Upon A Dark Night

by Peter Lovesey

  Before going out, he phoned the pathologist, Jim Middleton.

  ‘You got those blood-test results, then,’ Middleton’s rich Yorkshire brogue came down the line, confident that he knew the reason for the call.

  ‘On the woman, yes,’ Diamond said.

  ‘So did I. No drugs and very little alcohol, which greatly simplifies your job, doesn’t it?’

  ‘This isn’t about her. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a question about the other PM you did this morning.’

  ‘The old farmer? Fire away.’

  This required tact from Diamond; the medical profession don’t like laymen giving them advice. ‘I was thinking over what you said, about it being unusual in suicides, aiming the muzzle under the chin.’

  ‘This one was the first I’ve come across,’ Middleton confirmed, ‘but there’s always something new in this game.’

  ‘He must have had a long reach. I had a look at the gun earlier. The distance from muzzle to trigger is twenty-eight inches.’

  ‘Actually, he was on the short side.’A pause. ‘You’ve got a point there, my friend.’ The tone of that ‘my friend’rather undermined the sentiment. ‘I’d better check my measurements.’

  ‘When the body was found, there wasn’t any sign that he was tied to the chair,’ Diamond started to say.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Middleton. ‘What the fuck are you suggesting, inspector?’

  ‘Superintendent.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Peter will do. Is it conceivable that this was set up to look like a suicide when it was something else?’

  There was another awkward silence before Middleton said, ‘I found no marks of ligatures, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘He was in a wooden armchair,’ Diamond said. ‘If his arms were pinioned in some way to the chair, he’d be helpless. He was in his seventies.’

  ‘I said I found no marks.’

  ‘He was wearing several layers of clothes: jacket, pullover, shirt and long-sleeved vest. If a ligature was over the clothes, would the pressure marks show through?’

  ‘You’re bloody persistent, aren’t you? It depends how tight this theoretical ligature was, but, no, it need not. This was a corpse after a week of putrefaction. We’re not dealing in subtleties at that stage. What are you suggesting – that he was trussed up for slaughter and then untied after death?’

  Twenty minutes and a brisk walk later, Diamond entered the pub in Westgate Street where the Allardyces and the Treadwells had begun their celebrations on the fateful Saturday night. Not many were in. Six-fifteen this Tuesday evening was too early for the youthful regulars who nightly turned the Grapes into Bath’s hottest drinking spot. The sound from the music system was well short of the decibels it would reach later, but still loud for a man whose peaks of listening came on Radio Two.

  He sauntered through the narrow low-beamed bar with its low-watt electric lights masquerading as oil-lamps. The dark wood panelling and antique paintings lived up to the claim, inscribed along a crossbeam, that the present facade dated from the seventeenth century; the fruit machines on every side undermined the impression. He saw the TV set at the far end of the bar that must have given the Treadwells and the Allardyces the news of their lottery success. There were bottled drinks he’d never heard of on display behind the bar. A man of his maturity stood out in this place, he thought. Anyone expecting a visitor from the police ought to give him a second glance. No one did. He strolled the length of the bar eyeing all the lone drinkers. He was beginning to take against Gary Paternoster before having met him, which was stupid. This one might be a nerd, and a barfly into the bargain, but he had gone to the trouble of calling at the nick. He could be about to provide the information that would nail a killer.

  So quit racing your motor, Diamond told himself. Watch your blood pressure.

  He asked a barmaid for help.

  ‘Dunno, love, but it could be him over there, under the fish.’

  The fish was a trompe l’oeil, a pike carved in wood to look as if it was in a showcase. It was mounted on the wall near the door. Alone at a table, a youth sat like a more convincing stuffed specimen, staring ahead with glazed eyes. He was in a suit, a businessman’s three-piece, navy blue with a faint white pinstripe. He had an old-fashioned short-back-and-sides and owlish glasses. When Diamond spoke his name, he jerked and stood up.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Diamond told him. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

  ‘Lemonade shandy.’

  A pained expression came over Diamond’s features. It was a long time since he’d come across anyone drinking shandy. The very notion of mixing good beer with lemonade…

  In his innocence Gary Paternoster added, ‘But one is enough for me, thank you, sir.’

  Diamond went back to the bar and collected a pint of best bitter for himself, a chance to focus his thoughts. This wasn’t the class of nerd he’d expected. This was a throwback to some time in the dim past when kids in their teens respected their elders and stayed sober and wore their Sunday best for talking to the police. Did it matter? Not if the boy was reliable as a witness.

  At the table again, he perched uncomfortably on a padded stool with his back to a fruit machine called Monte Carlo or Bust and said, ‘Didn’t you want to wait at the nick, Mr Paternoster?’

  A nervous smile. ‘To be honest, they made me a little uncomfortable. Not the police officers. Some of the people who came in.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. They give me the creeps. So you offered to wait here. More relaxing, eh?’ They were sitting under a throbbing loudspeaker that didn’t relax Diamond much, but the music did guarantee that their conversation wasn’t overheard.

  ‘This was the only place I could think of. It’s mentioned in the newspaper.’ The boy took a cutting from his top pocket and passed it across the table. ‘They said you were out making inquiries. They couldn’t tell me where.’

  Diamond left the cutting where it was. ‘I see. You thought I might be here.’

  ‘I thought I’d come and see.’

  ‘Local, are you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘From Bath, I mean?’

  ‘Great Pulteney Street, actually.’

  ‘Very local, then. Nice address.’

  ‘It’s my mother’s.’

  He lived with his mother, and who would have guessed, Diamond cynically thought. ‘And are you in a job?’

  ‘I work at the Treasure House.’

  ‘What’s that – a Chinese restaurant?’

  Gary Paternoster blushed scarlet. ‘No. It’s a shop in Walcot Street, for detectorists.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond’s confidence in his star witness plunged another fathom. ‘Like me, you mean?’

  ‘Are you a detectorist?’

  Save us, he thought. ‘Detective Superintendent. Will that do?’

  The young man blushed again. ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m talking about people who use metal detectors.’

  Normally Diamond was quick, but it took a moment for the penny to drop. ‘What – treasure-hunters? The guys you see on the beach with those probe-things looking for money and watches other people have lost?’

  Gary Paternoster swallowed hard and said with disapproval, ‘Those people get us a bad name. Real detectorists aren’t interested in lost property – well, not modern lost property. You’ll find us in a ploughed field looking for ancient relics.’

  ‘Do you do it?’

  ‘Quite often, yes.’

  ‘Detectoring, you call it?’’ Yes.’

  ‘Ever found anything?’

  ‘Plenty.’ Self-congratulation lit the boyish features for a moment.

  Diamond pretended not to believe. ‘What – horseshoes and nails and bits of barbed wire?’

  ‘No. Medieval bronze buckles. Roman coins. Brooches and things. You learn a lot about history.’

  ‘Lonely hobby, I should think, for a young man like you.’

  This gentle goading was not wasted
. Faint glimmers of a personality were emerging from behind the shop-assistant’s manner. ‘I find it very satisfying, actually.’

  ‘And profitable?’

  ‘Not yet, but you never know what you might find – and profit isn’t really the point of it. We’re uncovering the past.’

  Uncovering the past summed up Gary Paternoster. He was a relic looking for relics.

  ‘But you weren’t out with your metal detector last Saturday night,’ Diamond said in an unsubtle shift to the matter under investigation.

  He looked at Diamond as if the question did him no credit. ‘It’s no good going out after dark. You wouldn’t find a thing.’

  ‘Mr Paternoster.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I’m inviting you to tell me what happened.’

  ‘Oh.’ He fastened a button on his suit. ‘I was up at the Royal Crescent, at that party.’

  Surprised, for Gary Paternoster didn’t look like a party-goer, Diamond said, ‘By invitation?’

  ‘Not in point of fact. It was open to everyone, wasn’t it? The shop was open late that evening, being Saturday. I was on my way home, about nine, I suppose, when I met some people I knew in Northgate Street. One of them was at school with me, quite a forceful personality. They were all on their way to this party and they asked me to join them. They said things I’m too embarrassed to repeat, about getting…getting…’

  ‘Laid?’

  ‘I was going to say getting lucky with girls. I didn’t really want to, and I said I wasn’t invited, but they said none of them were. I’m not very good at standing up to people like that.’

  ‘So you tagged along.’ Now he understood. The kid had been press-ganged.

  ‘I thought I’d slip away as soon as I got a chance. Parties make me tense. There seemed to be dozens going up there. They said someone here – in the Grapes – had won the lottery and thrown their house open for a party. That was what I heard and I think it’s true. When we got to the house, the door was open and we just walked in. There was loud music and beer. It seemed to be on several floors. We went upstairs to the first floor and that was where I saw the young lady who was killed.’

  ‘Already dead?’

  ‘No, at this point she was alive.’

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’

  ‘She’s the one whose picture is in the paper today. She was German, wasn’t she? She had a pink jumper thing and jeans – black or dark blue. A pretty face with dark hair, quite short. My friends seemed to know her from the pub – this place. She used to come here most evenings. It turned out that she didn’t know any English, because they were talking about her, making fun of her, saying suggestive things to her face.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Stupid stuff, like she was desperate for…’ He cleared his throat. Simply couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

  ‘Sex?’

  Paternoster took an intense interest in his shandy. ‘And they tried to embarrass me by telling her I wanted to go upstairs with her. She didn’t understand.’

  ‘She must have guessed what was going on,’ said Diamond. ‘She must have known what it was about from the sniggering. How did she take it? Was she upset?’

  ‘She ignored it. She seemed to be thinking about other things. She kept looking away, across the room.’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘The door, I think. She wasn’t looking at people. After a short time she just turned her back and moved off. They told me to go after her. They said she wanted me to follow her. I didn’t really believe it, but they were making me very embarrassed, so I went, just to get out of the room, really.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want you to think I had anything to do with her falling off the roof.’

  ‘It hasn’t crossed my mind,’ Diamond said in gospel truth. ‘Did you see where she went?’

  ‘Upstairs to the top flat. It was open. The party was going on there as well.’

  ‘And you followed?’

  The young man took a deep, audible breath through his mouth. ‘On the stairs she looked round to see who was following. I was at the bottom of the stairs, and our eyes met. I’m not very confident with girls as a rule, and I didn’t really expect anything, but the look she gave wasn’t unfriendly. It was kind of amused, as if she’d expected one of the others to be coming after her and was pleased to find it was me instead. I knew she was foreign and couldn’t speak the language and that was a help actually because I get tongue-tied when I talk to them. She was older than me by a few years and that was nice. Girls my age seem more hostile. Older women like my mother’s friends say I’m nice. She wasn’t as old as Mum’s friends, but she was in her twenties, I should think.’

  ‘So you began to fancy your chances?’

  He fingered his tie. ‘No, don’t misunderstand me. I was pleased because she’d noticed me and hadn’t pulled a face or something. I followed her upstairs. There were quite a number of people in the top flat, drinking and talking. I think some of them were dancing. It’s quite a big room.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. What did the woman do?’

  ‘She stood for a bit, watching. She went into the kitchen, I think, and came out.’

  ‘Was anyone with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you certain of that? Did you notice a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking much at the other people there. I was watching her.’

  ‘Try and remember. It’s important.’

  Paternoster frowned. ‘How tall do you mean?’

  ‘Really big. Well over six foot. Large hands, wide shoulders.’

  ‘No. I don’t remember anyone like that.’

  ‘Do you remember anyone at all, any of the guests who stood out?’

  ‘There was a black lady, but she was talking to people as if she belonged there.’

  ‘You’re probably right about that. Sally Allardyce is black and she lives in the top flat. You said she was talking to people. Can’t you picture any of them?’

  ‘No. They must have been friends. They seemed to know each other.’

  ‘Perhaps she was with the Treadwells, from downstairs.’

  ‘Not Mrs Treadwell. I know her and she wasn’t with them. I saw her downstairs. She was definitely downstairs.’

  ‘You know Mrs Treadwell?’

  ‘I’ve seen her in our shop.’

  ‘She’s a detectorist?’

  He smiled. ‘No. I know all the people in Bath who do it seriously. She came in out of interest one afternoon and looked at some books and magazines. A lot of people drop in just to see what it’s about. I think they expect us to have some treasure on view.’

  ‘How did you find out her name?’

  ‘Saw a picture of her in the paper almost the next day with her husband. In the business section. Something about a supermarket they designed. I remembered her face.’

  Diamond returned to the more pressing matter of Hildegarde Henkel. ‘You were telling me how you watched the German woman.’

  ‘Yes. She was there some time, getting on for half an hour, I’d say, and I was trying to pluck up the courage to go over to her.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  He was unsettled by Diamond’s comment. ‘Oh, but I was only wanting to let her know that not everyone in the place was unfriendly. I kept trying to catch her eye and smile or something, only she didn’t look my way. Like I said before, she didn’t seem to be looking at people. Then I got distracted – someone dropped a glass, I think – and when I looked up, she’d gone. I knew she hadn’t left the flat, because I was by the door and, believe me, I would have noticed if she’d come that close.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Diamond said. ‘So what did you do about it?’

  ‘Well, there was a small passageway at the end with two doors leading off it. One was the bathroom. I’d heard the toilet flushing as people came out. The other room had to be the bedroom. I assumed she’d gone to the bathroom. I waited some minutes to see if she would come o
ut, but when the door opened, it was a man. So…so I guessed she’d gone into the bedroom.’

  ‘Did you follow?’

  He eased a finger between his collar and his neck. ‘In the end, I did.’

  Diamond was almost moved to remind this wimp that he was not his mother and didn’t give a damn whether he followed a woman into a bedroom at a party.

  The confession resumed. ‘It was dark inside. I couldn’t really see much, just the shape of a large bed, and I could hear people on it. From the sounds it was obvious that they were…’

  ‘Hard at it?’

  ‘Yes. Me being there didn’t make any difference to them. I was amazed.’

  ‘That they ignored you?’

  ‘No. What surprised me was that it happened so fast. The man must have been in there waiting for her. I haven’t the faintest idea who he was.’

  He had put the wrong construction on this altogether. Diamond said, ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I came out. Left them to it. That’s all I can tell you, because I walked downstairs and out of the house at that point’

  Having made the first bold decision of his life by stepping into that bedroom, the boy had been cruelly disillusioned. Humiliated, he had quit the scene. It was easy to imagine, and it rang true.

  Diamond had heard all he needed. He could have thanked young Paternoster and arranged for someone else to take the statement. But some inner prompting, the memory, probably, of his own adolescent rebuffs, made him merciful. ‘I think you should know that there’s a second door in that bedroom. It’s on the far side. You wouldn’t have seen it unless you were looking for it, but I know it’s there because I’ve seen it. You said the German woman wasn’t looking at people. She’d worked out that there was an extra room – the attic room – upstairs. She looked everywhere else, and decided that the access to the attic had to be from the bedroom. I believe she found it and went up the stairs and eventually onto the roof.’

  ‘But… the people on the bed.’

  ‘Some other couple. You and I know what parties are like, Gary. We wouldn’t choose someone else’s house for a legover, but there’s always some randy couple who will.’

  ‘She wasn’t there?’