Upon A Dark Night

Thirty

Peter Diamond was not built for jogging, nor fast walking, but he covered the distance to Manvers Street in a sensational time by his standards. His brain was getting through some work, too, putting together the case that buried Emma Treadwell up to her neck in guilt. The descriptions of ‘Doreen Jenkins’ from Ada, Imogen Starr and the taxi driver all matched Emma’s solid appearance and svelte grooming; and now he had the damning fact that the Treadwells’ office was in the same building as Better Let. How easy to help herself to the keys to vacant furnished flats.

He called Julie at home.

‘Can you get here fast? I’m about to nick the Treadwells. I want you on board.’

She didn’t take it in fully.

‘They’re the link to Rose.’ He went on to explain why in a few crisp sentences.

The dependable Julie said she would come directly.

What a wimp of a young man, Diamond thought. It was almost eleven when Guy Treadwell, in silk dressing-gown and slippers, opened the door and saw the outsize detective with Julie and two uniformed officers beside him. Treadwell’s hand went to his goatee beard and gripped it like an insecure child reaching for its mother.

‘What is this?’

‘Shall we discuss it inside?’

‘If it’s about the damage to the car, I think you want our neighbours, the Allardyces.’

‘No, Mr Treadwell, this concerns your wife. Is she at home?’

He stared. ‘You’d better come in.’

Diamond gestured to the two officers to wait in the hall. He and Julie followed Treadwell into the living-room.

‘Your wife,’ Diamond prompted him.

‘She isn’t here. I’m expecting her soon. She went out. Some meeting or other.’

Diamond turned immediately to Julie. ‘Tell the lads to move the cars away, or she’ll take fright and do a runner.’

Treadwell looked in danger of bursting blood vessels. ‘What on earth is going on?’

‘I have some questions for your wife, sir. And for you, too.’

‘About what?’

‘You might like to get some clothes on. I intend to do this at the police station. You’ll come voluntarily, won’t you?’

Horrified, Treadwell mouthed the words ‘police station’. ‘Are you seriously proposing to arrest us?’

‘Didn’t you hear? This will be voluntary on your part.’

‘We’ve done nothing unlawful.’

‘No problem, then. Shall we go upstairs? If you don’t mind, I’ll stay with you while you put your clothes on.’

Speechless, shaking his head, Treadwell led Diamond to the bathroom on the first floor where his day clothes were hanging behind the door. Diamond waited discreetly on the other side holding it open with his foot.

‘I don’t see the necessity of this,’ the voice in the bathroom started to protest more strongly. ‘Coming at night without warning. It’s like living in a fascist state.’

Diamond chose not to tangle with him over that. In a few minutes the young man came out fully attired. Some of his bluster had returned now that his bow-tie was back in place. ‘I can’t imagine what this pantomime is about, but I tell you, officer, you’re making a mistake you may regret. I need my glasses.’ With Diamond dogging him, he crossed the passage to the bedroom opposite, where a single bed and a single wardrobe made their own statement about the marriage. The half-glasses were on a chest of drawers. He looped the cord over his head and looked ready to play the professor in a college production of Pygmalion.

On the way downstairs Diamond asked him if his wife made a habit of coming in late.

He said defiantly, ‘There’s no law against it.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

‘We’re grown-ups. I don’t insist that she’s home by ten.’

‘Was she out last night and the night before?’

‘There’s plenty to do in Bath. Emma belongs to things, she has friends, she doesn’t want to sit at home each evening watching television.’

‘So the answer is “Yes”?’

‘Haven’t I made that clear?’A direct answer seemed impossible to achieve.

They joined Julie in the living-room. While they waited for Emma, Diamond interested himself in the glass-fronted antique bookcase. Two shelves were filled with bound volumes of the Bath Archaeological Society Journal.

‘You’re seriously into all this, Mr Treadwell?’

‘The books? I got those for next to nothing at a sale. I don’t have the time to be serious.’

‘I remember someone telling me you’re a whizz at digging up relics.’

‘They were exaggerating.’

‘I’m sure. We were talking about this good luck you seem to be favoured with. If the truth were told, you have to know a bit about the site before you know where to dig. Isn’t that so?’

‘It helps.’

‘It’s like the cards. They call you lucky, but you have to know how to play the hand as well.’

‘That is certainly true.’

He was clearly reassured by Diamond’s change of tone. Then they heard the front door being opened. Treadwell grasped the arms of his chair, but Diamond put out a restraining hand. Instead, he gestured to Julie, who stepped into the hall to explain to Emma Treadwell why there would be no need to take her coat off.

Emma reacted more coolly than her husband had. ‘It’s a little late in the evening for all this, isn’t it?’

She was still composed in the interview room at the police station. She had spent the evening, she claimed, with a woman friend. No, she could not possibly divulge the friend’s name. The poor woman was going through a personal crisis. To pass on her name to the police would be like a betrayal, certain to undo any good she had been able to achieve.

Not bad, young Emma, Diamond thought, not bad at all.

And Julie was thinking that this was the most casual Emma had looked. The baggy sweater and jeans, and the fine, dark hair looking as if it could do with a brushing, supported the story. You don’t get dolled up to visit a distressed friend.

Diamond asked, ‘Is your friend in trouble with the police?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘We only want her to vouch for you.’

She raked some wayward hair from her face, smiled, and said, ‘What am I supposed to have done? Pinched the Crown Jewels?’

‘We just want it confirmed where you were.’

‘At this moment, her situation matters more to me than my own.’

‘You’ve spent a lot of time with her lately, haven’t you?’

Emma had no way of knowing how much her husband had already divulged. Guy Treadwell was seated in another room with a copy of the Bath Chronicle, some lukewarm coffee in a paper cup and only a bored constable for company. ‘It’s confidential,’ she insisted.

‘This woman: is she local?’

‘Look, I don’t want to be obstructive, but haven’t I already made clear why I can’t tell you anything about her?’

Reasonable as she appeared to be, she was rapidly sacrificing any rapport with Diamond. What Ada called the lah-de-dah voice grated on him. No doubt she could keep stonewalling ad infinitum. He changed tack. ‘You have an office in Gay Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Above the agency that lets flats. Better Let, isn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘Obviously, you’re on good terms with the people in Better Let. Is there a business tie-in?’

‘Do you mean are we connected with them? No.’

‘You understand why I’m asking this?’

She said without even blinking, ‘No, I don’t.’

‘One of their flats, a furnished basement in St James’s Square, was used by two women a couple of weeks ago. An unofficial arrangement. The place is supposed to be vacant. The women must have acquired a set of keys. There was no break-in.’

The pause that followed didn’t appear to unnerve Emma Treadwell.

‘One of the women fitted your description,’ Diamond resumed. ‘The other is called Christine Gladstone, known to some people as Rose, or Rosamund Black. She was in the care of Avon Social Services until recently, suffering from some form of amnesia. Do you have any comment?’

She said as though the subject bored her, ‘I did see something in the local paper about a woman who lost her memory.’

‘She was seen in the company of this woman who’s a dead ringer for you. We have three independent witnesses. We can hold an identity parade in the morning if you insist on denying that it’s you.’

‘All right,’ she said, still without betraying the least concern in her still, brown eyes. ‘Let’s do that. May I go home now?’

As neat a hand-off as he’d met, and he was an ex-rugby forward. ‘You don’t seem to realise how serious this is.’ He found himself falling back on intimidation. ‘It isn’t just a matter of illegally occupying a flat. Christine Gladstone is under suspicion of murder – the killing of an old man – her own father – at Tormarton a few weeks ago. If you’ve been harbouring her, this makes you an accessory.’ He watched for her reaction and it was negligible.

‘So?’

‘If there’s another explanation, now is not a bad time to give it.’

Her response was to look up at the ceiling.

He said, ‘I can arrest you and detain you here until we get that identification.’

‘That sounds like a threat.’

He paused, and then tossed in casually, ‘Did you get the fuses you were looking for in Rossiter’s?’

She blinked twice. For a fleeting moment her guard seemed to be down. Then she recovered. ‘What did you say?’

‘The fuses. You were seen in Rossiter’s yesterday afternoon asking for electric fuses. They don’t sell them.’

She managed to smile. ‘I know that.’

‘You don’t deny you were there?’

She gave Julie a glance as if to invite contempt for this man’s stupid questions. ‘It must have been someone else, mustn’t it?’

But he was certain he’d hit the mark. ‘You were seen there by Ada Shaftsbury, who was in the same hostel as Christine Gladstone. She recognised you as the woman who presented herself at Harmer House and claimed she was the sister. I really think you ought to consider your position. I can bring Ada in tomorrow morning.’

That look of indifference remained, so he heaped on everything he had.

‘I can bring in Miss Starr, Christine’s social worker. I can bring in the taxi-driver you hired – the one who waited for you and then drove you both to St James’s Square, to the vacant flat that Better Let had the keys for. St James’s Square – that’s just behind the Royal Crescent, isn’t it? Five minutes from where you live?’

Unperturbed, she rose from the chair. ‘Let me know what time you want me tomorrow, then.’

‘You can’t leave.’

‘Why not?’

‘We haven’t finished.’

Still in control, she said, ‘The hell with that. I’m not sitting here any longer, being put through the hoop about things that don’t concern me. I know my rights, Mr Diamond. I’d like to go home now.’

She managed to seem convincing, whatever she had done.

He said – and it sounded like a delaying tactic even to him: ‘We haven’t talked to your husband yet.’

‘That’s your business.’

‘You wouldn’t want to leave without him.’

‘And that’s mine.’

The flip response revealed more than she intended.

‘Working together, as you do, you must see a lot of each other.’

‘So?’

‘Puts a strain on your relationship, I reckon.’

She gave him a glare. ‘You’re getting personal, aren’t you?’

‘From what he was saying, you don’t share many evenings out.’

Nettled now, she said, ‘Oh, for pity’s sake. I’ve heard enough of this garbage.’ She moved to the door, but the constable on duty barred her way. ‘What is this? Tell this woman to let me pass.’

Diamond said in his most reasonable manner, ‘Emma, you may think this is over, but it’s hardly begun. I’m going to have more questions for you presently, after we’ve spoken to your husband.’

‘You can’t keep me here against my will.’

‘We can if we arrest you.’

‘That would be ridiculous.’

He gave her one of his looks. ‘And that’s exactly what I’m about to do. Emma Treadwell, you are under arrest on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact of murder.’ He turned to Julie and asked her to speak the new-fangled version of the caution he’d never had the inclination to learn. She had it off pat, even if she spoke it through gritted teeth. He supposed she felt put upon.

But outside the interview room, Julie had more than that to take up with him. ‘You won’t like this, but I’m going to say it. I don’t think we can justify holding her.’

‘Have a care,’ he warned. ‘This has been a long day.’

‘It’s a house of cards, isn’t it? The case against Rose isn’t proved yet, and now you’re pulling this woman in as an accessory.’

‘She’s obstructing us, Julie.’

‘All you’ve got is the fact that she works above the agency.’

‘She matches the descriptions of Jenkins: mid to late twenties, sturdy build, with dark, long hair, posh voice.’

She sighed and said, ‘I could find you five hundred women like that in Bath.’

‘Carry on in this vein, Julie, and I may take you up on that.

We may need an identity parade. She’ll go on ducking and weaving until someone fingers her.’

‘Who would do that? Ada?’

‘The husband is worth trying first. He’s brittle.’

‘But how much does he know?’

‘Let’s see.’

In the second interview room, Guy Treadwell had discarded the newspaper and shredded the coffee cup into strips. He told Diamond as he entered, ‘You’ve got a damned nerve keeping me here like this.’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t even told me what it’s about. I have some rights, I believe.’

‘Let’s talk about your business as an architect,’ Diamond said.

‘My practice,’ he amended it.

‘You’re in Gay Street, above Better Let.’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re a renting agency, am I right?’

Treadwell’s eyes widened. He said with a note of relief, ‘Are they the problem?’

‘Is there independent access to your office, or do you go through their premises to get to yours?’

‘We share a staircase, that’s all.’

‘I expect you know the people reasonably well?’

‘We’re on friendly terms.’

‘Friendly enough to go into their office for a chat sometimes, coffee and biscuits, catch up on the gossip or whatever?’

‘Very occasionally, if something of mutual interest crops up, I may go down and speak to the manager.’

So pompous. He was half Diamond’s age, yet he made the big man feel like a kid out of school. ‘Good. You can help me, then. You know the layout. What do they do with their keys – the keys to the flats they have to let?’

‘They hang them up in a glass-fronted case attached to the end wall.’

‘Does it have a lock?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘I suppose they wouldn’t need to keep it locked while the office is occupied,’ Diamond mused. ‘And your wife – is she on good terms with the Better Let people?’

‘Reasonably good.’

‘Nips down for a chat with the girls in the office?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Emma is a Chartered Surveyor. She doesn’t fritter away her time with office girls.’

Diamond was forced to accept it, put like that. Trapped in his middle-aged perspective of the young, he’d lumped Mrs Treadwell with the legion of women from eighteen to thirty, forgetting that they had a hierarchy of their own. ‘Tell me something else,’ he started up again. ‘I came past your office building tonight. I noticed you have a security alarm.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sensible. I imagine that’s a shared facility.’

‘Yes.’

‘So how does it work? A control panel somewhere inside with a code number you enter if you want to override the system?’

Treadwell nodded.

‘Where’s the control panel housed? Not in the hall, I imagine?’

‘Inside the Better Let premises. I have a key to their office for access purposes.’

‘Exactly what I was about to ask. You keep the key where?’

‘On a ring, in my pocket.’ He took it out and showed Diamond.

‘And does your wife have a key to Better Let for the same reason?’

‘Yes, in case one of us is away. Those alarms have a habit of going off at the most inconvenient times.’

‘I know, sir,’ said Diamond, with a glance at Julie, cock-a-hoop that one of his theories had worked out. ‘There you are, you or Emma, working late, and the darned thing goes off for no reason, disturbing the pigeons and all the old ladies within earshot. But happily you’re safe in the knowledge that either one of you can deal with it. You can get into the Better Let office at times when they aren’t there.’

Guy Treadwell looked at him blankly.

Diamond explained about the basement flat in St James’s Square and the suspicion that Emma had taken the missing woman Christine Gladstone there. ‘She can let herself into Better Let whenever she wants. She could have picked up the keys to this empty flat and used it, you see.’

Treadwell shook his head. ‘Emma isn’t stupid, you know. She wouldn’t risk her career. She doesn’t even know this woman. You’re way off beam here.’

The force of the denial tested even Diamond’s confidence. Surely Treadwell was implicated if Emma was. What else had he thought she was doing on her evenings out? Highland dancing?

‘I’m keeping her here overnight for an identity parade tomorrow.’

‘Do you mean she’s under arrest?’

Diamond gave a nod. ‘She’ll be comfortable.’

‘This is absurd!’

‘We’re not talking parking offences, Guy. Christine Gladstone is wanted on suspicion of murder. We think your wife knows where she is.’

Treadwell looked away and said bleakly, ‘Are you going to lock me up as well?’

‘You’re free to go. We all need some sleep.’ Diamond leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms. ‘Talking of sleep, I noticed you don’t share a bed with your wife.’

He flushed crimson. ‘Bloody hell, what is this?’

‘Don’t share a bedroom, even.’

‘Our sleeping arrangements are nothing to do with the police.’

‘They are if they provide your wife with an alibi. She’s out most evenings. Gets home late. If she isn’t with Christine Gladstone, who is she with?’

Treadwell stared back, his face drained of colour.

‘I’m still trying to understand her behavior,’ Diamond continued in his reasonable tone. ‘Back at your house you told me she’s got this social life that takes her out in the evenings. Forgive me, but you don’t seem to be part of it. Who are these friends?’

Treadwell leaned forward over the table, covered his face, and said in a broken voice, ‘Sod you. Sod you.’

Diamond lifted an eyebrow at Julie, whose eyes were registering amazement. Then he dealt quite sensitively with Treadwell, before the self-pity turned more ugly. ‘It has to be faced, Guy. Not all marriages work. I’m no agony aunt, but maybe you both entered into it thinking you were an ideal team, the architect and the surveyor. Working out of the same office can be a joy when you’re man and wife, but it can also be a strain.’

Without moving his hands from his face, Treadwell said in a low, measured voice, as if he were speaking into a tape-recorder, ‘I knew Emma rejected me physically, but I never thought she was seeing a woman until you told me. I thought she was with men. And now I discover it’s this Gladstone woman and it’s tied in with murder. I’m gutted.’ He looked up, his eyes red-lidded. He hooked a finger behind the bow-tie and tugged the knot apart. ‘I don’t know what else you want from me.’

‘There is one thing: did you stick the knife into your neighbour’s car-tyre?’

His startled gaze flickered between Diamond and Julie. ‘God, no. What makes you think…’ he started to say, then answered his own question. ‘You thought I suspected William and Emma were at it. Well I did, to be honest. There were times when I noticed the pair of them looking at each other as if they knew things I didn’t. He’s more outgoing than I am, smiles a lot, so I couldn’t be sure. Emma laughs at his remarks as if he’s the wittiest man she ever met. And that irritates me. I was jealous, let’s face it. I once saw them by chance coming out of the Hat and Feather in London Street. And quite often she’d come in at the end of an evening and a few minutes later I’d hear the front door open quietly again and he’d creep upstairs to his flat. You can torture yourself imagining things. But I wouldn’t do anything so sneaky as to take it out on his car.’

‘Who did, then?’ said Diamond, more to himself than Treadwell.

‘Sally?’ suggested Julie.

Thirty-one

Treadwell had been silent during the short ride. Diamond left him locked in his own misery until the patrol car swung onto the cobbles in front of the Crescent, jerking them all out of semi-slumber.

‘In the morning we’ll put your wife on an identity parade. These things take hours to set up, so it can’t be much before noon. I advise you to get your solicitor there.’

Troubled questions welled up again. ‘What’s Emma really supposed to have done? You don’t think she was involved in the deaths of these people?’

‘Will you sleep any better if I give you an answer?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, unable to decipher such a Delphic utterance.

‘How’s your cooking?’

‘What?’

‘Cooking. Pretty basic, is it? Boiled eggs and baked potatoes?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Go out in the morning and buy a decent cookbook. She’s not coming home for a long time.’

The wretched man trudged towards the front door like the closing shot of a sombre East European film.

Inside the car, Diamond yawned. ‘My place next.’

Only it was not to be. Julie, seated in the back, with a better view of the house, had spotted something she did not understand.

‘Hold it’

‘What’s up?’

‘The door’s already open. Someone is there.’ She wound down the window for a better view. ‘I’m sure of it.’ Without another word, she got out and crossed the pavement. Guy Treadwell heard her, turned and stopped.

She ran straight past him. The figure she had glimpsed for a moment in the doorway had retreated inside. Shouting, ‘Stop. Police!’ she dashed in and across the hall.

Diamond, still in the car, roused from his torpor, swung open his door and followed.

Treadwell had halted uncertainly outside his house.

Diamond asked him, ‘Who was that?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Which way?’

‘Upstairs.’

Inside, the sounds of a struggle carried down from an upper floor. The place was in darkness. He fanned his hands across the wall for a light-switch and couldn’t find one. Groped his way to the banister rail and took the stairs in twos. The gasps from above sounded female in origin.

Blundered up two flights of stairs.

Moonlight from a window on the second-floor landing revealed two figures wrestling. There was no need to pile in. Julie had her adversary in an armlock. A young woman.

‘You want help?’ Diamond asked. ‘Cuffs?’

‘You don’t have any cuffs,’ Julie reminded him. She eased her grip slightly, allowing the woman to turn her head.

Sally Allardyce’s eyes gleamed in the faint white light, the more dramatically against her black skin. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown over a white nightdress. Her feet were bare.

‘Let her go, Julie.’

Released, Sally sat up and rubbed her left arm, moaning.

‘I called out,’ said Julie. ‘And you took off.’

‘I was scared,’ Sally said. ‘I saw the police car.’

Diamond loyally did his best to justify Julie’s conduct. ‘What were you doing, peeking round the front door?’

‘I thought it was my husband coming in.’

He hesitated, playing her answer over in his head. ‘He’s still out? Where?’

‘God knows.’ Her voice faltered. She swallowed hard, pulling the dressing-gown across her chest, getting command of herself. ‘I heard a car draw up outside. I wanted to catch them sneaking in together.’

‘Catch who?’

‘William and Emma.’ Speaking the names caused a torrent of resentment to pour from her. ‘I’m sick of all the deceit. I’ve known about it for months, the way they look at each other, the secret meetings, the evenings out together, the restaurants on his credit card statements, pretending it’s business when I know bloody well what it is. I want to catch them creeping in. Tonight I was sure. I waited up. I knew they were together.’

So it was cards on the table with a vengeance.

‘But he isn’t with Emma,’ Julie told her.

‘Don’t give me that. I know bloody well he is.’

‘You’re wrong, Sally. Emma came back a good two hours ago and we picked her up. She’s in a cell at the police station.’

Sally stared at her. ‘What for? But I heard her go out at seven, seven-fifteen, or something, and he was looking out of the window, waiting. He didn’t know I was watching. It was like a signal to him, like she was some bitch on heat. He was off down those stairs without even telling me he was going out.’ She paused, letting Julie’s statement sink in. ‘If he isn’t with her, where is he, then? If she’s locked up, where the hell is William? What’s he doing at this hour of the night?’

The same question was troubling Peter Diamond. He thought of a possible answer that would be no comfort to anyone. Instead he asked, ‘Someone slashed a tyre of your husband’s car yesterday night. Was that you?’

‘Me?’ She looked bewildered. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘You’ve just told us. You’re an angry young woman with a two-timing husband, that’s why. You walk to the station early on your way to work, when it’s still dark. You go through the Circus, where you know it’s parked. You could easily-’

‘I didn’t,’ she said in a tight, controlled voice. ‘I wouldn’t demean myself.’

Back in the car, he told the driver, ‘Change of plan. Switch on the beacon and back to the nick. Fast.’

Above the surge in acceleration, Julie said, ‘If this is to do with me-’

‘It isn’t.’

‘I know I was out of order to scrap with her.’

‘Will you listen, for Christ’s sake? Another killing may have taken place tonight.’

‘William Allardyce?’ Her voice rose high. ‘You think he’s been murdered?’

‘No chance. I think he’s the murderer.’

After a pause, to be sure that he was serious, she spoke her mind. ‘This is an about-turn, isn’t it? You’ve been telling all and sundry that Rose is the killer.’

‘Of the farmer, yes.’

‘Is she, then?’

The lack of contact between them had never been so apparent. ‘No, Rose is innocent’

‘After all that you’ve been saying?’

Unwisely, he was still trying to claim some credit. ‘The way I prefer to put it, Julie, is that I confirmed my earlier theory. Allardyce was our main suspect from the day we met him. Remember the missing shoe? You can’t have forgotten us watching his car for hours.’

She said, ‘We were investigating something else.’

‘Right. I hadn’t connected Hildegarde’s death with the farmer’s. This new information that Emma has been hiding Rose stands the whole thing on its head. William is our man.’

‘Both murders?’ she said in disbelief. ‘William Allardyce?’

‘Don’t tell me you like the man.’

‘That’s neither here nor there.’

‘But…?’

‘He was easier to deal with than the rest of them. He went out of his way to be pleasant.’

‘His job,’ Diamond cynically dismissed it. ‘PR.’ He swayed against her as they swung left into George Street. ‘God, don’t you hate being driven fast?’

The car’s speed didn’t bother Julie. Being crushed against the arm-rest didn’t either, but being crushed by force of personality was something else. she said nothing. She was waiting for him to make his case against Allardyce.

Instead, he asked, ‘Did you believe what Sally just told us?’

‘About what – her husband with Emma?’

‘The tyre, Julie. The slashed tyre.’

‘Yes, I believed her.’

He sighed. ‘So did I.’

‘What is it about the damned tyre?’ she asked. ‘You won’t let go.’

‘I won’t let go because it’s crucial to the whole shooting match.’ Competing with the engine, he explained, ‘We have two angry spouses, Guy Treadwell and Sally Allardyce: reason enough to sabotage the car. I put it to them both and they denied it, and we believe them, right?’ Julie nodded.

‘And there’s no earthly reason, is there, why Allardyce would have done the slashing himself and then reported it?’

‘I can’t think of one.’

‘So who else knew where the car was parked last night?’

She pondered the options. ‘Only Emma. But she’s supposed to be his lover. She had no reason either.’

‘Oh, but she had,’ he said. ‘She had a reason, Julie, a far better reason than anyone else.’

Emma was not sleeping. She was lying in the cell wrapped in the blanket, but that was to keep warm. When the door was unbolted, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

‘Straight answers, now,’ Diamond demanded. ‘Where did you take Rose?’

Her mouth tightened.

He told her, ‘William Allardyce isn’t home yet. We just came from there. His wife says he followed you when you went out this evening soon after seven.’

She drew in a sharp breath and still said nothing.

‘Emma, you don’t want another killing on your conscience. You’ve been protecting Rose. That’s why you disabled his car last night. Isn’t that so?’

She stared away at the blank wall, absorbing what he had said.

‘You put his car out of action to stop him following you. But he’s out there now and he came after you tonight. How long is it since you left Rose?’

Now, giving way to emotion at last, her face creased in anguish.

‘You loved the man,’ Diamond went on, still taking the tolerant line with her. ‘You had an affair and it went horribly wrong. He’s a killer twice over, your lover. He shot the old farmer, didn’t he? And he threw the woman off the roof of your house. You know he won’t stop at two. If Rose isn’t dead already, she will be shortly. Where is she, Emma? Where are you keeping Rose?’ He grasped her arms and practically shook her.

She turned her terrified eyes on him. ‘Prior Park Buildings.’

‘Where’s that? You’re coming with us.’

In the short drive across the Avon and out along Claverton Street, Diamond got some more things straight with Emma.

‘He was using you – you realise that? Putting you out front, getting the plans of Marton Farm through your official duties as a surveyor. No doubt you were excited by his stories of a fabulous hoard waiting to be dug up. But did you know he was willing to kill for it?’

She was ready to talk now that she understood the danger Rose was in. ‘William was jealous of Guy. He was so reasonable in every other way,’ she said in a voice drained of all emotion. ‘Totally charming and civilised, much more in control than my husband.’

‘You say “in every other way”.’

‘He had this obsession – there’s no other word for it-with beating Guy at his own game. Guy seems to lead a charmed life. You’ve heard us talk about his good luck, and it’s true. Well, his hobby is archaeology.’

‘William wanted to beat him at that?’

She nodded. ‘By making a sensational find. He read about an Anglo-Saxon sword dug up during the war.’

‘The Tormarton Seax.’

Diamond’s status improved several notches. she said after a surprised interval, ‘That’s right.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, you seem to know about it. The family have never allowed anyone onto the land. Because of the war and the dog-in-the-manger attitude of the family, nothing actually happened after the sword was found. William researched the site. He sent me to the County Planning Office – which, of course, I’m familiar with – to copy maps of local burial sites. He read everything he could about the Anglo-Saxons and decided there was a real chance that other objects were waiting to be dug up. He believed it was worth buying the farm to make a search.’

‘Buying it? He was as confident as that?’

‘Massively confident.’

‘And you encouraged him?’

‘He didn’t need encouraging.’ She sighed and coloured a little. ‘It was the sure way of pleasing him.’

‘So what happened? He offered to buy the land?’

‘At a fair price. But old Mr Gladstone wouldn’t sell.’

‘One stubborn old farmer stood in his way. Wouldn’t even let you run a metal-detector over it.’

‘That wasn’t suggested. William was careful never to mention why he was interested in the farm. He said to me – and I think he was right – that any talk of possible finds would wreck the deal for ever.’

‘So when he couldn’t acquire the land by lawful means, he shot the old man.’

She was quick to close him down. ‘It wasn’t so crude as that. William visited the farm and made a good offer that Mr Gladstone turned down. He refused to leave the cottage. He’d been born there and he would die there, he said.’

‘And he did.’

She ignored that observation. ‘Then, William went back with a better idea. He would buy the land and the cottage on the understanding that Mr Gladstone would remain in the cottage as tenant – and for no rent. And William would pay for renovations as well. But it just seemed to inflame the old man.’

‘When was this?’

‘The Friday evening before…’

‘Before the body was found? And you were there?’

To confirm this could easily make her an accessory to murder, but she answered without hesitation, ‘Yes. The old man became angry. He ordered us out. He grabbed his shotgun off the wall and started waving it about really dangerously. I was terrified. William wrestled the gun away, holding it by the barrel. Mr Gladstone came at him and 312 William swung the gun at him. The heavy part you hold – what do you call it?’

‘The stock.’

‘Yes. The stock crashed against his head and he fell. I was appalled. It all happened so suddenly, and there he was lying on the floor. William was calm. He knelt beside him and tried to feel for a pulse to see if he was still alive. I was in a terrible state by then and he sent me out to the car. I waited there a long time, praying and praying that he wasn’t dead. Then to my absolute horror, I heard a shot. Terrible. I ran back and looked through the window. It was the worst moment of my life. The sight of that old man, what was left of him, propped in the chair.’

‘Did you go in?’

‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘What did William tell you?’

‘That he’d made it look like a suicide. The only thing to do, he said, because the old man was dead from the blow to his head. He sat the body in the armchair and propped the gun under the chin and fired. It caused a massive injury to the head, so much that you wouldn’t have known he’d been hit previously.’

‘He was right about that.’

Better Let would have described the street as a superior terrace dating from the 1820s in a secluded location south-east of the city, set back from Prior Park Road by steeply banked gardens and the novel feature of a shallow canal. They left the car in Prior Park Road and approached the house by the path skirting the canal.

Emma, handcuffed, remained in the car, guarded by the driver. She had pointed out the house, and there was no reason to think she was bluffing. She wanted Rose to survive. Say what you like about Emma, in all her actions over the past days, Rose’s safety had been paramount.

Two response cars had been ordered to the scene, bringing six uniformed officers – not bad, Diamond reckoned, for the small hours of the morning. Bath was not geared up to night emergencies.

Three men went to the garden at the rear of the house to cover a possible escape through the alley.

No lights were on in the house Emma had named. But they were turned on next door, and the curtains twitched. ‘The Neighbourhood Watch strikes again,’ muttered Diamond, rolling his eyes.

The curtains had not been drawn in the ground floor flat where Rose was supposedly in hiding. He shone a torch through the window. Nothing moved inside.

Over the personal radio, the officers at the back reported that no one was visible in either of the two rooms at the rear.

‘We’ll go in, then.’

They forced the front door and made a search. Signs of recent occupation encouraged them, a half-eaten chicken sandwich in the kitchen that was still soft and moist to the touch and a faintly warm teapot. But no one was there. No signs of a scuffle, even.

‘Where’s he taken her?’ said Julie.

‘Anywhere from Pulteney Weir to Clifton Suspension Bridge. Fake suicides are his m.o.’ He returned to the car and contacted headquarters. They already had a call out on Allardyce’s BMW. No one had sighted it.

He got into the back seat beside Emma. ‘You know where he must have taken her, don’t you?’

She shook her head.

‘I think you do. We need your help, Emma, if we’re going to save Rose’s life.’

She cried out in anguish, ‘I’d tell you if I knew. I’m on her side. God, I’ve spent the last two weeks hiding her from him.’

‘What state is she in mentally? Is her memory back?’

‘Hardly at all. I’ve told her some things I thought she should know. She knows what happened to her father, but I don’t think she remembers finding him.’

‘She found him dead?’

‘A couple of days later, yes.’

‘So she knows her father was murdered?’

‘No. I simply said he was found dead with a shotgun beside him. I was trying to be truthful without saying everything.’

‘She still thinks you’re her stepsister?’

‘Yes.’

‘And William. She has no suspicion that he killed her father?’

‘She doesn’t know who William is. I told her a little about the farm being a possible Anglo-Saxon site. I said the man who tried to force her into the car the other day must be a treasure-hunter who thinks she knows about precious objects her father may have unearthed.’

‘And that was Allardyce, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was driving?’ Julie asked.

‘I was.’

‘You?’ said Diamond.

‘Wearing a baseball hat.’

‘Nobody got a look at the driver,’ said Julie.

‘There’s something wrong here,’ Diamond said. ‘That car wasn’t the BMW Allardyce uses. It was a red Toyota according to Ada.’

‘A Toyota Previa. It took a dent in the side from Ada. He had to get it off the road until it was repaired, so he rented the BMW, until yesterday, when he got his regular car back,’ Emma said.

He hesitated. ‘You’re telling me the BMW isn’t his damned car? Julie, we’re looking for the wrong motor. What’s the Toyota’s number?’

Emma told him and he radioed central communications.

He turned back to her. ‘You say she doesn’t know who William is, but she knows a man is pursuing her. She knows he’s dangerous.’

‘He terrifies her.’

He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. The tension was getting to him. He was striving to second-guess the outcome of this meeting between the terrified young woman and the double murderer. ‘If she isn’t killed straight off – and I don’t think she has been, because he’ll want to dress it up as a suicide – her only chance is to bluff him. Does she have the self-control to do it?’

He’d been speaking his thoughts and he didn’t expect an answer, but Emma said, ‘To do what?’

‘You say he’s obsessed with the idea of finding a hoard. You mean really obsessed?’

‘It’s taken over his life.’

‘Does Rose know he’s so fanatical?’

‘She’s in no doubt about that. I had to get her to understand why I was trying to protect her.’

Diamond leaned forward and grasped the driver’s shoulder. ‘Tormarton. We’re going up to the farm.’ He lowered the window and shouted to Julie to get in. In seconds, all three cars were moving at speed in convoy, with beacons flashing, up Pulteney Road, heading north.

‘She’s bright enough to have thought of it, but is she cool enough?’ he said to no one in particular.

Julie turned to look at him.

He said, ‘The surefire way to buy time from a killer like this is to offer him the thing he craves – an Anglo-Saxon hoard. She tells him what? What would I tell him? What would either of you tell him in desperation? She bluffs. She says it’s a family secret that the stuff was dug up years ago and stored away in the house. Yes, inside the house. She’s willing to show him. It’s all his if he’ll spare her life.’

Julie digested this. ‘It’s asking a lot – for her to think up a story as good that.’

‘If she hasn’t come up with something, we might as well get some sleep and drag the river in the morning.’

Thirty-two

With Emma, the softly-softly approach seemed to be the right one. Diamond spoke with more steadiness than he felt whilst being driven through the cluttered streets of Bath at a speed appropriate to a three-lane motorway.

‘This help you’re giving us won’t be forgotten.’

She didn’t respond.

It was crucial to discover the likely behaviour of the killer they hoped to find at Tormarton.

‘Emma, we’re trying to save Rose’s life. We need to know more about his dealings with her. When did he first meet her?’

‘When she turned up at the farm on the Sunday afternoon.’

He paused, trying to follow the sequence of events. ‘Let me get this straight. You told me old Mr Gladstone was killed on the Friday evening. Now you’re talking about Sunday afternoon?’

She nodded. ‘A couple of days after.’

‘You say William went back to the farm?’

‘He went back on the Saturday and the Sunday.’

‘What for?’

‘To go over the ground. Use the metal detector. Dig for gold or silver or whatever is buried there.’

He breathed out audibly, vibrating his lips. ‘With the old man lying dead in the house? He was taking one hell of a risk.’

Emma, beside him, spread her hands. ‘That’s how fixated he is. I told you it’s an obsession. There’s no other word for it.’

‘The chance to get rich quick? Does he have money problems?’

‘They live beyond their means, but it’s more personal than that. He’s desperate to prove something.’

‘To you?’

‘To himself. Oh, he started out wanting to impress me, to show me that he’s a winner, much smarter than Guy.’

‘By stealing you from your husband?’

She was silent a moment. ‘I haven’t thought of it like that. I was carried along by the passion he put into it. Stupidly, I thought he was doing it all for me. A treasure hunt, with just the two of us sharing a secret. Flattered, yes. Any woman would be, to have a man care so much about her. I let him make love to me. But it’s been brought home to me that I’m of secondary importance. He’ll carry on regardless of anything I say.’

‘An old-fashioned lust for gold?’

She shook her head. ‘It goes much deeper with William. It’s about his self-esteem. He has this terrific opinion of himself and very little to show for it. His public relations business is going nowhere. If he could discover a new planet, or an unknown element, and have his name on it, he would. He’s sure he’s on the brink of a brilliant discovery. You have to know someone as single-minded as that. He thinks about nothing else but the finds he is going to make at that site. With the old man dead, he could get onto the land at last and use his metal detector. That’s how blinkered he is.’

Diamond understood. It was the kind of all-or-nothing motive that made a man into a hero, or a crook. Certain individuals had this supreme belief in themselves that in the right conditions produced great art, huge discoveries and inspiring leadership. But the same self-importance spawned dictators and murderers.

‘So he spent the weekend at the farm, searching,’ he said. ‘Worth the risk, I suppose. It could have been weeks before anyone else turned up there. Old Gladstone didn’t welcome visitors.’

‘Believe me,’ Emma stressed, ‘if it had been Queen Square in the centre of Bath, he would still have been there with his metal detector.’

‘So? Any joy? We saw the places where he dug.’

‘Only bits of scrap.’

‘What a let-down.’

‘He won’t accept that nothing is there. He still believes in this hoard.’

‘That’s the hope we’re hanging onto,’ said Diamond. ‘You were starting to tell me about that afternoon when Rose turned up at the farm.’

‘I’ve only heard William’s side of it. Rose doesn’t remember.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘He told me time was getting on and he’d just about decided to stop for the day, when he heard a car come up the lane. It was a taxi, and it stopped in the yard, right beside William’s parked car. William took cover behind the chicken house. He heard someone get out, and the taxi driving off.’

‘This was Rose?’

‘Yes. William saw this woman arrive and he didn’t know who she was, or what to do. He stayed hidden while she walked up to the cottage and went in.’

‘It was open?’

Julie, in the front passenger seat, turned and reminded him, ‘It doesn’t lock automatically when you close it. There’s a key that works from both sides.’

‘I get you,’ he said. ‘If it had been locked on the outside, then the suicide theory would have looked very dodgy indeed. So she went in.’

Julie put in, ‘Which is why two of her hairs were found at the scene.’

He didn’t like being reminded of his earlier theory. Ignoring that, he asked Emma, ‘What did Allardyce do?’

‘His first impulse was to run back to his car and drive off. But he had his metal detector lying on the ground where he’d left it and he went to pick it up and everything happened too quickly. She came rushing out in a state of hysteria. She saw William and ran towards him, for help, I suppose. She was gibbering, unable to speak. She must have had the most horrendous shock you can imagine, finding her own father like that. He’d been dead for two days. Enough-’

‘To blow her mind?’

Emma returned Diamond’s gaze. ‘That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

‘Something shut down in her brain, for sure.’

‘William didn’t know what to do with this frantic woman. But she calmed down quite quickly, and he tried talking to her, yet still couldn’t get any sense out of her. Couldn’t even get eye contact. He asked who she was, and where she came from, and she just stared ahead, like a zombie, he said. Obviously she was in deep shock at finding the body. That suited William. His best plan was to get her away from the farm while she was still confused. So he put her in the car and drove off.’

‘And shoved her out a couple of miles down the road.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Letting her take her chance with the traffic on the A46. Charming. What happened next? You read in the paper that she survived and was the mystery woman who lost her memory, right?’

‘Yes. William saw her picture. He was really alarmed. The report said she’d recovered her power of speech. He didn’t know if she remembered enough to give the police a description of him, or lead them to the farm. People might lose their memory for a short time, but they usually get it back.’

‘So he made the botched attempt to snatch her outside Harmer House – with you at the wheel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Using his red Toyota. If Ada hadn’t dented it, we would have made the connection sooner, wouldn’t we, Julie?’

Julie didn’t look round, or speak.

He turned back to Emma. ‘You drove the car knowing what you’d got yourself into.’

‘No.’ She was adamant. ‘In my worst nightmare I didn’t think Rose would come to any harm. I thought he wanted to talk to her, give her some story that would reassure her and keep her quiet. I was so upset about what had happened already that I didn’t think it through. It was only after he was so violent trying to get her in the car that I knew what danger she was in.’

‘You feared for her life.’

‘And I still do. I fear for it now.’

As if he were tuned in on the radio, the driver in the police car ahead switched on his siren. With blue lights flashing, the convoy of three slipped past the line of traffic at the junction of the London Road with the A46, jumped the traffic lights and started the long climb up Nimlet Hill.

Diamond had to wait for the siren to stop before he picked up the thread. ‘You meant to stop him from harming her. You say you were too upset to think straight, but you must have got your thoughts in order.’

‘I had to.’

‘Your plan was more subtle than his, and it worked. You went to Avon Social Services and told them you were Rose’s stepsister. They were taken in because you had those photos. Where did the pictures come from? Rose’s handbag, I suppose.’

Emma nodded. ‘The bag was in the car the evening he drove her away from the farm. That’s how we found out who she is. Her name, Christine Gladstone, was on a chequebook and the credit cards. William asked me to get rid of it for him. He kept involving me at each stage. Going through the bag, I found the pictures and kept them. Old photos are precious. Everything else is at the bottom of the river.’

‘You won over the social worker with those pictures. She was the crucial person.’

‘Yes. The others were uneasy, I could see, but they weren’t taking the decision.’

‘So you had to hide her away. You nicked a set of keys from Better Let and took her to the basement flat in St James’s Square. But you moved her soon after. Why?’

‘William spotted her in the street.’

He said in surprise, ‘You let her out?’

‘I wasn’t capable of keeping her hidden all the time. She thought I was family and she co-operated. It was just bad luck that William saw her. I suppose it was good luck that he didn’t see me with her. Anyway, he followed her to St James’s Square. He appeared at the window. Of course Rose recognised him as the man who’d tried to snatch her outside Harmer House. She heard someone let him into the house and she panicked. Climbed out of the kitchen window at the back. Those houses are built on a steep gradient and it was a long drop, longer than she expected in the dark. When I found her next morning, she’d spent the night lying in pain in the yard. I had to get her to hospital.’

‘Hospital?’ His voice piped high. ‘Are you saying she’s injured?’

‘A broken ankle.’

‘That’s all we need.’

Julie said, ‘In plaster?’

‘Yes.’

All that softly-softly stuff went out of the window. Diamond clenched a fist and brought it down hard on his thigh. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re telling us she’s immobile?’

‘She has crutches.’

‘Terrific.’

He was temporarily lost for words, so it was Julie who asked, ‘Didn’t the nurses find out who she is?’

‘They’re terribly overstretched. In the Triage Room all they wanted was her name and date of birth. I gave it.’

‘Yes, but in Casualty Reception…?’ Julie knew the procedures at the RUH.

‘I told them we were sisters visiting Bath and made up an address and the name of a GP in Hounslow and they were satisfied.’

‘Rose didn’t speak up?’ said Julie.

‘She didn’t know any different.’

‘They must have asked how the accident happened.’

‘I told the truth, or most of it. A fall from a window. I said she was trying to hide from someone and underestimated the drop. Accidents often sound stupid when they have to be explained.’

‘And Rose went along with this?’

‘She was feeling pretty bad at the time, and was happy for me to do the talking.’

‘She trusted you?’

‘I hadn’t been unpleasant to her. What she couldn’t understand was why we didn’t go back directly to West London, where I said we lived. I’d made up a story about being on holiday with my partner and wanting to spend a few more days in Bath for his sake.’

Diamond chipped in again, needing to press on urgently. Already they had reached the approach to Dyrham. ‘So after she had the foot plastered, you moved her to Prior Park Buildings, to another furnished flat. What about Allardyce? At which point did he start to suspect you were double-crossing him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Emma told him. ‘He heard from somewhere that her family had collected her and she didn’t remember anything and at first he was relieved. I think it must have been the evening of the party when he got suspicious.’

‘Suspicious! He killed the German girl.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

‘That party. Was it really got up that night as you told me, with no planning?’

‘It was just as we told you. Thanks to Guy’s lucky streak we won a small prize on the lottery and our house was taken over. I was glad of the distraction, to tell you the truth. The tensions had been pretty bad in the house.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t tell you much about the poor girl who was killed except that she was behaving strangely, very inquisitive, looking into store cupboards and trying to get into the basement at one point.’

‘And the attic,’ Diamond enlightened her. He had long since worked out what Hildegarde had been up to that night. ‘She was looking for Rose. She didn’t speak much English, but she got about, and she was sharp-eyed. She was a witness to the kidnap attempt outside Harmer House. She tried to report it to us.’

Emma’s eyes registered surprise.

‘We got a translation and filed the statement,’ he said. ‘Put it down as a scuffle in the street, unfortunately. We had the same story from Ada. They both lived in the hostel.’

‘Oh.’

‘Later, Hildegarde thought she recognised you when you came to the hostel to collect Rose. Her suspicions were fuelled, but she didn’t have enough English to discuss it with Ada, who was the obvious person to talk to. Instead, she made the fatal mistake of doing some investigating of her own. She followed you that Saturday night when you met in the Grapes. She was a regular there, and she saw you and the others come in. She was positive she knew you this time, because Allardyce was with you. She was right about so much, but wrong in one crucial matter. She suspected you were keeping Rose at the Royal Crescent, and the chance of getting into your house was too good to miss.’

With an insight that impressed even Julie, he was drawing together strands of the case she had not thought about until now.

‘At the party, she checked everywhere in the house she could imagine as a possible place where Rose was kept and finally she was left with the attic room. Allardyce had noticed her prowling around. He was worried about this woman’s strange behaviour. He noticed her looking at him suspiciously. He may have seen her previously, tracking his movements out on the streets of Bath. So when she went through the bedroom and up the stairs to the attic, he followed. Hildegarde heard him and opened the window and climbed out onto the roof. Fatal. He saw his chance to be rid of her. Pushed her off. There must have been a struggle, because one of her shoes came off – something Allardyce didn’t know until the body was found by the paper-boy. The shoe was still up on the roof. Too late to place it beside the body, he disposed of it. Only he knows where. I don’t suppose we’ll find it.’

Julie explained, ‘He had to get rid of it after handling it. Forensic traces.’

Diamond asked Emma, ‘Did he tell you any of this?’

She shook her head, visibly shaken at hearing her lover’s callous conduct set out in full.

Pitying her, he said, ‘Don’t be in any doubt. Your efforts to hide Rose saved her life.’

But she shook her head. ‘He’ll have killed her by now.’

They had reached the Tormarton interchange. The convoy crossed above the motorway and took the right turn that would bring them north of the village and out another mile to the Gladstone farm.

He spoke over the radio to the other cars. This was a covert operation, he informed them. They were to switch off the beacon lights immediately. They would park on the main road opposite the farm and cut their lights, and not under any circumstances drive up the track. All personnel would assemble at the near end of the track leading to the farmhouse and await instructions.

‘And now pray to God our hunch is right,’ he told Julie.

The first car drew up as instructed. Diamond ordered his own driver to stop in a position that sealed the lane. He had Emma moved to one of the other vehicles at the roadside. An officer had to be spared to guard her. That left seven, including Julie and himself.

In a subdued voice, he issued orders. They would know at once, he said, if the suspect was present in the farmhouse because his car, a red Toyota Previa, must be in the yard. If so, it was to be disabled as a precaution, and one of the officers was deputed to do this. The others would surround the house. The suspect, Diamond went on, was not known to possess a firearm, but extreme care was to be taken. This was a potential hostage situation, complicated because the hostage was a woman whose leg was in plaster.

They started along the mud track. Diamond had not gone more than a few steps when he spread his arms to signal a halt. His heart pumped harder. The Toyota was standing, as he had predicted, in the yard in front of the farmhouse.

What he had failed to predict was that the engine roared, the lights came on full beam and the car raced towards them.

Thirty-three

Ever since she fell from the kitchen window in the St James’s Square basement and broke her ankle, Rose had been shackled, physically and mentally. The plaster was an obvious constraint; so, also, was her flawed relationship with Doreen. She was not deceived. Yes, her memory had stalled, but not her logic. She knew for certain that the whole truth about her life was being denied to her. There were times when Doreen refused point-blank to answer questions. Her actions – the daily shopping, the care for her comfort and safety – were decent, sisterly, genuine – but whenever Rose asked for more freedom, more space, Doreen was rigid and unforthcoming. She was not malicious; Rose would have detected that. But the trust was absent.

Until this evening.

Doreen’s entire manner had been different when she had arrived in the flat in Prior Park Buildings. Usually so well-defended, she seemed uneasy, as if her strength were undermined. When Rose had asked for the umpteenth time about her family, Doreen had spilled it out, confiding astonishing things to her. The truth was deeply distressing, so painful that she could appreciate why Doreen had delayed discussing it with her. Her father, an elderly farmer living alone, had recently been found dead with half his head blown away by a shotgun. Rose had visited the farm expecting to find him alive. The dreadful scene had affected her brain. In effect, she was denying her own existence to shut out the horror.

She heard all this with a sense that it must be true, but still without remembering any of it. She had no recollection of being at the farm, or walking in on the bloodbath within, or what happened after. She was left emotionally drained.

After a while, Doreen had told her other things. She had talked of the family’s unusual claim to fame, her grandfather’s discovery of the Tormarton Seax during the war. Two generations of Gladstones had resisted all requests to excavate the ground. They wanted only to be left alone to earn their living from farming. But now her father was dead, there was renewed interest in the site, even rumours that other objects had been recovered by the family. The smiling man who had tried to abduct her was almost certainly acting on the rumours.

Rose was white-knuckled thinking about that evil predator. Thank God Doreen had moved her to another flat. This place seemed even more tucked away than St James’s Square. Unless you knew it was here, masked by trees and up the steps from Prior Park Road, you would probably go straight past.

Doreen had stayed with her until late. She left about ten-thirty. Afterwards, horrid images churned in Rose’s brain and she knew she would not sleep. For distraction, she switched on the TV. An old black and white film was on, with James Mason looking incredibly boyish as an Irish gunman on the run from the police. She watched it intermittently while clearing the table. Everything she did was slowed by the crutches, but she liked to be occupied, and she had insisted Doreen left the things for her to carry out.

On about the fourth journey between kitchen and sitting-room she happened to notice two slips of paper lying on the armchair. They must have fallen out of Doreen’s pocket when she took out a tissue. At a glance they were only shop receipts. She left them there; when you depend on crutches, there is a limit to the number of things you stoop to pick up.

She finished washing up and went back to the armchair. The film was reaching a climax. The girlfriend had found James Mason in the snow surrounded by armed police. She would surely draw their gunfire on to both of them.

Involved in the drama, Rose gripped the underside of her thigh and her hand came into contact with one of those scraps of paper. When the film ended, Doreen’s receipts were lying in small pieces in her lap. While watching the last tragic scene she must have been shredding them. Stupid.

They didn’t belong to her. They might have been needed for some reason.

To make sure they were only receipts, she spread the pieces on the table and put them together, jigsaw fashion. Astra Taxis, the first said, From: Bath Stn. To: St Jas Squ. + waiting, with thanks £30. She had seen the transaction herself, watched the receipt being handed across after the drive from Harmer House to St James’s Square. Her short-term memory couldn’t be faulted.

The other was a credit-card slip for the lunch at Jolly’s. Doreen had settled that one at the till.

She stared at the name.

But it ought to read Doreen Jenkins.

The date was the correct one. Two lunches, it said. The name of the card-holder was Mrs Emma Treadwell.

Emma?

Frowning, she stared at the name for some time. There was only one conclusion. Her so-called stepsister was caught out. Here was proof that she had been lying about her real identity.

She was crushed by the betrayal. If Doreen concealed her own name, could anything she said be trusted? The story about her father and his horrible death could be pure fabrication, as could the stuff about the Tormarton Seax.

Soon after, the doorbell rang.

Her first thought was that Doreen must have come back. No one else knew who was staying here. That would be it: she had just discovered she’d mislaid the receipts and she was back in a panic.

She called out, ‘Coming,’ and hastily scooped up the bits of paper and put them in her own pocket, hoisted herself up and on to the crutches and picked her way across the floor to the hall.

There was no second ring. She knows I’m slow, she thought. She unfastened the door and opened it the few inches the safety chain allowed.

A mistake.

A metal-cutter closed on the safety-chain and severed it. The door swung open, practically knocking her down, and Smiling Face walked into the flat and slammed the door closed.

She gripped the crutches, terrified.

‘Move,’ he ordered, pointing to the armchair.

She hobbled across the room. She was turning to make the awkward manoeuvre of lowering herself when he grabbed one of the crutches away and pushed her in the chest, slamming her into the chair. He kicked the other crutch out of her reach.

As if she were no longer there, he walked through and checked the kitchen and the bedroom. Satisfied, he sat opposite her, resting a brown paper carrier on his knees. He was in a suede jacket, white sweater and black jeans.

In a shaky voice she asked him what he wanted.

‘You don’t know?’ It was an educated voice, no more comforting for that. His mouth curved in that crocodile smile. ‘Come now, Miss Gladstone, you’re not stupid. You know you’ve got to be dealt with, and it needn’t hurt. You swallow the sleeping tablets I give you, helped down with excellent cognac, which I also happen to have in my bag, and you don’t wake up. It’s the civilised way to go, and it works.’

‘You want to kill me?’

‘Not at all.’ The smile widened. ‘I want you to commit suicide.’ From the carrier he produced some cheap plastic gloves, the sort garages provide free at the pumps, and put them on. ‘Oh, and so that no one is in any doubt, I’ll fix a new safety-chain before I leave, reassuring anyone with a suspicious mind that you must have been alone here.’

Rose had not listened to any of it.

He took out and placed on the low table between them a silver flask and a brown bottle full of prescription capsules. ‘Fifteen should do it. Twenty will make certain.’

Terrified as she was, her brain went into overdrive. This man would snuff out her life unless she found some way of outwitting him.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘What have I done, that you want to kill me?’

He unscrewed the bottle and tipped some capsules on to the table. ‘Take a few.’

If anything Doreen had said could be believed, the man was a treasure-hunter. She knew nothing else about him, so she would have to gamble on its being true.

She said, ‘It’s revenge, isn’t it?’

‘For what?’

She held his glance and began to unfold a story worthy of Scheherazade. ‘Because you didn’t find the necklace and the other things that belong to my family.’

He gazed at her blankly, unconvinced. ‘Just what are you wittering on about?’

‘Certain objects my father dug up years ago.’

His brown eyes were giving away more than he intended. ‘You’re bluffing. There’s no record of anything being found there after 1943.’

He was a circling vulture.

‘There wouldn’t be,’ Rose said, trying to sound calm, ‘because Dad didn’t report it. He didn’t want some coroner declaring them as treasure-trove and belonging to the nation. My grandfather made that mistake with his find.’

‘Nice try,’ he said, getting up. ‘I don’t buy it. I’ll fetch you a glass from the kitchen.’

Elaborating wildly, she called out, ‘I’ve tried on the necklace. Dad re-strung the gold beads and the garnets himself. The original string rotted in the soil.’

Smiling Face was silent for some time.

When he returned from the kitchen he was holding a tumbler. ‘It isn’t the right shape for a decent cognac, but it will have to do. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You don’t remember a damned thing about your father, let alone any gold objects, so swallow these and give us both a break.’ He took the cap off the flask and poured some brandy.

Her brain grappled with the complexities. In this poker game her life was the stake and the cards had been dealt to her by Doreen, an impostor. In spite of the denials, the man had appeared at first to be interested. She had no choice but to play on as if she held a winning hand.

‘Don’t you want to know why I came down here to visit my father?’ Without giving him time to respond she answered her own question. ‘Dad invited me to collect the hoard, as he called it. He wrote to say it would be safer with me. People had visited him, wanting to excavate. If he agreed, he said, they’d find nothing and there was a danger they would turn nasty. He felt vulnerable, being elderly. He was afraid they would break into the house.’ While she was speaking, her eyes read every muscle movement across his face. She was encouraged to add, ‘He said the coins would bring me a steady income sold in small amounts and to different collectors.’

The mention of coins drew a better result than the necklace had. His grin lost a little of its upward curve. ‘What coins?’

‘The ones he dug up.’

‘You mean old coins?’

‘I don’t know how old they are. Silver and gold mostly. They must have been in a pot originally, because they were mingled with tiny fragments of clay.’

His facade was crumbling, even if he tried to sound sceptical. ‘And where are these fabulous coins kept now? In a bank vault?’

‘No. He wouldn’t trust a bank. They’re in the farmhouse.’

‘Oh, yes? Where precisely?’

If she named a hiding-place, he wouldn’t be able to resist checking. He might disbelieve her, but he was too committed to let any chance slip by, however remote. The challenge was to keep him interested without telling him enough to let him believe he could go alone. ‘He didn’t tell me exactly where.’

He was contemptuous. ‘Convenient.’

‘But there can’t be more than four or five places they could be. I knew the farmhouse as a child.’

‘Now you’re lying through your teeth,’ he said. ‘It’s common knowledge that your memory is gone. You know sweet FA about what happened when you were a kid.’

Rose harangued him with the force of Joan of Arc in front of her accusers. ‘Wrong. It came back a couple of nights ago. I woke up in the small hours and remembered who I am and everything about me.’A huge claim that she would find impossible to justify if put to the test, but how much did Smiling Face know of her life? She started talking at the rhythm of a sewing machine, stitching together a patchwork of what Doreen had told her and what sprang to mind. ‘I’m twenty-eight, and I live in Hounslow and I work in a bookshop. My parents separated when I was very young and I’ve seen very little of my father since. I came down from London the other day at his request and when I got to the farmhouse I found him dead, shot through the head. The rest you know.’

He reached for the brandy and drank some, caught in indecision.

‘If you like,’ she offered in a more measured tone, squeezing her hands between her knees to stop them trembling, ‘we could go to the farmhouse and find the hoard. You can have the coins and all the other things except the necklace.’ Trying to do a deal over the non-existent necklace was an inspiration. ‘Dad always promised me the necklace.’

He said tersely, getting in deeper, ‘You’re in no position to bargain. If I believed you for one moment, I could go there and turn the place over. I don’t need your help.’

‘Believe me, you do. Cottage hiding-places are really cunning. People centuries ago needed to keep all their valuables secure. The places they used were incredibly clever. You have to live there to know where to look.’

He passed a gloved hand uncertainly through his black hair.

At the limit of her invention, she added, ‘We can go there now. I’ll show you where to look.’ She pointed at the plastered ankle. ‘I’m not going to run away.’

In the Toyota, he said with his habitual grin, ‘If your memory is back, I’m surprised you want to get into a car with me.’

She didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t care to think about it. she said with disdain, ‘It’s better than the alternative.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

They had been on the road about twenty minutes, going further and further from the lights of Bath, past places with strange, discomforting names like Swainswick, Cold Ashton, Nimlet and Pennsylvania. How this would end, Rose did not dare think. With her injury, she had no chance of running away. Her plan, such as it was, amounted to no more than delaying action – but for what? The Cavalry wouldn’t come riding to her rescue.

The car swung right and up a bumpy track. A stone building, pale in the headlamp beam, appeared ahead. It was essential to pretend this was familiar ground. She felt her mouth go dry. The bluffing was over. He would expect her to deliver now.

‘Out.’

‘I can’t move without my crutches.’

He got out and took them off the back seat and handed them to her. He produced a heavy-duty rubber torch and lit the way across the yard to the house.

Strips of yellow and black police tape were plastered across the front door. Smiling Face kicked it open and clawed the tape away.

He told her, ‘There’s no electricity. We’ll have to do this by torchlight. Where first?’

She’d spent the last twenty minutes asking herself the same question. Without any memory of this house, it required swift decisions. She had to put up a show of familiarity. ‘Could I hold the torch a moment?’

He handed it to her. She cast the beam rapidly around the kitchen. ‘There used to be a loose brick against the wall there,’ she improvised, training the torch on one section, ‘but it seems to have been cemented in.’ She hobbled out of the kitchen, hoping the floors might be of wood – for loose floorboards – but they were flagstoned.

This was the living-room. She shone the torch over a wooden armchair and a small table, a chest of drawers and a bed against the wall. One other hope was dashed: the place had no phone. On the walls and ceiling were a number of stains encircled with chalk. Her own father’s blood? She made a huge effort to put death out of her mind. Then she spotted the faint outline of a pair of footprints in chalk, and a shudder passed through her. There used to be a special flagstone with a cavity under it. I’m trying to remember which one.’

Smiling Face kicked the mat, uncovering most of it. He wasn’t saying anything, but his impatience was obvious.

‘It definitely wasn’t one of these,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if you rolled the mat right back…’

‘And you cracked me over the head with the torch? No thanks,’ he said. ‘Your time has run out.’ Even so, he moved the mat with his foot and exposed more flagstones. It was obvious from the dirt impacted in the cracks that none of them had been disturbed for years.

‘I wonder if the stone I’m thinking of was in the back room,’ she speculated, switching the torch-beam to the door at the end.

‘Full of junk,’ he told her acidly. ‘No one has been in there for years.’

Undaunted, she crossed the room and shone the torch over a forest of furniture and household objects. ‘Well, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s at the back, by the wardrobe.’

To reach the wardrobe, he would have to remove a rocking-chair, a table, a dog-basket and a hat-stand, all coated with an even layer of dust.

‘Let’s face it,’ he said. ‘This has been a total waste of time. You haven’t any more knowledge than I have about this place. Give me that.’ He grabbed back the torch.

She started to say, ‘I didn’t promise to-’

He swung the torch viciously and cracked it against her head. She felt her skull implode. Briefly, she saw fireworks, brilliant, multicoloured points of light. Then they went fuzzy and faded away.

The darkness was absolute, but some of her sensations returned. Shallow breathing. She was cold, freezing cold, there was a roaring in her ears and she was being buffeted.

This uniform blackness was scary. Her eyes were open. She could feel them blink, and she could see nothing, not the faintest grey shading at the edge of her vision.

Blind?

I will not panic, she thought. Try to work out a rational explanation.

She seemed to be lying on her right side in a hunched position. Her foot – the one not in plaster – was in contact with something solid that made it impossible for her to stretch.

And there was a smell that made her nose itch and her eyes water.

Petrol fumes. I am in a car. It’s an engine that I’m hearing. I’m being driven at high speed.

By degrees, she remembered the incident immediately prior to blacking out. This, she deduced, must be the red Toyota. Smiling Face is at the wheel, driving at a terrifying speed, and only he knows where.

I’m locked in the boot. He knocked me senseless with the torch and carried me to the boot and now he’s going to dispose of me somewhere. He wants me to die. He made that clear. He may even think I’m dead already.

The strange thing about it is that I’m beginning not to care. I’m freezing and uncomfortable and I want to be sick.

Some instinct for survival insisted that she do something about it. Car boots had linings. If she could wrap some of the lining around herself she would get some insulation. She reached out in the dark, probing with her fingertips for the edge of the felt she was lying on. Some of her fingernails broke. The effort was almost too much. But a strip of the material came away from the bodywork. More followed. She drew it to herself like a blanket, or a shroud.

Thirty-four

Diamond’s physique had thickened and, it has to be said, slackened since he gave up rugby, but his reactions were still quick. He grabbed Julie and dived out of the path of the advancing car. It whooshed by so close that he felt the rush of air on the back of his neck.

Scratched and winded, but basically unhurt because his colleague’s soft flesh had cushioned his fall, he hauled himself off her and out of a hedge that was mainly bramble.

‘You okay?’

She thought she was. He helped her up.

‘See if Rose is in the farmhouse.’

Leaving Julie, he started running up the lane after the Toyota, confident that a patrol car was blocking the exit to the road.

From up ahead a screech of brakes pierced the air. But the expected impact didn’t happen. There was the high note of the engine in reverse, then a change of gear.

He was in time to see the Toyota mount the verge to avoid the police car, rip through the hedge, advance into the field, rev again, switchback over the uneven turf and bear down like a tank on a wooden gate at the edge nearest to the road. Like a tank it smashed through.

‘Get after him then!’

One of the cars was already turning to give chase, its blue light pulsing. Diamond hurled himself through the open door of another and they were moving before he slammed it.

The rear lights of the Toyota were not in sight.

‘He’ll make for the motorway,’ Diamond told the driver. ‘Can you radio ahead?’

On an undulating stretch north of Tormarton, the skyline momentarily glowed in the high beam of headlights. At a rough estimate, Allardyce was a quarter of a mile ahead. There was no chance of catching him before the M4 interchange.

A message came through from headquarters. Diamond could just make out through the static that Julie had radioed in from the farmhouse to say no one was in there, but she had found Rose’s crutches.

‘I don’t like the sound of that. I didn’t see her in the car, did you?’ he asked his driver.

‘No passenger, sir. I had a clear look.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘PC Roberts, sir.’

There was a hairy moment when they raided the wing mirror in passing a stationary car. They were doing eighty along country lanes.

‘Been driving long, Roberts?’

‘Since my seventeenth birthday, sir.’

‘How old are you now?’

‘Eighteen, sir.’

The problem at the approach to the motorway was how to divine which direction Allardyce had taken. At the roundabout, Diamond watched the patrol car ahead speed up the first slipway eastwards. ‘Then we go west,’ he told PC Roberts. They swung with screaming tyres around the long turn and presently joined the Bristol-bound carriageway. At this time of night the traffic would be sparse.

Diamond was trying to hold down the nausea he always felt at high speed. It was compounded by concern over Rose. If she was not at the farmhouse and her crutches were there, what had Allardyce done with her?

‘No sign of him, sir,’ Roberts said. ‘I reckon he took the other route.’

‘Is this thing as fast as the Toyota?’

‘Should be. He should be in sight by now.’

‘Keep going.’

This stretch of motorway had no lighting whatsoever. They had the main beam probing the three lanes. In the next minute Diamond thought he could discern a dark shape ahead.

‘Isn’t that something?’

‘You’re right, sir. He’s switched off his lights, bloody idiot. He’s all over the road.’

As they got nearer, they could make out the outline of a car without lights veering erratically between the lanes.

Roberts said, ‘I think his electrics are buggered. He braked just then and the brake lights didn’t come on.’

‘Flash him. Let him know we’re here.’

‘He knows that, sir. My God, he’s going!’

They watched the car sheer towards the crash-barrier in the centre, hit it in a shower of sparks and skew left across three lanes and the hard shoulder. It thudded into the embankment, reared up like a whale, rolled over and slid upside down with a sickening metallic sound, spinning back across two lanes of the motorway.

In trying to avoid it they got into a skid themselves. Their vehicle did a three-quarter turn before coming to a halt.

Diamond hurled open the door, got out and sprinted towards the up-ended Toyota on legs that didn’t feel like his own, only to discover that the impact had pancaked the superstructure to the level of the seats. The driver and anyone inside must have been mangled.

PC Roberts joined him and warned, ‘You can’t do anything. It could easily catch fire, sir. I’ve radioed for help.’

It was good advice which he ignored, for he had noticed something Roberts had not. The force of the crash had ripped open the Toyota’s luggage compartment. The lid was hanging open under the upturned wreck and a dark form wrapped in a roll of fabric was lying in the angle. Projecting from it was a white tubular object shaped like an angled section of drainpipe, but it was patently not a drainpipe because just visible at the end were five toes.

‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘She’s wrapped in something.’

Steam was rising from the wreck, but it had not yet caught fire. On his knees, Diamond reached into the darkness and got his arm around the body. Roberts was beside him.

‘I’ve got her legs, sir.’

Diamond tried talking to Rose and got no response. The hope was that the limited size of the compartment had restricted her movement as the car somersaulted. She was wrapped in the felt lining.

They prised her out and carried her to a place of relative safety on the grass embankment.

Diamond gently removed part of the felt that was covering her face. She had a bloody nose, but she was breathing. Her eyes opened.

‘You’ll make it, love,’ he told her.

‘Allardyce? The fire service got him out eventually, sir, what there was of him,’ he told the Assistant Chief Constable next morning.

‘Looking at it from a cost-effectiveness standpoint,’ said the ACC, who usually did look at things that way, ‘I suppose it saves the community the expense of a long trial and keeping him in prison for a life term. And the woman?’

‘Do you mean Emma Treadwell? We’re still holding her. We’ll send a report to the CPS, but I can’t see them proceeding on any of the more serious charges.’

‘I meant the woman you rescued.’

‘Christine Gladstone? They kept her overnight in the RUH. She escaped with some ugly bruises. Being in the luggage compartment, where Allardyce put her, she was in the one reasonably secure part of the car.’

‘Secure? I’d say she was damned lucky.’

‘Some people are, sir. You’re right. Considering she caused the crash, she was bloody lucky.’

‘She caused it, you say?’

‘Being in the boot, she grabbed the wiring and ripped it out. His lights went, and the next thing he hit the barrier.’

The ACC cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. ‘Good thing you were close behind. I think it’s in order to congratulate you on your prompt action, Peter.’

‘No need, sir. It was a team effort.’

‘Yes, that’s a fact. You and John Wigfull between you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond half-smiled, suspecting that this was humour.

But it was not. The ACC was serious. ‘I think of you two as the Castor and Pollux of Bath CID.’

‘The what?’

‘Castor and Pollux. It’s a compliment, Peter. They were the twin sons of Jupiter, a formidable duo.’

‘I see,’ said Diamond. ‘And which is which?’

The ACC frowned. ‘I don’t think it matters.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll take Castor, and Pollox to John Wigfull.’

At home the next evening, he was less buoyant. He ate one of his favourite meals of salmon en croute almost in silence. Stephanie didn’t need telling that he was badly shaken.

She suggested an evening walk.

‘If you like.’

They had not gone far when he said, ‘Julie’s leaving. She asked for a transfer and they’ve found her a job at Bristol. No warning. It’s fixed.’

‘I know,’ Stephanie admitted.

‘You do.’ He stopped.

‘She came to see me, Pete.’

‘To see you? When?’

‘A couple of days ago. She was pretty unhappy. She has a lot of respect for you, but she feels too much of her time is spent smoothing the way.’

‘For me, you mean?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. You know you’re hell to work with. She’s young for an inspector, ambitious. She’s entitled to move on.’

‘We were a bloody good team.’

‘Too good for your own good.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You told me yourself that you’re underworked most of the time, and it’s bad for your health. Julie in her quiet way has been batting for you all the time, making your life easier. I didn’t tell her about the hypertension, of course, though it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s aware of it. But we agreed that a trouble-free life isn’t necessarily what you want.’

‘It’s what I expect from my deputy.’

‘She’s too good at it. Let her go, Pete.’

He sniffed. ‘When she meets that lot at Bristol, she’ll realise I’m not such an ogre.’

‘She didn’t say you were. she said some very complimentary things.’

They walked on for some distance before he spoke again.

‘It’s going to be tough without Julie. I’ll keep an eye on what happens at Bristol.’

Stephanie said, ‘No. When the path is slippery it is safer to go two paces forward than one pace back.’

‘Who says that?’

‘The book you keep by the bed.’

‘Kai Lung? I don’t subscribe to everything he says.’

Thirty-five

At the other end of winter, when millions of daffodils were brightening all the approaches to Bath, a visitor came to Harmer House and called on Ada Shaftsbury.

‘Bless your little cotton socks,’ said Ada, with a bear-hug. ‘If it isn’t my mate Rose!’

‘Christine, actually.’

‘I know, petal. I saw it in the papers. You’re looking well, Rose. Did you get your memory back?’

‘In time for Christmas.’ She laughed, so much more relaxed now. ‘I was in Oxford Street looking at the lights, and suddenly I knew I’d been there years ago with my mother. It was amazing, just like the clouds parting. And now I know why I came to Bath. It was to see my father. After Mother’s death I had a difficult time, but I felt closer to my dad than I ever had. I really wanted to see him. Then finding him dead like that, with the shotgun at his side, I blamed myself for neglecting him so long. I just blanked everything out. Anyway, I’ve picked up my life as it was, living in my flat in Fulham and working again.’

‘What are you doing here, then?’

‘Two things. I’ve just been to see that policeman who pulled me out of the crash. I wanted to thank him.’

‘Old gutso? What did he suggest as a thank-you – a jumbo burger and chips?’

‘Oh, Ada.’

‘Say it, blossom. Next to me, he’s a sparrow. What’s the other thing you came for?’

‘To sort out the farmhouse. It’s officially my property now.’

‘Are you selling the farm?’

‘Definitely. I’m having the house demolished first. The solicitor advised it after what happened there.’

‘And all the furniture?’

‘I’ve arranged for one of those house clearance firms to take it all away. I’m meeting them there this afternoon.’ Christine nervously touched her hair, twisting a length of it between her finger and thumb. Her new, confident look softened into something like the diffidence Ada remembered. ‘I’m a bit uncomfortable about going there alone. Would you have the time to come with me?’

Invited to choose a present from the farmhouse, Ada picked an old milking stool, which she said she would rest her feet on while thinking of all the years of honest work it represented.

‘It isn’t much. Don’t you want anything else?’

‘You know me, love. I only ever take what I can carry away. I’d have the kitchen range if I could. I was born in a cottage. Spent the first ten years of my life in a place like this.’

‘You’re welcome to take the range if you want. The clearance people won’t have any use for it.’

‘Can you see Imogen’s face if I had it sent up to Harmer House?’

They decided to light a last fire while waiting for the van. Soon the flames were giving an orange glow to the dark room.

‘Have I got it right?’ Ada asked. ‘Allardyce brought you here to look for some old treasure your dad was supposed to have salted away?’

‘That was only delaying tactics on my part. I made it up, telling him there were hiding places in old cottages.’

‘There wasn’t anything?’

‘Only the Seax, and that was dug up half a century ago.’

‘Two innocent people died for bugger all?’

‘I’m afraid that’s true.’

They watched the flames for a while. Finally Ada said, ‘All this was an open hearth once. In the old days they used to roast on a spit, over an open fire. You can see where they bricked in the space they didn’t need any more.’ She picked up her milking stool by one leg and tapped it firmly against the wall to the right of the range. ‘Hear it? Hollow.

I’ll tell you for nothing, blossom, it’s a perfect place to hide anything. If I had some hot stuff I wanted to salt away – not that I ever do, mind – I’d chip out a couple of bricks and put it in there.’

They both looked at the wall. Each of them spotted the loose bricks at floor level on the left of the range.

‘Well, if you’re not going to look, I am.’

Ada planted her stool by the bricks and lowered herself onto it. She withdrew the bricks with ease and put her hand into the space behind. ‘Wouldn’t it take the cake if there really was…’ Her voice trailed off and she stared at Rose with saucer eyes. She took out her hand and showed something that glinted gold in the fire’s glow.