taking on the formidable appointments machinery at the Royal United Hospital and winning. ‘Two-fifteen this afternoon,’ she told Rose. ‘Dr Grombeck. Cranial Injuries Unit. Would you like me to come with you?’

Rose said she could manage alone.

The desk sergeant at Manvers Street hailed Julie Hargreaves over the heads of the people waiting in line to report lost property, abusive beggars and complaints against their neighbours. ‘Inspector Hargreaves, ma’am, can you spare a moment?’

She looked at her watch. She was about to slip out for a quiet coffee with Peter Diamond, away from the hurly-burly, as he called it, meaning John Wigfull and his henchmen. Diamond had asked for the canteen gossip and he would be waiting for it in the Lilliput Teashop at ten-thirty.

Julie had some sympathy for the sergeant. She had worked the desk in her time and knew the pressure. ‘Just a jiffy, then.’

‘It’s the old problem. A tourist. No English at all. I don’t know if she’s lost, or what. Could you point her in the direction of the Tourist Information Office? They’re more likely to speak her language than I am.’

The woman’s eyes lit up when Julie approached her. Clearly she was as frustrated as the sergeant at the lack of communication. Before Julie had taken her across the entrance hall to a quieter position, she asked, ‘Spricht hier jemand Deulsch?’, and Julie knew she would not be of much more use than the sergeant. She had a smattering of German, no more.

This was no schoolgirl looking for her tour-leader. She was about Julie’s age, around thirty. Her worn jeans and faded grey tracksuit top were too shabby for a tourist. She could easily have come from the queue outside the job centre. The face, pale and framed by short brown hair, had deep worry lines. She was in a state over something.

Without much difficulty, Julie established the woman’s name. Hildegarde Henkel. She wrote it down. But progress after that was next to impossible without a German/English dictionary. It wasn’t even clear whether Ms Henkel wanted to report an incident or register a complaint. Sign language didn’t get them far.

Julie ended up speaking to herself. ‘I really think the sergeant is right. We’ve got to find someone who speaks your language.’ She beckoned to the woman and walked with her to the Tourist Information Office in Abbey Chambers.

She left Hildegarde Henkel deeply relieved and in earnest conversation with one of the staff. It seemed to be about some dispute in the street the previous afternoon involving a car. The German-speaking information officer said she would phone the police station with the salient details.

More than ten minutes late for coffee with Diamond, Julie cut through York Street to North Parade. He was seated with his back to the Lilliput’s bow window, making inroads into a mushroom omelette. ‘You didn’t see this,’ he said when she got inside. ‘I’m supposed to be watching my weight. Haifa grapefruit and some toast for breakfast. I was fading fast.’

‘A diet?’ said Julie, surprised.

‘Nothing so drastic.’ He forked up another mouthful. ‘Just being sensible. Doctor’s orders.’

‘I see.’ Really, she didn’t see at all. Diamond kept away from doctors. And missing his cooked breakfast was on a par with the Pope cutting Mass. She explained about the detour with the German woman.

‘Probably wanting to find Marks and Spencer,’ he said amiably. The omelette was improving his mood. ‘They come over here and buy all their underwear at M and S, Steph informs me.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘Coffee and a scone, is it?’

‘Just the coffee, thanks. She wasn’t a tourist.’’ Student, then.’

‘Different age group.’

Immediately the order had been taken, he dropped the subject of the German woman. ‘What’s the inside story on the dead farmer?’

‘You’re going to be intrigued. According to the blokes who drove out there, the place is really isolated. Only a few acres, a couple of fields. The farmhouse is a tumbledown ruin. He’s lived there all his life, just about.’

‘I got most of this from Wigfull,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t shoot the pianist – she’s doing her best,’ Julie countered. ‘There’s something he didn’t tell you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m coming to it. I haven’t even got my coffee yet. The old man has lived at this dump all his life, just about. He used to work the land and keep a few animals, but he gave up the heavy work a few years ago, when he got arthritis of the hip. Now there are a few pathetic chickens, and that’s all. The lads are not surprised he decided to end it all. They say there’s no electricity or gas. Damp everywhere, fungus growing on the ceiling.’

‘You don’t have to be so graphic. I just had a mushroom omelette.’

‘Some time last week, he sat in a chair, put the muzzle of his twelve-bore under his chin and pulled the trigger.’

‘I know that. Did he leave a note?’

‘No.’

‘Any family?’

‘They’re checking. His name was Gladstone, like the old Prime Minister.’

‘Before my time.’ He leaned back as the waitress placed a toasted teacake in front of him and served the coffee. When they were alone again, he said, ‘But what’s the ray of sunshine in this squalid story? What brought John Wigfull hotfoot from Bath?’

Julie added some milk to her coffee, taking her time. ‘They only discovered that by chance. It was pretty overpowering in the house while the pathologist was doing his stuff. One of the constables, Mike James, felt in urgent need of fresh air.’

‘A smoke, more like.’

‘Anyway, he went outside and took a stroll across the field.’

‘Found something?’

‘As I said, the land hasn’t been farmed for some years, so it was solid underfoot. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed his feet sinking in.’

‘Moles.’

‘No, Mr Diamond. Digging had taken place.’

‘Ploughing, you mean?’

She shook her head. ‘This was definitely done with a spade.’

‘The old boy buried something before he topped himself?’

‘They’re not sure. This was recent digging. It could even have been done after the farmer’s death.’

He paused in his eating. Julie, is that likely?’

‘You know what freshly dug soil is like,’ she said, as if Diamond spent all his weekends in gumboots. ‘After a few days the top hardens off and gets lighter in colour. Some shoots of grass appear. This wasn’t like that. Anyway, with his arthritis the old man was in no condition to dig holes.’

‘Are you saying there was more than one?’

‘Mike found another patch, yes.’

She had his full attention now. ‘I can’t picture this, Julie. Is it just a spade’s depth, like a gardener turning over the soil, or something deeper?’

‘I’m only reporting what they said. I wasn’t there. From the look of it, deep digging. Holes that had been dug and filled in.’

‘What size?’

‘I got the impression they were large. They think something could be buried there.’

‘Or someone.’ This was the head of the murder squad speculating.

Julie said, ‘All I know is that when it was reported to John Wigfull he drove out especially to look.’

‘If these are graves, I should have been told,’ said Diamond.

A couple of heads turned at the next table. ‘I think we should lower our voices,’ Julie cautioned.

‘What’s Wigfull playing at, keeping this to himself?’

‘Give them a chance. They haven’t dug anything up yet. They’ve been too busy inside the house. There are only two of them. He’s talking about sending some more fellows out with spades.’

‘Sod that for a game of soldiers.’

Overhearing the sounds of displeasure, the waitress paused at the table and asked if anything was wrong.

‘It is, my dear,’ Diamond said, ‘but it has nothing to do with the food. That was not a bad omelette, not bad at all.’

When the waitress was out of earshot, Julie said, ‘Unless they find human remains, he’s within his rights, surely. He is head of CID operations.’

‘There’s such a thing as consultation.’

Wisely, she refrained from comment.

‘I might just take a drive in that direction when I get an hour to spare,’ he said.

Some of the bored outpatients in the waiting area stirred and looked across with interest when Rose’s name was called as ‘Miss X’, but she’d been through this before. She was past the stage of embarrassment.

She was required to give samples of blood and urine – not exactly the way she had visualised the day. Another hour went by before she got in to see Dr Grombeck.

He was not the earnest, bespectacled little man she anticipated from his name. He looked as if he had wandered in after driving from London in a vintage sports car. Young, ruddy-faced and with black, unruly curls, he had the sort of smile that would have made you feel good about being told you only had hours to live. He glanced up from the card in front of him.

‘Well, Miss X, I don’t know much about you, but it seems you don’t know much about yourself.’

‘That’s right.’ She told him about waking up in the Hinton Clinic and knowing nothing at all.

‘This was when?’

‘Last Tuesday morning.’

‘That isn’t long.’ He asked her a series of questions to elicit information about her family, education and friends, and got nothing. But when he turned to matters of general knowledge like the names of the royal princes and the Rolling Stones, she supplied the answers with ease.

He enquired about her injuries and she told him about the cracked ribs and the bruising.

‘Nothing to show on the head? No sore spots?’

‘No.’ She told him Dr Whitfield’s theory that concussion can be caused by a sudden jerk of the head.

He didn’t comment. He asked to examine her head. Probing gently with his fingertips, he said, ‘You’re quite certain you were unconscious when they brought you into the Clinic?’

‘Well, I can’t be certain.’

‘Dumb question. Sorry.’ He flashed that smile. ‘That’s what they told you, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then there’s no question that you spent some hours in coma. You’re not diabetic – we tested. And presumably the Hinton tested you for drugs and found nothing. So we’re back to this accident as the explanation.’ He perched on the edge of his desk and rubbed his chin. The few known facts of her case seemed to perplex him. Finally he sighed heavily and told her, ‘Miss X, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m the chap to help you.’

‘Why not?’ she said, feeling cheated. She’d pinned strong hopes on this man.

‘I’d better explain about memory loss. For our purposes, there are two sorts. The kind we’re used to dealing with in this place is known as retrograde amnesia. It’s caused by an injury to the brain. The patient is unable to remember the events leading up to the injury. It’s a permanent loss of a small section of memory – and that may well have happened to you. But it shouldn’t have blocked out your long-term memory. It doesn’t behave like that.’

She listened apprehensively. She didn’t want to be a problem case. She wanted a simple solution.

‘The amnesia you’re displaying at this stage – the virtual loss of identity, the blocking out of all your personal memories – has to be different in origin. It’s the other sort, and I have to say I’m doubtful if it came as the result of the accident.’

Rose was frowning. ‘What is the “other sort”?’

He didn’t answer directly. ‘The good news for you is that the memories can be recovered.’

‘How soon?’

‘Hold on a minute. The point about your condition – if I’m right in my opinion – is that it has nothing to do with an injury to the brain. The cause is psychological.’

She stared, repeating the last word in her head.

‘For some reason, your memory is suppressed. It isn’t lost. Something deeply upsetting must have happened to you, some emotional shock that you couldn’t cope with. You blot out everything, denying even your own existence. You won’t recover your long-term memory until you’re capable of dealing with the situation that faced you.’

‘How will I do that?’ Rose said blankly. This fresh theory had poleaxed her.

‘Psychotherapy. Investigation.’

‘Doctor, let me get this clear. You’re telling me my loss of memory wasn’t caused by the accident. Is that right?’

‘Not completely. You may well have suffered some retrograde amnesia as well, but that isn’t the problem you have right now.’

‘That’s a mental problem?’

‘Yes, but don’t look so alarmed. You’re not losing your marbles. The cause must have been external, some event that happened in your life.’

‘Recently?’

‘We can assume so. You’re sure you don’t recall anything prior to waking up in the hospital?’

‘Positive.’

‘Then I reckon it happened the same day. Would you like to see a psychotherapist? We can arrange it.’

She came out of the hospital with an appointment card in her back pocket and a totally different diagnosis from the one she’d expected. Something deeply upsetting…. Some emotional shock. She took the bus back to the centre of Bath and stopped at a teashop called the Lilliput to collect herself before seeing Imogen again.

What could have caused a shock so momentous in her life? A break-up with a man? People were ending relationships all the time. They didn’t lose their memories because of it. No, it had to be more traumatic, some terrible thing she had discovered about herself. A life-threatening illness, perhaps. Would that be enough to make one deny one’s existence? She thought not. And she felt well in herself. Even the sore ribs had improved. Then was it a matter of conscience? Some deeply shaming act. Even a crime. Was that what she wanted to remove herself from?

Tea was brought to the table. She left the pot standing a long time. While people at other tables chatted blithely about their grandchildren and last night’s television, Rose constructed a theory, a bleak, demeaning scenario. Far from being the victim of an accident, she was responsible for it. She pictured herself driving too fast along a country road, running over and killing a pedestrian. A child, perhaps, or an old person. Unable to cope with the shock and the upsurge of guilt, she suppressed it. Injured, but not seriously, she climbed out of the car and wandered the lanes in a state of amnesia. Eventually she blacked out and was found by the couple with the fish mascot on their car. They drove her to the Hinton Clinic. Because they didn’t want questions asked about themselves (they were having an affair) they left her in the car park confident that she would soon be found and taken inside.

She poured some lukewarm tea and sipped it.

There were flaws. If there was an accident victim lying dead beside an abandoned car, why hadn’t the police been alerted? They knew about her. They’d visited the Hinton Clinic the night she was brought in. They would surely have suspected a connection with the accident.

The tea was now too cold to drink. She left it, paid, and walked the short distance to Imogen’s office.

The first person she saw was Ada. Ada was the first person you would see anywhere. She was in the general office wagging a finger at Imogen. She swung around.

‘There you are at last, petal. We’ve waited the best part of two hours. Imogen’s had it up to here with me.’

Imogen didn’t deny this.

Rose said she didn’t know she’d kept anyone waiting.

Imogen asked, ‘How did you get on?’

‘They want me to see a psychotherapist.’

‘A nut doctor?’ said Ada in alarm. ‘Don’t go, blossom. They’ll have you in the funny farm as soon as look at you.’

Imogen rebuked her with, ‘Ada, that isn’t helpful.’

‘You haven’t been on the receiving end, ducky,’ said Ada. ‘I have, more times than I care to remember. “Remanded for a further month, pending psychiatric reports.” I’ve seen them all. The ones with bow-ties are the worst. And the women. Grey hair in buns and half-glasses. They’re all alike. Stay clear.’

‘The cranial injuries unit can’t help me,’ said Rose. She did her best to explain the distinction between the two sorts of amnesia.

‘Any trouble a woman gets, if you’re not actually missing a limb, you can bet they’ll tell you it’s psychological,’ said Ada. ‘And if you cave in and see the shrink, he’ll send you barking mad anyway.’

Imogen disagreed. She urged Rose to keep the appointment.

‘It’s three weeks away,’ said Rose. ‘Three weeks – I hope I’m right before then.’

Ada remained unimpressed. ‘We can get you right ourselves. Speaking of which, I have hotshit news for you, buttercup. Percy has struck gold. Well, silver, to be accurate. There’s a bloke in Westbury with a silver fish on his car. I’ve got a name and address.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ said Rose, transformed. ‘Westbury -where’s that?’

‘No distance at all. We can get the train from here. There’s still time.’

‘I’m short of money.’

‘Get it off Imogen. This is going to save them a bomb.’

‘And I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.’

Imogen solved both problems. She handed over thirty pounds from the contingency fund and she phoned a bed and breakfast place on Wellsway that took some of Avon’s homeless. Ada said she would help Rose with the move.

Imogen told Ada firmly that she wasn’t to go prospecting for better lodgings.

‘What do you think I am, always out for the main chance?’

Ada protested.

‘And don’t you dare walk out with anything belonging to the house,’ Imogen warned her, unmoved.

Ten

Prospect Road, Westbury, was a long trek, they discovered, south of the town under the figure of the white horse once carved, now cemented, into Bratton Down. They spent some of Rose’s money taking a taxi from the railway station.

‘This man Dunkley-Brown is well known in the area, Percy told me,’ Ada started to explain, whereupon the taxi-driver joined in.

‘If it’s Ned Dunkley-Brown you mean, he were mayor of Bradford some years back. Powerful speaker in his time.’

‘He doesn’t mean that Bradford,’ Ada said for Rose’s benefit. ‘Bradford on Avon is a dinky little town not far from here.’ She asked the driver, ‘Politician, is he?’

‘Was. Don’t get much time for politics no more. Too busy testing the ale.’

‘Enjoys his bevvy, does he?’

‘You could say that. Him and his missus. If we catch them at home at this time of day, I’ll be surprised.’

He had no need to be surprised. No one came to the door of the large, detached house. Inside, a dog was barking. Ada said she would go exploring. She marched around the side as if she owned it. Presently, she called out from somewhere, ‘Come and look at this.’

Rose found her in the garage, jammed into a space between the wall and a large white car, her hand resting on the silver fish figurehead. she said with pride, ‘I knew we could bank on Percy.’

Rose’s heart-rate stepped up. ‘This must be the one.’

‘Funny-looking fish,’ Ada commented.

‘What do you mean?’

‘For a car, I mean. The fins stick up high. Not very streamlined.’

True, it was spikier than a trout, say, or a salmon. ‘It’s still a fish.’

‘Definitely.’

‘We’d better go,’ said Rose, suspicious that Ada might be planning some housebreaking. ‘We don’t want to get caught here.’

They had asked their driver to wait, and he offered to take them to the pub the Dunkley-Browns frequented. It wouldn’t have taken long to walk there, but Ada preferred travelling on wheels whenever possible. This had a useful result, because the driver once more picked up a point from their conversation.

‘That fish on D-B’s car? That’s a gudgeon.’

‘A what?’ said Ada.

‘Gudgeon. A freshwater fish. They’re small. Good for bait. Not much of a bite for supper, though. You know why he has it on his car, don’t you?’

Ada said, ‘That was my next question.’

‘Maybe,’ he said slyly, ‘but I asked it first.’

‘He’s a fisherman?’ Ada hazarded.

‘No.’

‘He drinks like a fish?’

He chuckled. ‘I like it, and it’s true, but that ain’t the reason. I told you he were mayor of Bradford once. Proper proud of that, he is. That fish is the official fish of Bradford. Gudgeon.’

‘Like a symbol of the town?’

‘Correct. You’ve heard the saying, haven’t you, “You be under the fish and over the water”?’

‘Can’t say I have,’ said Ada. ‘Like a riddle, is it?

Rose asked what it meant.

‘Local people know it. You know the Bradford town bridge, anywhiles?’

‘Yes.’

Even Rose knew that, just as she knew the names of the Rolling Stones. The medieval nine-arched bridge over the Avon is one of the more famous landmarks in the West Country. Generations of artists and photographers have captured the quaint profile with the domed lock-up (once a chapel) projecting above the structure.

‘On top of the lock-up, there’s a weathervane in the form of a gudgeon. So if you had some cause to spend the night in there…’

‘We get the point,’ said Ada. ‘Mr Dunkley-Brown is proud of his time as mayor, and that’s all we need to know, except where to find him.’

‘No problem there,’ said the driver.

He turned up Alfred Street and stopped in the Market Place opposite the Westbury Hotel, a Georgian red-brick building that looked well up to catering for an ex-mayor. Obviously it had an identity problem, because the gilt and wrought-iron lettering over the door still proclaimed it as the Lopes Arms and there was a board with a coat of arms to affirm it. Another board claimed a history dating back to the fourteenth century and yet another gave it four stars from the English Tourist Board. Mindful of a possible tip, the driver took the trouble to get out and look inside the bar. ‘What did I tell you, ladies? Table on the left, party of six. He’s the little bald bloke and his missus next to him.’

Ada heaved herself out of the back seat and thanked the driver. ‘Do you happen to have a card? We might need to call you again.’ She explained later to Rose that asking a driver for his card was the ploy she used when unable to afford a tip. It saved embarrassment because there was just the suggestion that the tip was being saved for the second run, which never happened.

The interior bore out the promise of gentility: a leather-clad bar, thick, patterned carpet, dark wood panelling and framed Victorian cartoons by Spy. The Dunkley-Browns looked well set for a long session, seated with four others in a partitioned section a step up from the main bar, their table already stacked with empties. Although their conversation didn’t quite carry, the bursts of laughter did.

Rose would have started by going to the liveried barmaid and ordering something. Ada was more direct. She stepped up to the table where the Dunkley-Browns were and said, ‘Pardon me for butting in, but you are the former Mayor and Mayoress of Bradford, aren’t you?’

Ned Dunkley-Brown seemed to grow a couple of inches. Bright-eyed, short and with clownish clumps of hair on either side of his bald patch, he appeared friendly enough. ‘As a matter of fact we are. Should we know you?’

Mrs Dunkley-Brown, beside him, cast a sharp eye over the newcomers. She was probably twenty years younger than her husband, with black, shoulder-length hair. She must have enlivened civic receptions in Bradford on Avon.

‘No, we’re visitors here,’ said Ada. ‘Ada Shaftsbury and – what do you call yourself, petal?’

‘Rose.’

‘She’s Rose. Our driver pointed you out.’

‘So you drove here?’ said Dunkley-Brown, simply being civil with these people who may have appeared odd, but who had earned his approval for reminding his drinking companions that he had once been the top dog in Bradford on Avon.

‘Not all the way,’ said Ada. ‘We took the train from Bath. We don’t own a handsome car like yours.’

‘You’ve seen my Bentley, have you?’

Someone in the party made some aside and the women – Mrs Dunkley-Brown excepted – giggled behind their hands.

‘It’s a motor you’d notice anywhere, a gorgeous runabout like that,’ Ada said, unfazed. ‘Specially with the figurehead.’

‘The fish. You know about the fish?’

‘The gudgeon of Bradford.’

‘You are well-informed. Look, why don’t you ladies join us? We’re just having a few drinks with our friends here. What will you have?’

‘A few private words will do. We didn’t come to crash your party.’

‘Private words?’ said Dunkley-Brown.

‘It’s important,’ said Ada.

He became defensive. ‘But I’ve never met you before.’

Mrs Dunkley-Brown said, ‘Just who are you?’

‘I said – Ada Shaftsbury. We’d also like a word with you in a moment.’

Rose decided to soften the approach. Ada’s tone was becoming abrasive. ‘It’s for my sake, actually. It’s true you haven’t met Ada before, but you may recognise me.’

The Dunkley-Browns looked at her fully and she was certain there was a moment of recognition. To her astonishment the husband said immediately in a hard, clipped tone, 77

‘No, my dear. Never once clapped eyes on you. Obviously you’re mistaken.’

Ada, braced for battle, said, ‘Mistaken about your motor, are we?’

‘Anyone could have told you about my car…’ Dunkley-Brown started to say. Then he interrupted himself and said, ‘All right, you’re obviously mistaken, but for the sake of some peace, I’ll talk to you outside. Fair enough?’

‘Do you want me to come, Ned?’ his wife asked.

Ada spoke up as if the offer were addressed to her. ‘Thanks, but we’d rather talk to you later.’

She said, ‘You sound like the police. What are we supposed to have done? Robbed a bank?’

‘Gordon Bennett, we’re nothing to do with the police,’ said Ada, speaking from the heart.

Dunkley-Brown stood up. ‘Let’s sort this out, whatever it is. I’ll step outside with you, but I’m not having my wife’s evening disturbed.’

Ada led the way and they stood in the sparse evening light in the Market Place while Rose explained the connection. She set out the facts without guile, admitting that she had her information second-hand from an elderly woman, fully expecting her frankness to be matched by Dunkley-Brown’s. He heard it all in silence, his eyes giving no hint of involvement.

Finally Rose asked him, ‘Well, was it your car she saw? Did you bring me to the Hinton Clinic that evening?’

Dunkley-Brown overrode the last word. ‘Absolutely not. You’re mistaken. I was nowhere near Bath last Monday night and neither was my car. We spent the evening in Westbury. I can’t help you.’

Ada couldn’t contain herself. ‘But the car was seen, a big white car with a fish on the bonnet. How many cars like that are there in these parts? Have you ever seen another one?’

He would not yield. ‘There’s no reason why someone else shouldn’t have one.’

‘The driver was a bald bloke.’

Ada spoke this as a statement of fact without regard to any sensitivity Dunkley-Brown may have had about his appearance. He didn’t care for it at all. ‘I’ve heard more than enough of this. I’ve made myself clear. I can’t help you. Now allow me to get back to my friends.’

Ada was blocking his route to the bar door.

She remained where she was. However, she said with more tact, ‘If you took the trouble to drive her to hospital, you must have been concerned.’

He said, ‘Will you stand out of my way?’

‘Please. We’re not blaming you for anything,’ said Rose. ‘I just want to know what happened to me that night. You’re the best chance I have – the only chance.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Ada. ‘There’s his wife.’

Dunkley-Brown said through clenched teeth, ‘You are not speaking to my wife.’

‘She offered to come outside,’ said Ada.

‘There’s no reason. She can’t tell you a damned thing.’

‘Then you have nothing to fear.’

‘I’ve nothing to fear anyway. My conscience is perfectly clear.’

Ada turned to Rose. ‘Why don’t I stay out here with Mr Dunkley-Brown while you go and ask his good lady to join us?’

‘This is outrageous,’ said Dunkley-Brown. ‘You can’t detain me against my will. I’ll complain to the police.’

Ada beamed at him. ‘I bet you won’t, buster. I bet my next dinner you won’t.’

Rose went back inside and found that the bonhomie had been fully restored at the table. There was some ribald comment when they saw who had come from outside.

‘Hullo, what’s happened to Ned?’ one of them said. ‘Still at it?’

The other man said, ‘With the big one.’

‘Showing her his Bentley,’ shrieked one of the women.

Ignoring them, Rose walked around the chairs and up to Mrs Dunkley-Brown. ‘If you don’t mind, we’d like you to help us after all.’

‘Watch out, Pippa,’ said the woman to her right. ‘They might want you for a threesome.’

Pippa Dunkley-Brown glared at Rose. ‘My husband said he could handle it. What do you want me for?’

‘To support what he’s saying.’

‘He doesn’t need me. He’s well used to speaking for himself and being believed.’

‘You were there. We want to know what happened.’

‘Where? What is this about?’

‘The Hinton Clinic last Monday night.’

After a pause, she said, ‘I don’t know a damned thing about the Hinton Clinic. I’ve never set foot inside the place.’

In her exasperation, Rose found herself pouring out words. ‘Oh, come on, I don’t mean inside. Just in the grounds. The car park, where I was found. I need your help. I’m not accusing you of anything. You probably saved my life, you and your husband. If you want to keep quiet about what you did, that’s up to you, but please have some understanding for my position.’

The man across the table, the most vocal of the group, said, ‘What’s this about saving her life, Pippa? Have you and Ned been performing acts of heroism and keeping it from your old chums?’

She said tight-lipped, ‘She’s confused.’

‘Yes, I am confused,’ Rose said. ‘I admit it. That’s why I’m appealing to you for help.’

Pippa Dunkley-Brown drew herself up. ‘Young woman, I’m becoming more than a little angry.’

The man opposite, well soused, seized the chance to goad her. ‘Come clean, Pippa. What were you and Ned up to in this hospital car park that you don’t want us to know about? Naughties in the back of the Bentley?’

She snapped, ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’

‘Well, if it wasn’t you with Ned,’ he said with a grin at the other women, ‘who was it?”

Pippa reddened.

One of the women, probably the man’s wife, said, ‘Knock it off, Keith, you stupid jerk.’

The rebuke had the effect of stinging Pippa rather than Keith, for it showed that these friends of hers were taking the suggestion seriously. The idea that her ageing husband might dally with another woman was more damaging than any threat represented by Rose and Ada. She couldn’t allow it to pass unchallenged. she said in a low, measured voice, ‘What are you on about, Keith?’

‘Ignore him. You know what he’s like,’ said Keith’s wife.

‘No, I’m not having Ned smeared. If you’ve got something to tell us, Keith, you’d better say it, or apologise.’

Keith was grinning to cover his unease. ‘Calm down, love,’ he said. ‘I was only pulling your leg.’

The other man tried clumsily to assist. ‘Let’s face it. Old Ned’s a bit of a lad.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’ said Pippa, at the limit of her self-control. ‘Right.’ She made a fist with her right hand and thumped the table. ‘I’m going to tell you all exactly what happened. I was with Ned all of last Monday, all of it. We were coming back from Bristol early in the evening, about six-thirty. We’d been to a garden centre to look at some ornaments and left a bit late to miss the worst of the traffic. We were on the motorway, the M4, as far as that junction that leads down into Bath.’

‘Eighteen,’ said the other man at the table to ease the tension. ‘She means Junction Eighteen.’

‘I suggested we got something from a Chinese takeaway. That’s why we headed for Bath. We drove along there for about a mile.’

‘The A46,’ said the same man. ‘You were on the A46.’

‘Shut up, Frank,’ said his wife.

Pippa continued, ‘It was that difficult light between day and evening. Ned was driving. It’s that stretch before you come to Dyrham Park. Just open country. I was thinking about other things. Suddenly Ned had the brakes on and I was jerked forward against the safety belt. What had happened was that this stupid woman – you.’ She pointed at Rose. ‘You had wandered into the road, right in front of us. Thank God Ned saw you a bit ahead, because you would have been dead meat now if he hadn’t. He jammed on the brakes, as I said, and when we hit you we’d slowed right down. Good thing there wasn’t anything close behind us. You still fell across the bonnet and you must have landed awkwardly because you were right out. It was terrifying. We got you off the front of the car and made sure you were still breathing and tried to revive you at the side of the road. Ned was in a state of shock, poor man. He knew he was in deep, deep trouble.’ She looked across the room towards the door. ‘He isn’t coming, is he?’

Rose said, ‘He won’t get past Ada. Go on, please.’

‘He’s been caught before for being over the limit,’ said Pippa. ‘You all know that. One more would do for him. He’d had a couple of drinks in Bristol. It doesn’t affect his driving, not that amount. I tell you, this wasn’t his fault, but it would have been no good arguing. They’d have breathalysed him and taken his licence away, and if it was known he’d hit someone, he’d get sent down for a term. That’s why we couldn’t report it. I knew the hospital wasn’t far away. There’s a road sign along there.’

‘I know it,’ said Frank.

She looked up at Rose. ‘We did what we could for you. We lifted you into the back seat. Cars and lorries were going by, but no one stopped, thank God. Then we drove to the Hinton Clinic, with Ned at the wheel and me beside you in the back seat.’

‘What a nightmare,’ said Keith’s wife.

‘Then we had this problem. We couldn’t take you in as a casualty, or questions would have been asked. To have given false names would have made it worse. So I suggested we put you down in the car park where someone was sure to discover you and get you inside. That’s what we did. We picked a spot under a lamp-post. Then we got the hell out of there.’

‘That’s all?’ said Rose.

‘Well, I called the hospital a couple of days or so later.’

‘That was you. I see.’ Now that the story was told – and told with enough detail to make it credible – Rose was gripped by overwhelming disappointment. She had learned some more about what happened that night, but the overriding question remained unanswered. ‘When you first saw me, I was wandering in the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘In open country?’

‘You came out of nowhere,’ said Pippa. ‘Look, Ned’s going to go through the roof when he finds out I’ve told you all this. We were going to say nothing to anybody. I was just so incensed when Keith started hinting that Ned-’

‘Pippa, darling, what are friends for, if we can’t stand by you at a time like this?’ put in Keith’s wife. ‘It could have happened to any of us.’

Rose turned away. She hadn’t listened to the last exchange.

She wasn’t interested in how Pippa made peace with her husband. The painstaking process of reconstruction, from Mrs Thornton to Percy the car-dealer, to the Dunkley-Browns, had crashed with that devastating phrase: ‘You came out of nowhere.’

Eleven

On Westbury station, Ada found the chocolate-bar machine and subjected it to a series of expert thumps.

When seated with the resulting heap of Cadbury’s bars in her lap, she remarked to Rose, ‘I wouldn’t want to be Pippa when he gets her home.’

Rose hadn’t given a thought to Pippa. Her mind was occupied trying once more to find a way out of her predicament.

Ada chuckled a little and said, ‘While her old man was refusing to admit to anything, she was singing like the three tenors.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Rose, snapping out of her thoughts and turning to face her.

‘Get away. Have some choc.’

‘She didn’t set out to tell me anything. It was only because her friends started winding her up, hinting that her husband was having an affair.’

‘Which he very likely is,’ said Ada. ‘And she very likely knows it.’

‘How do you work that out?’

Ada answered with conviction, ‘They must have got horribly close to the truth. Much more of it, and she would have cracked, and all her friends would know she couldn’t hang on to her decrepit old goat of a husband. Bloody humiliating for a woman as pretty as Pippa.’

‘Maybe. But instead she told them how he knocked me down and failed to report an accident. That’s worse than humiliation. That’s a crime, Ada.’

‘That crowd are boozers themselves, petal. They won’t shop him.’

All of this rang true, but none of it helped Rose. ‘I’m not much further on, am I? We now discover that I wandered onto a main road and was lucky not to be killed. What was I doing there?’

Ada ripped open another bar of chocolate. ‘Buggered if I know. If that’s the stretch I’m thinking of, it’s desolate up there.’

‘Really?’

‘No trees, no houses, nothing.’

‘Ada, I’m going to have to go there and see the place for myself.’

‘What use is that?’

‘I want to find out what I was doing there.’

Ada’s flesh rippled with amusement. ‘A date with a little green man?’

‘Get serious, will you?’ said Rose. ‘It could spark off a memory.’

‘Shut up and eat some chocolate.’

‘I’ve really got to go there.’

‘Tomorrow, petal. Tonight you move into your new place on Wellsway. Remember?’

First, they returned to Harmer House to collect Rose’s few possessions, automatically quickening their steps on approaching the line of parked cars outside. This time they reached the front door without incident. ‘You don’t have to help me with the move,’ Rose said as they started up the creaking stairs. ‘You’ve given up so much of your time already, and I’m really grateful, but I can do this by myself.’

‘Try and keep me away,’ said Ada.

Rose thanked her.

Ada said, ‘Don’t get ideas. I want to see if it’s a better drum than this.’

Rose knew it wasn’t in Ada’s nature to admit to being helpful. ‘I’ve really enjoyed your company. I don’t know how you feel about keeping in touch. I’d like to stay friends if you would.’

They went up four or five more stairs before Ada reacted.

‘Give me a five.’

‘What?’ said Rose.

‘Your hand.’

‘Oh.’ She held out her palm and Ada slapped hers against it in agreement.

‘Whatever, wherever.’

‘Whatever, wherever,’ repeated Rose.

Ada stopped suddenly and lowered her voice. ‘Can you hear anything? I think there’s someone in our room.’

Rose listened. Without question there were voices coming from the bedroom. ‘It sounds like Imogen.’

‘At this time?’

They crept to the top. The door had been left ajar. Rose was right. Imogen’s well-bred drawl was coming through clearly. The other voice was female also.

Rose looked at Ada, who shrugged.

They pushed the door wide and stepped in.

‘Goodness, you surprised us,’ said Imogen.

Ada, close behind Rose, said, ‘Can’t think why. Believe it or not, this is our room, ducky.’

‘Yes, it’s an intrusion. I’m sorry, but there was nowhere else to wait,’ said Imogen. ‘And something very special…’

… was interrupted by something very unexpected. The other woman opened her arms wide, said, ‘Darling, where have you been?’ and stepped forward to embrace Rose in a hug that squeezed a high note out of her like a Scottish piper starting up.

Ada cried out, ‘Watch it – she’s busted her ribs.’

The woman released Rose. ‘Oh, my God, I had no idea.’

Actually the discomfort was mild, for the pressure had been cushioned by a substantial bosom. The woman was sturdy, though sylphlike compared to Ada. She was about Rose’s age or younger, with fine brown hair, worn in a ponytail. Her get-up was strangely chosen for visiting a hostel for the homeless. She looked as if she had spent the last hour having a make-over in a department store. She was in a white silk blouse that hung loose over black leggings. An expensive-looking coat was draped over a chair-back.

Imogen said, ‘This is your sister Doreen. Don’t you recognise her?’

Rose felt as if lightning had struck. ‘My Sister?’

‘Stepsister, to be accurate,’ said the woman. ‘Roz, it’s me.’ She took one of Rose’s hands and clasped it between both of hers. ‘It’s all over, love. I’ve come to take you home.’

Pulses buzzed in Rose’s head and none of them made any helpful connections. She took a step away, releasing her hand.

Imogen said, ‘When Miss Jenkins called the office, I just had to bring her here. I know it’s late and obviously we’ve taken you by surprise.’

Rose said flatly, ‘I don’t know her.’

‘You don’t recognise her,’ Imogen corrected her. ‘You don’t recognise her because you still haven’t got your memory back.’

‘But if she’s my own sister…’

‘It doesn’t mean that your memory will suddenly switch on.’ She turned to the woman. ‘You’ll have to make allowances, I’m afraid. It’s like a shutter in her brain. She can’t see anything behind it.’

Rose went white with anger. Imogen had no right to discuss her as if she were some dead laboratory animal pinned out for dissection. She was intelligent, for God’s sake. She could hear what was being said.

Before she opened her mouth to object, Ada said, ‘The point is, we can’t be too careful. Yesterday, some gorilla claimed to know Rose and then tried to force her into a car. I was there. We both had to fight to get away.’

Imogen quickly said, ‘It’s all right, Ada. There’s no question of any deception here. Miss Jenkins has satisfied me that she’s Rose’s sister. She has proof. Photos.’

Doreen Jenkins picked her handbag off the back of a chair, unzipped it and opened a pigskin wallet. And she had enough tact to address Rose directly. ‘Here’s one of you with Mummy in the garden at Twickenham.’ She handed across a standard-size colour print of two women arm in arm in front of a lavender bush.

Rose had to steady the photo from shaking in her hand. Here was a large, smiling middle-aged woman in a print dress. The other was younger, slimmer, dark-haired, with the face she saw in mirrors, the face she had learned to accept as her own. Sharply focused and in a good light, the likeness couldn’t be dismissed. ‘This is me with my mother?’ she said, frowning.

‘Yes, and she’s my mummy, too, of course,’ said Doreen Jenkins, smiling. ‘Look at some others.’ She handed across two more. ‘They’re more recent. I don’t know where they were taken. Probably on holiday. I didn’t take them. I got them from you.’

Imogen, suddenly at Rose’s side and squeezing her arm, said, ‘There isn’t any doubt, is there? It’s you.’

A detail in these extra pictures clinched it. Both were shots of Rose alone, one seated on a drystone wall, the other standing in a doorway. In each she was wearing the belt she had been found in and was wearing now, its large steel buckle unmistakable. Probably the jeans were the same designer pair she had damaged in the accident.

Ada came over to look. ‘Pity,’ she said. ‘We were shaping up nicely as sleuths, weren’t we, petal?’

Rose turned to the woman she now had to accept as her stepsister. She had to force herself to speak. ‘Did I hear right just now? Did you call me Roz?’

Doreen nodded. ‘That’s your name. Rosamund.’

Imogen said in a self-congratulating tone, ‘I wasn’t far out, calling you Rose.’

‘What’s my surname – Jenkins?’

‘No,’ said Doreen. ‘You’re Rosamund Black. You and I had different fathers. Mummy got a divorce in 1972. It’s so peculiar having to tell you this.’

It was more peculiar listening to it, struggling to believe it. ‘Rosamund Black,’ she repeated as if the name might trigger some reaction in her brain. She ought to feel genuine warmth for this woman who was her stepsister and had gone to the trouble of finding her. Instead she felt like running out of the room. Now that the uncertainty was removed she was panicking. She wasn’t sure that she could face any more truth about herself.

Imogen said, ‘When you’ve had a chance to take it in, everything will fall into place.’

Doreen said, ‘I’m going to take care of you.’

‘I’m not sick,’ Rose snapped back, then softened it to, ‘I can take care of myself, now that you tell me who I am. How did you find me?’

‘We tracked you down,’ Doreen answered. ‘Mummy was worried. You always phone her Sunday nights, wherever you are, and you missed last week. When she tried you, there was no answer. You can imagine the state she was in, with her imagination. She’s always reading stuff in the papers about women disappearing. Remember the fuss she made about your trip to Florida? I suppose not. Well, you still managed to call her from the States at the usual time. What with Mummy going spare, I promised to make some enquiries. Jackie – your friend, Jackie Mays – thought you’d said something about a weekend in Bath. Some hotel deal. She didn’t know which one. I phoned a few without success, and then Jerry said he’d got a week owing to him so why didn’t we go down and stay at a bed and breakfast. The first or second person we asked said there had been a report in the local paper about a woman who’d lost her memory. It was you – my own sister! When I saw your picture, I phoned the social services and here I am.’

‘Who’s Jerry?’

Doreen gave her a surprised look. ‘My bloke.’

‘Does he know me?’

‘Of course he does. I’ve been living with him for the last three years. You’re going to stay with us tonight. I insist, and so does Jerry. There are spare rooms in the place where we are out at Bathford. It’s a lovely spot and it’ll do you good.’

Rose said – and it must have sounded ungrateful, but she refused to be swamped by all the concern – ‘I’d rather get home if you’d tell me where it is.’

Imogen said quickly, ‘That might not be such a good idea. You’d be better off with your family until your memory comes back.’

Doreen took Rose’s hand and said, ‘We can help you remember things. Between us we’ll soon get you right. You’ll be home in no time. Promise.’

She tugged her hand away. ‘For God’s sake, will you all stop treating me like a four-year-old?’

She was angry with herself as much as them, playing the spoilt brat and insisting they treated her with respect. She felt guilty giving bad reactions to this well-meaning sister who wanted to take her over. There was no way she could explain the degree of alienation seething within her.

She asked, ‘Where do I live?’

‘Hounslow,’ said Doreen. ‘Quite close to Mummy. We’ll take you back in a day or two. Now that Jerry’s here, he’d like to see a little more of Bath. It is his holiday.’

‘Tell me the address. I’m perfectly able to travel.’

‘We wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Doreen, taking a more assertive line. ‘What if you had another blackout? Look, I know you want to be independent. So would I. We’re like that, aren’t we, you and I? Believe me, Roz, you need someone to keep an eye on you, at least until we know you’re back to normal.’

‘Doreen’s right,’ Imogen weighed in, in her role as social worker. ‘There’s nothing like the support of one’s family.’

Doreen said, ‘You must speak to Mummy as soon as possible and put her mind at rest. We can ring her from the place where we’re staying.’

Imogen said, ‘You can call from here. There’s a payphone downstairs.’

‘Let’s do it now,’ said Doreen.

All this had happened at a pace too fast for Rose – or Roz -to take in. She didn’t yet feel comfortable with this stepsister who wanted to take her over and she balked at the prospect of phoning a mother she didn’t recognise. Naively she had imagined being reunited with her family would solve her problems, restore the life she had been severed from, but she was discovering that she didn’t want to be claimed by these people she still regarded as strangers. She needed more time to adjust.

She said to Doreen, ‘You call if you like. I’d rather not speak to her yet’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d feel uncomfortable and it would show in my voice. You can tell her what happened. Say I haven’t got my memory back yet.’

Doreen’s expression tightened. ‘I think you ought to speak to her.’

Imogen was nodding.

Ada backed her friend. ‘Jesus, if it was my Mum, all she’d want to know is that I was alive and kicking. But if I sounded like a zombie on the end of the line, she’d go bananas.’ She told Doreen, ‘You cover for your sister, love. Phone’s on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. You can’t miss it.’

Ada’s air of authority succeeded. Doreen Jenkins sighed, shrugged and left the room.

Ada asked Rose, ‘What’s up, kiddo? You ought to be over the moon. Don’t you take to your long-lost sister?’

‘That’s immaterial,’ said Rose.

‘In other words, she’s a right cow.’

‘Ada, I didn’t say that!’

‘The trouble is, we can’t choose our families,’ said Ada. ‘We’re stuck with the beauties we’ve got. I can talk. The Shaftsbury mob could teach the Borgias tricks. You managed to escape yours for a bit, and now they’ve caught up with you.’

Imogen, as usual, tried to compensate for Ada’s outspokenness. ‘I found her pleasant to deal with, and there can’t be any doubt. She’s made a special trip from London to find you.’

‘I know.’

‘The photos clinch it, don’t they?’

Rose folded her arms. ‘It’s hard to put into words the way I feel. I’m sure she’s doing this from the best motive. I suppose I’m panicking a bit. Or pig-headed. Part of me doesn’t want to be taken over. You see, I feel perfectly well in myself. I could manage. I can manage, here, with Ada.’

‘What you’re overlooking,’ said Imogen, with a hard edge to her voice, ‘is that you’ve been managing with the help of Avon Social Services. That was fine while you were homeless and without family. Now, you see, the rules have altered. I can’t let you stay here when your own people are willing to take you back.’

‘You’re kicking me out, in other words.’

‘I’ve got my job to do.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Why put it off until tomorrow? Your sister’s offering you a comfortable room somewhere.’

Ada put a beefy arm around Rose’s shoulders. ‘Life’s a bummer. Like we said, petal, whatever, wherever. Let me know when you get home. Directly, right?’

Rose nodded.

‘In fact, I’ll give you one of my cards.’ Ada went to the cupboard beside her bed.

‘Your said Imogen.what?’

Ada had been full of surprises from the start, but the idea of a homeless woman having cards to hand out was the most incredible yet.

The expression on Imogen’s face was priceless.

‘You can have one, too, if you like,’ Ada said. ‘I’ve got about two thousand.’ What she had was a handful of postcards. ‘Aerial views of Bath. Lovely, aren’t they?’

Imogen said, ‘Ada, you’re the limit’

Ada gave her a disdainful look, ‘They’re legit. I got them out of a skip, sweetie. They’re all fuzzy. Some cock-up with the printing. They were being chucked out. How many do you want?’

Imogen shook her head.

Rose told Ada, ‘You’ve been more than a good friend. You’ve kept me sane.’

‘Send me one of these as soon as you get back to Hounslow, right?’ said Ada, putting a bunch of them in her hand. ‘And when you’ve got yourself together again, come and see me. I’ll be here if I’m not doing another stretch – and if I am I’d still appreciate a visit.’

Rose couldn’t speak any more. She picked a Sainsbury’s bag off the back of a chair and started putting her few possessions into it.

Twelve

The farm ‘at Tormarton’ turned out to be closer to Acton Turville than Tormarton, Diamond only discovered after cruising the lanes for three-quarters of an hour. This was a corner of the county he seldom visited, unless you could call racing through on the motorway a visit. On this bleak October afternoon, contending with patches of mist, he concluded that if any stretch of countryside could absorb a three-lane motorway without appreciable loss of character, it was this. The two people he met and asked for directions said they couldn’t help. Locals both, they hadn’t heard of a farmer called Gladstone. When eventually he found the farm (luckily spotting a police vehicle at the end of a mud track) he had no difficulty in understanding how the body had lain undiscovered for up to a week. The stone cottage looked derelict. The outbuildings were overgrown with a mass of soggy Old Man’s Beard, its hairy awns, silver in high summer, now as brown as if the Old Man smoked sixty a day.

The remoteness of the place meant that he could not in all conscience tell Wigfull that he merely happened to be passing. Instead he gave no explanation at all when he hailed the party of diggers.

‘Any progress, John?’

If Dracula himself had stepped out of the mist Wigfull could not have been more startled.

‘I said how’s it going?’

‘What are you…?’

‘Is there any progress?’

‘If shifting half a ton of soil is progress, yes,’ Wigfull succeeded in saying.

‘But you haven’t found anything?’

‘If you insist on standing there,’ said Wigfull, ‘you’ll get your shoes dirty.’ It sounded more like a threat than a warning. He was more sensibly clad than Diamond, in gumboots and overalls.

Diamond took a step back. Perhaps to make the point for Wigfull, one of the men at work in the hole deposited a chunk of soil where the big detective had been standing.

Pre-empting the next question, Wigfull said, ‘It’s an exploratory dig. We’re keeping an open mind.’

‘Sensible. How deep do you intend to go?’

‘When we come to the end of the loose stuff, we stop.’

‘Sounds as if you’re almost there.’

‘Possibly.’ Alerted to the fact that this was the critical point in the excavation, Wigfull bent over the hole and instructed the two diggers to take care.

Diamond, too, stepped closer and peered in. The depth was a little over four feet. ‘Difficult to see. You want some lighting on a day like this.’

Wigfull didn’t respond.

The spades were definitely scraping on the bedrock. One of the diggers climbed out and the other asked for a rake. It was increasingly obvious that nothing so bulky as a corpse was buried there. Diamond stepped away from the trench and took a few paces across the field. ‘There’s another hole here, by the look of it,’ he reported.

‘We know,’ said Wigfull with ill-concealed annoyance. ‘There are three, at least.’

‘I’ll see if I can find some more for you.’ Why, he thought after he’d spoken, did Wigfull bring out the worst in him?

In a penitent mood, he took a slow walk around the boundary of the late Farmer Gladstone’s land, in truth not looking for more evidence of recent digging. The methodical Wigfull could be relied on to find anything suspicious. Instead, he mused on the purpose of the holes. If they weren’t used to bury things, what were they for? A search? There was the stock story of the recluse who leads a frugal life and secretly has a hoard of money that he buries. Had someone heard of the old man’s suicide and come shifting earth on the off-chance? Three trenches suggested rather more confidence than an off-chance.

The neglected field was a conservationist’s ideal, the hedge bristling with small trees and shrubs, with mud-slides showing evidence of badgers along the far side. He stopped and looked over the hedge at the deep ploughing that presumably indicated someone else’s land. What had the neighbours to say about old Gladstone? he wondered. And had they noticed anyone digging on his land in recent days?

Having toured the field, he approached the house, which was open. The SOCOs had long since collected all the forensic evidence they wanted, and now it was in use as a base for the police. Some attempt had been made that afternoon to get a fire going in the range. He used the bellows on the feebly smouldering wood and soon had a flame, though he doubted if it would give much heat to the kettle on top. The range stood in what must once have been the open hearth, and the section where they had started the fire was intended for coal, but he didn’t fancy exploring the outhouses in search of some.

Here, as the fading afternoon gave increasing emphasis to the flickering fire, he felt a strong sense of the old man shuffling around the brown matting that covered most of the flagstones, seeing out his days here, cooking on the range, dozing in the chair and occasionally stepping outside to collect eggs from the hen-house, or to wring a chicken’s neck. His bed was against the wall, the bedding amounting to a pair of blankets and an overcoat. Thanks to the work of the SOCOs, the place was very likely cleaner at this minute than it had been in years.

The chair – presumably the one the body had been found in – stood in a corner, a Victorian easy chair with a padded seat, back and wooden armrests. He saw the chalkmarks on the floor indicating the position it had been found in. There, also, were the outlines of the dead man’s footprints and of a gun.

A shotgun is not the most convenient weapon for a suicide, but every farmer owns one and so do many others in the country, so the choice is not uncommon. Methods of firing the fatal shot vary. Gladstone’s way, seated in the chair, presumably with the butt of the gun propped on the floor between the knees, and the muzzle tucked under the chin, was as efficient as any. With the arms fully extended along the barrel, both thumbs could be used to press down on the trigger. The result must have been quick for the victim, if messy for those who came after. Diamond looked up and noticed on the ceiling a number of dark marks ringed with chalk. He recalled the rookie constables in their face masks assisting the police surgeon and was thankful that his ‘blooding’ as a young officer had not been quite so gruesome.

For distraction, he crossed the room to a chest of drawers and opened the top one. An immediate bond of sympathy was formed with the farmer, for the inside was a mess, as much of a dog’s breakfast as Diamond’s own top drawer at home. This one contained a variety of kitchen implements, together with pencils, glue, a watch with a broken face, matches, a pipe, a black tie, some coins, a number of shotgun cartridges and thirty-five pounds in notes. The presence of the money was interesting. This drawer, surely, was an obvious place any intruder would have searched for spare cash. The fact that it had not been taken rather undermined his theory that the digging outside had been in search of Gladstone’s savings, unless the digger had been too squeamish to enter the cottage and pick up what had been there for the taking.

The lower drawers contained only clothes, so old and malodorous that the sympathy was put under some strain. He closed the drawer, blew his nose, and looked into the cottage’s only other room, a musty place that could not have been used for years. It was filled with such junk as a hip-bath, a clothes-horse, a shelf of books along a window-ledge, a wardrobe, a roll of carpet, a fire-bucket and other bits and pieces surplus to everyday requirements.

Diamond sidled between the hip-bath and a bentwood hat-stand to get a closer look at the books, all of which had suffered water-damage from a crack in the window behind them. They told him little about the man. There was a county history of Somerset and two others on Somerset villages; an Enquire Within Upon Everything, several manuals on farming; one on poultry-keeping; and a Bible.

When he picked the Bible off the shelf, the cloth cover flapped away from the board where the damp had penetrated. A pity, because it was clearly an antique. In the end-paper at the front was inscribed a family tree. It went back to 1794, when one Gabriel Turner had married Ethel Moon. Gabriel and Ethel’s progeny of nine spread across the width of two sheets and would surely have defeated the exercise if a later architect of the tree had not decided to restrict further entries to one line of descent, ending in 1943, when May Turner married Daniel Gladstone in St Mary Magdalene Church, Tormarton.

So far as Diamond could discern from the handwriting and the ink, all the entries had been made by two individuals. It appeared that the originals had been inscribed early in the nineteenth century, with the object of listing Gabriel and Ethel’s family; and the later entry was post-1943, to provide a record of May’s link through the generations with her great-great-grandparents. Daniel, presumably, was the suicide victim.

Sad. Now the old farmer would probably be buried in the church where he and his bride had married over half a century ago. Even more touching, the Bible also contained a Christmas card, faded with age, and inside it was a square black and white photo of a woman with a small girl. A message had been inscribed in the card: I thought you would like this picture of your family. God’s blessing to us all at this time. Meg.

Odd. He turned back the pages to check. The writing was clear. Daniel Gladstone had married May Turner, not Meg.

A second marriage? If so, the message seemed to suggest that it was a marriage under strain.

Hearing someone enter the cottage, he replaced the Bible and its contents where he had found it. John Wigfull heard him and looked through the door, his hair and moustache glistening from exposure to the mist.

‘Digging around?’

‘I thought that was the order of the day,’ Diamond answered.

‘We’ve given up. It’s too dark to see a damned thing and the mist is coming down.’

‘You’re right. I was getting eye-strain looking at his books,’ said Diamond. ‘Not much of a reader, apparently. What an existence. No papers, no telly. I’m not surprised he decided to end it. Did you find any personal papers?’

‘There was a deed-box. I’ve got it at Manvers Street. Birth certificate and so on. It establishes clearly who he was. We can’t trace a next of kin, so a health visitor will have to do the formal identification for us. At least Social Services were aware of his existence. Not many round here were.’

‘You’ve talked to neighbours, then?’

‘They scarcely ever saw him. There was some friction. I think the fellow on the next farm made several offers to buy him out when he stopped working the land, but he was a cussed old character.’

‘Aren’t we all, John?’

Wigfull was reluctant to bracket himself with the farmer or his rival. ‘What I was going to say is that no one could stand him for long. He married twice and both women divorced him.’

‘Any children?’

‘If there were, they didn’t visit their old dad.’

Diamond explained why he asked the question. He picked the Bible off the shelf again and showed the Christmas card and photo to Wigfull.

There wasn’t much gratitude. ‘Could be anyone, couldn’t it? There’s nothing to prove these people were his family. I mean, the Bible looks as if it belonged to the wife. It’s her family tree in the front, not his.’

Diamond didn’t pursue it. Wigfull was discouraged by the digging and even more discouraged by Diamond’s visit.

‘So will you come back tomorrow?’

‘No chance,’ answered Wigfull. ‘I’ve got to get the body identified before we can fix a post-mortem. These lonely people who kill themselves without even leaving a note are a pest to deal with. For the present, I’ve seen more than enough of this God-forsaken place and I’m chilled to the bone. I might send a bunch of cadets out to turn over the other trenches. I don’t expect to find anything.’

‘Any theories?’

‘About the digging? No. If we’d turned up something, I might be interested.’

‘There must be some explanation, John. It represents a lot of hard work.’

‘You think I don’t know? Anyway, I’m leaving. If you want to stay, be my guest. There are candles in the kitchen.’

Thirteen

Doreen had a taxi waiting outside Harmer House. She opened the rear door for Rose, helped her in with the two carrier bags containing all her things, and got in beside her.

The driver turned to Doreen and asked, ‘All right, my love? All aboard and ready to roll?’

Visitors to the West Country are sometimes surprised by the endearments lavished on them. Doreen answered with a nod.

Rose was looking back at the hostel. She felt no regret at leaving the place, only at being parted from Ada, who had been a staunch friend. She was sure Ada would not let the parting get her down, and neither would she, if she could help it.

‘At least you’ll have a room to yourself tonight,’ Doreen said, trying to be supportive.

‘Will I?’

‘It’s like a furnished flat. Your own bathroom, kitchen, everything. I’ve done some shopping for you. Hope you don’t mind pre-cooked meals.’

‘I’ll eat anything, but I don’t have much cash to pay for it.’

‘Forget it, darling. We’re family.’

They drove past the fire station at the top of Bathwick Street and over Cleveland Bridge.

‘Did you walk along here while you were staying at the hostel?’

‘No. It’s new to me.’

Doreen smiled. ‘Different from Hounslow High Street.’

The joke was lost on Rose. The street they had just joined, with its tall, terraced blocks with classical features, might as well have been Hounslow for all she knew.

The taxi moved across the city at a good rate into some more modern areas built of imitation stone that looked shoddy after the places they had left. But presently they drove up a narrow street into a fine, eighteenth-century square built on a slope around a stretch of garden with well-established trees.

‘Your temporary home.’

‘Aren’t you staying here as well?’

‘Just around the corner in a bed and breakfast. You don’t mind having the place to yourself?’

Truth to tell, Rose preferred it. She was drained by the effort of accepting as her sister this woman she had no recollection of meeting before. They got out at the lower end of the square. Doreen had a hefty fare to settle: she counted out six five-pound notes and got a receipt, which she pocketed. Then she escorted Rose to the door. ‘There are shops along there, in St James’s Street, newsagent and grocer combined, deli, launderette, enough for all immediate needs,’ she said, sounding like a travel guide. ‘Oh, and a hairdresser’s.’

‘Does it look that awful?’

‘Of course it doesn’t, but if you’re like me, you get a lift from having your hair done. If not, there’s the pub.’

From the arrangement of doorbells, Rose noted that the house was divided into flats with a shared entrance.

‘Hope you won’t mind the basement,’ Doreen said apologetically, when she had let them in. ‘That’s all I could get at short notice.’

They stood in a clean, roomy and impersonal hall without furniture except a table for the mail.

‘You must have been confident of finding me to have fixed this up.’

‘More than confident, my dear. I knew. Saw your picture in the paper, you see. It said you were being looked after by the Social Services, so it was just a matter of establishing who I was.’

‘And who I am.’

‘Well, yes.’ Doreen led the way downstairs and turned the key in the door. They stepped inside a large room that must have faced onto the square. All you could see through the window was the outer wall of the basement well and, high up, a strip of the street with railings.

‘The living room. Better than the hostel?’

‘I don’t think the hostel had a living room.’

Affectionately Doreen put her arm around her. ‘So this will do?’

‘Home from home.’

In reality, it was just another strange setting for Rose to get used to. She was impatient to get back to her own place, whatever that turned out to be. She hated being under an obligation to people. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do while Doreen and her partner Jerry chose to linger in Bath.

Fitted green carpet, two armchairs, glass-topped table, bookshelf with a few paperbacks: it would do. The only thing she disliked was having to keep the light on during daytime, a fact of basement life.

‘I’m going to make us a cuppa,’ said Doreen, crossing to the kitchen.

Rose looked into the bedroom. Clean, if rather spartan. Two divan beds with the mattresses showing. A sleeping bag had been arranged on the nearer one. Fair enough, she thought. I could hardly expect them to go to the trouble of buying a full set of bed linen. She put her carrier bags on the spare bed. Unpacking wouldn’t take long.

Back in the kitchen, Doreen showed her the food shopping she had done. There was enough for a couple of days at least. ‘Didn’t know whether you’d gone back to your vegetarian phase, so it’s rather heavy on veggies,’ she said.

‘If I have, it’s all gone by the board in the last few days. I simply don’t remember if I’m supposed to be a vegetarian.’

‘You were always taking up new diets. I could never keep track of them.’ Doreen poured hot water into the teapot and swirled it around. ‘But you like your tea made properly. The pot has to be warmed.’

‘It’s so strange being told these things. I’m wanting to know everything about myself, of course, but it’s still like talking about another person. If I make tea for myself, I suppose I’ll go to the trouble of warming the pot now that you’ve told me I always do it, but it’s the strangest feeling – as if I’m trying to be someone I’m not.’

‘It will all start coming back, I expect,’ Doreen said, ‘and then it will make more sense. Did the doctors give you any idea how long you’ll be like this?’

‘Not really. All I was told is that I’ll get that part of my memory back. It isn’t like concussion, when you lose a small chunk of your life for ever. I may have had concussion as well, of course.’

‘You have had a time of it.’

‘I’ll be all right soon.’

‘But it’s still horrid for you while it lasts.’

‘Yes.’

‘How will it come back, all at one go, or in little bits?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You haven’t noticed anything stirring at the back of your mind?’

‘I wish I could say I had. You said my real name is Rosamund. I didn’t even know that.’

While the tea was brewing, they sat on two stools facing each other across the kitchen table. People with impaired sight or hearing sometimes develop their other senses more sharply. Rose, deprived of so much of her memory and experience, found she was becoming acutely observant of the way others behaved towards her. She could detect insincerity as if with a sixth sense. For example, she had found Imogen, the social worker, friendly, but unwilling to get involved beyond the limits of her job. She carried out her duties without really throwing herself into them whole-heartedly. Ada, on the other hand, had come across as totally committed, dependable and sympathetic, however brash her utterances were.

She could tell that Doreen’s motives were more complex. Doreen had a strong, honest concern, though it came out less obviously than Ada’s. Maybe that was only the difference between family and friends. No doubt Doreen was trying to reconcile different loyalties, to their mother, her partner, Jerry, and to Rose. The important thing, Rose concluded, was that Doreen clearly had her welfare at heart. She might appear manipulative, bossy, even, but she had gone to all the trouble of arranging this flat, and it was done with Rose’s interests clearly in mind.

She was trying her best to warm to Doreen.

‘Will I meet Jerry soon?’

‘Jerry?’ There was hesitation, as if Doreen’s mind had been on other things. ‘You threw me for a moment. It won’t be a case of meeting him. He knows you almost as well as I do.’

‘Sorry. You’ll have to make allowances. Remind me what he’s like.’

Doreen blushed a little. ‘I think he’s special, or I wouldn’t have moved in with him and shocked the family. They’ve accepted him now, even Mother.’

‘Good-looking, then?’

‘I think so, anyway.’

‘You live at his place?’

‘Yes, but we don’t crowd each other. Today I told him I didn’t want him with me when I called at the Social Services place. Jerry can be a bit abrupt with people like that. It called for some tact and persuasion, if you know what I mean. So he’s doing his own thing, which probably means test-driving a new car at some posh garage. You’ll see him soon enough.’

‘Tonight?’

‘I thought you’d want an evening at home. Nice bath, chance to put your feet up and relax.’

Rose took this to mean that her sister wanted dinner out somewhere nice with her partner. And why not? This was their short break in Bath.

‘About tomorrow,’ she thought it right to say. ‘If you two want to spend the day together, sightseeing or something, I don’t need to tag around with you. There are plenty of things I can do.’

Doreen ventured no immediate response. She went to the fridge and took out a carton of milk. ‘Is semi-skimmed all right?’

‘Fine.’

When the tea was poured, Doreen said, ‘Look, I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but you’ve got to be on your guard.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, come on, darling. Someone tried to force you into a car yesterday.’

So much had happened since that Rose had put it out of her mind. She shrugged and said dismissively, ‘I don’t know what that was about. You get some weirdos these days. I suppose he saw my picture in the paper. He knew my name, the name I’m using, anyway.’

‘Good thing your friend Ada was there to help you.’

‘And how!’

‘I think you should keep your head down now,’ Doreen continued the sisterly pressure. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell the social worker exactly where we’re staying. I told her Bathford, which is on the other side of town. You don’t want too many people knowing.’

Rose didn’t have much patience with the cloak and dagger stuff. ‘I don’t think Imogen goes round talking to all and sundry about her clients.’

‘All I’m saying is better safe than sorry. You’ll be all right here. You wouldn’t think of going out tonight, would you?’

Rose giggled at that. ‘It isn’t the back streets of Cairo out there.’

‘But you’ll stay in? Promise me.’

‘Your hotel is nearby, isn’t it?’

‘Hotel?’ Doreen said with a pained expression. ‘I keep telling you it’s only a private boarding-house. Yes, it’s very near, just around the corner in Marlborough Street, in fact. What’s that got to do with it?’

‘What’s it called if I need you?’

She was evasive. ‘Look, you won’t need me if you do as I say and stay in tonight. I’ll show you where we’re staying tomorrow.’

‘Why the mystery?’

‘No mystery at all. I feel responsible for you, right? Look, this may sound high-handed, but I think I’d better hold on to the keys of this place. Then you won’t be tempted to go for an evening walk if you know you wouldn’t get back in.’

Rose reddened and said, ‘That’s absurd.’

‘Not after all the trouble I’ve been to for your sake, it isn’t.’

They finished the tea. At Doreen’s suggestion, they explored the central heating system and succeeded in getting the boiler going. Rose, trying her best to be appreciative, said she was looking forward to a bath.

Before leaving, Doreen showed her the spyhole in the door and urged her to use it if anyone called. ‘It should only be me, anyway, and I won’t be back before ten tomorrow. Don’t open the door to anyone else, will you?’

Rose assured her that she would not.

‘If your bell rings, ignore it. Nobody knows you’re here except for me.’

‘Hadn’t I better have the keys? What if there’s a fire?’

‘You open the door and walk out. You don’t need a key to get out.’

‘All right.’

‘And there’s a chain on this door.’

Rose rolled her eyes upwards. ‘All these precautions. I should be so lucky – strange men beating a path to my door.’

‘Use it. Promise.’

Reluctantly, she said, ‘All right, I promise.’ She smiled at Doreen. ‘Just my luck.’

‘What’s that?’

‘To have Bossyboots for a sister.’

At about this time a woman called at the Central Police Station at the top of Manvers Street and handed over a sheet of paper. She explained that she was from the Tourist Information Office and she had been asked to translate something a German woman had wanted to tell Detective Inspector Hargreaves. It was about an incident in Bathwick Street the previous day. The desk sergeant glanced through it, thanked her, and had it taken upstairs to Julie’s desk.

The same evening a phone message reached the sergeant with responsibility for missing persons. He noted the details and turned to the computer operator on the adjacent desk. ‘When you get a moment, you can close the file on this one. She’s one of the Harmer House women, the one found wandering on the A46 suffering from loss of memory. Her family have surfaced now. Taking her back to Hounslow, where she lives. The name is Rosamund Black.’

‘Nice when there’s a happy ending,’ the computer operator said.

Fourteen

A bell was ringing intermittently and the sound fitted into a dream Rose was having. After the third or fourth time, she wriggled down in the sleeping bag and covered her exposed ear. Then the idea penetrated that this had to be a real sound. But if it’s the doorbell I’m supposed to ignore it, she told herself, remembering enough of yesterday’s instructions to justify her sloth. Fine. She felt so drowsy she could sleep for another six hours. Soon, surely, the bloody thing would stop.

Through the padded sleeping bag she could hear the ringing almost as clearly as before. Please give up and go away, she silently appealed to it.

Now the sound changed to knocking. Whoever it was had no consideration. Angrily she freed one arm and felt for the small digital clock on the shelf by the bed.

10.08.

She sat up and took in the scene, registering that she was in a strange room and that it was daylight and that her head felt like a butterfly farm.

The doorbell started up again.

Her surroundings began to make sense – the twin divans, the chipped tallboy, the wardrobe with a door that wouldn’t close properly – a job-lot of second-hand furniture to fill a flat. She remembered being brought here by her sister Doreen. Squirming out of the sleeping bag, she put her feet to the floor, padded through the living-room and looked through the spyhole. Doreen was out there, alone.

Rose released the safety-chain.

‘I thought you’d never come,’ Doreen said as she entered.

‘Asleep. Sorry.’

‘Why don’t you swish some cold water over your face and wake yourself up?’

‘Sadist.’

‘I did say I’d be here by ten. I’ll make coffee.’

Still light-headed in a way she didn’t like or understand, Rose went into the bathroom. The sensation of the water against her face helped a little. She took a shower and then remembered there was no bath-towel. After the bath last night she’d had to improvise. Fortunately the kitchen-roll she had used was still here and there was enough left, just. The coarse feel of the paper against her goose-pimpled skin did more to waken her than the shower. She slipped the nightdress over her head again. She could smell bacon cooking when she stepped into the living-room.

‘I’m getting you some breakfast,’ Doreen called out from the kitchen. ‘One egg or two?’

‘One’s enough. I feel just as if I took a sleeping-tablet.’

‘You did, darling. I popped a sedative into your tea last night.’

There was a second of shocked silence.

‘You didn’t?’ She went to the kitchen door and looked in, to see if the remark was serious.

Doreen said without looking away from the frying-pan, ‘It’s always difficult sleeping in a strange place, so I helped you out.’

‘You had no right.’ If she had not felt so muzzy, she would have objected more strongly. ‘I’m trying to get my brain working properly, not make it even more woolly.’

‘I guessed you’d say something like that. Get some clothes on and don’t be too long about it. This’ll be ready in five minutes.’

She didn’t feel alert enough to stand there arguing, but she would later, she would.

Over breakfast, she registered another protest about the sedative, but Doreen dismissed it. ‘That was only something herbal that I take myself. It might have a very good effect on your amnesia.’

‘I don’t know how.’

‘Relaxing you.’

She made it as clear as she could that she didn’t want any more sedatives secretly administered. ‘Look, if we’re going to stay on speaking terms, there’s got to be some trust between us.’

Doreen started to say, ‘I was only doing it-’

‘… for my own good? Well, I’d rather decide for myself what’s good for me.’

Doreen suggested a walk. The sun was out, she said, and they should make the best of it.

They strolled around St James’s Square and left at the north-west end to make their way up the hill in search of a good viewpoint.

Rose asked, ‘Are you and Jerry planning anything today?’

‘Planning anything?’

‘Sightseeing.’

She sounded relieved. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. No plans. Jerry’s not feeling too good. Last night’s wine, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Some little Italian place in the centre of town. I didn’t even look at the name. We made the mistake of ordering a bottle of the house wine. Jerry had most of it. The taste put me off.’

‘Is it a headache, or what?’

‘Tummy. He doesn’t dare go out. I don’t think you’ll be seeing him today, poor old thing.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I’m assuming it was the wine. We don’t want our holiday ruined.’

‘How many days are left?’ Rose asked.

Doreen frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Of the holiday. When do we all go home?’

‘Oh. Tuesday or Wednesday.’

Rose wondered if she could hold out so long. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler all round if I took a train home this afternoon? You wouldn’t have to pay for the flat and you two could enjoy your holiday without bothering about me.’

‘I thought we’d been through that,’ Doreen said in her brisk, assertive way. ‘We couldn’t possibly enjoy ourselves in the knowledge that you’ve gone off again. You’re in no state to cope on your own. Besides, you don’t know where you live.’

‘Hounslow, you said.’

She gave a smile that said she could trump anything. ‘Yes, but I didn’t tell you the address, did I? And I won’t, just in case you get ideas of wandering off.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Rose said with a glare. ‘I haven’t got enough for a train ticket.’

They toiled right up to Lansdown Crescent by way of Somerset Place. The panorama of the city, the limestone walls gleaming in the thin autumnal sunshine, was worth the climb. Against all her inclinations, Rose had to concede that you could do worse than pass a few days here.

Doreen took a wallet from her handbag and handed across two ten-pound notes. ‘Take it. Really. You may want to do some shopping. Tomorrow we’ll go into town together and get some more food in. Make a note of anything you need. Would it suit you better if I came in the afternoon?’

She came alone again. Jerry, she said, sent his apologies. He was still quite poorly. Rose found herself unkindly wondering if Jerry’s upset stomach might bring a premature end to the holiday.

The possibility didn’t seem to have crossed Doreen’s mind, because she insisted on buying Rose a set of towels and three days’ supply of groceries. They had tea and pastries in Jolly’s department store.

‘How did you spend yesterday evening?’

‘Reading.’

‘One of those books in the flat?’

‘An old Georgette Heyer. I don’t want anything more demanding.’

‘You’re still blocked – your memory, I mean?’

‘Unfortunately.’

They were so laden with shopping that Doreen suggested a taxi. She was less bossy today, and Rose quite enjoyed her company. They emerged into Milsom Street to discover that this was the Bath version of a rush hour and all the cabs coming down from George Street were occupied. They stood uncertainly, watching the steady one-way flow of traffic.

‘Perhaps we should start walking.’

‘There are buses. We’d better find out if any of them go up to the Square,’ said Doreen.

Unexpectedly, a driver flashed his headlights.

‘Look, someone’s seen us,’ Rose said elatedly. She lifted a bag in salute and started towards the car. He had braked and was holding up the traffic.

Behind her, blocked by other people, Doreen shouted her name. Urgently. It came out almost as a scream. At the same time, Rose got a clear sight of the driver, and she knew him.

He was the man who had tried to grab her outside Harmer House. She recognised his wide, fixed, unfriendly grin, and it petrified her. He was flapping his hand, beckoning to her.

She felt her coat grabbed from behind and for a moment she thought she was about to be forced into that car again, but it was Doreen tugging her away, shouting, ‘What’s wrong with you? Come on!’

The man swung open his door and stepped out.

Rose dropped her shopping, shattering something in the bag and spreading a stream of liquid across the pavement. She turned and let Doreen force her through the door of the nearest shop, which was Jolly’s. They dashed through the cosmetics section, rattling the merchandise. Rose glanced fearfully behind her and a display of perfumes on a glass-topped table narrowly escaped destruction. She veered left, past bemused shoppers, and was confronted by the theatrical-looking double staircase that dominates the centre of the store.

Behind her, Doreen said, ‘Not the stairs.’

They cut to the right, around the staircase and into the menswear department, all jackets on hangers, up a few steps and into an area enclosed on three sides which turned out to be the suit-room. Down more steps to the level they’d just left, past a jigging blur of socks and shorts, and back to where they had just come from. A silver-haired shop assistant snatched up a phone and spoke into it, his alarmed eyes on them.

Rose was losing all confidence. The place was a maze. She fully expected to come out at Milsom Street again. The only untried way ahead was to the left and up a different staircase, with the risk of getting trapped on a floor that led nowhere.

Doreen spoke the obvious. ‘We’ve got no choice.’

The stairs had two right-angled turns and brought them up to the household section, which looked depressingly like another dead end until they turned left and saw a way through.

‘The restaurant’s up here somewhere,’ Doreen confidently claimed. ‘There are some back stairs if we can only find them.’

Finding the restaurant was not so simple, and that was not the only problem. They started along one aisle, only to be confronted by a uniformed security man hunched like a wrestler. But their immediate about-turn brought them face to face with the exit sign and the stairs Doreen had spotted earlier.

Through the door they dashed, and down what felt like far too many stairs, but with promising glimpses through the windows of a narrow road that was definitely not Milsom Street. Expecting to find a way out at the bottom, they found themselves instead among displays of women’s raincoats and hats.

But Doreen pointed to a door at the end.

They emerged in the street at the back of the store. It was narrow and quiet, with antique shops of the sort you never see anybody go into.

‘This way. Don’t slow up now.’

‘It was him,’ Rose said. ‘That thug who tried to grab me the other day. I nearly got in his car before I saw who it was.’

‘You prat. After all the warnings I gave you.’

‘I thought it was some bloke being helpful.’

‘Didn’t I warn you to be on your guard? Didn’t I?’

‘I’m bloody scared, Doreen.’

’You ‘re scared? How do you think I feel?’

They had stopped running. They were both short of breath, but nobody was in sight behind them.

‘Did he follow us into the store?’ Rose asked.

‘If he did, we shook him off.’

The road came out at the corner of a vast square with a grotesque obelisk at the centre partially hidden by some mighty plane trees. The two women looked nervously at the traffic moving clockwise around the margin.

‘Over there,’ said Doreen.

Rose’s heart thumped again. ‘What?’

‘Taxis. Outside the hotel.’

One taxi moved away from the entrance to the Francis just as another with a passenger drew up. Doreen made a reckless beeline across the road, shouting, ‘Taxi!’

Rose was on the point of following. She looked at the flow of cars, trying to spot a gap. One flashed its lights and she nearly had heart failure, but the driver was a woman, and she was signaling that it would be safe to cross.

She made it to the other side. Doreen had already secured the cab. They collapsed into the rear seat. The taxi moved off.

She grasped Doreen’s arm. ‘Thank God for that.’

Doreen did not respond. She had turned and was staring out of the rear window.

‘What is it?’ Rose asked, alarmed again.

‘Nothing.’ Doreen turned to face the front, flicking the loose hair from her face. ‘Just my nerves.’

Not entirely believing her, Rose took a look herself. There was only a blue mini behind them, followed by a white van. It was a red car she dreaded seeing. A big red Toyota.

‘The way he looked at me,’ she said aloud, with a shudder.

When they drew up outside the house in St James’s Square, there was no other car behind them.

‘You’ll come in, won’t you?’ Rose insisted.

Doreen nodded whilst finding her money for the fare.

Rose waited, looking sharply left and right. Just then a red Toyota saloon nosed into the Square from the St James’s Street side.

‘Doreen!’

Doreen heard the shout and guessed what it meant. She didn’t wait for change from the note she’d given the driver. Without even a glance along the street, she stepped to the front door, unlocked and ushered Rose inside and slammed the door.

‘I think it was him.’

‘Darling, red cars are two a penny.’

They went down the stairs to the basement. ‘How are you doing? I’m shattered,’ said Rose.

‘Me, too. I’ll make tea. Calm our nerves.’

‘Don’t you dare put anything in it. He’s out there somewhere and I want to be alert.’

‘Now cut the crap, Rose. You’re safe with me.’ For the normally demure Doreen, this was strong talk.

Over tea, they assessed the position. Rose insisted she had seen the red car entering the Square as they were getting out of the taxi. Doreen pointed out that even if it were the same car – which was unlikely – and even if the driver had spotted them going into the building – which she doubted – he had no way of entering without a key and he didn’t know which flat they were using. There was someone else’s name against the doorbell, two names, in fact, left by the previous tenants.

‘Could I move in to your boarding house?’

‘Not possible,’ said Doreen. ‘All the other rooms are booked.’

‘Is it nearby?’

‘Of course. Just round the corner, in Marlborough Street. I was going to show you, wasn’t I, but we missed the chance.’

‘It isn’t safe here any more. I’m going back to Hounslow.’

‘We’ve been through that, Rose. You’re not going anywhere without us, and Jerry’s in no state to travel. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. In the morning, I’ll ask at the tourist office. They may have another flat on their list. But you’ll be lucky to get a place as nice as this.’

To her credit, she stayed for over an hour.

‘Got a grip on your nerves?’ Doreen asked.

‘I’m not nervous,’ Rose retorted. ‘I can assess my situation, can’t I?’

‘You still want to move out?’ Doreen enquired before leaving.

‘Definitely.’

Left alone, she admitted to some qualms, putting out the living-room light in case it could be seen through the high, barred windows at the front. After fixing the safety-chain, she went into the bedroom and tried to interest herself in Georgette Heyer’s regency romance. Another night in this regency basement exercised her imagination much more.

A few times she heard other tenants use the front door of the building and hoped that they closed it properly behind them. There seemed to be people living in the two top flats, but she’d heard nothing from the ground floor above her.

After an hour or so, more to occupy herself than because she fancied food, she went into the kitchen and selected a meal from the packets Doreen had stacked in the fridge. The yogurts, the apple juice and half a dozen eggs hadn’t made it back to the flat; they must have been in the bag she had dropped outside Jolly’s. A happy find for someone, or a nice gooey mess, she thought, trying to smile.

In the twenty minutes it took to heat a quiche, she prepared a salad, taking her time, washing each leaf and chopping everything finely, humming to drown the silence. She had no liking for television, but if the flat had contained a set, it would have provided some background sound.

When it was ready she had only a little of the food, sitting on a stool facing the window over the draining-board. She could be reasonably confident that the grinning man wouldn’t appear on that side of the house. The kitchen was at the rear of the terrace, overlooking an enclosed yard. And since the house was built on a sloping site, the window was a good ten feet above the ground outside. Even so, she glanced at it from time to time.

She threw most of the meal away, washed up and returned to the bedroom to read the book. The evening was passing. In a while she would change into her night clothes. I slept here last night, she told herself, and I can do it again. But you were given a sedative last night, another inner voice reminded her.

She made a pledge with herself that she would read one more chapter before undressing. The clock showed 9.45.

She turned the page and her doorbell rang.

She went rigid.

Be sensible. Think this through. Doreen is the only person who knows you’re here. It’s not that late. Very likely she’s had her evening meal and decided to call in and make sure you’re all right.

She got off the bed and went into the living-room without switching on the light.

But Doreen has the keys, her panicky inner voice reminded her, so she has no need to ring. She could let herself in through the front door.

On the other hand, Doreen may have rung as a kindness to me, just once, to let me know she’s out there, and coming in.

It rang again. Rose’s heart gave such a thump it was painful.

Not Doreen, then. It has to be a mistake, someone pressing the wrong button in the dark. Ignore it. They’ll find the right bell in a moment. Or they’ll give up and go away.

They did neither. There was a pause of about half a minute and then she heard a new sound, of footsteps crossing the pavement. Heavy steps. Surely a man. The visitor had given up ringing and was walking off.

Or was he?

Instead of getting fainter, the steps increased in strength, coming closer. Then she realised why the sound appeared so close. Level with the top pane of the living-room window was a section of the street. Against the railings right outside the window she could see his shoes and the part of his trousers below the knees, caught in the street light. And as she watched, petrified, the legs bent like a drawbridge. First a hand appeared, dangling below the level of the knees, and then a face, at an angle, straining to see into the room.

The grinning man.

She reacted by taking a step backwards. The back of her leg touched a chair and she cried out in terror. The light was off, so it was unlikely he could see her, but she could see him. She dared not move again.

He shone a torch into the room.

The beam picked out the bits of furniture, flicking up and down. Then it found her feet and moved up her body, dazzling her.

She bolted through the door.

He had seen her for sure.

There were iron bars across the living-room window, so he could not possibly get into the flat that way, she told herself, standing in the kitchen, shaking, her hands clasped in front of her.

The bell rang again.

Some chance.

Then she heard a sound like an echo, a fainter ringing, somewhere else in the house. He must have pressed someone else’s doorbell.

It sounded again, faintly, higher in the house.

Then there were footsteps on the stairs. One of the other tenants was coming down to open the door. This was a danger that hadn’t crossed her mind. She had to stop them. They were quick, light steps, still descending.

She ran to the door of the flat and felt for the handle. The door would open only a fraction because the safety chain was in place. She fumbled with the chain in the darkness, wasting precious seconds. When she managed to release it and look out, she was too late. The person from upstairs was at the front door, opening it. She heard him say, ‘Yes?’

She tried slamming her door, but it came to a grating stop – the dangling safety chain caught between the edge and the frame. With a cry of terror, she abandoned it and ran through the flat to the kitchen. There was no back door to this basement. The only means of escape was through the window over the draining board. She didn’t hesitate. The fastening was stiff, but her strength was superhuman at this minute. She thrust the window open, climbed on the draining board and jumped into the dark back yard.