Upon A Dark Night

by Peter Lovesey

‘When you came in, she’d already found the door and gone up to the attic.’

  Diamond’s statement acted like a reprieve. The boy’s posture altered. His face lit up. ‘That never occurred to me.’

  Diamond nodded. ‘I’m going to get you a beer, son. A regular beer.’

  He remained with the lad for some time, talking of the high expectations of women and how even a man of his experience could never hope to match their dreams. ‘That’s their agony, Gary, and ours. We’re all trying to make the best of what we’ve got. They have to accept that you’re not Elvis, or Bill Gates, or Jesus Christ, and if you keep talking, make them laugh a little, show them you’re neither a rapist nor a rabbit, you may find one willing to stretch a point and spend some time with you.’ The boy said he lacked confidence. Talking more like a best mate than the father he had not been, Diamond pointed out that the party hadn’t been the personal disaster it seemed. To have faltered at the bedroom door would have been a failure. The lad had proved to himself that he was man enough to go in. Now it was just a question of some fine tuning. Trendy clothes. A different haircut. Drinking beer was a good start.

  The time had not been wasted.

  Twenty-three

  ‘John, I’m setting up a murder inquiry.’

  Wigfull stiffened and pressed himself back in his chair. ‘This German woman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘The farmer.’

  ‘Gladstone?’

  In a pacifying gesture, Diamond put up his palms. ‘It was your case, I know, and you had it down as a suicide.’

  Wigfull snatched up a manila folder. ‘It’s here, ready for the coroner.’

  There was a moment’s silence out of respect for all the work contained in the manila folder. ‘As you know,’ Diamond resumed, ‘I was out at Tormarton the afternoon you were there. I’ve been back since.’

  The Chief Inspector’s face turned geranium red. ‘You had no right.’

  Diamond went on in a steady tone, neither apologetic nor triumphant, ‘The first test of suicide is to make sure that the death wound was self-inflicted. I’ve looked at the shotgun, in its wrapper. I measured it. Have you seen it? The length, I mean. I tucked it under my chin and tried the position he is supposed to have used to blow his own brains out. I’m a larger man than old Gladstone was and I tell you, John, my fingers can’t reach the trigger with my arms fully stretched. If the muzzle was in my mouth, yes, I could fire it, just. If it was against my forehead, easier still. But the cartridge went through his jaw from underneath. The little old man was physically incapable of doing that.’

  Wigfull was unwilling to be persuaded. ‘We found his prints on the breechblock and on the barrel.’

  ‘But you would. The gun was his.’’ There were no other prints.’

  Diamond gave him a long, unadmiring look. ‘If you were handling a murder weapon, would you leave your prints on it?’

  ‘The gun was found beside him.’

  ‘To make it look like suicide.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m incompetent?’

  ‘John, for pity’s sake, listen. This was set up as a suicide. It looked cut and dried. Dead man in a chair with his shotgun beside him. You saw it yourself before forensic removed the body from the scene. Difficult to reconstruct later, of course. That’s the fault of the procedure. We store the gun in one place and the corpse in another and it’s easy to overlook the mechanics. I’m not getting at you personally. Any of us.’

  ‘Except you,’ Wigfull said with ill-concealed resentment.

  ‘But do you see what I’m driving at?’

  ‘What put you onto it?’

  The question signalled that Wigfull was listening to reason, and Diamond treated it with restraint. ‘I couldn’t understand why the ground was disturbed at the farm after Gladstone’s death.’

  ‘I knew all about that,’ Wigfull waded in again, still making this an issue of personal rivalry. ‘In fact I was the one who told you about it.’

  ‘Perfectly true.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t pin too much on it,’ he added, seeing a possible flaw in Diamond’s reasoning. ‘What was it – five days the body lay there? You can bet some evil bastard noticed that the old farmer wasn’t about. Maybe they looked in and thought this was an opportunity. There were rumours Gladstone was miserly. Someone could have thought he buried his savings. If they dug a few holes, it might make them trespassers and thieves, but it doesn’t make them murderers.’

  ‘Fair point,’ said Diamond. ‘You may still be right about the digging. But you wanted to know what put me onto homicide as a possibility, and I’m telling you. When I see signs of a third party at the scene, I automatically think murder. It’s my job. I asked myself if Gladstone’s death could have been caused by the person or people who dug his land. Ran it through my mind as a faked suicide. Looked at the scene and checked the weapon. And unless the old boy had arms like an orangutan, I’m right.’

  Wigfull resigned the contest. The moustache hung over his downturned mouth like the wings of a caged vulture. ‘So what was the motive? Theft?’

  ‘That isn’t clear yet. But I have a suspect.’

  He sat forward, animated again. ‘You do?’

  Diamond’s bland expression didn’t alter. ‘But if you don’t mind, John, I’ll sleep on it. Tomorrow we’ll set up an incident room and a squad and I’ll take them through the evidence. I expect you’ll want to be in on it.’

  He went to look for Julie.

  She had not returned, so he ambled down to the canteen for some supper. Baked beans, bacon, fried eggs, chips and toast, with a mug of tea. ‘You’re a credit to us, Mr Diamond,’ the manageress told him.

  ‘Stoking up,’ he said. ‘Heavy session in prospect.’

  It was almost eight when Julie got back to the nick.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked her first.

  ‘Not since lunch.’

  ‘Why don’t we go across to Bloomsburys? I don’t think I can face the canteen tonight.’ Coming from a man who was a credit to the police canteen, it was a betrayal. What a good thing the manageress didn’t hear him.

  Julie said, ‘On one condition: that you stay off the beer.’ Seeing his eyes widen at that, she explained, ‘No disrespect, but you’ve had enough for one day if you’re driving home after.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Her slightly raised eyebrows said enough.

  Bloomsburys Cafe-Bar was their local, just across the street from the nick, a place with bewildering decor that amused Diamond each time he came in. Pink and green dominated and the portraits of Virginia Woolf and members of the Bloomsbury Set co-existed with non-stop TV and plastic tablecloths, lulled by rock ballads and the click of billiard balls from the games room behind the bar.

  They chose a round table in a window bay. Diamond circled it first, assessing the fit of the chairs. On previous visits he’d discovered a variation in size, although they were all painted pale green. A big man had to be alert to such things. While Julie started on a chicken curry with rice and poppadom, he sampled the apple pie and custard, stared at the Diet Coke in front of him and brought her up to date on his long afternoon, recalling how he handled the shotgun, examined the church registers at Tormarton and gave advice on women to a detectorist. Unusually, he went to some trouble to explain how each experience had an impact on their investigations. In total, he said, it had been a satisfactory afternoon – and how was it for her?

  Less exciting, she told him. She had started, as per instructions, by visiting Imogen Starr, the social worker, and questioning her about Doreen Jenkins, the woman who had collected Rose. In Imogen’s opinion, Jenkins was an intelligent and well-disposed woman, concerned about Rose and well capable of caring for her.

  ‘Ho-hum,’ commented Diamond. ‘Did you get a description from her?’

  ‘A good one. I’ll say that for Imogen: she’d make a cracking witness. She puts the woman’s age at thirty or slightly younger
. Height five-eight. Broad-shouldered. Healthy complexion. Regular, good-looking features, but with large cheek-bones. Good teeth, quite large. Brown eyes. Fine, chestnut brown hair worn in a ponytail. She was beautifully made-up, face, nails, the lot. White silk blouse, black leggings, black lace-up shoes. Oh, and she had a mock-leather jacket that she put on at the end and one of those large leather shoulder-bags with a zip.’

  ‘Accent?’

  ‘Home counties. Educated.’

  ‘Your memory isn’t so bad either. I take it that Imogen hasn’t changed her opinion about this elegant dame?’

  ‘She still believes Rose is in good hands.’

  He clicked his tongue in dissent. ‘And I told her myself that the Hounslow address is false.’

  ‘She thinks it quite feasible that the family wanted to protect Rose from the press.’

  ‘Talk about Starr. Starry-eyed,’ he said.

  ‘Inexperienced,’ said Julie.

  Doreen Jenkins’s integrity had unravelled as Julie had got on the trail, phoning around and checking the information. None of it had stood up to examination. Nothing was known of the family in Twickenham or Hounslow, nor of Jackie Mays, the friend who had been mentioned. Rose’s mother was supposed to have got a divorce and remarried in 1972. A check of all the marriages that year of men named Black had failed to link any with a woman whose surname was Jenkins.

  Doreen Jenkins and her partner Jerry were supposed to have been staying at a bed and breakfast place in Bathford. Not one of the licensed boarding houses could recall a couple staying that week and being joined later by someone of Rose’s name or description.

  ‘Ada Shaftsbury was right all the time,’ Julie summed up. ‘This woman was lying through her teeth.’

  ‘Except for the photos,’ he said. ‘They must have been genuine to have convinced Ada as well as Imogen. They definitely showed Rose with an older woman.’

  ‘I’d be more impressed if they’d shown Doreen Jenkins in the same picture.’

  ‘You doubt if she’s the stepsister?’

  ‘Having spent this afternoon the way I did, I doubt everything the bloody woman said.’

  Hunched over the drink, which he was taking in small sips like cough medicine, he said, ‘Why then? Why all the subterfuge?’

  Julie shook her head, at a loss. ‘I spent the last two hours with Ada, going over everything again.’

  ‘With Ada?’

  She nodded.

  He shook his head. ‘You need a socking great drink.’

  ‘And some.’

  ‘I’ll join you.’ He closed his eyes and downed the last of the Diet Coke.

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘make it Diet Cokes for both of us.’

  His mouth may have turned down at the edges, but he didn’t protest. Meekly he stepped back to the bar and when he returned with the drinks he told her, ‘Yours has vodka added.’

  She said, ‘They look the same to me.’

  ‘Colourless, isn’t it?’ He took a long swig of his. ‘Now, Julie, I want to try out a theory on you. If it holds up, we may have a suspect for Gladstone’s murder.’

  Rain turning to sleet, sweeping in on an east wind, rattled the metal-framed windows of the Manvers Street building as Diamond briefed the murder squad. It was nine-twenty on Wednesday morning. Sixteen of them had assembled, most in their twenties, in leather and denim, the ‘plain-clothes’ that is almost a CID uniform, their hair either close-cropped or overlong. John Wigfull, the only suit in the room, sat slightly apart, closest to the door. Behind Diamond was a display board with a map of north-east Avon showing Tormarton Farm marked with a red arrow. There were several eight-by-ten photos of the scene inside the farmhouse, the corpse slumped in an armchair, the back of the head blown away, the shotgun lying on the floor. That same gun in its transparent wrapping lay across a table. Already this morning Diamond had demonstrated the impossibility of Daniel Gladstone’s ‘suicide’. He had talked about the digging on the farm at Tormarton and the possible motive of theft. Now he turned to another incident.

  ‘Monday, October 3rd, about six-thirty. An elderly couple called Dunkley-Brown are driving back from Bristol to Westbury on the M4. At Junction Eighteen…’ He took a step towards the map and touched the point. ‘…they decide to take a detour through Bath to collect a Chinese takeaway. They start down the A46 and after maybe three-quarters of a mile – before Dyrham, anyway – they are forced to brake. A young woman has wandered into the road. They can’t avoid hitting her, but they think they’ve avoided a serious accident. She fell across the bonnet. But when they go to help her it’s clear that she’s lost consciousness. They try to revive her at the side of the road. This is a real dilemma for them because the man has endorsements for drunk driving and he’s had a few beers during the day. They don’t want to be identified. What they do is this: drive her to the nearest hospital, a private clinic, here…’ He touched the map again. ‘…the Hinton Clinic – and dump her unconscious in the car park. But they are seen leaving the hospital and they have a Bentley with a distinctive mascot, and that’s how we know as much as we do.

  ‘The woman is found and taken into the hospital still in a coma and at this point it becomes a police matter. We send someone to the Hinton, but without much result, because although the patient is nursed back to consciousness, she is apparently suffering from a total loss of memory about her past, everything leading up to and including the accident. However, her physical injuries amount to no more than a cracked rib and some bruising and she’s handed over to Bath Social Services. We send a photographer to get some pics of the damage. Screen, please.’

  One of the squad unfurled the screen on the front wall. Diamond switched on a slide-projector and the back view of a naked woman appeared and was hailed with approving noises by the largely male audience. Julie Hargreaves shook her head at the juvenile reaction, but they quieted down when Diamond pointed out the cuts and bruising on the thighs and legs. The next slide, a frontal shot, still got a few rutting sounds, if more muted than before. The woman on the screen had attractive breasts and a trim waist, yet her discomfort at being photographed was evident in the pose.

  ‘That’s the end of the floorshow, gentlemen.’

  Some good-humoured dissent was heard.

  Diamond slotted in another slide, a close-up of the woman’s face, and left it on the screen while he told the story of Rose’s short stay at Harmer House, eventually concluding it with: ‘…and after she is collected by the woman claiming to be her stepsister, we hear no more of her. Nobody hears a dickybird, not Social Services, not Ada, not the Old Bill.’

  The room had gone silent except for the steady drumming of the rain. To a murder squad, the disappearance of a woman is ominous.

  ‘What is more,’ Diamond added, ‘nothing holds up in the stepsister’s story. Julie spent most of yesterday checking.’ He paused and looked at the tense, troubled face on the screen. ‘It’s already two weeks since she was collected. We thought we knew her name and background, but we can’t be sure of it any more. We’ll continue to call her Rose. Take a long look. She’s top priority. We’ve got to find her.’

  He made eye contact with Julie. ‘DI Hargreaves is in charge of the search.’

  He turned back to the map. ‘Now, look at this, the point on the A46, here, where she wanders into the road out of nowhere, the first anyone has heard of her. It’s not a great distance from Tormarton, is it? Not a great distance from Daniel Gladstone’s farm.’ He spanned it roughly with his outstretched forefinger and thumb. ‘Two miles at most. Think about that, will you? And think about when it happened, Monday, October 3rd. Curious, isn’t it, that the Friday previous is the pathologist’s best estimate of the old farmer’s date of death?’

  ‘You think she killed him, sir?’ someone asked.

  Diamond faced the screen, saying nothing.

  ‘How could she?’ one of the younger detectives asked. ‘You’d need two people. One to pull the trigger and the other to hold t
he old bloke still.’

  Another chipped in. ‘Bloody risky, holding his head over a shotgun. I wouldn’t do it. You could get your face blown away, easy.’

  ‘What you do,’ said Keith Halliwell, the longest-serving member of the squad, ‘is tie him to the chair first.’

  ‘You think a woman trussed him up?’

  ‘No problem. He was seventy-plus. Did you look at her physique?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Keith did,’ said a mocking voice. ‘Keefy likes ‘em beefy.’

  Diamond swung around, glaring at the unfortunate who had spoken. ‘Oh, dead funny. Why don’t you come up here and do your act from the front? We’ll all club together, buy a red nose and a whoopee cushion and get you into show business.’ With silence reinstated, he said, ‘Someone asked if I think Rose killed the farmer. I was coming to that.’ He let them stew for another interval while he walked across to the window and looked at the rain. ‘Yes. It’s a possibility. She was in the area at approximately the time he was killed. Very approximately. The pathologist will tell you we’re dealing in rough figures here. A couple of days either side. So let’s not get carried away. However-’ He paused to wipe some condensation from the window. ‘-if the loss of memory is genuine, it will have been caused by some deeply stressful, traumatic event. And not just concussion from the accident. That’s different. You don’t lose your long-term memory from a bump on the head. This woman is suffering from acute neurosis. The scene in that farmhouse was scary enough to throw anyone’s mind off beam. True, it seems to have been a cold-blooded execution, but the effect of that shotgun blasting the back of old Gladstone’s skull off may have been more of a shock to the killer than she expected. Enough to suppress her memory and wipe out her own identity. And for those of you thinking I know sod-all about traumatic disorders, I did consult a couple of textbooks. There have been cases like it.

  ‘And now you’re going to ask me about a motive and I can’t tell you one because I don’t know who the woman is. But the possibilities are there. You can say she hates him because of something evil he did in the past, like abusing her when she was a child, or raping her mother. Or she could be the cold-blooded sort, after his savings. She may be mad, of course.’