Upon A Dark Night

by Peter Lovesey

  She stared at the screen. ‘Well, she’s German, from Bonn. A drop-out from school who lost touch with her people. Got friendly with a young English guy working as an interpreter at the British Embassy and married him. Soon after, they moved to England. He turned out to be a fly-by-night and was away in a matter of weeks. This poor girl found herself jobless and without much knowledge of the language.’

  ‘Couldn’t she have gone back to Germany?’

  ‘Didn’t want to. Her life was a mess. She’d walked out on her parents. As the wife of a British subject she was entitled to remain in Britain, and that was her best hope, she thought. She soon used up what little money she had, lived rough for a while, got treated for depression and ended up as one of Imogen’s case-load at Avon Social Services. That’s it, in your nutshell.’

  ‘The husband. Was his name Henkel, then?’

  ‘Perkins, or something like that. She wanted to forget him, and no wonder, poor girl.’

  ‘Wanted it both ways. Wipe him out of her life and use him to qualify as a resident.’

  Julie’s eyebrows pricked up. ‘That’s harsh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t know about that. Your version sounded a shade too sisterly for my taste.’

  ‘Well, she is dead, for God’s sake. Aren’t we allowed any pity at all in this job?’ She switched off the machine, rolled back the chair and quit the room.

  With a sigh, he ran his hand over his head. He held Julie in high regard. Out of churlishness, he’d upset her just to make a point about some woman he had never met except on a mortuary trolley.

  Exactly how unfortunate the upset was became clear presently, when he went to his desk to look at the messages. On top was a note from the local Home Office pathologist stating that now that formal identification had taken place, he proposed carrying out the post-mortem on Hildegarde Henkel at 8.30am the next morning. Normally Diamond would have found some pretext for missing the autopsy. It was the one part of CID work he tried to avoid. At least one senior detective on the case was routinely supposed to be present, listening to the pathologist’s running commentary and discussing the findings immediately afterwards. The only possible stand-in was Julie, who had deputised on several similar occasions.

  A call to Julie at home?

  Even Peter Diamond didn’t have the brass neck for that.

  He did not, after all, get home early. He drove over Pulteney Bridge, ignoring the ban on private vehicles, and up Henrietta Street to Bathwick Street, to call at Harmer House. He had two objectives. The first was to examine Hildegarde Henkel’s room. The second was to call on Ada Shaftsbury, a prospect he didn’t relish, but against all reason he felt some sympathy for Ada after the shock she had suffered. True, she had not had to endure the ordeal of watching a pathologist at work, but by her own lights she had gone through a traumatic experience and it had been at his behest.

  He found her in her room eating iced bun-rings. Her voice, when she called out to him to come in, was faint, and he prepared to find her in a depleted state. It transpired that her mouth was full of bun.

  ‘You,’ she said accusingly. ‘You’re the last person I want to see.’

  For a moment the feeling was mutual, and he almost turned round and left. She presented such a gross spectacle seated on her bed, her enormous lap heaped with paper bags filled at the baker’s.

  ‘I called to see how you are – after this morning.’

  ‘Shaky,’ said Ada. ‘Very shaky.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be someone you knew. I can honestly tell you that, Ada.’

  ‘She was a true mate of mine,’ said Ada, starting on another bun-ring. ‘She cooked my breakfast every day, you know. She was wonderful in the kitchen. Germans are good learners, and I showed her what an English breakfast should be. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.’

  ‘Did you talk to her much?’

  She managed a faint grin. ‘Quite a bit. But she didn’t say a lot to me. Her English wasn’t up to it. I taught her a few essential words.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know about her state of mind? If she was depressed, say?’

  ‘You can tell a lot just by looking at people,’ said Ada. ‘Take yourself, Mr Diamond. I can see you’re on pins in case I mention my friend Rose again. You can’t wait to get out of here.’

  He ignored the shrewd and accurate observation. ‘And Hildegarde?’

  ‘She was happier here than she’d been for a long time. She wasn’t suicidal.’

  ‘Any friends?’

  ‘Don’t know. I never saw her with any. Not here. She used to go out evenings sometimes. Maybe she knew some German people. They stick together. I can’t think how she got to that party at the Crescent unless she was with some people.’

  Diamond pondered the possibility and it seemed sensible. ‘If she was with anyone, they haven’t come forward yet.’

  ‘Maybe I’m wrong, then. She could have just followed the crowd. Germans are more easily led than us, wouldn’t you say?’

  He gave a shrug. These sweeping statements about the Germans left him cold. He was interested only in Hildegarde’s individual actions.

  ‘Do you want a bun?’ Ada offered. ‘There’s plenty for both of us.’

  He was hungry, he realised. ‘Just a section, then. Not the whole ring.’

  ‘You look as if you could put it away, easy. You and I are built the same way.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  She missed the intended irony. ‘Got to keep body and soul together.’

  ‘I’m eating later.’

  ‘I could make tea if you like.’

  ‘This is fine. Really.’

  After a pause for ingestion, Ada said, ‘Help yourself to another one. Do you think she jumped?’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know her. You did.’

  ‘Someone else’s house is a funny place to choose to end it all,’ Ada speculated. ‘But if she wasn’t planning to kill herself, what was she doing on the ledge? Had she taken something?’

  ‘We haven’t heard from the lab yet. It’s possible. I’m going to look at her room presently.’

  ‘She didn’t leave a suicide note, I can tell you that.’

  ‘You’ve been in to check, I suppose?’

  ‘It’s open house here, always has been,’ Ada said, unabashed. ‘Are you going to talk to that ball of fire, Imogen, her social worker?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Hildegarde was on her list, same as Rose was. Imogen keeps shedding clients, have you noticed? Dropping them faster than a peep-show girl.’

  ‘You can’t blame the social worker.’

  ‘Try me, ducky. Rose didn’t know the woman who came to collect her, but did it cross Imogen’s tiny mind that it might be a try-on? Not on your nelly.’

  Here we go, thought Diamond.

  She went on, ‘I’ve been thinking about those photos. They didn’t prove this woman was Rose’s stepsister. The only thing they proved is that she’d brought in some photos of Rose with some old woman. If there had been a picture of the step-sister with Rose, the two of them in one picture, I’d shut up, but there wasn’t. And I still haven’t had that postcard.’

  ‘Her memory was dodgy,’ said Diamond.

  ‘Her short-term memory was spot on.’

  ‘You won’t let go, will you? Look, when I speak to the social worker I’ll check on your friend Rose as well, right? Now point me towards Hildegarde’s room.’

  Ada escorted him downstairs, still griping about Rose. After she’d thrust open a door, he thanked her and said he would examine the room alone. He had to repeat it before she left him in peace.

  Had she remained, she would have told him, he was certain, that Germans are very methodical. Everything in sight in the room – and there was not much – was tidily arranged. It was rather like entering a hotel room. The bed, unlike Ada’s, was made without a loose fold anywhere. Hildegarde’s few items of make-up and her brush and comb were group
ed in front of the mirror on the makeshift dressing-table consisting of two sets of plastic drawers linked by a sheet of plate glass.

  He started opening drawers and the contrast with the sights and smells he’d recoiled from in Daniel Gladstone’s cottage could not have been more complete. Everything from thick-knit sweaters to knickers and bras was arranged in layers and each drawer had its bag of sweet-smelling herbs in the front right-hand corner.

  The room was conspicuously short of the personal documents that Hildegarde Henkel must have possessed: passport, wedding certificate and social security papers. Their absence tended to confirm his view that she had carried them in a handbag that some opportunist thief had picked up at the party in the Royal Crescent. He doubted if Ada had taken anything from the room. As far as he knew she never stole from individuals.

  Anything of more than passing interest he threw on the immaculate bed. At the end of the exercise he had a photo of a dog, two books in German, a German/English dictionary, a packet of birth control pills, a set of wedding photos, a Walkman and a couple of Oasis tapes and a bar of chocolate. No suicide note, diary, address book, drugs. He scooped up the lot and replaced them in a drawer.

  In sombre mood, he drove home.

  Twenty

  Peter Diamond’s moods may have been uncertain to his colleagues, but his wife Stephanie reckoned he was transparent ninety-nine per cent of the time. This morning was the one per cent exception. His behaviour was totally out of character. After bringing her the tea that was her daily treat, he rolled back into bed and opened the Guardian instead of going for his shower and shave and starting the routine of grooming, dressing, eating and listening to the radio that he’d observed for years. When he finally put down the paper, he went for a bath. A bath. He simply didn’t take baths in the morning. There was never time. He preferred evenings after work, when he would linger for hours with a book, topping up the hot water from time to time by deft action with his big toe against the tap.

  She tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Are you all right in there?’

  ‘Why? Are you waiting to come in?’ he called.

  ‘No, I’m only asking.’ She was more discreet than to mention his blood pressure. ‘As long as you know how the time is going.’

  ‘Sixty minutes an hour when I last heard.’

  ‘Sorry I spoke, my lord.’

  She’d finished her breakfast and was on the point of going out when he came downstairs.

  The sight of him still in his dressing-gown and slippers evoked a grim memory and her face creased in concern. ‘Peter, should you be telling me something? You haven’t resigned again?’

  He smiled and reached for her hand. The two-year exile from the police had been a rough passage for them both. ‘No, love.’

  ‘And they haven’t…?’

  ‘Given me the old heave-ho? No. It’s just that I don’t have to go in first thing. I’m supposed to be down at the RUH.’

  ‘Oh?’ White-faced, she said, ‘Another appointment?’

  ‘A post-mortem.’

  A moment of incomprehension, then, as the light dawned, ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know, Steph, it never occurred to me when we bought this place that it was just up the road from the hospital. When we lived on Wellsway I could say I’d been sitting in a line of traffic for ages and be believed. That little wrinkle isn’t much use now I live in Weston and can walk down to the mortuary in five minutes. If I want a reason for not showing up on time I’ve got to think of something smarter.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘I’m giving it my full attention.’

  ‘Do you really need to be there?’

  ‘Need? No. But it’s expected. This one is what we term a suspicious death. The pathologist points out anything worthy of note, and discusses it with CID. I’m supposed to take an active interest, or one of us on the case is.’

  ‘Isn’t there someone else, then? I mean, if you’re practically allergic, as we know you are…’

  ‘Not this time. I had a bit of a run-in with Julie last night.’

  ‘Oh, Pete!’

  ‘Can’t really ask her a favour. No, I’ll tough it out, but I don’t have to watch the whole performance, so long as I appear at some point with a good story.’ He rolled his eyes upwards, trying to conjure something up. ‘We could have a problem with the plumbing. Water all over the floor. Or the cat had kittens.’

  ‘A neutered male?’

  ‘Surprised us all. There’s no stopping Raffles.’

  ‘I’d think of something better if I were you.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as your wife, finally driven berserk, clobbering you with a rolling-pin. No one would find that hard to understand.’

  Eventually he drove into the RUH about the time he judged the pathologist would be peeling off his rubber gloves. He parked in a space beside one of the police photographers, who had his window down and was smoking.

  ‘Taken your pictures, then?’ Diamond called out to him matily and got a nod. ‘Are they going to be long in there?’

  ‘Twenty minutes more, I reckon,’ came the heartening answer.

  He made a slow performance of unwrapping an extra-strong peppermint. He thought he might listen to the latest news on Radio Bristol before getting out of the car, just (he told himself) to see if anything new had come up. Then they played a Beatles track and he had to listen to that.

  Finally he got out and ambled towards the mortuary block just as the door opened and Jim Middleton, the senior histopathologist at the RUH, came out accompanied by – of all people – John Wigfull. Well, if Wigfull had represented the CID, so be it. He was welcome to attend as many autopsies as he wished.

  Middleton, a Yorkshireman, still wearing his rubber apron, greeted Diamond with a mock salute. ‘Good to see you, Superintendent. Nice timing.’

  ‘Family crisis that I won’t go into,’ Diamond said in a well-rehearsed phrase. ‘Why do they always blow up at the most awkward times? I dare say John can fill me in, unless there’s something unexpected I should hear about at once.’

  ‘Unexpected?’ Middleton shook his head. ‘The only thing you won’t have been expecting is that we switched the running order. I’ve just examined Mr Wigfull’s farmer. All done. Your young woman is next, which is why I said your timing was nice. We’re on in ten minutes or so, after I’ve had some fresh air.’

  No one needed the fresh air more than Diamond. His eyes glazed over. ‘I had a message that it was to be eight-thirty.’

  ‘I know, and we were ready to go, but we didn’t like to start without anyone from CID. Isn’t it fortunate that Chief-Inspector Wigfull phoned in to find out what time he would be needed for the farmer? “As soon as you can get here,” I told him.’

  Wigfull didn’t actually smirk. He didn’t need to.

  There was no ducking it now. In a short time, Diamond stood numbly in attendance in the post-mortem room with a scenes of crime officer, two photographers and a number of medical students. First the photographs were taken as each item of Hildegarde Henkel’s clothing was removed. It was a slow process. A continuous record had to be provided.

  Jim Middleton clearly regarded all this as wearisome and unconnected with his medical expertise, so he filled the gaps with conversation about the previous autopsy. ‘Poor old sod, lying dead that long. It’s a sad comment on our times that anyone can be left for up to a week and nobody knows or cares.’

  He stepped forward and loosened the dead woman’s left shoe and removed it. The sock inside was as clean as the other. ‘Double bow, securely tied. Yes, he was far from fresh. An interesting suicide, though. I don’t think I’ve heard of a case where the gun is fired from under the chin. A shotgun, I mean. All the cases I’ve seen, they either put the muzzle against the forehead or in the mouth.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Diamond asked, happy to absent himself from what was going on under his nose.

  ‘Think about it. It’s bloody difficult firing a shotgun at yoursel
f anyway. You’ve got to stretch your arm down the length of the barrel and work the trigger. I haven’t tried it and I hope I never will, but I imagine it just adds to the difficulty if you can’t see what you’re doing.’

  Unnoticed by anyone else, Diamond mimed the action, jutting out his chin like Mussolini making a speech, and at the same time holding his right arm rigid in front of himself and making the trigger movement with his thumb. Middleton had made a telling point. The victim couldn’t possibly have seen his finger on the trigger without moving the muzzle into the mouth or against the front of his face. But would it really matter to someone about to kill himself? Wouldn’t he be content to grope for the trigger?

  Middleton continued to find the farmer’s death more interesting than that of the woman in front of him. ‘It’s not unknown for shotgun suicides to take off their shoe and sock and press the trigger with their big toe. That didn’t happen in this case.’

  The words were lost on Diamond. Mentally he was yet another remove from here, up the A46 and across the motorway at Gladstone’s farm. The scene in the cottage came back vividly. He pictured the position of the chair and the chalked outlines of the farmer’s feet. How he wished he had seen it before the body was taken away. He made a mental note to look at the photos, for he had thought of another problem with the suicide. He brooded on the matter for a long time, going over it repeatedly, pondering the way it was done. If you are about to blow your brains out, do you choose the most simple way? In that state of mind, are you capable of taking practical decisions?

  Such was his concentration that he didn’t get much involved in the activity at the dissecting table.

  When he emerged from the reverie, he heard Middleton saying, ‘…nothing inconsistent with a fall from a considerable height. Obviously we’ll see what Chepstow have to say about the samples, but them’s me findings for what they’re worth, ladies and gentlemen, and unless you have any questions I recommend an early lunch.’

  The early lunch was part of the patter, a pay-off that the pathologist took a morbid pleasure in inflicting. Judging by the queasy looks around the table it would be a long time before his audience could face anything to eat.