Wigfull stayed silent until the next problem arose. Unable to make a U-turn, they were obliged to take a route up a steeply inclined lane with a passage so narrow that it ought to have been designated one-way. As proof that it was not, they met a Post Office van making its way down, and were forced to reverse. At the second try, they got three-quarters of the way up before another vehicle appeared at the top, a red Mini, small, yet sufficient to obstruct the way. In common courtesy, the driver should have given way and backed up. He continued to advance, however, with his headlights on full beam.
'You know what they say in traffic division,' said Diamond. 'Always watch out for the ones wearing hats and driving red cars. This looks a prize specimen.' He stopped the car.
'I'll handle it,' Wigfull volunteered, unfastening his safety belt. The atmosphere was improving in the BMW now that they were united in the face of a common nuisance.
Diamond took a second look at the driver, who had also come to a halt. 'No. Leave him. He's ninety, if he's a day, poor old codger. Probably forgotten how to get into reverse.'
'In that case he shouldn't be on the road.'
Wigfull plainly felt that the sympathy was misdirected. He'd taken plenty of stick; why should some inconsiderate old man get away with it?
'Something tells me to let this one alone, John,' Diamond told him, turning in his seat and starting to back down the hill.
'Bet you wouldn't have done this in London,' Wigfull commented.
'You're right. I've gone soft as a cider apple since I came down here.'
'I hadn't noticed.'
At the foot of the hill, the old man in the Mini revved powerfully and passed them, recklessly removing his hand from the wheel to raise his hat.
'You see?' said Diamond. 'Politeness breeds politeness.'
Their third attempt was successful. They turned right at the top, negotiated two tight turns and found the name of the street chiselled into the wall. High above the street level was a terrace of six small Georgian houses set back from the road, each with its own iron gate. The Didrikson house was the second. Like the others, it was in need of cleaning, stained most heavily below the cornice and sills. They drew up outside and toiled up three sets of stone steps to a front door painted royal blue.
'Someone's in,' Wigfull said.
'Good – I wouldn't want to make this trip too often.'
Their knock was answered by a boy in the grey trousers, white shirt and striped tie of one of the more exclusive schools in the area – presumably the lad Professor Jackman had pulled out of Pulteney Weir.
'Hello, son,' Diamond hailed him. 'Is your mother in?'
This amiable greeting was answered with, 'We don't buy anything at the door.' The boy could have been any age from twelve to fourteen, at that stage of life when the features grow out of proportion and the look on the face expresses resentment at the process – or at the world in general.
'We're from the police,' said Diamond.
'Where's your warrant?'
'What's your name, son?'
'Matthew.'
'Matthew what?'
'Didrikson.'
'Well, Matthew Didrikson, do you ever watch The Bill?'
'Sometimes.'
'You want to pay more attention, then. We don't have warrants unless we're searching a place. We just want to see your mum. I'm asking you again. Is she in?'
'She goes out to work,' said the boy.
'We'll come in and wait.' Diamond stepped forward.
Momentarily the boy blocked the doorway in defiance, then took a step back as Diamond put a huge foot over the doorstep.
Wigfull, behind him, had spotted a movement along the hall. 'Someone's going out the back!' he said.
'Grab them.'
In the first stride of the pursuit, Diamond was stopped by a vicious kick in the groin. As any ex-rugby-player would, he reacted to the swing of the foot by attempting to swerve, with a simultaneous jack-knifing action. The movement would have saved him if he had not acquired so much extra poundage since giving up the game. His agility was unequal to the intention. True, the impact might have been more damaging had Matthew Didrikson been wearing leather rather than rubber. It still felt like being impaled on a heat-seeking missile and savaged by a Rottweiler at the same time. And the boy followed it up by making a diving grab for Diamond's thigh.
Acting on instinct now, Diamond handed him off and pitched forward on to his hands and knees, bellowing in agony. Somewhere behind him, the boy thudded against the wall.
The pain was extreme. Numbness would take over eventually, Diamond promised himself. Could he wait that long?
His eyes were shut tight. Through his groaning he heard Wigfull's, 'Leave it to me.' A superfluous offer.
By degrees, the pain spread and became less intense. Diamond opened his eyes. They watered copiously. Just as well, he told himself grimly, because he doubted whether the organ intended for watering would ever function again. He looked round for the juvenile delinquent who had maimed him. Prudently for his survival, Matthew Didrikson had fled through the front door.
With the help of a table-leg, Diamond succeeded in hauling himself off the floor. In a fair imitation of a Sumo wrestler charging his opponent, he lurched a few steps and found a chair. There he sat, conscious of nothing but the fire below. How long he was there, he neither knew, nor cared.
'You all right, sir?'
He looked up.
The fatuous question came from Wigfull.
'Do I look all right?' Even the vibrations of his own voice gave him pain.
'It was obviously Mrs Didrikson I saw,' Wigfull informed him. 'I didn't catch her, unfortunately. The house backs on to another street. She ran through the yard^and drove off in a black Mercedes. I got the number.'
'So what do you want – a pat on the back?'
'I suppose you don't happen to have a personal radio on you?' Wigfull ventured.
'What would I want with a bloody bat-phone?'
'We could put out a message.'
'There's a phone on the table beside you,' said Diamond. 'Come on, man!' With that, he began to feel marginally better.
Wigfull got through and ensured that the motor patrols would be alerted. 'In that fast car she's probably heading for the motorway,' he said when he had finished. 'They'll pick her up in the next hour with any luck.' He continued to fuel his optimism. 'Well, we're quite a bit further on, funnily enough. The lady does a bunk and confirms herself as the number one suspect, in my book, anyway. She's going to regret this. Look, would you like me to see if I can find some sort of painkiller?'
'The first sensible thing you've said,' Diamond told him.
A short time later, he lowered himself gingerly into the passenger seat of his car. The codeine Wigfull had found in the bathroom was beginning to work. Wigfull closed the door gently on him and walked round to the driver's seat and got in.
Then he gave an embarrassed cough.
What's the matter with him now? Diamond thought.
'The keys.'
'Why didn't you think of it before? Why didn't I, come to that?' Nothing is so awkward as fishing in your pocket when you're seated in a car, or as perilous, when you're sore down there.
It was an effort and a pain, but Diamond prised them out and handed them over and they drove off. He didn't offer to map-read. It was up to Wigfull to remember. They took the two sharp turns and then steered left to the top of the narrow hill that had caused such problems on the way up. Wigfull stopped the car.
'Not again.'
The way down was obstructed.
Diamond started to laugh. It was ridiculous to do so, because every movement gave him a spasm of pain, but he couldn't prevent it. He shook with laughter.
The car halfway down the hill was a stationary black Mercedes – stationary because it had met another vehicle coming up. They were bonnet to bonnet, quite literally. The vehicle the Mercedes had hit was a red Mini with the headlights full on. The driver, familiar in his t
rilby, had got out and was standing beside the cars examining the damage. There was a figure still seated in the Mercedes.
'Can't be too serious if his lights are still working,' said Wigfull. 'I'll trot down and see.'
Diamond got out and hobbled after him. This was going to be worth the discomfort.
Chapter Nine
THE DAMAGE TO THE VEHICLES was slight, no more than a flaking of paint from the Mercedes and a small dent in the nearside wing of the Mini. But it was enough to provide a pretext. Having established that neither driver was injured, Wigfull solemnly took particulars from the old man – a retired doctor – who owned the Mini, while Diamond opened the door of the Mercedes, introduced himself and asked the woman inside to hand him the key.
'Thank you. Now would you move across to the other seat?'
She obeyed, her hands trembling as she put them out to support herself.
'Sure you're all right?'
'Yes.'
He lowered himself towards the driver's seat, then realized just in time that he wouldn't fit. The level of the seat had been raised by two squares of foam rubber, leaving so little space below the steering wheel that it would have courted disaster to squeeze the already suffering portion of his anatomy under there. 'I'll have to move these.'
She shrugged her consent and he managed the manoeuvre at the second try.
'You're Mrs Dana Didrikson?'
'Yes.' Her face had turned the colour of skimmed milk, accentuated by the brown hair that framed it. A neat, finely-shaped mouth and dark, intelligent eyes that now had a hunted look. Without it, Diamond might have guessed that she was a teacher or a social worker.
Capable of murder? he asked himself as he said aloud, 'Would you care to tell me how this happened?'
'I was driving too fast. It wasn't his fault. I thought I'd stopped in time.'
'Why the hurry?'
She let out a sigh that said this was playing games because they both knew the reason. 'I was trying to escape.'
Simple cause and effect. Naturally she'd hurried because she was trying to escape. From her deadpan manner, she might have been talking about the weather.
Diamond couldn't match her composure. He quivered. The adrenalin coursed through him. The breakthrough was happening. All those miserable hours by the lake, in the caravan, on the phone to Merlin, at case conferences, watching the pesky computer screens, teasing out information from the professor – were about to be rewarded.
His throat had gone dry. He dredged up the one word that mattered. 'Escape?'
'Out of the back of the house. Didn't you see me?'
'We saw you.'
'Well, then.' More words, apparently, were superfluous.
Not wishing to say one syllable that might discourage her candour, he kept to practicalities. 'Your car was parked at the back, I take it?'
She nodded. 'I got in and drove too fast. What's going to happen to me?'
'We're going to require a statement. Would you wait here, please?' He hauled himself out of the seat and approached Wigfull, who was still going through the motions of questioning the elderly Mini driver. 'Reverse the Mercedes, John. She's willing to cough the lot, I think.'
The old man said at once, 'If she's admitting responsibility, I'd like it noted.'
'Thank you for drawing it to our attention, sir,' said Diamond. 'An officer will come and see you in due course.' He returned to the Mercedes and got into the back seat, behind Dana Didrikson. 'Back to the house,' he told Wigfull when he got in.
At the top of the hill, he transferred to his own car and drove the short distance, and somehow his soreness was less disabling now. Wigfull followed in the Mercedes and they parked both cars in front of the Didrikson house.
The door stood open as they had left it. Sensing that a second escape bid was unlikely, Diamond allowed Mrs Didrikson to go in first. She called out a name.
'If that's your son you're calling,' said Diamond, 'he went out through the front as we came in.'
She said, 'He had no reason to run off.' More loudly, she called, 'Mat, are you there?'
Wigfull explained, 'He attempted to stop us from entering, ma'am. We could do him for obstruction and assault. He caught Mr Diamond well and truly.'
She said with contempt, 'He's just a schoolboy.'
Diamond signalled to Wigfull not to pursue the matter, a fine instance of altruism in the line of duty. 'We'll be wanting to interview you at some length, Mrs Didrikson.'
'Here?'
'Down at Manvers Street. It's late already. You might wish to put a few things in an overnight bag.'
'You want me to come to the police station? Can't you talk to me here?'
'That won't be possible.'
'What about Mat? I can't leave him alone all night. He's only twelve, you know.'
Diamond assured her that the boy would be taken care of in her absence. The Abbey Choir School had a house for boarders in Lansdown Road. While Mrs Didrikson, accompanied by Diamond, went upstairs to pack her bag, Wigfull spent some time on the phone arranging for a patrol to find the boy and drive him to the school to spend the night there.
Dana Didrikson's bedroom revealed little about the character of its owner, unless it was that she was tidy-minded and self-effacing. Emulsioned walls in the magnolia shade so popular with decorators. Fitted shelves, wardrobes and a double bed. Free-standing dressing table. A wall-to-wall carpet in a neutral stone colour. And matching curtains. No pictures, photos, books, stuffed animals or discarded clothes. Perhaps the reason why it so resembled a hotel room was that Mrs Didrikson's work as a chauffeur allowed her little time for anything but sleeping there.
She took a bag from the top shelf of the wardrobe and put in a few things. 'Now may I pack a bag for Matthew?'
Diamond gave his consent. He could hear Wigfull still on the phone downstairs.
They had to go up another flight to the boy's room, which had a more lived-in look. Cardboard birds and bats, made from modelling kits, were strung from the ceiling. Pop posters adorned the walls and socks and record-sleeves were scattered about the floor. An unfinished chess game stood on the top of a desk. Decidedly more lived-in, not least because its occupant was lying on the bed behind the door.
'Mat – I thought you were out,' his mother said. 'I called out and you didn't answer.'
He was on his stomach leafing through a comic, only his dark hair visible. He didn't look up. dark hair visible. He didn't 'Mat – do you hear me?'
Still without turning to look at her, the boy said, 'They're the fuzz. They knocked me over and forced their way in. I asked them for a warrant, but they took no notice.'
'Knockedyoa over?'
Diamond explained, 'I pushed him aside when he aimed a kick at me.'
'Against the wall,' Matthew stated vehemently. 'You bashed my head against the wall and knocked me over.
What do you want, anyway?'
'Your mother is going to give us some help with a matter we're investigating,' Diamond said, expressing it more sensitively than he thought the kid's attitude deserved. This looked a prime example of a boy in want of a father's authority and playing hell with his hapless mother. He went out to the landing and called downstairs, 'John, the kid's up here. He was here all the time.'
Back in the boy's bedroom, Mrs Didrikson was explaining to her son why it would be necessary for him to spend a night at school. Matthew made an unsuccessful appeal to be allowed to remain alone in the house, then turned his back on everyone and went back to his comic. His mother packed a bag for him, watched indulgently by Diamond, who felt a stirring of pity for the kid, in spite of everything. One night as a boarder was likely to be an underestimate.
PART FOUR
Dana
Chapter One
THIS IS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED to Geraldine Jackman, isn't it? You want to know how I got involved with the Jackmans. I'm willing to talk about it now, if you'll let me tell it in my own way, but this is going to be quite an effort for me. I'm not one of t
hose twittering women who broadcast their life stories to everyone in the supermarket queue. By nature I'm a private person, which sounds like a way of keeping people at a distance and often is, but I wouldn't describe myself as shy, which always makes me think of a five-year-old covering her face at a birthday party. It's more true to say that it doesn't come naturally to me to confide in anyone else. As a result, I'm sometimes accused of being unfriendly, or stand-offish. I constantly struggle to break out of it because, believe me, when you're a single parent, you have to speak up for yourself and your child.
After Sverre, my former husband, left me three years ago, I drove taxis, and you might think that was a peculiar way for a social misfit to earn a living. Actually it was my salvation. I learned to put up a front and shelter behind it. I could hear myself playing the part of the taxi driver and saying these mundane things about the traffic and the tourists and what I'd just heard on the radio, knowing all the time that the real me was a million miles back from the action. None of it touched me personally. But this situation is another thing altogether. Blood from a stone.
All right, let's plunge in. At the time I met the Jackmans I'd given up the taxi-driving. I had a job as chauffeur with Mr Stanley Buckle, the managing director of Realbrew Ales. That's how I got to drive the Mercedes. It doesn't belong to me.
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