Upon A Dark Night

Twenty-four

John Wigfull was pencil thin and a brisk mover, so Diamond was breathless when he finally drew level on the stairs.

‘A word in your ear, John.’

Wigfull stopped with one leg bent like a wading bird. He didn’t turn to look.

Diamond spoke more than a word into the ear. ‘I didn’t mention this in the meeting, but I need to take over any exhibits you picked up at the scene. Gladstone’s personal papers. Prints, fibres, hairs. Can I take it that the Sellotapers went through the farmhouse?’

‘Sellotapers?’

‘The scenes of crime lads.’

‘SOCOs.’

Diamond nodded. Something deep in his psyche balked at using the acronyms accepted by everyone else in the police. ‘I was sure you must have called them out, even though it looked like a routine suicide.’

‘A suspicious death. I know the drill.’

‘I never doubted.’

There was a glint in Wigfull’s eye. ‘Forensic had a field day. The place hadn’t been swept or dusted in months. The bloodstains alone are a major task. So if you’re looking for results, you may have to wait a while.’

‘I’ll check with them.’

‘You could try.’

‘Is the rest of the stuff with you?’

‘Yes. You can have it. Is that all?’ The bent leg started to move again.

‘Not quite. There’s the question of the other inquiry, into Hildegarde Henkel’s death.’

Wigfull turned to look at Diamond. ‘What about it?’

‘Difficult for me to manage at the same time as the Tormarton case.’

Wigfull’s eyebrows reared up like caterpillars meeting. ‘You want me to take it back?’

‘I do and I don’t. It could well be another murder.’

‘Work under your direction?’

‘I know. You’d rather have a seat in a galley-ship. Listen, all I want is a watching brief. You tell me what progress you make and I won’t interfere. We’ve had our differences, but, sod it, John, you ran the squad when I was away.’

‘I’m not saying I couldn’t do it.’

‘Shall we square it with the boss, then?’

‘Would you give me a free hand?’

Diamond swallowed hard.

‘And a team?’

‘The pick of the squad, other than Keith and Julie.’

Thoughtfully Wigfull preened the big moustache. This was an undeniable opportunity.

‘I could have taken on that job,’ said Julie when he told her.

‘I know.’

‘Well, then?’ Her blue eyes fixed him accusingly.

‘I need you on this one.’

‘Nobody would think so.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You assigned responsibilities to practically everyone else.’

‘I don’t want you tied down. That’s the reason.’

She was unconvinced, certain he was punishing her for speaking out of turn in the meeting. He always expected her to back him, or at least keep quiet. He was so pig-headed that he didn’t know most of the squad agreed he was way off beam when he linked Rose Black to the murder.

Oblivious to all this, he said, ‘These stories that the old man had money tucked away – I’d like to know if there’s any foundation for them. Would you get on to it, Julie? Find out if he had a bank account. He must have received the Old Age Pension. What did he do with it?’

In front of him was the deed-box that Wigfull had removed from the farmhouse. ‘There’s precious little here. His birth certificate. Believe it or not, his mother gave birth to him in that squalid house.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t so squalid in the nineteen-twenties. Do we know when the parents died?’

‘There’s nothing in here about it. Some Ministry of Agriculture pamphlets he should have slung out years ago. Remember the Colorado Beetle scares? A parish magazine dated August, 1953. Instructions for a vacuum cleaner – much use he made of that. And some out-of-date supermarket offers.’

‘I expect the parents are buried in the churchyard.’

‘Probably. Is that any use to us?’

‘I suppose not. May I see the box?’

Diamond pushed it across to her. ‘Be my guest. I want to put a call through to Chepstow. It’s high time I fired a broadside at forensic.’

While he was on the phone demanding to be put through to the people carrying out the work on the Tormarton samples, Julie sifted through the papers. She took out the old parish magazine and skimmed the contents. The Church was St Mary Magdalene, Tormarton. In a short time she discovered why Daniel Gladstone had kept this copy. Towards the back was a section headed ‘Valete’, a list of recent deaths, and among them appeared Jacob Gladstone, 1881-1953. A few lines recorded his life:

Jacob Gladstone, farmer, of Marton Farm, passed away last January 8th, of pneumonia. A widower, he lived all his life in the parish. For many years he served as sidesman. In September, 1943, Mr Gladstone unearthed the Anglo-Saxon sword known as the Tormarton Seax, and now in the British Museum. He is survived by his beloved son Daniel.’

Julie read it again. She leaned back in her chair, absorbing the information. If Gladstone’s father had made an archaeological find during the war, perhaps it had some bearing on the case. Eager for more information, she scanned the rest of the magazine and found only a piece about the meaning of Easter, written by the vicar, and reports on the Mothers’ Union and the Youth Club.

Diamond was still sounding off to Chepstow about the urgency of his inquiry. Through sheer bullying he had got through to someone actually at work on the case. He stressed several times that this was now upgraded to a murder, and surely it warranted a higher priority. ‘Can’t you even give me some preliminary findings?’ he appealed to the hapless scientist on the end of the line. ‘Like what? Well, like whether anything so far suggests the presence of someone else in the farmhouse. You don’t have to tell me it was a Welsh-speaking Morris-dancer with size nine shoes and a birthmark on his left buttock. I’ll settle for anyone at all at this stage.’ He rolled his eyes at Julie while listening. ‘Right, now we’re getting somewhere,’ he said presently. ‘Two, you say, definitely not the farmer’s. What colour?…Brown? Well, you could have told me that at the outset. Male or female?…How long?…Yes, I understand…No, we won’t. We’re not exactly new in this game…Thanks. And sooner if you can.’ He slammed down the phone. Julie looked up.

‘They have two hairs from the scene that didn’t belong to the victim,’ he summed up. ‘Brown, three to four inches. They warned me that there’s no way of telling how they got there. They could have come from some visitor weeks before the murder. They’re doing some kind of test that breaks down the elements in the hair.’

‘NAA,’ said Julie.

‘Come again.’

‘Neutron Activation Analysis.’

‘Sorry I asked.’

‘It was part of that course I did at Chepstow last year. You can find up to fourteen elements in a single inch of hair. If you isolate as many as nine, the chance of two people having the same concentration is a million to one.’

‘Could be that,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But it’s the usual story. What it comes down to is that whatever the result it’s bugger-all use without a hair from the suspect to match.’

She shrugged. ‘We can hardly expect them to analyse a hair and tell us the name of the person it came from.’

He grinned. ‘Take all the fun out of the job, wouldn’t it?’

She showed him the piece in the magazine and it was as if the sun had just come out. ‘Good spotting,’ he said when he’d studied it. ‘His old dad had his fifteen minutes of fame, then. The Tormarton Seax.’

Julie said, ‘Thinking about those holes-’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about them. If there was a sword buried on the site, there could have been more stuff. And someone may have done some excavating.’

‘Wouldn’t they have organised a dig in 1943 when it was found? I can’t imagine anything of interest would be left.’

‘Of value, Julie. Bugger the interest.’ He glanced at the page again. ‘Well, this was the middle of the Second World War. People had other things on their minds than Anglo-Saxon swords. I reckon archaeology took a back seat.’

‘But later, when the war ended, wouldn’t they have wanted to explore the site?’

‘Possibly. It seems nothing else was found, or it would have got mentioned here. I just don’t know. What happens if the landowner doesn’t want a bunch of university students scraping at his soil for weeks on end? By all accounts, Daniel Gladstone wasn’t the friendliest farmer in these parts. If his dad was equally obstructive, it’s quite on the cards that nobody ever followed up the find.’

‘Until just recently.’

‘Right.’

‘It could explain the digging.’

‘It could, Julie.’ He closed the magazine and tossed it back into the deed-box. ‘Do you know, I’ve thought of someone who may throw some light on this.’

Down in the reception area, the desk sergeant was under siege.

‘If you won’t let me through,’ Ada Shaftsbury told him, ‘I’ll go straight out to the car park and stand on top of his car. I know which one it is. He’ll soon come running when he looks out the window and sees his roof cave in.’

‘Mr Diamond isn’t dealing with it any more,’ the sergeant explained for the second time. ‘He’s on another case.’

‘Don’t give me that crock of shit.’

‘Madam-’

‘Ada.’

‘Ada, if you’ve got something material to say, I’ll make a note of it. There are other people waiting now.’

‘If gutso isn’t dealing with it, who is?’

‘Another officer in CID.’

‘Well, is it a secret, or something?’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him.’

‘Try me. I know everyone in this cruddy place. I spend half my life here.’

‘I know that, Ada. Chief Inspector Wigfull has taken over. ’

She grimaced. ‘Him with the big tash. God help us!’

‘Now if you’ll kindly move aside…’

‘I’ll have a word with Wigfull, then.’

‘We’ll tell him you called.’

‘You won’t. You’ll take me to see him pronto. I have important information to impart.’

At this sensitive moment the interior door opened and Peter Diamond stepped into the reception area on his way out.

‘Mr Diamond!’ Ada practically embraced him.

‘Can’t see you now, Ada. I’m on an emergency.’

‘Is it true you’re off the case?’

‘What case?’

‘The missing woman, my friend Rose.’

He said with deliberate obtuseness, ‘I’m dealing with a murder. An old man. Right?’

Ada said bitterly, ‘Nobody bloody cares. You’ve written her off, haven’t you? She’s off your list. They moved a new woman in last night. It’s like she never existed. And how about poor little Hilde?’

He crossed the floor and went through the door, leaving Ada still defiantly at the head of the queue. She would presently get upstairs to torment Wigfull, he thought with amusement. Offloading the Royal Crescent case had been a wise decision. But halfway up Manvers Street he grasped the significance of something Ada had said. If they had moved a new woman into Rose’s room at Harmer House, they must have vacuumed it and changed the bed-linen. Any chance of obtaining a sample of Rose’s hair from that source had gone. The smile vanished.

Young Gary Paternoster was alone behind the counter in the shop called the Treasure House when Diamond entered. He dropped the book he was reading and stood up guiltily. He was still wearing the suit, but a yellow tie with a palm tree design held promise that some of the previous day’s man-to-man advice had sunk in.

It was Diamond’s first experience of a detectorists’ shop. They had designed it to excite the customer with murals of gold and silver objects half submerged in sand. There was a real wooden chest open in one corner and filled with fake treasure picked out by a spotlight. But most of the space was taken up with metal detectors with their special selling-points listed. ‘Silent search’, ‘deep penetration’ and ‘accurate discrimination’ were the qualities most touted. You would need to make some major finds to justify the prices, Diamond decided. There was also a stand with books, magazines and maps.

‘Relax, Gary,’ Diamond told the quaking youth. ‘I’m not here to make an arrest. I want to tap your expert knowledge. Have you ever heard of the Tormarton Seax?’

The question took some time to make contact. Mentally, Paternoster was still in the bedroom at the Royal Crescent. ‘It’s a sword, isn’t it? In the British Museum.’

‘Right. I don’t expect you to have its history off pat. It was found in the war by a farmer up at Tormarton, north of where the motorway is now.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s a place where detectorists go.’

‘The farm?’

‘Not the farm. No one’s ever been allowed on the farm. I mean the general area. It was the border between two ancient kingdoms, Mercia and Wessex, so there were skirmishes. And there was the great battle in the sixth century.’

Where had he heard this, about Mercia and Wessex? From the vicar, explaining the derivation of Tormarton’s name. ‘What great battle?’

‘Between the Saxons and the Britons. The Saxon army was fighting its way west for years, across the Berkshire Downs and to the south as well. This was the decisive battle. Hardly anybody knows about it these days, but it was just as important to our history as Hastings. It was the one that made modern England. If you’ve got a minute, there’s a book on the stand.’

Diamond wasn’t sure how much he needed to know of sixth-century history, but he was going to get some. Young Paternoster was fired up.

‘Here it is. “As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, in 577 Cuthwine and Ceawlin fought against the Britons and killed three kings, Conmail, Condidan and Farinmail, at the place called Dyrham, and they captured three of their cities, Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath.”’

‘At Dyrham, it says?’

‘A mile or so south-west of Tormarton, actually. “The West Saxons, under the command of their king, Ceawlin, cut the Bath to Cirencester Road, the A46, as it is now, and camped a little to the west, at Hinton Hill Fort.”’

‘Hinton, I’ve heard of.’

‘“The Britons had assembled three armies, two from the north and the other from the south, and they sensibly combined forces, but this required strenuous manoeuvres to avoid being picked off separately by the Saxons. It is likely that their fighters were exhausted and dispirited before the battle. Moreover, they made the tactical error of trying to attack the well-defended Saxon army by pushing up the hill. They suffered a massive defeat. Wessex was established in the south-west, and the Britons retreated to Cornwall and Wales.”’

‘Stirring stuff,’ said Diamond. ‘So what can you tell me about the Tormarton sword? Was that thrown down by some unlucky fellow who copped his lot?’

‘I doubt if it was ever used in battle. I think it was partly made of silver, with some precious stones inlaid in the hilt, the kind of sword a nobleman owned as a symbol of his power. I guess it belonged to an important Saxon. Let’s see if there’s anything about it in these other books. Anglo-Saxon Artefacts should mention it.’ He took another book off the stand and turned to the index.

‘It’s here. With a picture.’ He found the page and handed Diamond the book.

It was a colour photograph of a short, single-bladed sword with its scabbard displayed beside it. ‘The Tormarton Seax, unearthed on farmland in North-West Wiltshire in 1943,’

the caption read. ‘This Frankish design came into use in England during the seventh century. The pommel is decorated with garnets set in silver, probably worked by a Frankish silversmith. The scabbard is also of silver. Acquired by the British Museum.’

‘Handsome,’ said Diamond.

‘But seventh century,’ Paternoster pointed out. ‘Well after the Battle of Dyrham. By then Tormarton was firmly in Saxon hands.’

‘So what do you reckon, Gary? How did it get in the ground?’

‘Difficult to say. Sometimes when people were being invaded or attacked, they buried valuable things to keep them safe, meaning to dig them up again later. If that was what happened, the sword should have been declared Treasure Trove, and the British Museum would have paid the farmer its market value. If it was buried in a grave, it belonged to the landowner. He might sell it to the Museum, but he could bargain for a better price than the valuation.’

‘Either way, he makes some money.’

‘Unless he decided to keep the treasure. If it isn’t Treasure Trove, he’s entitled to hang onto it.’

‘How do they decide?’

‘By inquest, so it’s up to the coroner and his jury. They have to try and work out why it was buried. If it’s found in a situation that is obviously a grave, there’s no argument. It belongs to the landowner.’

‘How can anyone tell? I suppose if it’s lying beside a skeleton.’

‘Archaeologists can usually tell. The difficulty comes with isolated finds.’

‘Was this an isolated find?’

Paternoster shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of anything else turning up there. But to my knowledge the farm has never been searched or excavated. If the owner doesn’t want you there, there’s nothing you can do, and he’s said to be dead against us. He’s been asked many times. People like me can’t wait to get up there with our detectors.’

‘How does it work?’ Diamond asked.

‘Detectoring?’

‘I understand the principle, but what do you do exactly?’

The young man started to speak with genuine authority. ‘First you have to get the farmer’s permission, and like I say that isn’t so easy. I offer fifty-fifty on any finds, but we’re still just a nuisance to some of them. Obviously I wouldn’t ask if the field has just been sown. And a freshly ploughed field isn’t ideal because of the furrows, you see. It’s better when the soil is flatter, because more coins lie within range of your detector. So I like a harrowed field to work in.’

‘Do you find much in fields?’

‘Not so much as in parks or commons where people go more often, but what you find is more interesting.’

‘Such as?’

‘Silver medieval coins. My average is one every two or three hours. I’ve also found ring-brooches, buckles and bits of horse-harness.’

‘In bare fields?’

‘You’ve got to remember that in centuries past hundreds of people worked those fields. It was far more labour-intensive then than it is these days, with so much farm machinery.’

Diamond picked up one of the detectors and felt its weight. ‘What’s your most powerful model?’

‘The two-box. This one over here. It’s designed for people searching for hoards, rather than small items like single coins.’ He picked up a contraption with two sensors separated by a metre-length bar. ‘It can signal substantial amounts of metal at some depth, say six feet. The trouble is, you have to be prepared to do an awful lot of digging and possibly find something no more exciting than a buried oil-drum or a tractor-part.’

The two-box was a source of much interest for Diamond. He could see a plausible explanation for the digging at the farm. If some treasure-hunter had ambitions of finding a hoard, the most promising site, surely, would be one that had already yielded a famous find, and the best machine for the job was the two-box. And if the site-owner was a stubborn old farmer who steadfastly refused to allow anyone on his land, the first opportunity would have come after his death.

Was it, he wondered, sufficient motive for murder?

‘Have you sold any of these things in the last year or so?’

‘Two-boxes? No. This hasn’t been in the shop long.’

‘Can people hire them?’

‘I suppose we might come to an agreement, but we haven’t up to now.’

‘You just have, Gary. I’ll send someone to collect it.’

Twenty-five

‘Up and running,’ Keith Halliwell announced with some pride.

Nobody was quicker than Halliwell at furnishing an incident room. Phones, radio-communications, computers and filing cabinets were in place. The photos and maps from the briefing session were rearranged on an end wall. Two civilian computer operators were keying information into the system. Having ordered all this, Diamond could not allow himself to be intimidated by it, even though he was a computer-illiterate. He mumbled some words of appreciation to Halliwell and even dredged up a joke about hardware: he hadn’t seen so much since his last visit to the ironmonger’s. The younger people didn’t seem to know what an ironmonger’s was, so it fell flat. Then he spotted Julie sitting with a phone against her ear. He went over. Telephones he could understand.

‘Who are you on to?’

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Acton Turville Post Office. Gladstone used to collect his pension from there. They’re checking dates.’

‘When you come off…’

She nodded, and started speaking into the phone again.

In the act of moving towards the sergeant who was handling press liaison, Diamond caught his foot under a cable and cut off the power supply to the computers.

‘Who the blazes did that?’ said one of the civilian women when her screen whistled and went blank. She was new to the murder squad.

‘I did, madam,’ he told her. ‘I almost fell into your lap. Next time lucky.’

‘You great oaf.’ Clearly she had no idea who she was addressing.

Halliwell zoomed over to prevent a dust-up. ‘I should have warned you, sir.’

‘About this abusive woman?’

‘About the cable. It needs a strip of gaffer tape.’

‘Bugger the cable,’ said Diamond. ‘She thinks you should tape the gaffer.’

‘His mouth, for starters,’ said the woman, before it dawned on her who this great oaf was.

With timing that just prevented mayhem, Julie finished on the phone and called across, ‘He last drew his pension on September 18th.’

‘In cash?’

‘He used to cycle in to Acton Turville once a week. He’d do some shopping and then cycle back.’

Stepping more carefully than before, he moved between the desks to where Julie was. ‘Didn’t anyone notice when he stopped coming in?’

‘Sometimes he would let it mount up for two or three weeks. People do.’

‘How would he manage for shopping?’

‘Tinned food, I suppose. The chickens supplied him with eggs. And another thing, Mr Diamond. I’ve called all the local banks and building societies and none of them had any record of him as an account-holder.’

He glanced up at the clock. ‘What time is my press conference?’

‘Two-fifteen, sir,’ the press liaison sergeant told him. ‘The hand-outs are ready if you want to see them. Everyone gets a head-and-shoulders of Rose.’

He scanned the press release. ‘Fine.’ He turned back to Julie. ‘There’s time for you to drive me out to Westbury. A pub lunch with the double-barrels.’

‘The who?’

‘Dunkley-something. The people who ran into Rose on the A46. Oh, and there will be another passenger, a scene of crime officer.’

The ex-mayor and his lady were, as Diamond anticipated, having a liquid lunch at the Westbury Hotel. The barmaid pointed them out at one of the tables under the Spy cartoons, a grinning, gnome-ish man opposite a dark-haired woman wearing enough mascara for a chorus-line.

‘We’ll leave you here at the bar,’ Diamond said quietly to Jim Marsh, the SOCO he had recruited for this exercise. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘It had better be a grapefruit juice, sir.’

‘God help us. What are you – a blood-pressure case?’

‘I’m working, sir.’

The affable mood at the table changed dramatically when Diamond announced who he was and introduced Julie.

The gnome, Ned Dunkley-Brown, reddened and said, ‘I told you we hadn’t heard the last of it, Pippa. All that malarkey about things spoken in confidence.’

His wife said, ‘Ned, I think we should hear what they have to say.’ She gave Diamond a patronising stare. ‘My husband is an ex-mayor of Bradford on Avon. He served on the police committee.’

‘But that was Wiltshire County,’ said Dunkley-Brown. ‘These officers are from Bath.’

‘Avon and Somerset,’ she corrected him.

‘Now we’ve got that straight,’ Diamond said, under some strain to stay civil with this couple, ‘I’d like to hear about the evening you had the accident on the A46. That’s inside our boundary, by the way.’

‘Accident?’ shrilled Pippa Dunkley-Brown, folding her thin arms.

‘Don’t say another word,’ Dunkley-Brown commanded his wife. ‘No comment.’

Diamond took a long, therapeutic swig of beer. ‘We’re not from Traffic Division, sir. We’re CID. People’s mistakes at the wheel are someone else’s pigeon.’

The Dunkley-Browns exchanged looks.

‘We’re investigating the young woman you met that evening. Called herself Rose.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Dunkley-Brown in a faraway tone.

‘She’s a mystery all round. Lost her memory, or so she claimed. And now she’s missing.’

Pippa Dunkley-Brown was still coming to terms with an earlier statement. ‘What do you mean – “mistakes at the wheel”? There was no question of a mistake.’

‘Leave it,’ said Dunkley-Brown through his teeth. The training in local politics took over as he diverted along the safer avenue. ‘Missing, you say. But she was in here speaking to us, with a large woman.’

‘Ada Shaftsbury, yes. Rose hasn’t been seen since the day you spoke to them.’

Julie put in quickly, ‘We’re not accusing you of anything.’

‘I should damned well hope not!’ said the wife.

Indifferent to the mood of mild hysteria, Diamond explained patiently, ‘We’re retracing Rose’s movements, as far as they’re known. It all started with you meeting her on the road and transporting her to the hospital. We don’t know anything about her before that evening.’

‘Nor do we,’ said Dunkley-Brown. ‘She was unconscious.’

‘Unconscious when she walked into the road?’

‘Not then, but after. We didn’t get a word out of her. We took her to the nearest hospital.’

‘Hospital car park.’ In spite of his efforts Diamond was getting increasingly irritated with this couple.

Julie said, ‘Did she appear to be waving you down?’

‘She put up her arms,’ said Dunkley-Brown, ‘but she was out in the road by then.’

‘Lunacy,’ said his wife.

He added, ‘Anyone would raise an arm if a car was bearing down on them.’

‘We weren’t speeding,’ said she.

‘It’s dark along that stretch,’ said he.

‘So you slammed on the brakes,’ said Diamond.

‘And tried to avoid her,’ said the husband. ‘We skidded a bit to the right. By the time we hit her, the car was virtually at a standstill. It nudged her off balance and I suppose she took a bump on the head.’ He made it sound like an incident in a bouncy-castle.

‘She was unconscious,’ Diamond reminded him.

‘Yes, so we did our best to revive her at the side of the road, and when it was obvious that we weren’t going to be successful, we lifted her into the car-’

‘The back seat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lying across the seat?’

‘Propped up against one corner really.’

Diamond sat forward, interested. ‘Which side was her head? The nearside?’

‘The left, yes. After that we drove her to the Hinton Clinic. She was very soon taken in, I understand.’

‘But you’d already pissed off out of it.’

‘That’s offensive,’ said Pippa.

‘Pippa phoned a day or so later to enquire about her,’ Dunkley-Brown was anxious to stress. ‘The people at the hospital said she was so much better that she’d been discharged. We assumed she’d made a full recovery.’

‘Very reassuring.’

‘We didn’t know about her loss of memory.’

Diamond finished his beer. ‘We’d like to look at your car. Is it back at the house?’

The colour drained from Dunkley-Brown’s face. ‘But you said you weren’t here to inquire into the accident.’

‘As a traffic offence, it doesn’t concern me, sir. As an incident involving a missing person, it does. Do you see the tall man at the bar drinking fruit juice? He’s trained to look for evidence. He can back up your story by examining the car.’

‘But we’ve been perfectly frank.’

‘No problem, then. Shall we go?’

‘Do you use it much, Mr Dunkley-Brown?’ Diamond asked after the Bentley had been backed out of the garage for inspection.

‘Not a great deal these days. If we go to the pub, we tend to walk. It’s exercise, which is good at our age, and we can enjoy a couple of drinks without being breathalysed.’

‘Shopping?’

‘We do use the car for that, but it’s only a trip to the local supermarket.’

‘We’ll join you presently, then,’ Diamond said. ‘DI Hargreaves wouldn’t mind a coffee if your wife would oblige.’ When Dunkley-Brown was out of earshot he told the SOCO. ‘If nothing else, find me some long, dark hairs on the nearside of the back seat and you’re on for a double Scotch.’

When Jim Marsh came in to report that he’d finished his examination of the car, he didn’t have the look of a man who has just earned a double Scotch.

‘No joy?’ said Diamond.

‘It’s been vacuumed inside,’ said the SOCO, ‘and very thoroughly.’

Diamond turned to look at Dunkley-Brown. ‘Is that a fact?’

A shrug and a smile. ‘There’s no law against Hoovering one’s car, is there?’

‘I know why you did it.’

‘You may well be right, Mr Diamond. We’d have been fools to have left any evidence of the girl there.’

‘May we see your Hoover?’

‘Certainly, only at the risk of upsetting you I’d better admit that we emptied the dust-bag right away. It was collected by the dustmen the same week.’

Diamond was not at his best during the drive back to Bath. Not a word was said about the abortive search of the Bentley’s interior. Nothing much at all was said. Each of them knew how essential it was to find a sample of Rose’s hair. Diamond’s far-from-convincing theory linking her to Gladstone’s murder could only be taken seriously if the hairs found at the farmhouse were proved to be hers. The idea behind the trip to Westbury had been an inspiration, but unhappily inspirations sometimes come to nothing.

He rallied his spirits for the press conference, held in a briefing room downstairs at Manvers Street. He needed to be sharp. His purpose in talking to the media was simply to step up the hunt for Rose. He didn’t intend to link her disappearance to any other crime. However, he was meeting a pack of journalists, and the modern generation of hacks were all too quick to make connections. Their first reaction would be that the head of the murder squad wouldn’t waste time on a missing woman unless he expected her to be found dead. From there, it was a short step to questioning him about other recent deaths: Daniel Gladstone and possibly Hildegarde Henkel. These same press people had reported the finding of the bodies. It was all too fresh in their memories.

He handled the session adeptly, keeping Rose steadily in the frame. It was obvious from the questions that Social Services would be in for some stick. They were used to being in the front line. Poor buggers, they came in for more criticism than any other organisation.

He was about to wrap up when the inevitable question came, from a young, angelic-featured woman with a ring through her right nostril. Nothing made him feel the generation-gap more than this craze for body piercing. ‘Would you comment on the possible connection with the death of the German woman, Hildegarde Henkel, at the Royal Crescent?’

He was ready. ‘I’d rather not. That case is being handled by another officer.’

‘Who is that, please?’

‘DCI Wigfull.’

‘But you were seen up at the Crescent at the weekend. You made more than one visit.’

‘That’s correct. I’m now on another case. If that’s all, ladies and gentlemen…’

She was persistent. ‘It may be another case, Mr Diamond, but you must have taken note that the missing woman Rose was staying in Harmer House at the same time as Ms Henkel.’

‘Yes.’

‘There were only three women staying in the hostel,’ she said evenly, watching for his reaction, ‘and one of them is missing and one is dead.’

‘I wouldn’t read too much into that if I were you. Harmer House is used as a temporary refuge for people in the care of Social Services. Some of them are sure to be unstable, or otherwise at risk.’

She had thought this through. ‘There was a superficial similarity between Rose and Hildegarde Henkel. Dark, short hair. Slim. Aged in their twenties. Is it true that there was speculation at the weekend that the body at the Royal Crescent was that of Rose?’

‘If there was,’ answered Diamond evenly, ‘it was unfounded. I don’t really see what you’re driving at.’

‘I thought it was obvious. You’ve made no announcement about the cause of Ms Henkel’s death.’

‘She fell off the roof.’ The slick answer tripped off his tongue, but even as he spoke it, he knew he shouldn’t have. Several voices chorused with questions.

‘I’m answering the lady,’ he said, and provoked some good-natured abuse from her professional colleagues.

She was not thrown in the least. ‘The fall is not in doubt, Mr Diamond. The question is whether she fell by accident or by design, and when I say by design I mean by her design or someone else’s. In other words, suicide or murder.’

He gave a shrug. ‘That’s for a coroner’s jury to decide.’

‘Come on,’ she chided him. ‘That’s a cop-out, if ever I heard one.’

This scored a laugh and cries of ‘cop-out’ from several of the press corps.

He wanted an out and he couldn’t find one without arousing universal suspicion that he hadn’t been honest with them.

She wasn’t going to leave it. she said, ‘If it was murder, have you considered the possibility that Ms Henkel was killed by mistake because she resembled Rose, the other woman, and they lived at the same address? If so, you must be extremely concerned, about the safety of Rose.’

The opening was there, and he took it. ‘Of course we’re concerned, regardless of this hypothesis of yours. That’s why I called this conference. We’re grateful for any information about Rose. The co-operation of all of you in publicising the case is appreciated.’ He nodded across the room, avoiding the wide blue eyes of his inquisitor, and then quit the room fast.

‘Who was she?’ he asked the press sergeant.

‘Ingeborg Smith. She’s a freelance, doing a piece on missing women for one of the colour supplements, she says.’

‘If she ever wants a job on the murder squad, she can have it.’

He sought out Julie, and found her in the incident room. ‘When you spoke to Ada yesterday, did she say anything about the press?’

‘She may have done. She did go on a bit.’

‘She went on a bit to a newshound who goes under the name of Ingeborg Smith, unless I’m mistaken.’

‘What about?’

‘The possibility that Hilde was killed in error by someone who confused her with Rose.’

Julie said, ‘It sounds like Ada talking, I agree.’ She picked up the phone-pad. ‘There’s a large package waiting for you in reception.’

‘That’ll be my two-box. I’ll leave it there for the present.’

‘Your what?’

‘Two-box.’

‘It sounds slightly indelicate.’

‘Wait till you see it in action. Has anything else of interest come in?’

She made the mistake of saying, ‘It’s early days.’

‘What?’ His face had changed.

‘I mean all this was only set up a couple of hours ago.’

‘All this?’ He flapped his arm in the general direction of the computers. ‘You think this is going to work some miracle? We’ve got a corpse that was rotting at the scene for a week and you tell me it’s early days. The only conceivable suspect has vanished without trace. Forensic have gone silent. Julie, a roomful of screens and phones isn’t going to trap an old man’s killer.’

‘It can help.’

He turned and looked at the blow-up of Rose’s face pinned to the corkboard. ‘What I need above all else is to get a hair of her head. One hair.’

Julie said nothing. They both knew that the best chance had gone when Rose’s room at the hostel was cleared for another inmate. Dunkley-Brown’s car had been a long shot that had missed.

He wouldn’t leave it. ‘Let’s go over her movements. She’s driven to the Hinton Clinic in the Bentley, but we know that’s a dead pigeon. The people at the Clinic put her to bed.’

‘Three weeks ago,’ said Julie. ‘They’ll have changed and laundered the bedding since then – or it’s not the kind of private hospital I’d want to stay in.’

‘Two dead pigeons. They send her to Harmer House, and that’s another one.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Julie. ‘How did she get there?’

‘To Harmer House? That social worker – Imogen – collected her.’

‘In a car?’

‘Well, they wouldn’t have sent a taxi. Funds are scarce.’ His brown eyes held hers for a moment. ‘Julie, I’m trying not to raise my hopes. I think we should contact Imogen right now.’

Imogen was not optimistic. ‘I don’t recall Rose combing her hair in the car, or anything. I doubt if you’ll find a hair.’

‘People are shedding hair all the time,’ Diamond informed her. ‘She wouldn’t have to comb it to leave one or two in your car.’

‘In that case, you’re up against it. I’ve given lifts to dozens of people since then. I’m always ferrying clients around the city.’

‘We’d still like to have the car examined.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘How long does it take? I wouldn’t want to be without wheels.’

‘We’ll send a man now. Collecting the material doesn’t take long. It’s the work in the lab that takes the time.’

‘I don’t like to contemplate what he’ll find in my old Citroën. Some of my passengers – you should see the state of them.’

‘Just as long as you haven’t vacuumed the interior recently.’

‘You’re joking. I have more important things to do.’

He asked Julie to drive him out to the farm to check the mobile operational office, or so he claimed. She suspected he wanted to try out his new toy.

The van was parked in the yard and manned by DS Miller and DC Hodge, the only woman of her rank on the squad. They were discovered diligently studying a large-scale Ordnance Survey map, no doubt after being tipped off by Manvers Street that Diamond was imminent. What were telecommunications for, if not to keep track of the boss?

When asked what they were doing they said checking the locations of nearby farms. Someone had already called at the immediate neighbour and spoken to a farmhand called Bickerstaff who was the only person present. He had confirmed that the owners were a company known as Hollandia Holdings, based in Bristol. Bickerstaff and his ‘gaffer’, a man from Marshfield, the next village, worked the land for the owners. It was a low-maintenance farm, with a flock of sheep, some fields rented out to the ‘horsiculture’- the riding fraternity – and some set-aside. Bickerstaff had heard about old Gladstone’s death and was sorry his body had lain undiscovered for so long, but expressed the view that local people couldn’t be blamed. Gladstone had long been known as an ‘awkward old cuss’ who didn’t welcome visitors.

‘Have you got a fire going in the house?’ Diamond asked Miller.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. I’m going in there to put on my wellies.’

Julie and the sergeant exchanged glances and said nothing. He was back in a short time shod in green gumboots and carrying a T-shaped metal detector with what looked like a pair of vanity cases mounted at either end of the metre-length crosspiece. ‘You’ll want a spade, Sergeant.’

‘Will I, sir?’

‘To dig up the finds.’

‘Old coins and stuff?’

‘No, this super-charged gizmo is too powerful for coins unless they’re in a pot, a mass of them together. It ignores small objects. I’m after bigger things. It works at quite some depth, which is why you need the spade. Julie, there’s a ball of string in the car with some skewers. You and the constable can line and pin the search area. We don’t want to go over the same bit twice. Follow me.’ He clamped a pair of headphones over his ears and strode towards the edge of the field. Clearly he had spent some time studying the handbook that came with the two-box.

‘What does he expect to find?’ Cathy Hodge asked Julie. ‘Treasure, I think,’ said Julie, ‘if there’s any left.’

‘Has someone else been by?’

‘Get with it, Cathy. You must have seen the evidence of recent digging. We don’t know how thorough they were, or how much of the ground they covered.’

Diamond was already probing the field with the detector, treading an unerring line towards the far side. Julie sank a skewer into the turf, attached some string and started after him. ‘Put more skewers in at two-foot intervals,’ she called back to Hodge.

They completed about six shuttles of the field before something below ground must have made an interesting sound in Diamond’s ear-phones. He stopped and summoned Sergeant Miller, who at this stage was watching the performance from the comfort of the drystone wall. ‘I don’t know how deep it is, but I’m getting a faint signal. Get to it, man.’ Then, with the zest of a seasoned detectorist, he moved on with the two-box in pursuit of more finds.

Julie was beginning to tire of the game. She wasn’t wearing boots and the mud was spattering her legs as well as coating a passable pair of shoes. ‘Your turn with the string,’ she told young Hodge.

‘Ma’am, you said we don’t know how much of the ground was searched by whoever did that digging.’

‘Yes?’

‘I just thought I ought to tell you that someone has marked this up before. If you look along here, there’s a row of holes already.’

Julie saw for herself, circular holes in the earth at intervals of perhaps a metre, along the length of the hedge.

‘Should we tell Mr Diamond?’ Hodge asked. ‘I mean, he could be wasting his time.’

‘Tell him if you’re feeling strong,’ said Julie. ‘I’m not.’

On consideration, nothing was said at that stage. Julie strolled over to the farmhouse, removed her shoes, went inside, filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. A reasonable heat was coming up from a wood fire. There was a teapot on the table, with a carton of milk and some teabags and biscuits. The two on duty had wasted no time in providing for creature comforts. She found a chair – not the armchair – and sat with her damp feet as near the iron bars of the fire as possible.

She had always lived in modern houses, so the cottage range was outside her experience. She saw how it was a combination of boiler, cooking fire and bread oven. A great boon in its time, no doubt, with everything positioned so neatly around and over the source of heat: hot plate rack, swing iron for the meat, dampers and flue doors set into the tiled back. This one must have been fitted some time in the nineteenth century; the farmhouse was two or three hundred years older. Earlier generations would have cooked in the open hearth where the range now stood. She reckoned from the width of the mantelpiece over the hearth that in those days the fireplace must have stretched a yard more on either side. The ‘built-in’ range had been installed and the spaces filled in. It was obvious where the joins were.

Presently she got up and tapped the wall to the right of the oven and had the satisfaction of a hollow sound. An early example of the fitted kitchen unit. The water was simmering, the kettle singing in the soothing way that only old-fashioned kettles in old cottages do. She went back to the door and looked out. They hadn’t finished, but the light was going. Sergeant Miller was hip-deep in the pit he had dug, a mound of soil beside him.

She went to look for more cups.

When they came in, Diamond looked in a better mood than was justified by the treasure-hunt. ‘Tea? That’s good organisation, Julie. It’s getting chilly out there.’

‘No luck?’

‘Depends what you mean by luck. We didn’t find you a Saxon necklace, if that’s what you hoped for.’

‘I wasn’t counting on it.’

‘But Sergeant Miller dug up a horse-brass.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘Finally,’ said Miller as he slumped into the chair.

‘It proves that the two-box works. And it also tells us that there ain’t no Saxon treasure left in the ground.’

‘Do you think any was found where the digging took place?’

‘Don’t know. My guess is that they used a two-box just as I did and got some signals. They could have found a bag of gold, or King Alfred’s crown – or more horse-brasses.’

Julie poured the tea and handed it around. ‘Just because a sword was found here fifty years ago, is it really likely that anything else would turn up?’

‘You do ask difficult questions, Julie. I’m no archaeologist. Let’s put it this way. I understand that people in past centuries buried precious objects like the Tormarton Seax for two reasons: either as part of the owner’s funeral or for security. A grave or a hoard. Whichever, it’s more than likely that other objects would be buried with them. So there’s a better chance here than in some field where nothing has turned up.’

‘Don’t you think old Gladstone, or his father before him, would have searched his own land?’

‘I’d put money on it, Julie, but let’s remember that metal detectors weren’t around in 1943, not for ordinary people to play with. They started going on sale in the late sixties. By that time the Gladstones must have dug most of their land many times over and decided nothing else was under there.’

‘They missed the bloody horse-brass,’ said Miller, with feeling.

‘And they could have kept missing a Saxon hoard,’ said Diamond. ‘A ploughshare doesn’t dig all that deep. There are major finds of gold and silver in fields that have been ploughed for a thousand years.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like a metal detector salesman,’ said Julie.

A high-pitched electronic sound interrupted them.

‘What’s that?’

‘My batphone,’ said Sergeant Miller. He had hung his tunic on the back of the door. He picked off the personal radio and made contact with Manvers Street.

They all heard the voice coming over the static. ‘Message for Mr Diamond. We have a reported sighting of a woman he wants to interview in connection with the Rose Black inquiry. She is called Doreen Jenkins. Repeat Doreen Jenkins. She was seen in Bath this afternoon.’

‘Give me that,’ said Diamond. He spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Who by?’

‘You’ve pressed the off button, sir,’ said Miller.

He re-established contact. ‘This is DS Diamond. Who was it who saw Doreen Jenkins in Bath?’

‘Miss Ada Shaftsbury. Repeat Ada-’

He tossed it back to Sergeant Miller and said to Julie, ‘Ada. Who else?’

Twenty-six

‘Where?’

‘Rossiter’s,’ said Ada. ‘That big shop in Broad Street with the creaky staircases.’

‘What were you doing in Rossiter’s?’ asked Julie, thinking that Bath’s most elegant department store would have been alien territory for Ada.

‘Looking for the buyer.’

‘You had something to Sell them?’

‘Postcards. Two thousand aerial views of Bath I’m trying to unload. Rossiter’s have all kinds of cards. The ones I’ve got came out kind of fuzzy in the printing, but the colours are great, like an acid trip. A swanky shop like that could sell them as arty pictures, couldn’t they? Anyway, it was worth a try. I went into the card section and I was running an eye over the stock, checking the postcards, when I heard this voice by the till. Some woman was asking if they sold fuses – you know, electrical fuses, them little things you get in plugs? This young assistant was telling her to go to some other shop. Telling her nicely. He was being really polite, giving her directions. I was pottering about in the background, not paying much attention.’

‘Your mind on other things?’ said Diamond, meaning shoplifting.

‘If you want to hear this…’

‘Go on, Ada. What happened?’

‘It was her voice. Sort of familiar, la-de-dah, going on about fuses as if every shop worth tuppence ought to have them.’ She stretched her features into a fair imitation of one of the county set and said in the authentic voice, ‘“But it’s so incredibly boring, having to look for electrical shops.” The penny didn’t drop for me until she was walking out the shop. I went in closer, dying to know if I’d seen her before, and stone me I had, and I still couldn’t place her. You know what it’s like when you suddenly come eye to eye with some sonofagun you’re not expecting.’

‘Did she recognise you?’

‘She almost wet herself.’

‘When did you realise who she was?’

‘Just after she left the shop. She was off like a bride’s nightie. Jesus wept, that was the Jenkins woman, I thought. I turned to follow her, and I was almost through the door when the young bloke came round the counter and put his hand on my arm and asked to look in my plastic carrier.’

‘Too quick,’ said Diamond, who knew the law on shoplifting. ‘He should have waited for you to step out of the shop.’

She glared at him. ‘Listen, can you get it in your head that I wasn’t working? I told you, I was there to sell stuff. Told him, too. Showed him the cards in my bag. He got a bit narked and so did I and by the time I got outside, she was gone.’

Diamond sighed.

Ada said, ‘Look, she could have gone ten different ways from there. I had no chance of finding her. No chance.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Around four, four-fifteen. I came straight here.’

‘You’re positive it was the same woman who claimed to be Rose’s stepsister?’

‘No question. Look, I may have form, Mr Diamond, but I’m not thick.’

She seemed to expect some show of support here, so he said, ‘No way.’

‘She’s supposed to come from Twickenham, so what’s she doing in Bath?’

He reached for a notepad. ‘Let’s have a description, Ada. Everything you can remember.’

She closed her eyes and tried to summon up the image of the woman. ‘Same height as me, more or less. Dark brown hair. Straight. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a ponytail. This time it was pinned up, off the neck, like some ballet-dancer, except she was a couple of sizes too heavy for the Sugar Plum Fairy. I’d say she’s a sixteen, easy.’ She opened her eyes again. ‘Big bazoomas, if you’re interested.’

If he was, he didn’t declare it. ‘Age?’

‘Pushing thirty. Pretty good skin, what you could see of it. She lashes on the make-up.’

‘Eyes?’

‘Brown. With eye-liner, mascara, the works.’

‘And her other features? Anything special about them?’

‘You want your money’s worth, don’t you? Straight nose, thinnish lips, nicely shaped. Now you want to know about her clothes? She was in a cherry-red coat with black collar, black frogging and buttons. A pale blue chiffon scarf. Black tights or stockings and black shoes with heels. Her bag was patent leather, not the one she had when I saw her in the Social Security.’

As descriptions go, it was top bracket. He thanked her.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she demanded to know when he had finished writing it down.

‘Find her.’

She regarded him with suspicion. ‘You wouldn’t farm this out to whatsisname with the tash?’

‘DCI Wigfull? He’s busy enough.’ He got up from behind the table, signifying that the session was over.

But Ada lingered. ‘When you find her, you’ll put her through the grinder, won’t you? She’s evil. I don’t like to think what’s happened to Rose by now.’

‘We’ve appealed for help,’ he told her. ‘Rose will be all over the front page in the paper tomorrow.’

‘God, I hope not,’ she said, misunderstanding him.

After Ada had gone, muttering and shaking her head like a latter-day Cassandra, Diamond commented to Julie, ‘Don’t ask what we’re going to do about this. It’s a terrific description, but next time the Jenkins woman goes out she’s not going to be in cherry-red, she’ll have her hair down and be wearing glasses and a blue trouser suit. She won’t go within a mile of Rossiter’s.’

‘Because Ada recognised her?’

He nodded.

Julie said, ‘It’s a definite sighting – and in Bath.’ She hesitated over the question that came next. ‘Do you think Rose could still be in the city?’

‘Hiding up?’ He pressed his mouth tight. His eyes took on a glazed, distracted look.

Julie waited, expecting some insight.

Eventually he sighed and said, ‘Rossiter’s. I haven’t been in there since they closed the restaurant. Steph and I used to go for a coffee sometimes, of a Saturday morning, up on the top floor. Self-service it was. You carried your tray to a deep settee and sat there as long as you liked, eating the finest wholemeal scones I’ve tasted in the whole of my life.’

She was lost for a comment. This vignette of the Diamond domestic routine had no bearing on the case that she could see.

‘That was bad news, Julie,’ he said.

She looked at him inquiringly.

‘When Rossiter’s restaurant closed.’

It seemed to signify the end of his interest in Ada’s sensational encounter. Maybe it was his way of telling her not to expect insights.

They returned to the incident room to find that a message had been left by Jim Marsh, the SOCO. He had collected no less than seventeen hairs from Imogen Starr’s Citroën Special and the lab were in process of examining them. There was no indication when a result might be forthcoming.

‘Seventeen sounds like a long wait to me.’

‘Most of them belong to Imogen, I expect,’ said Julie.

‘One of Rose’s would be enough for me.’

He ambled over to Keith Halliwell and asked what else had been achieved.

‘You asked us to check on the neighbouring farm at Tormarton, the one that wanted to swallow up Gladstone’s little patch.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s owned by a company called Hollandia Holdings Limited.’

‘We know that already, Keith.’

‘We checked with Companies’ House and got a list of the directors. It’s here somewhere.’ He sorted through the papers on his desk. ‘Four names.’

Diamond looked at them and frowned.

Patrick van Beek (MD)

Aart Vroemen (CS)

Luc Beurskens

Marko Stigter

‘Dutch?’

‘Well, it is called Hollandia-’

‘Yes. And we’re all in the Common Market and the Dutch know a lot about farming. What are the letters after the names? Is van Beek a doctor?’

‘Managing director.’

‘Ah.’ He grinned self-consciously. Abbreviations were his blind spot and everyone knew it. ‘Do we have their addresses?’

‘Just the company address, a Bristol PO number. PO – short for Post Office,’ said Halliwell.

The grin faded. ‘Thank you, Keith.’ He turned to Julie. ‘What’s your opinion, then?’

She said, ‘They’re not locals, for sure. Can we check if they own other farms in this country?’

‘We already have. Two in Somerset, one in Gloucestershire,’ said Halliwell. ‘The company seems to be kosher.’

The two of them looked to Diamond for an indication where the inquiry was heading now. He stood silent for some time, hunched in contemplation, hands clasped behind his neck. Finally he said, as if speaking to himself, ‘There was just this chance that the neighbours were so set on acquiring the farm that they did away with Gladstone. We know he was made an offer more than once and refused, but that’s no justification for blowing the old man’s head off. It was a piddling piece of land. There had to be a stronger motive. The only one I can see is if they believed more Saxon treasure was buried there. The Tormarton Seax was well known. There might have been other things buried, but Gladstone was an obstinate old cuss who wouldn’t let anyone find out. That’s the best motive we have so far.’ He paused and altered his posture, thrusting his hands in his pockets, but still self-absorbed. ‘The idea of some faceless men, a company, greedy to grab the land and dig there, had some appeal. Now I’m less sure.’

‘Somebody did some digging – quite a lot of it,’ Julie commented.

He said sharply, ‘I’m talking about the company, this Hollandia outfit. We know who they are now. Not faceless men. Keith gets the names from Companies House without any trouble at all. Mr van Beek and his chums, a bunch of Dutchmen with holdings in other farms as well. We can check them out – we will check them out – but I don’t see them as killers. If they went to all the trouble of buying the farm next door, employing locals to work the land, if that’s the planning, the commitment, they made to acquire this treasure, would they be quite so stupid as this?’

‘It almost got by as a suicide,’ said Halliwell.

‘But it didn’t. And we know their names. Check their credentials, Keith. Find out if the other farms they own are going concerns, how long they’ve been investing here. I think we’ll discover these Dutchmen are more interested in turnips than treasure.’

‘Now? It’s getting late to phone people.’

‘Get onto it.’ Next it was Julie’s turn to feel the heat. ‘You just brought up the digging. Have you really thought it through?’

Experience of Diamond told her he wouldn’t need a response.

‘I said, have you thought it through? Has it crossed your mind at any point that the digging could be one bloody great red herring? People all around Tormarton knew about the Saxon sword. It was common knowledge that old Gladstone wouldn’t let anyone excavate his land. He was lying dead in that house for a week and we’re given to believe nobody knew. But what if some local person did find out, looked through the farmhouse window, saw the body and thought this is the chance everyone has waited fifty years for? Do you see? Your enterprising local lad comes along with a metal detector and spade and gets digging. If so, the murder and the digging are two separate incidents.’

‘So are you suggesting we look for another motive?’ said Julie, now that the discussion was becoming rational again. ‘Why else would anyone have wanted to kill the old man?’

‘What do we know about him, apart from the fact that he lived here all his life?’

‘And was unfriendly to archaeologists?’

He talked through her comment. ‘Who did we put onto researching the victim’s life history? Jerry Hansen.’

‘Sir?’ The quiet man of the squad, Jerry, got up from his desk and came over.

‘Where are we on Gladstone?’

‘Piecing his story together, sir, from local knowledge and documentation. It’s still patchy.’

‘Let’s have what you’ve got.’

Jerry launched smoothly into it. Nobody was better at ferreting for information. ‘The Gladstone family have been at Marton Farm for generations. He was born in 1923, the only child of Jacob and Esther, and went to school in Tormarton. Left when he was fourteen, and worked for his father. Seems to have joined in village life in those days.’

Diamond gave a nod. ‘Young and carefree, according to the vicar. That’s a tearaway in the language you and I speak.’

‘Well, he certainly married young, at nineteen, in 1943. In fact, they were both nineteen. She was May Turner, a London girl who was living in the village during the war.’

‘It was her family Bible I found.’

‘Yes, sir, that was helpful.’

‘How about war service?’

‘He was exempt. Farming was a reserved occupation. They rented rooms in a house in Tormarton. But the marriage wasn’t happy. He seems to have been difficult all his life.’

‘Unfaithful?’

‘I don’t know about that, but unbearable, it’s fair to say,’ said Jerry. ‘This is gossip, but several elderly people in the village told us the same things. He was constantly picking on her, complaining of this and that. And he worked her hard. His mother died in 1944, so he and May moved into Marton Farm to care for the old father, who couldn’t even boil an egg. May took on the job, but she didn’t last long. She died two or three years after the marriage. We don’t have the date yet.’

‘What cause?’

‘Bronchial pneumonia. The locals insist that she was ill before they moved to the farm. The lodgings were never heated properly. He would only buy so much paraffin.’

The detail opened a small window into the short, tragic marriage.

‘Any children?’

‘Not by the first wife.’

‘And after she died, father and son fended for themselves?’

‘Until 1953, when old Jacob passed on. Daniel managed the farm alone for some years. He married for the second time in 1967, to the local publican’s daughter, Margaret Torrington, known as Meg. A child, a daughter, came along in 1970.’

‘Christine. I saw her entry in the Church Register.’

‘Yes. Soon after that, they separated. Life on the farm must have been hard.’

‘Life with the farmer, more like. Do we know what became of Meg and her child?’

‘We’re piecing it together. Her parents have long since gone from the village to manage other pubs. No one knows where they ended up.’

‘You could try the brewers.’

‘We did. No joy. And none of the family kept in contact with anyone else in Tormarton. There was just the photo you found, and the message in the Christmas card.’

Diamond repeated the forlorn words, ‘“I thought you would like this picture of your family.”’

‘But it’s not a total blank. Someone in the Post Office reckons they moved to London.’

‘London’s a big place, Jerry.’

‘I was going to add Wood Green.’

‘Better.’

‘They also heard that Meg – the second wife – died of leukemia in January. We checked the registers and it seems to be true. A married woman called Margaret Gladstone died in St Ann’s Hospital, Harringay – that’s close enough to Wood Green – on January 28th, aged forty-nine.’

‘Is that all?’

Jerry’s face clouded. Clearly he thought he had done a reasonable job.

Diamond said, ‘Her age, Jerry. I mean forty-nine is no age at all.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘And he outlived her.’

Jerry said hesitantly, ‘I found it rather a sad touch that on the death certificate she is still described as a barmaid.’

‘You’re too sentimental for a young man,’ Diamond told him. ‘She probably enjoyed working in bars. Do you know what I’m about to ask you?’

‘The daughter Christine?’

‘Spot on.’

‘There is something to report. I contacted the hospital for Mrs Gladstone’s next of kin. They confirmed the name on their file as Christine Gladstone, daughter, and gave me an address in Fulham. Gowan Avenue. I asked the Met to check and I’m waiting for a call.’

‘We’ll all be waiting,’ said Diamond, rubbing his hands. ‘God, yes. How old would this young woman be now?’

‘We have the date of her baptism as February, 1970, so assuming she was baptised soon after birth she’s about twenty-seven.’

‘Near enough for me.’

No one else spoke. Each of them had made the connection. If it emerged that Christine Gladstone had been missing from home for the past four weeks, then it was a fair bet that she was the young woman known to them as Rose. And Diamond’s insistence that Rose was the principal suspect suddenly looked reasonable.

Twenty-seven

‘Pete!’

Diamond drew back, shocked by the panic in his wife’s voice. A steel kitchen knife was in his hand.

Stephanie Diamond moved fast to the electric point and switched it off.

‘You damned near electrocuted yourself, you great ninny. What were you thinking of?’

Thinking of using the knife to prise out the piece of toast stuck in the toaster and starting to smoke? Or not thinking?

With her slim fingers Steph picked out the charred remains and tossed them into the sink. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll cut you a fresh piece. You’ve never been able to cut bread evenly.’

He said, ‘If we used a cut loaf…’

‘You know why we don’t,’ she said, trimming off the overhang he had left on the loaf. ‘What’s the matter with you? I nearly had a corpse of my own to deal with.’

‘Thinking of other things.’

She cut an even slice and dropped it into the toaster and switched on again. She didn’t ask any more. If he wanted to tell her, he would. ‘Other things’ probably meant the details of his work that Steph preferred not to know. On the whole she was happier being given gossipy news of the Manvers Street staff: Wigfull, the ambitious one Peter called ‘Mr Clean’, making it sound like a term of abuse; or ‘Winking, Blinking and Nod’, the three Assistant Chief Constables; and Julie Hargreaves, the plucky young inspector who smoothed the way, dealt with the murmurings in the ranks and made it possible for her brilliant, but testy and brutally honest boss to function at all.

‘I’m sleeping better, Steph.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

‘I reckon the tension isn’t hyper any more. Things are humming nicely again.’

‘You’re doing an honest day’s work?’

‘Tell me this, if it doesn’t ruin your breakfast. Why would a woman murder her father of seventy-one who she hasn’t seen since she was a small child?’

Ruin breakfast? Lunch as well, she thought. But he seemed to need her advice. ‘This is the one whose picture is in the local paper?’

He nodded.

‘Insanity?’

His eyebrows popped up. ‘That’s a theory no one has mentioned up to now.’

‘She looks confused.’

‘She is. She lost her memory, allegedly. But people who met her say she’s rational.’

‘And you think she shot that old man at Tormarton?’

Now he looked at her in awe. She’d just made a connection it had taken him days to arrive at. ‘Crosswords getting too easy, are they? You’re having to read the rest of the paper?’

She smiled faintly.

‘You’re spot on,’ he said. ‘She’s the daughter and she was found wandering a mile or so from the scene on the day of the murder. Today I expect to get the proof that she was present in the farmhouse. I’m still uncertain as to her motive. What does it take for a woman to tie her father to a chair and fire a shotgun at his head?’

‘Did he abuse her as a child?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘That’s something you might consider,’ Steph said. ‘Anger surfacing after many years.’

‘She’s supposed to have lost her memory.’

‘That could be due to repression. She blocks it all out after killing him. She wants to cleanse herself. The mind can act as a censor. Is it a possibility here?’

‘Could be. The mother left him only a few years after they married.’

Steph spread her hands. ‘If the mother found out…’

‘But then she sent him a Christmas card with a photo of herself and the child. “I thought you would like this picture of your family. God’s blessings to us all at this time.” Would an angry mother do that?’

She thought for a moment and said, ‘I doubt it. Maybe she never knew of the abuse.’

He tried his own pet theory on Steph. ‘This woman, the mother. She died in January of leukemia. This is speculation, but I wonder if Rose, the daughter, sorting through her mother’s things as she would, being next of kin, found something, a letter, say, or a diary, that revealed some family secret.’

‘Such as?’

‘Cruelty to her mother is the best bet. A history of violence or meanness that outraged her when she discovered it. She’d watched her mother die prematurely, at forty-nine. Now she discovered things that made her angry enough to find the old man and kill him.’

‘You could be onto something there.’

‘You really think so?’

‘But you’re not going to know the answer until you find her.’

‘True.’

‘Instead of trying to work out why she killed him, isn’t it better to focus on finding her?’

‘You mean she’ll roll over and tell all? I guess you’re right, as ever.’

He spread marmalade on his beautifully even piece of toast and left for work soon after.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed overnight that Christine Gladstone had not used her flat in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, since at least the last week in September. They had found a heap of unopened mail waiting for her. Her landlord knew nothing about her absence because she paid her rent by banker’s order. The people in the other flat thought she was on a foreign holiday.

Diamond handed the fax back to Halliwell. ‘We’re closing in, Keith. I’ll get up to London today and look at the flat. Julie can drive me. You’re in charge here, at the cutting edge.’

Halliwell grinned. ‘Expecting results from our press conference?’

Diamond was determined to be upbeat. ‘I said we’re closing in, Keith. It’s all coming together. For example, I’m about to get the latest from Jim Marsh.’

But Jim Marsh, the pathologist, wasn’t about. He wasn’t at the lab, either.

Undaunted, Diamond asked the exchange to get his home number.

‘Who’zzz zizzz?’ The voice of a man on Temazepam. Or gin.

‘Shouldn’t you be in work like the rest of us? I’m sitting here like a buddha waiting for results from you.’

‘Gave them to Ju – Ju-’

‘Julie?’

‘Couldn’t get hold of you last night. Called her at home.’

‘She isn’t in yet. Have we come up trumps?’

Marsh was becoming more coherent, and he didn’t sound like a man with a winning hand. ‘Worked until bloody late. Three of us.’

‘And?’

‘I took a sleeper when I got home. If I work late I can’t get off to sleep.’ He was off on a tangent.

‘What about the hairs, Jim?’

‘Hairs?’

‘The tests you were doing.’

‘Tests, yes. I told you I found how many specimens of hair?’’ Seventeen.’

‘Seventeen. Eleven from the owner of the car.’’ Imogen Starr.’

‘That left…’

‘Six.’

‘Six, and when we analysed them, they came from three subjects. You’re going to be pissed off, Mr Diamond. None of them matched the two hairs we found in the farmhouse.’

He couldn’t believe it. ‘You drew a complete blank?’

‘It doesn’t prove a thing either way. She could have sat in the car without losing a hair.’

‘What do I do now?’

‘Find the lady, I reckon.’

‘Oh, cheers!’

‘We still have the two hairs from the scene,’ Marsh reminded him. ‘That’s the good thing about NAA. We don’t destroy the evidence in the test. Those hairs will be useful at the trial.’

‘What trial?’

After he’d slammed the phone down, he realised he had not actually thanked Marsh and his team for working overtime. For once he remembered his manners, pressed the redial button and rectified that. Marsh listened and said, ‘Mr Diamond.’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you get off my phone now?’

He gave the disappointing news to the others in the incident room, and then added, ‘It’s not all gloom and doom. With the Met’s help, we’ve confirmed that Christine Gladstone, alias Rose Black, the victim’s daughter, has been missing from home since the end of September. I’m off to London shortly to search her flat. Meantime, Keith will take over here. Since we went public yesterday, a number of possible sightings have come in.’

Halliwell summed up the paltry results. Seven reported sightings and two offers of help from psychics. The missing woman had apparently shopped in Waitrose and Waterstone’s, cycled down Widcombe Hill, eaten an apricot slice in Scoffs, appeared at a bedroom window in Lower Weston, studied Spanish in Trowbridge and walked two Afghan hounds on Lansdown. One of the psychics thought she was dead, buried on the beach at Weston-super-Mare, and the other had a vision of her with a tall, dark man in a balloon. All of it, however unlikely, was being processed into the filing system, and would need to be followed up.

The squad heard the results in silence. Appeals for help from the public had predictable results. You had to hope something of substance would appear. As yet, it had not.

‘Do we go national now?’ Halliwell asked.

‘No. We knock on doors in Tormarton,’ said Diamond.

‘House-to-house?’

‘Someone up there knows about the digging, if nothing else. There were seven large holes, for God’s sake, and they didn’t have a JCB. It took days. They were tidy. They filled in after. Covered over any footprints. Get a doorstepping team together, Keith, and draw up some questions that we can agree.’

‘Is it worth targeting the metal-detector people, the guys who spend their weekends looking for treasure?’

He snapped his fingers. ‘Of course it is. Good. Send someone to Gary Paternoster, the lad who runs the shop in Walcot Street, the Treasure House, and get a list of his customers, plus any clubs that function locally. Julie and I are off to London shortly to…’ He looked around the room. ‘Where the hell is Julie?’

‘Hasn’t been in yet,’ said Halliwell.

‘Any message?’

Halliwell shook his head.

‘What time is it?’ Diamond asked. ‘She would have called in by now if she’s ill.’

Shortly after nine that morning, William Allardyce came out of the house in the Royal Crescent and looked for the blue BMW. It was not in its usual place. Then his attention was caught by a fat man dressed in eccentric clothes and behaving oddly and he was reminded of the filming of Pickwick. All the residents had been paid to park elsewhere the previous night. His BMW was in the Circus.

Annoyed with himself, he set off at a canter along Brock Street. He didn’t like being late for appointments and he hadn’t allowed for the extra ten minutes this would add to his short journey. He was due to meet an important client at the Bath Spa Hotel.

When he reached his car it was already 9.15. He unlocked and got in. The moment he sat down he realised something was wrong, a crunch, a solid sensation when the springs took his weight. He got out. As he feared, he had a flat, one of the rear tyres. He kicked it and the casing gaped. This wasn’t a simple puncture. Some vandal had slashed it. So far as he could see, other cars nearby had not been damaged. His was singled out.

There was no time to change the tyre and he was without his mobile phone. The nearest taxi rank was at the bottom of Milsom Street. He decided to return home and phone the hotel to say the earliest he could manage was 9.45. And while he was waiting for a taxi he would also phone the police.

Julie’s non-arrival at the incident room was the result of a night without much sleep. Late last evening, Jim Marsh had called her at home to report the disappointing result of the hair analysis. People who knew Diamond’s volatile moods tended to take the soft option and give Julie the bad news and ask her to relay it to him. She had decided to save it for the morning. About 1.30am, her brain churning over the day’s events for the umpteenth time, still fretting at the lack of progress, she reached for the light-switch and sat up to read, hoping some science fiction would engage her mind more than hair samples that didn’t match. Charlie was away, on duty in Norfolk. She opened Dune, a book she was re-reading and enjoying even more the second time. Soon the chill in the room got uncomfortable. She reached for a drawer and took out a thick cardigan and wrapped it around her shoulders. As she brought the sleeves across her chest she happened to notice a hair attached to the ribbing. Automatically she picked it off and dropped it over the edge of the bed. She carried on reading. Some minutes passed before this unthinking action was replayed in her mind. Then an idea came to her that kept her from sleeping for another two hours.

In the morning it still seemed worth following up. She hoped she could deal with it before Peter Diamond got into work. By nine she was at the Social Services office, just along the street from the nick. Unluckily, Imogen Starr had also had a disturbed night and didn’t turn up until almost nine-thirty.

Julie told her that the hair samples from the car had proved negative. ‘We’re still hoping to find one of Rose’s, and I had a thought last night. When you brought her back from the hospital what was she wearing?’

‘Her own things,’ said Imogen.

‘The clothes she was found in?’

‘They were stained and torn, but they were all she had.’

‘So did you fit her out with fresh clothes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where from?’

‘From our stock. Here. We keep some basic clothes for emergency use. I brought her in before we went to Harmer House and we found a shirt and some jeans. They weren’t new, but they were clean and in better condition than the ones she had.’

Tensely Julie asked, ‘And what happened to the old clothes?’

‘They were really no use to her.’

‘Did she take them with her?’

‘No, she discarded them. There was nothing left in the pockets, if that’s what you were thinking.’

‘What happened to them?’

Imogen lifted her shoulders in a dismissive way. ‘I suppose they were thrown out with the rubbish. Well, the shirt was, for sure. We may have kept the jeans. They were hanging open at the knee, but that’s fashionable, isn’t it? We don’t like to throw anything out that might come in useful.’

‘Where would they be if you kept them?’

‘The storeroom.’

‘Can we check?’

‘I don’t want to dash your hopes, if you’re hoping to find a hair on them, but they’ve probably been washed by now.’

Julie felt a flutter of despair.

‘We wait for a reasonable load and then someone takes them to the launderette.’

‘But I’d like you to check, please,’ Julie insisted.

In the storeroom she helped Imogen rummage through black plastic sacks of musty-smelling clothes.

‘Most of these haven’t been to the laundry.’

‘Yes, we’ve obviously been stockpiling.’

Eventually, Imogen looked into a bag and said, ‘This could be them.’

‘Careful,’ Julie warned. ‘Don’t lift them out.’

‘How can we tell if they’re hers if we don’t lift them out?’

‘Look at them in the sack. Spread it open. Keep your head back if you can. We don’t want to catch one of your hairs.’

Imogen found the rip in the knee she remembered.

Resisting the temptation to see if she’d really got lucky, Julie tied a knot in the top of the bag and carried it through the street to the police station.

She went in search of Jim Marsh.

Eventually, she arrived at the incident room at 10.20. The meeting was over and people were going about their business with a quiet sense of purpose, so each word of what followed was heard by most of the squad.

‘It looks nice,’ Diamond said in his heavy-handed way.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘The do. Been to the hairdresser’s, have you?’

There was an awkward interval. Then Julie said, ‘Obviously I should have called earlier, but I didn’t think it would take so long.’

‘The highlighting?’

She’d had enough. ‘Will you listen? I don’t fix personal appointments in police time. As a matter of fact, the last time I was due to have my hair done, you put me on overtime, so I had to cancel. If you want to know where I was first thing this morning, it was on police business, on my own initiative. Is that allowed?’

‘All right, I’m out of order,’ he said without sounding as if he meant it. ‘Where were you?’

She told him about her last-ditch idea of tracking down Rose’s rejected clothes, and of locating the jeans in the storeroom.

His entire approach altered. ‘I hardly dare ask. Have you shown them to Marsh yet?’

‘That’s why I’m so late. He was still at home.’

‘I know. But did he find anything?’

‘He said it had to be examined in a controlled situation, or some such phrase.’

‘Here?’

‘In the SOCOs’ section, I think.’

He picked up a phone and pressed the internal number. He was through to Marsh directly.

‘You have? With what result?…Brilliant!…I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me that. Just rush it to the lab and see if we’re in business, will you?’ He put down the phone and smiled at Julie. ‘One dark hair, nine centimetres long. You may have cracked it this time, Julie.’

She didn’t trust herself to say anything.

Allardyce was surprised to be shown into Chief Inspector 265 Wigfull’s office. ‘I expected to speak to Superintendent Diamond. He’s the one I saw previously.’

‘Mr Diamond is on another case,’ said Wigfull in a lofty tone. ‘I’ve taken over the handling of the incident at your house.’

‘It’s just that we haven’t seen you there.’

‘It’s mainly paperwork at this stage. The on-site investigation is complete.’

‘What conclusion did you reach – or am I not supposed to ask?’

‘That will be up to the coroner. We simply present the evidence. You’ll be notified about the inquest in due course, sir. You’ll be called as a witness. As to this other matter, the damage to your car, we’ll investigate, of course, but-’

‘The tyre was slashed. It had to be reported.’

‘You’re absolutely right, sir, but if it’s any consolation, it may not have been personal,’ Wigfull said, confirming a melancholy truth. ‘Casual vandalism is quite common even in Bath, I’m sorry to say. If we had more officers to patrol the streets…’

‘If it wasn’t personal, why was my car picked out? None of the others were touched.’ He was genuinely puzzled and hurt..

‘You said it’s new. Sometimes that can be a provocation.’

Allardyce gave a shrug and a smile. ‘What are we supposed to do? Never drive a new car?’

Wigfull shifted in his chair. He was beginning to feel sympathy for this young man. ‘Why else should it have been picked out? You tell me, sir.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

This justified leading the witness a little. ‘I suppose it comes suspiciously soon after the publicity about the young woman’s death in your house.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Any vandalism is taken seriously, sir.’

Allardyce ignored the empty phrase. ‘I mean what does that poor woman’s death have to do with this?’

‘I don’t know. If they decided you were responsible in some way…’

‘Me?’

‘I’m trying to see it from their point of view.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Some friend of the deceased.’ Even as he spoke, an uncomfortable idea was stirring at the back of Wigfull’s brain.

‘I don’t follow your thinking.’

‘But it’s well known that you weren’t to blame for what happened,’ Wigfull affirmed, not wanting to grapple with the dire thought now forming. ‘Your house was taken over by young people wanting a party. There was a tragic consequence. No fault of yours.’

‘If that’s the way you see it…’ said Allardyce, beginning to be swayed.

‘Besides,’ said Wigfull, ‘it wasn’t as if your car was parked outside your house. Anyone wanting to get at you personally would have to know which car it was and where you parked it last night.’

‘True.’

‘We’ll follow this up and let you know if we have a result, but my money is on some kid out of school who doesn’t know your vehicle from anyone else’s,’ he lied, to bring this to a close. He got up from his chair and showed Allardyce to the door. ‘Your neighbour – Mr Treadwell. Does he have a car?’

‘No. Wise man. He works in Bath and doesn’t need to travel so much.’

Alone in his office again, Wigfull sat brooding like a Thomas Hardy hero on the malign sport of the fates. Finally he sighed, pressed the intercom and spoke to the control room. ‘Send someone round to Harmer House, would you, and bring in Ada Shaftsbury. Yes, I repeat: Ada Shaftsbury.’

Twenty-eight

Somewhere east of Reading on the M4, Diamond said to Julie, ‘We’ve got some fences to repair, you and me.’

She didn’t speak, so he amended it.

‘I’ve got some fences to repair.’

They drove another half-mile in silence.

‘I said I was out of order, didn’t I? Meant it, too. You know me by now, Julie. Things start going wrong and I get stroppy. That’s all it was back there. Jim Marsh had just been on the line telling me his tests were negative.’

She was driving as if she had a sleeping cobra on her lap.

‘There’s the difference between you and me,’ Diamond talked on. ‘I take my disappointment out on other people, anyone in the firing line, while you get on and sort out the problem.’

Not a flicker.

He opened the glove compartment. ‘There were some Polos in here last time I looked. Fancy a mint?’

She mouthed the word ‘no’ without even a glance towards him.

This was becoming intolerable. He said, ‘Well, if you want to cut me down to size, now’s as good a time as any.’

‘You mean in private,’ she ended her silence, ‘where the rest of the squad can’t overhear us?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘What really got to me,’ Julie went on in a level tone that still managed to convey her anger, ‘is that you put me down in front of the rest of them, people I outrank. You do it time and again. I don’t mind taking stick. I don’t even care if it’s unjustified. Well, not much. But I really mind that you don’t respect me enough to save it for a private moment. That’s what you demand for yourself. Here, in the car with no one listening, you invite me to cut you down to size. Big deal. I’d rather save my breath.’

She had blown him away and she was talking of saving her breath. Like this, she was more devastating than Ada Shaftsbury turning the air blue with abuse.

He had no adequate response. All he could think to say was, ‘Point taken.’

In the silence, he dredged his brain to think of something even more conciliatory, but Julie seemed to sense what it would be. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’ll do the same thing again and I’ll get madder still with you next time. Yes, I will have a Polo now.’

The traffic ahead was slowing. The motorway narrowed to two lanes as they approached Chiswick. Excuse enough to sink their differences for a while and consult over the route.

Just before the Hammersmith Flyover they peeled off and joined Fulham Palace Road. Diamond opened the read out the names of the streets on the left. Gowan Avenue came up in a little over a mile, long, straight and dispiriting, the kind of drab terraced housing that obliterated the green fields of West London in the housing boom at the start of the twentieth century.A-Z and

The landlord had been tipped off that they were coming and had the door open. He was Rajinder Singh, he told them, and his property was fully registered, documented and managed in accordance with the law of the land.

Diamond put him right as to the purpose of their visit and asked if he knew his tenant Christine Gladstone personally.

‘Personally, my word yes,’ Mr Singh said, eager to please. ‘We have very close relations, Miss Gladstone and I. She is living in my house more than two years, hand in glove. Very charming young lady.’

Diamond thought he knew what was meant. ‘Pays her rent by banker’s order, I understand?’

‘Midland Bank, yes. The Listening Bank. No problem.’

‘Does she work nearby?’

‘I am thinking she does. In shop.’

‘You wouldn’t know which one?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Does she drive a car?’

‘Miss Gladstone? I do not think so.’

There was a pile of mail on a chair just inside the hallway, all addressed to Christine Gladstone. Diamond riffled through it. Mostly circulars and bills. A couple of bank statements from the Midland. The earliest postmark was 29th September.

‘When did you last speak to her?’

‘August, maybe. Some small problem with loose tile on roof. I am fixing such the same day.’

‘She lives upstairs, then? Shall we go up?’ When the door at the top of the stairs was unlocked for them, Diamond added, ‘We’ll be taking our time over this, sir. No need for you to stay.’

Mr Singh brought his hands together in the traditional salute of his race, dipped his turbaned head, and left.

‘Don’t know about you, Julie,’ Diamond said when he had stepped inside, ‘but I’ve lived in worse drums than this.’

They were in a small, blue-carpeted living-room, with papered walls, central heating, television, a bookcase and a pair of brown leather armchairs. Large framed posters of Venice lined one wall.

Julie picked a photograph off the bookcase. ‘Her mother, I think.’

He studied it. The improbably blonde, gaunt woman must have been twenty years older than she had been in the picture he had found in the Bible in the farmhouse. The eyes were more sunken, the lines either side of the mouth more deeply etched. The leukemia may already have taken a grip, yet the smile had not changed.

‘No question.’

His attention was caught by some cardboard cartons stacked along the wall below the posters. The first he opened contained pieces of used china and glass wrapped in newspaper, presumably treasured pieces brought from Meg Gladstone’s house after she died.

Julie had gone through to the bedroom. ‘More photos in here,’ she called out.

‘Any of the father?’

‘No. Mummy again, and one of Rose arm-in-arm with a bloke.’

He looked into another box. Cookery books. The boxes were not so interesting after all.

Julie announced, ‘There’s a folder by the bed with a photocopy of the will inside. And other things. Solicitors’ letters. Her mother’s death certificate.’

He walked through to the bedroom and looked at the contents of the folder. It was a simple will leaving everything to ‘my beloved daughter, Christine’. The Midland Bank were named as executors. No mention of the husband.

‘She seems to have travelled a lot,’ said Julie, running a fingertip along a bookshelf beside the bed. ‘France, Switzerland, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, Spain. Maps, too, that look as if they’ve been used more than once.’

‘She ought to have some personal papers. Income tax forms, passport, birth certificate.’ He started opening drawers. The clothes inside were folded and tidily stacked. Then he found a box-file. ‘Here we are. The dreaded Tax Return. Trade, profession or vocation. Any guesses?’

‘Courier?’

‘Not bad. Travel agent employed by Travel Ease. Fulham High Street. We’ll call there, Julie. See if they know what her plans were.’

He returned the box to the drawer and took a more leisurely look at the bedroom, getting an impression of its user. It was without the frills and furry toys often favoured by single young women. A distinct absence of pastel pink and blue. The duvet had a strong abstract design of squares in primary colours. Against the window, the dressing-table was long, white and clinical, with a wide, rectangular mirror. A few pots of face-cream, more functional than expensive, a brush and comb and a small hand-mirror suggested someone not over-concerned with her appearance.

He picked up the photo of Rose (he couldn’t get into his head that she was Christine) with the young man. More relaxed than in the police picture, her dark hair caught by a breeze, she looked alive, a personality, intelligent, aware and enjoying herself.

‘If we could find an address book, we might learn who the boyfriend is.’ He unclipped the photo from its frame, but nothing was written on the reverse.

‘She may use a personal organiser.’ Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, Julie said, ‘You know what I mean? One of those electronic gadgets that tell you where you live and when you were born and when to take your anti-stress pills? John Wigfull has one.’

And he would, Diamond thought.

‘If so,’ she said, ‘it probably went with her. She’ll have taken her basic make-up as well. I noticed you check the dressing-table drawer.’

‘Did I?’

‘No lipstick, eye-liner, mascara.’

‘So you think she packed for some time away?’

‘I didn’t say that. If you want my opinion, it’s unlikely. She isn’t a heavy buyer of clothes and there’s still quite a stack of underwear in the drawers.’

‘So?’

‘Women always pack more knickers than they need.’

‘The things you learn in this job.’

‘That’s why I tag along, isn’t it?’ She’d scored a nice point and she allowed herself a smile, the first in hours. ‘I could be totally wrong. She must possess some luggage and I haven’t come across any yet.’

‘It ought to be obvious.’

‘Unless it’s stored somewhere else in the house. Should we check with Mr Singh?’

He pondered the matter. ‘But would you pack a suitcase if you were going to Tormarton to murder your father?’

She didn’t attempt an answer.

Diamond wrestled with his own question. ‘Even if she did, and took a travelling bag with her, what happened to it? She wasn’t carrying one when she was found.’

‘She wasn’t even carrying a handbag.’

He looked at her with approval. ‘Good point. Why hasn’t the handbag turned up?’

Julie shook her head.

Almost without thinking, Diamond stepped into the bathroom and made a telling discovery. He came out holding up a toothbrush. ‘I think she was planning to come back the same day.’

But Julie had already moved into the small kitchen. She called out, ‘I’m sure you’re right. She left out a loaf and – ugh!’

‘What’s up?’

‘A portion of uncooked chicken in the fridge. That’s what’s up. Well past its sell-by date.’

The smell travelled fast. He tugged open a sash-window in the living-room. Julie joined him there. The petrol fumes from the street were primrose-sweet at that moment.

‘That’s put me off chicken for a week.’

‘Did you shut the fridge?’

‘Yes, but you wouldn’t believe I did.’

When the air was clearer they began a more thorough sweep of the shelves, cupboards and drawers in each room. Rose was unusually tidy and well organised, but things still came to light in unexpected places. Two tickets (under a candlestick on the chest of drawers) for a symphony concert at the Barbican in mid-October. A chocolate box containing opera programmes from La Scala, Milan, and Rome. A copy of a typed letter to Mr Singh complaining about a damp patch in the ceiling. A couple of gushing love-letters from someone called James; they were tucked into one end of the bookcase.

‘I wonder why James hasn’t been round to see her in all this time?’

‘Take a look at the dates,’ said Julie. ‘September and October, 1993. He’s history.’

‘Why didn’t she bin them, then?’

‘Women don’t get love letters all that often. She may want to keep them.’

‘Or she forgot they were there.’

‘Cynic.’

He didn’t challenge her. He was taking one more look at the manila folder containing the will and death certificate. Diligence was rewarded. Trapped inside, out of sight along the inner fold of the pocket, was an extra piece of paper. He pulled it out. An envelope, torn open. On it was written: To Christine, to be opened after my death.

‘Frustrating,’ he said. ‘This is her mother’s handwriting. It matches the writing on that photo.’

‘Isn’t the letter in the folder?’

‘No.’

‘Then she must have it with her.’

‘Unless she destroyed it.’

‘The last letter she ever received from her mother?’ said Julie on a high note of disbelief. ‘Besides, if she kept the envelope, she means to keep the letter.’

He conceded the sense of this with a nod.

Julie added, ‘Do you think the letter could have a direct bearing on the case? If it was only to be read after Meg Gladstone’s death, it may have revealed some information Rose wasn’t aware of, a family secret. Some reference to the old man’s shabby treatment of them?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he commented after a moment’s thought. ‘It would be too negative. It’s more likely to be a last request, some service the mother wanted Rose to perform for her.’

‘A bit of unfinished business. Like visiting her father?’

‘Possibly. You see, she delayed several months before going to see him. No doubt she was busy sorting things out for some time after her mother’s death in – when was it? – January. She probably wanted to get down to Tormarton before the end of the year. That’s my feeling about it – but of course it’s all speculation without the damned letter.’

They spent another half-hour in the flat before he called time. On their way out, downstairs in the hall, they were treated to the sight of Mr Singh’s scarlet turban behind a door that was drawn shut as they approached.

‘Good day to you, landlord,’ Diamond called out.

The door opened again and he looked out. ‘All satisfactory, is it?’

‘Thanks, yes.’

‘She is in trouble, Miss Gladstone?’

‘We hope not. If she comes back, you’ll inform us, I expect.’

‘Indeed, yes, sir, I will.’

‘You live downstairs, do you, Mr Singh?’

‘No, no.’ He emerged fully from behind the door and held it open. ‘This is store cupboard. I live across river. Detached house. Putney Hill. Five bedroom. I show you if you like.’

The store cupboard held more interest for them than Mr 274 Singh’s detached house. ‘This is where the tenants keep their luggage?’

‘Just so.’ He flicked on a light and they saw a stack of suitcases. One uncertainty, at least, had been cleared up.

Travel Ease, where Rose was employed, was crowded with people booking winter sunshine. It was not easy attracting the attention of the manager, and even when they got to his desk he assumed they were planning a holiday together. Diamond disillusioned him with a few pithy words and asked about Miss Gladstone.

‘Yes,’ the young man said, ‘I have been concerned about Christine. She hasn’t been in for weeks. I wrote letters and tried phoning with no result. It’s so out of character. She’s always been reliable up to now.’

‘Did she say if she was going away?’

‘She said nothing. You can ask any of my staff. She simply didn’t turn up after one weekend. You don’t think something dreadful has happened to her?’

They got back to Bath soon after four. Diamond commented to Julie that the incident room had all the fevered activity of a town museum on a hot day in August. One civilian computer operator was on duty. she said she thought Inspector Halliwell might have slipped out to the canteen. Only just, she added loyally.

They spotted Halliwell taking a shot at the snooker table. Someone alerted him and he put down the cue and snatched up a cup and came to meet Diamond and Julie midway across the canteen floor. ‘I missed my lunch,’ he said in mitigation. ‘We’ve been overstretched. Most of them are out at Tormarton on the house-to-house. How did it go?’

‘Has anything new come in?’

‘A couple more sightings, but I wouldn’t pin any hopes on them. Oh, and we’ve got a list of the treasure-hunters. I had no idea this is such a popular thing. Getting on for fifty names, and clubs in Bath, Bristol and Chippenham. Do you think it pays?’ He was trying manfully to appear untroubled at being caught out.

‘No word from Jim Marsh?’

‘About the hair Julie found? No.’

‘Have you called him?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You finish your break, then,’ said Diamond. After a pause of merciless duration, he added, ‘Your lunchbreak, I mean.’

On the way upstairs they met Ada Shaftsbury of all people. ‘What idiot let her in?’ he muttered to Julie. Then, to Ada, with an attempt at good humour, ‘You’re out of bounds, you know. This is strictly for the Old Bill.’

Ada twitched her nose, a dangerous sign. She also took a deep breath before sounding off. ‘Do you think I’m here out of choice? Don’t you know what’s going on in your own festering nick? Well, obviously you don’t. You’re the bullshit artist who wouldn’t listen when I came in about my friend Rose. She’s all right, you said, talking down your nose at me. All done through Social Services, so there can’t be nothing wrong. What do I see now? Rose’s picture all over the papers. Missing woman. “Grounds for concern, says Superintendent Peter Diamond.” Pity you didn’t show some bleeding concern when I told you she was in trouble.’

‘Ada, this isn’t helping her. What are you doing here anyway?’

‘Like I said, you don’t even talk to each other, you lot. I was brought in. You grab an innocent woman off the street and throw garbage at her for the fun of it. Just because I’m homeless you think you can walk all over me. I’m going straight from here to see a lawyer. I’m going to get on television and tell my story.’

‘What exactly is the trouble, Ada?’

‘False arrest is the trouble. Invasion of civil liberties. Getting me in an arm-lock and forcing me into the back of one of your poky little panda cars, so I got bruises all over my body, and dragging me up here and strapping me about things I wouldn’t do if I was paid.’

‘What things?’

‘Only vandalising a car, like I’m some hopped-up kid, that’s what.’

‘What did you do – lean on it?’

‘Piss off. I didn’t do nothing. Haven’t been near the place. Stupid berk.’

‘Who are you talking about now?’

‘Him with the face-fungus. Wigwam.’

‘Chief Inspector Wigfull?’

‘I told you it was barmy letting him take over. He’s got sod-all interest in how my friend Hilde died. All he cares about is a frigging flat tyre. Bastard. Well, he’s got egg all over his mean face now, because I had a copper-bottom alibi, didn’t I? I was doing my night job.’

‘You’ve got a job?’

She sniffed and drew herself up. ‘Two nights a week, ten till six. I sit in a shabby little office in Bilbury Lane answering the phone and talking to taxi-drivers over the radio. So I’ve got ten to fifteen blokes who can vouch for me last night. They all know when I’m on duty. We have some good laughs over the short wave, I can tell you.’

‘And Chief Inspector Wigfull is investigating damaged cars now? Are you sure of this, Ada?’

‘Sure? Of course I’m bloody sure. I wasn’t brought in here for my health. I’m his number one suspect, or I was until I put him straight.’

This was difficult to believe. No officer of Wigfull’s rank looked into minor acts of vandalism unless there was an overriding reason. ‘Do you happen to know whose car it was? Not a police vehicle, I hope?’

She told him. ‘One of them people up the Crescent. Alley something, is it?’

‘Allardyce, I expect.’ Diamond was intrigued.

‘That was it and that’s why Wigwam fingered me. He reckons I got a grudge against them because of my friend Hilde dying up there. It’s not true, Mr Diamond. I don’t blame them for what happened to Hilde. I never even met them.’

Diamond turned to Julie. ‘Would you see Ada safely to the door?’

Julie gave him a mutinous look.

He explained, ‘I want to get things straight with JW. This is a development I hadn’t expected.’

Ada said, ‘Throw the book at him. He’s out of order, victimising innocent women.’

‘Come on, love,’ said Julie. ‘Don’t waste our valuable time.’

‘And you’re no better,’ Ada shouted at Diamond as she was led away. ‘What about poor Rose, then? If you lot had the sense to listen to me, you’d solve your bleeding cases and have time to spare,’ was Ada’s parting shot.

He spent twenty minutes with Wigfull, going over the implications of the slashing of Allardyce’s tyre. Now that Ada had been eliminated as the suspect, Wigfull fell back on his original theory that it had been a random act by a teenager.

Diamond was like a dog with a bone. ‘Did you ask Allardyce if he could think of anyone holding a grudge against him?’

‘I did.’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘Negative.’

‘Was he being totally honest?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Was he hiding anything? Bad feelings with someone else?’

‘Why should he?’ Wigfull said, reasonably enough. ‘If he’d wanted to keep it quiet he wouldn’t have come to me in the first place. A slashed tyre is no big deal. He could have put on the spare and got on with his life.’

‘You see, if it was deliberate, the circle of suspects is fairly small. Not many people knew where he’d left his car last night. Not many would know his car anyway. You said it was new.’

‘He’s not the sort who makes enemies of his neighbours,’ said Wigfull. ‘There’s nothing to dislike in him. The only person I could think of who might have taken against him was Ada. She’s still upset about Hildegarde Henkel’s death at the party they had, and she’s an unstable personality anyway, but she’s got this alibi for last night. I really think we’re wasting our time talking about it.’

Diamond carried on as if nothing had been said. ‘Is the car still up there at the Circus?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did you go to see it?’

‘What would have been the point?’

He picked up Wigfull’s phone. ‘Get me William Allardyce, will you?…The Crescent, yes.’

Wigfull tapped his fingers on the desk and looked out of the window at the early evening traffic jam, trying to appear nonchalant while listening keenly to Diamond’s end of the conversation.

‘Who is this?…Mrs Allardyce. Peter Diamond here, from Bath Police…He isn’t? Well, I have the pleasure of speaking to you instead. I was perturbed to hear about the damage to your husband’s car this morning…After you’d left for work? You must start early. Of course, you do. I forget the television runs right through the day. Personally I prefer the radio in the morning…Do you have a car of your own?…I agree. The train is much the best way to travel if you can…Yes, it only just reached my attention. We’re having a meeting about it right now. Tell me, has he had the tyre fixed yet?…He has? No use me trotting up to the Circus to look at the damage, then…I dare say the filming has finished in the Crescent, so he’ll be able to park in his usual spot tonight…These things happen, sadly, but I think it’s unlikely. Just in case, I’ll ask our night patrol to keep a lookout…No trouble at all. Just tell him we’re working on it, would you? Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Perturbed, are you?’ said Wigfull.

‘Yes, John, I am. Let me know if you get any further with it, won’t you?’

He returned to the incident room, now transformed into a bustling workplace. Halliwell had a message from Jim Marsh: would Mr Diamond call if convenient?

‘If convenient?’ He snatched up the phone and got through. ‘Well, John?’

‘It’s a match, Mr Diamond. The hair from the clothing comes from the same individual as the two hairs found at the scene of the murder.’

‘So Rose was definitely in the farmhouse?’

‘That’s for you to say. I was looking at hairs.’

‘And now you’re splitting them.’

‘I’m simply reporting our findings.’

Diamond turned and gave a triumphant thumbs-up to the entire incident room. ‘Cheers, mate,’ he said into the phone. ‘You can bill me for that beer next time we meet.’

‘Double Scotch.’

‘What?’

‘It was a double Scotch you offered before.’

‘Was it? Mad, impetuous fool. You’re on, then.’

The news buoyed everyone up. Few had been willing to back Diamond when he picked on Rose as the main suspect. Now they had to admit he was justified. It wasn’t quite the surge of exhilaration that comes when a case is buttoned up. They didn’t shake him by the hand or pat him on the back, but they clustered around him, united in support. Then in the passion of the moment the computer operator who had called him a great oaf gave him a hug and retired immediately to the ladies.

He took the whole thing equably (even the hug, which no one would forget), reminding everyone that the time to celebrate would be when they picked up Rose and she admitted everything.

So there was no popping of corks. Just a quiet coffee in Bloomsburys. Alone.

This should have been a defining moment in the inquiry. It was…and yet. He found himself thinking increasingly not of Rose, but the people in the house in the Royal Crescent – the Allardyces and the Treadwells. The trivial incident of the ripped tyre would not bed down with the rest of the day’s events. It niggled. It had brought the two couples back into the frame, his frame, anyway. Speaking on the phone to Sally Allardyce, the slim, softly spoken black woman working in television, he was reminded of the tensions he had noticed. Superficially, they were good neighbours and firm friends. Their ill-starred weekend had started with an evening in the pub. Together they had coped with a party much larger than they anticipated. In the aftermath they shared the inconvenience of policemen taking over their apartments. They had got up a card game to pass the time when their Sunday was so disrupted. But under questioning, the men, in particular, had taken different stances over the party, Turnbull agitated and resentful, while Allardyce was more tolerant.

If anyone had deliberately slashed Allardyce’s tyre, the betting was strong that it was somebody from that house. Who else would have known where it was parked on that one night? Another neighbour, maybe. Less likely, though.

Why was it done then, then?

Out of malice, sheer frustration, or for a practical reason?

In his mind he could cast Guy Treadwell as a tyre-slasher with no difficulty. The young man bristled with resentment. Exactly why it should be directed at his neighbour was another question, except that people like Treadwell rarely got on with their neighbours.

Emma Treadwell? A woman could rip a tyre with a sharp blade as easily as a man. If anything, she was a more forceful personality than Guy. ‘Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.’

And what of Sally Allardyce? She had left early for work that morning. Her walk to the station would have taken her through the Circus, very likely when it was still dark. If she had wanted, for some reason, to limit her husband’s movements that day, she could have done the deed.

The motive? In each case he could only guess, and he didn’t do that.

He would find out.

Twenty-nine

He crossed the street from Bloomsburys and returned to the police station the quick way, by the public entrance. Before going home, he meant to have a few pointed words with Halliwell about manning the incident room at all times. But he got no further than the enquiry counter. The sergeant on duty had spotted him.

‘Mr Diamond.’

‘At your service.’

‘You’re wanted upstairs, sir. A taxi-driver came in ten minutes ago, reckons he knows where your missing lady is.’

Caught in freeze-frame, as it were, Diamond let the magic words sink in. In his experience taxi-drivers didn’t volunteer information unless it was reliable. This had to be taken more seriously than the so-called sightings up to now.

Two old men and a dog were waiting by the enquiry window. As one, they turned to see who it was who needed to find a missing lady. And he was so elated by the news that he performed a slow pirouette for them – with surprising grace for a big man.

‘The incident room?’

‘Your office.’

‘I’m on my way.’

Upstairs, Halliwell, caught off guard again, sprang up from Diamond’s chair and introduced Mr John Beevers, from Astra Taxis.

John Beevers did not spring up. He was in the one comfortable armchair in the room, basking in limelight and cigar smoke. He took a cellophane-wrapped corona from an inside pocket and held it out to Diamond in a way that was faintly vulgar.

‘Non-smoker. What have you got to tell us?’

Now the driver produced the Bath Chronicle from his car-coat. ‘This woman in the paper. You want to find her, m’ dear?’

Diamond had worked in the West Country long enough to be used to being a stranger’s ‘dear’ or ‘love’, but it grated when coming from someone he disliked on sight. ‘That’s the general idea.’

‘Well, I got news for you. I had her in my cab. Her and another woman.’

A vulgar quip would have been all too easy. ‘When was this?’

‘Two and a half weeks back, I reckon. It was her, no question.’

Diamond’s hopes plummeted. ‘As long ago as that?’

‘If ‘tis no use, m’ dear, I’ll save my breath.’

‘It could still be useful. Go on.’

The driver exhaled copiously in Diamond’s normally smoke-free office. ‘I can’t tell you the date. ‘Twere the afternoon and it had been raining. The first woman – not her you’re looking for – hailed me in Laura Place, by the fountain. She wanted Harmer House, the women’s hostel in Bathwick Street.’

So it was that far back in Rose’s history. Diamond’s elation was ebbing away.

‘I gave her a close look to see if she were a paying customer. You hear the word “hostel” and you got to be careful, if you understand me. She were quite respectable actually. Mind, I weren’t over-pleased with the job. It were no fare at all from Laura Place. No more than six hundred yards, I reckon. I told her, polite like, she’d do better to walk it and save herself the fare, but she said she were picking someone up, with luggage. She wanted me to bide awhile outside, and then we’d go up St James’s Square.’

‘Tucked away behind the Royal Crescent?’

‘Right. That sounded more like a job of work to me. I warned her it would all be on the clock, and she weren’t bothered. So that’s what we did.’

‘What was she like?’

‘The one who hired me? Now you’re asking. This were some days back, you know.’

‘Try.’

‘Dark-haired, I b’lieve. Thirty, maybe. Bit of a madam. She weren’t having no lip from a common cabbie.’

‘The hair. Can you tell me anything about it?’

‘What do you mean, m’dear? I said it were dark. I can’t tell one style from another.’

‘Curly?’

‘No, not curly. Straight, and combed back, fixed behind her head. What do they call that?’

Diamond knew, but he wasn’t going to put words into the witness’s mouth.

Beever was getting there by stages. ’’ Orse-tail. Is that it?’

Halliwell looked ready to supply the word, so Diamond cut in, ‘We’ve got to hear it from you to be of any use, Mr Beever.’

’’ Orse-tail, I said. No, that b’ain’t right. Pony-tail. She had a pony-tail. If you ask me, pony-tails look nice on little girls and really scrawny women. Her’d had too many good dinners to get away with it.’

‘And the face. Can you picture the face?’

‘You want a lot for nothing. ‘Twere the other woman I came in about. Well, I don’t know if this be any help, but she made me think of them women in boots.’

‘Boots?’ said Diamond.

‘The tarty ones on the make-up counters. Heavy on the war-paint.’

‘Ah, Boot’s the chemist.’

‘I was telling thee what happened. She made a great to-do about could she rely on me to wait. I told her if she were paying, I didn’t mind how long it took. So that’s what happened. We drove to Bathwick Street. I bided my time outside Harmer House, reading my paper for a good half-hour, maybe longer. Then she came out with this other woman, the one you’re trying to find. She’d said sommat about luggage, but it were only a couple of carrier bags, so I didn’t open the boot. I drove them up to St James’s Square-’

‘Was anything said?’

‘Could have been. I don’t recall. When we got up to the Square – off Julian Road, behind the Royal Crescent-’

‘We established that.’

‘Be that as it may, m’ dear, nine out of ten people couldn’t take you to it without a map. When we got up there, she pointed out the house. I can’t tell you the number. It were on the south side, with a red door. That’s all I got to say, really. She settled the fare – something over twenty-five by that time – and I give her a receipt and out they got. They went in with their bags and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since.’

‘Did she let them in with a key, or did someone come to the door?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t look.’

‘Is your taxi in our car park?’

‘I bloody hope so. That’s where I left ‘er.’

‘Right. You can drive me to the house. One of our patrol cars will meet us there.’

St James’s Square is one of Bath’s tucked-away Georgian jewels, located on the slope above the Royal Crescent and below Lansdown Crescent. You come to it from the scrappy end of Julian Road, where pasta-coloured housing from the 1960s cuts it adrift from the dignified end of the city. But the spirit soars again when you come upon John Palmer’s charming square dating from the 1790s, noble buildings with Venetian windows and Corinthian pilasters facing across a large lawned garden with mature trees.

John Beever said as he double-parked outside the house with the red door, ‘It be too much to hope that I can charge this to the police, I reckon.’

‘I reckon, too,’ said Diamond, and added, ‘Nice try, m’ dear.’

‘Do I have to stay?’

A patrol car was entering the square on the far side, so he was content to let John Beever drive away in search of a paying passenger.

There were lights at the windows of the two upper floors. The bell-push gave names for all four flats. He pressed the top one first. Angus Little.

Meanwhile the patrol car had pulled up. Two uniformed constables got out and joined him.

‘You know what this is about?’

They did not.

He explained succinctly. There was ample time before anyone came to the door. This house was not equipped with an answerphone.

Angus Little from the top flat was silver-haired, sixtyish and deeply shaken to have the police calling.

Diamond showed his ID and the picture of Rose.

Little took off his glasses and examined the picture. Then shook his head. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Would you mind terribly turning off the flashing light on your car? It’s a bit of a poppyshow, if you know what I mean.’

‘Can’t do that, sir,’ said the driver. ‘We’re blocking the street.’

Diamond asked, ‘Do you live alone, Mr Little?’

He did.

‘Tell me about these other tenants.’

As if he had never previously noticed the names listed against the four bells, Mr Little bent close to inspect them. His own was a printed visiting-card, David Waller’s had been produced on a printer, made to look like italic writing; Adele Paul’s was a peel-off address-label; and Leo and Fiona (no surnames) had typed theirs on pink card.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Who are they? Young people, married couples with kids, pensioners?’

‘There’s only Mr Waller underneath me now. He’s single, like me, and quite a bit younger. The other flats have been empty for months.’

‘So Adele Paul and – who is it? – Leo and Fiona aren’t living here although their names are showing?’

‘That’s my understanding. Nobody has bothered to remove the cards, that’s all. It may be deliberate, for security, you see. You don’t want people knowing that some of the flats are unoccupied. I expect the agent is having trouble finding anyone prepared to pay the rent. It’s pretty exorbitant. I had the impression Miss Paul was a student at the university. Well-heeled parents, I expect. She must have left last June.’

‘Have you noticed anyone using either of the empty flats recently?’

‘I can’t say I have, but then I’m out so much. I’m in the antique business. Buying and selling clocks and watches. You might do better asking Mr Waller. He spends more time here. He’s a computer expert, I believe, and he tells me he can do most of it from home, lucky man.’

Mr Waller could be saved for later, Diamond decided. He wanted to see inside the two allegedly empty flats. The door to the ground floor one was just ahead. He knocked, got no reply, and asked the more solid of the constables to force it.

Mr Little protested at that. ‘Shouldn’t you contact the landlord first?’

‘Who is the landlord?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. But we pay our rent to an agency called Better Let. Do you know it? They have an office in Gay Street.’

‘So we don’t know the landlord, and the agency is closed by now. What are you waiting for, constable?’

The door sprang inwards at the first contact of the constable’s boot.

The flat had the smell of many months of disuse. They didn’t spend much time looking at the even spread of dust on the furniture. ‘We’ll try the basement.’

Mr Little was returning upstairs, probably to confer with Mr Waller. No one had mentioned a search warrant yet, but the computer buff might.

No answer came to Diamond’s rapping on the basement door.

‘Get on with it, lad.’

This one was harder to crack. The door-frame withstood a couple of kicks and it took a kung fu special to splinter the wood.

Diamond felt for the light-switch. The result was encouraging. The mustiness upstairs was not present here, even though the apartment was shuttered and below ground. He stepped through the living-room to the kitchen, confident that the fridge would yield the clue, as it had in Rose’s London flat. But it was switched off, empty, the door left ajar as recommended by the makers.

He looked into the cupboards. There was a tin containing tea-bags, and a jar of instant coffee. The label had a ‘best before’ date of December 1996 – evidently bought some time ago.

The bedroom, then: a small, cold room with a window placed too high to see out of. Twin divans, a wardrobe, dressing-table and two chests of drawers, empty. No sign of recent occupation.

Quite an anticlimax.

As he returned to the living-room, he heard people coming down the stairs. A youngish, cropped-blond man in a blue guernsey and jeans appeared in the doorway. He had a silver earring. ‘Do you mind telling me what this is about?’

‘You are…?’

‘David Waller from upstairs.’

‘The one who works from home? As you see, Mr Waller, we’re police officers. Do you happen to know if anyone has used this flat in the last three weeks?’

Waller answered, ‘The tenants left ages ago.’

‘That isn’t what I’m asking. This doesn’t have the look of a flat that’s been empty for months. Where’s the dust?’

The young man gave a shrug. ‘It’s no concern of mine, is it?’

‘You seem to think it is, coming downstairs to check what we’re doing. I’m not blaming you. It’s the responsible thing to do. I just wonder if you’ve caught anyone else letting themselves in here.’

‘Squatters, you mean?’

‘This is potentially more serious than squatting,’ Diamond told him. ‘Two women were seen entering this building some two weeks ago. We’re anxious to question them both. Did vou see them?’

‘No.’

‘So they weren’t visiting you?’

Waller rolled his eyes as if to say it was obvious that he didn’t entertain women.

‘Nor me,’ said Mr Little, stepping from behind the door, where he must have been waiting unseen, but more out of discretion than deceit. ‘Do you think you might have come to the wrong house?’

Diamond concentrated on Waller. ‘You’re in here working most days, I gather. Are you sure you didn’t hear anyone downstairs?’

‘Have you ever lived in a well-built eighteenth-century building? I’m two floors up, aren’t I? It’s solidly constructed. I don’t hear much at all, except when Mr Little uses a hammer or some such. You could have a rave-up in here, and I don’t think the sound would travel up to me.’ He paused, fingering his earring. ‘But there was something that struck me as strange a couple of weeks ago. We put out our rubbish on Mondays. Black plastic sacks by the front door. Mine was out the night before, and on Monday after breakfast I found I had some other items to throw out, so I went downstairs intending to chuck it in the sack. I unfastened the sack, and much to my surprise it was practically full. I was certain I hadn’t filled it up. There were food cans and a cereal packet and some magazines that I knew hadn’t belonged to me. Very odd – because it was the only sack there. Mr Little hadn’t brought his downstairs at that stage.’

‘What magazines were they?’

‘That was what puzzled me,’ he said. ‘They were women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan and She and Harper’s & Queen. The current issues, too. Someone had gone to all the trouble of unfastening the wire tag on my sack, adding their rubbish to it and fastening it up again. I didn’t seriously think anyone else had moved in downstairs. I’m not sure what I thought, except it didn’t seem too important. But now that you mention this, I wonder.’

‘So do I,’ said Diamond. ‘But you don’t remember seeing anyone in the building?’

‘No. They’d have needed keys, wouldn’t they? One for the front door and one for the flat – unless they were experts at picking locks.’

‘Tell me about the people who were here before. Leo and, em…’

‘Fiona. They didn’t stay long. Leo was an ex-prisoner, I heard. He did eighteen months in Shepton Mallet for stealing underwear off washing-lines. Fiona worked for the Theatre Royal, didn’t she?’ he asked Little.

‘She was in the box office,’ the older man confirmed. ‘I hinted that I wouldn’t say no to some complimentary tickets, but it didn’t work.’

‘Would their keys have been returned to the agent when they gave up the flat?’

‘That’s the drill,’ said Waller.

‘Better Let, in Gay Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said they weren’t here long. Who were the previous tenants?’

‘An old couple: the Palmers. Mr Palmer died last year and his wife went into a retirement home. After that the place was redecorated and let to Leo and Fiona.’

‘What was their surname?’

‘Leo and Fiona? I didn’t enquire.’

‘Nor I,’ said Little.

‘Were they married?’

‘I never enquired. Did you?’ David Waller asked his neighbour.

‘They were only ever Leo and Fiona to me. Whether they were married is their business.’

Such is the innate respect of the British for their neighbours, Diamond mused. They give you their prison record straight off, but they won’t be drawn on their marital status.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and turned his back on them. He wanted another look at the bedroom. Waller started to follow until Diamond looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Do you mind? This is police business.’

The flat had been used by Rose and Doreen, he felt sure, but why, and for how long? The magazines in the rubbish-bag were about the only clue. If they suggested anything, it was that the women had spent time here and needed something to fend off boredom.

He went into the bedroom and began looking behind cupboards for objects that might have been accidentally left behind. The longer the women had remained, the better chance there was of finding some trace of their stay. They had gone to some trouble to leave the place as they had found it, but things occasionally fall out of sight.

Whilst he worked, pulling out pieces of furniture and feeling along the spaces behind, he pondered the reason why the woman who called herself Doreen Jenkins had gone to such trouble to annexe Rose and bring her here. The cover story had been that they were going back for at least one night to Bathford, where Doreen was staying with her partner Jerry. Patently this had been untrue. Doreen was not a visitor to Bath, here on a weekend break, as she had claimed. It was clear that she had planned all along to bring Rose to this address. Very likely she had brought in food and bedding in advance. To have set it all up, she must have obtained a set of keys, but who from? Mrs Palmer, the old widow, now in a retirement home? Leo, the ex-con? Fiona, former box-office person at the Theatre Royal? Or the agency, Better Let, in Gay Street?

His fingers came in contact with something small, hard and lozenge-shaped behind the wardrobe. ‘Help me, will you?’ he said.

The more burly of the constables tugged the massive piece of furniture away from the wall. Diamond retrieved his find, and held it in his palm. The lozenge-shaped object was a cough lozenge.

He let the two constables go back on patrol, saying he would walk back.

Alone, he searched for almost another hour before giving up. By then he had been through all the rooms and the finds amounted to the cough-sweet, two hairpins that could have belonged to anyone, a piece of screwed-up silver paper and threepence in coppers. Who said police work is rewarding?

David Waller had lingered in the hallway and was waiting for Diamond when he came up the basement stairs. He asked what was going to happen about the doors that had been forced.

Diamond said it would be up to Better Let. He would notify them.

Outside the house, he looked over the railings to see if there was a separate basement entrance. He hadn’t noticed one from inside. If there had ever been one, it was bricked over. The only means of entry was inside. The windows had an iron grille over them.

It was quiet on the streets in this upper part of the city. He supposed it would be around nine-thirty, maybe later. All the night life – and there wasn’t much in Bath – took place in the centre. Facing a twenty-minute walk to the nick, he stepped out briskly. One of Bath’s advantages was that you had the choice of different and interesting routes wherever you were heading. This time he decided to take in Gay Street.

This once-grand street built on a knee-straining slope has a strong literary tradition, home at some point to Jane Austen, Tobias Smollett and Mrs Piozzi, the friend of Dr Johnson. Diamond was on the trail of a less exalted connection. He had a recollection of some information that he scarcely dared hope to confirm: not literary, but commercial. First he had to find the premises of Better Let, the renting agency. It was on the right, almost opposite the George Street turn. A recently cleaned building. Some attempt had been made to display photos of flat interiors at the windows, but it was still essentially residential in appearance. All these houses were protected from the modernisers and developers.

The only other clue to its business use was a plaque on the wall by the door – something about rented accommodation. Peter Diamond didn’t bother to read it. His attention was wholly taken by the distinctly superior brass plaque above the Better Let notice:

Guy Treadwell ARIBA

Chartered Architect

Emma Treadwell FRICS

Chartered Surveyor

His memory was accurate, then. They did have an office in Gay Street, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t have been at a more interesting address.