Upon A Dark Night

by Peter Lovesey

Ada said, ‘Look, she could have gone ten different ways from there. I had no chance of finding her. No chance.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Around four, four-fifteen. I came straight here.’

  ‘You’re positive it was the same woman who claimed to be Rose’s stepsister?’

  ‘No question. Look, I may have form, Mr Diamond, but I’m not thick.’

  She seemed to expect some show of support here, so he said, ‘No way.’

  ‘She’s supposed to come from Twickenham, so what’s she doing in Bath?’

  He reached for a notepad. ‘Let’s have a description, Ada. Everything you can remember.’

  She closed her eyes and tried to summon up the image of the woman. ‘Same height as me, more or less. Dark brown hair. Straight. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a ponytail. This time it was pinned up, off the neck, like some ballet-dancer, except she was a couple of sizes too heavy for the Sugar Plum Fairy. I’d say she’s a sixteen, easy.’ She opened her eyes again. ‘Big bazoomas, if you’re interested.’

  If he was, he didn’t declare it. ‘Age?’

  ‘Pushing thirty. Pretty good skin, what you could see of it. She lashes on the make-up.’

  ‘Eyes?’

  ‘Brown. With eye-liner, mascara, the works.’

  ‘And her other features? Anything special about them?’

  ‘You want your money’s worth, don’t you? Straight nose, thinnish lips, nicely shaped. Now you want to know about her clothes? She was in a cherry-red coat with black collar, black frogging and buttons. A pale blue chiffon scarf. Black tights or stockings and black shoes with heels. Her bag was patent leather, not the one she had when I saw her in the Social Security.’

  As descriptions go, it was top bracket. He thanked her.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she demanded to know when he had finished writing it down.

  ‘Find her.’

  She regarded him with suspicion. ‘You wouldn’t farm this out to whatsisname with the tash?’

  ‘DCI Wigfull? He’s busy enough.’ He got up from behind the table, signifying that the session was over.

  But Ada lingered. ‘When you find her, you’ll put her through the grinder, won’t you? She’s evil. I don’t like to think what’s happened to Rose by now.’

  ‘We’ve appealed for help,’ he told her. ‘Rose will be all over the front page in the paper tomorrow.’

  ‘God, I hope not,’ she said, misunderstanding him.

  After Ada had gone, muttering and shaking her head like a latter-day Cassandra, Diamond commented to Julie, ‘Don’t ask what we’re going to do about this. It’s a terrific description, but next time the Jenkins woman goes out she’s not going to be in cherry-red, she’ll have her hair down and be wearing glasses and a blue trouser suit. She won’t go within a mile of Rossiter’s.’

  ‘Because Ada recognised her?’

  He nodded.

  Julie said, ‘It’s a definite sighting – and in Bath.’ She hesitated over the question that came next. ‘Do you think Rose could still be in the city?’

  ‘Hiding up?’ He pressed his mouth tight. His eyes took on a glazed, distracted look.

  Julie waited, expecting some insight.

  Eventually he sighed and said, ‘Rossiter’s. I haven’t been in there since they closed the restaurant. Steph and I used to go for a coffee sometimes, of a Saturday morning, up on the top floor. Self-service it was. You carried your tray to a deep settee and sat there as long as you liked, eating the finest wholemeal scones I’ve tasted in the whole of my life.’

  She was lost for a comment. This vignette of the Diamond domestic routine had no bearing on the case that she could see.

  ‘That was bad news, Julie,’ he said.

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘When Rossiter’s restaurant closed.’

  It seemed to signify the end of his interest in Ada’s sensational encounter. Maybe it was his way of telling her not to expect insights.

  They returned to the incident room to find that a message had been left by Jim Marsh, the SOCO. He had collected no less than seventeen hairs from Imogen Starr’s Citroën Special and the lab were in process of examining them. There was no indication when a result might be forthcoming.

  ‘Seventeen sounds like a long wait to me.’

  ‘Most of them belong to Imogen, I expect,’ said Julie.

  ‘One of Rose’s would be enough for me.’

  He ambled over to Keith Halliwell and asked what else had been achieved.

  ‘You asked us to check on the neighbouring farm at Tormarton, the one that wanted to swallow up Gladstone’s little patch.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s owned by a company called Hollandia Holdings Limited.’

  ‘We know that already, Keith.’

  ‘We checked with Companies’ House and got a list of the directors. It’s here somewhere.’ He sorted through the papers on his desk. ‘Four names.’

  Diamond looked at them and frowned.

  Patrick van Beek (MD)

  Aart Vroemen (CS)

  Luc Beurskens

  Marko Stigter

  ‘Dutch?’

  ‘Well, it is called Hollandia-’

  ‘Yes. And we’re all in the Common Market and the Dutch know a lot about farming. What are the letters after the names? Is van Beek a doctor?’

  ‘Managing director.’

  ‘Ah.’ He grinned self-consciously. Abbreviations were his blind spot and everyone knew it. ‘Do we have their addresses?’

  ‘Just the company address, a Bristol PO number. PO – short for Post Office,’ said Halliwell.

  The grin faded. ‘Thank you, Keith.’ He turned to Julie. ‘What’s your opinion, then?’

  She said, ‘They’re not locals, for sure. Can we check if they own other farms in this country?’

  ‘We already have. Two in Somerset, one in Gloucestershire,’ said Halliwell. ‘The company seems to be kosher.’

  The two of them looked to Diamond for an indication where the inquiry was heading now. He stood silent for some time, hunched in contemplation, hands clasped behind his neck. Finally he said, as if speaking to himself, ‘There was just this chance that the neighbours were so set on acquiring the farm that they did away with Gladstone. We know he was made an offer more than once and refused, but that’s no justification for blowing the old man’s head off. It was a piddling piece of land. There had to be a stronger motive. The only one I can see is if they believed more Saxon treasure was buried there. The Tormarton Seax was well known. There might have been other things buried, but Gladstone was an obstinate old cuss who wouldn’t let anyone find out. That’s the best motive we have so far.’ He paused and altered his posture, thrusting his hands in his pockets, but still self-absorbed. ‘The idea of some faceless men, a company, greedy to grab the land and dig there, had some appeal. Now I’m less sure.’

  ‘Somebody did some digging – quite a lot of it,’ Julie commented.

  He said sharply, ‘I’m talking about the company, this Hollandia outfit. We know who they are now. Not faceless men. Keith gets the names from Companies House without any trouble at all. Mr van Beek and his chums, a bunch of Dutchmen with holdings in other farms as well. We can check them out – we will check them out – but I don’t see them as killers. If they went to all the trouble of buying the farm next door, employing locals to work the land, if that’s the planning, the commitment, they made to acquire this treasure, would they be quite so stupid as this?’

  ‘It almost got by as a suicide,’ said Halliwell.

  ‘But it didn’t. And we know their names. Check their credentials, Keith. Find out if the other farms they own are going concerns, how long they’ve been investing here. I think we’ll discover these Dutchmen are more interested in turnips than treasure.’

  ‘Now? It’s getting late to phone people.’

  ‘Get onto it.’ Next it was Julie’s turn to feel the heat. ‘You jus
t brought up the digging. Have you really thought it through?’

  Experience of Diamond told her he wouldn’t need a response.

  ‘I said, have you thought it through? Has it crossed your mind at any point that the digging could be one bloody great red herring? People all around Tormarton knew about the Saxon sword. It was common knowledge that old Gladstone wouldn’t let anyone excavate his land. He was lying dead in that house for a week and we’re given to believe nobody knew. But what if some local person did find out, looked through the farmhouse window, saw the body and thought this is the chance everyone has waited fifty years for? Do you see? Your enterprising local lad comes along with a metal detector and spade and gets digging. If so, the murder and the digging are two separate incidents.’

  ‘So are you suggesting we look for another motive?’ said Julie, now that the discussion was becoming rational again. ‘Why else would anyone have wanted to kill the old man?’

  ‘What do we know about him, apart from the fact that he lived here all his life?’

  ‘And was unfriendly to archaeologists?’

  He talked through her comment. ‘Who did we put onto researching the victim’s life history? Jerry Hansen.’

  ‘Sir?’ The quiet man of the squad, Jerry, got up from his desk and came over.

  ‘Where are we on Gladstone?’

  ‘Piecing his story together, sir, from local knowledge and documentation. It’s still patchy.’

  ‘Let’s have what you’ve got.’

  Jerry launched smoothly into it. Nobody was better at ferreting for information. ‘The Gladstone family have been at Marton Farm for generations. He was born in 1923, the only child of Jacob and Esther, and went to school in Tormarton. Left when he was fourteen, and worked for his father. Seems to have joined in village life in those days.’

  Diamond gave a nod. ‘Young and carefree, according to the vicar. That’s a tearaway in the language you and I speak.’

  ‘Well, he certainly married young, at nineteen, in 1943. In fact, they were both nineteen. She was May Turner, a London girl who was living in the village during the war.’

  ‘It was her family Bible I found.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that was helpful.’

  ‘How about war service?’

  ‘He was exempt. Farming was a reserved occupation. They rented rooms in a house in Tormarton. But the marriage wasn’t happy. He seems to have been difficult all his life.’

  ‘Unfaithful?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but unbearable, it’s fair to say,’ said Jerry. ‘This is gossip, but several elderly people in the village told us the same things. He was constantly picking on her, complaining of this and that. And he worked her hard. His mother died in 1944, so he and May moved into Marton Farm to care for the old father, who couldn’t even boil an egg. May took on the job, but she didn’t last long. She died two or three years after the marriage. We don’t have the date yet.’

  ‘What cause?’

  ‘Bronchial pneumonia. The locals insist that she was ill before they moved to the farm. The lodgings were never heated properly. He would only buy so much paraffin.’

  The detail opened a small window into the short, tragic marriage.

  ‘Any children?’

  ‘Not by the first wife.’

  ‘And after she died, father and son fended for themselves?’

  ‘Until 1953, when old Jacob passed on. Daniel managed the farm alone for some years. He married for the second time in 1967, to the local publican’s daughter, Margaret Torrington, known as Meg. A child, a daughter, came along in 1970.’

  ‘Christine. I saw her entry in the Church Register.’

  ‘Yes. Soon after that, they separated. Life on the farm must have been hard.’

  ‘Life with the farmer, more like. Do we know what became of Meg and her child?’

  ‘We’re piecing it together. Her parents have long since gone from the village to manage other pubs. No one knows where they ended up.’

  ‘You could try the brewers.’

  ‘We did. No joy. And none of the family kept in contact with anyone else in Tormarton. There was just the photo you found, and the message in the Christmas card.’

  Diamond repeated the forlorn words, ‘“I thought you would like this picture of your family.”’

  ‘But it’s not a total blank. Someone in the Post Office reckons they moved to London.’

  ‘London’s a big place, Jerry.’

  ‘I was going to add Wood Green.’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘They also heard that Meg – the second wife – died of leukemia in January. We checked the registers and it seems to be true. A married woman called Margaret Gladstone died in St Ann’s Hospital, Harringay – that’s close enough to Wood Green – on January 28th, aged forty-nine.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Jerry’s face clouded. Clearly he thought he had done a reasonable job.

  Diamond said, ‘Her age, Jerry. I mean forty-nine is no age at all.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘And he outlived her.’

  Jerry said hesitantly, ‘I found it rather a sad touch that on the death certificate she is still described as a barmaid.’

  ‘You’re too sentimental for a young man,’ Diamond told him. ‘She probably enjoyed working in bars. Do you know what I’m about to ask you?’

  ‘The daughter Christine?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘There is something to report. I contacted the hospital for Mrs Gladstone’s next of kin. They confirmed the name on their file as Christine Gladstone, daughter, and gave me an address in Fulham. Gowan Avenue. I asked the Met to check and I’m waiting for a call.’

  ‘We’ll all be waiting,’ said Diamond, rubbing his hands. ‘God, yes. How old would this young woman be now?’

  ‘We have the date of her baptism as February, 1970, so assuming she was baptised soon after birth she’s about twenty-seven.’

  ‘Near enough for me.’

  No one else spoke. Each of them had made the connection. If it emerged that Christine Gladstone had been missing from home for the past four weeks, then it was a fair bet that she was the young woman known to them as Rose. And Diamond’s insistence that Rose was the principal suspect suddenly looked reasonable.

  Twenty-seven

  ‘Pete!’

  Diamond drew back, shocked by the panic in his wife’s voice. A steel kitchen knife was in his hand.

  Stephanie Diamond moved fast to the electric point and switched it off.

  ‘You damned near electrocuted yourself, you great ninny. What were you thinking of?’

  Thinking of using the knife to prise out the piece of toast stuck in the toaster and starting to smoke? Or not thinking?

  With her slim fingers Steph picked out the charred remains and tossed them into the sink. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll cut you a fresh piece. You’ve never been able to cut bread evenly.’

  He said, ‘If we used a cut loaf…’

  ‘You know why we don’t,’ she said, trimming off the overhang he had left on the loaf. ‘What’s the matter with you? I nearly had a corpse of my own to deal with.’

  ‘Thinking of other things.’

  She cut an even slice and dropped it into the toaster and switched on again. She didn’t ask any more. If he wanted to tell her, he would. ‘Other things’ probably meant the details of his work that Steph preferred not to know. On the whole she was happier being given gossipy news of the Manvers Street staff: Wigfull, the ambitious one Peter called ‘Mr Clean’, making it sound like a term of abuse; or ‘Winking, Blinking and Nod’, the three Assistant Chief Constables; and Julie Hargreaves, the plucky young inspector who smoothed the way, dealt with the murmurings in the ranks and made it possible for her brilliant, but testy and brutally honest boss to function at all.

  ‘I’m sleeping better, Steph.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

  ‘I reckon the tension isn’t hyper any more.
Things are humming nicely again.’

  ‘You’re doing an honest day’s work?’

  ‘Tell me this, if it doesn’t ruin your breakfast. Why would a woman murder her father of seventy-one who she hasn’t seen since she was a small child?’

  Ruin breakfast? Lunch as well, she thought. But he seemed to need her advice. ‘This is the one whose picture is in the local paper?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Insanity?’

  His eyebrows popped up. ‘That’s a theory no one has mentioned up to now.’

  ‘She looks confused.’

  ‘She is. She lost her memory, allegedly. But people who met her say she’s rational.’

  ‘And you think she shot that old man at Tormarton?’

  Now he looked at her in awe. She’d just made a connection it had taken him days to arrive at. ‘Crosswords getting too easy, are they? You’re having to read the rest of the paper?’

  She smiled faintly.

  ‘You’re spot on,’ he said. ‘She’s the daughter and she was found wandering a mile or so from the scene on the day of the murder. Today I expect to get the proof that she was present in the farmhouse. I’m still uncertain as to her motive. What does it take for a woman to tie her father to a chair and fire a shotgun at his head?’

  ‘Did he abuse her as a child?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘That’s something you might consider,’ Steph said. ‘Anger surfacing after many years.’

  ‘She’s supposed to have lost her memory.’

  ‘That could be due to repression. She blocks it all out after killing him. She wants to cleanse herself. The mind can act as a censor. Is it a possibility here?’

  ‘Could be. The mother left him only a few years after they married.’

  Steph spread her hands. ‘If the mother found out…’

  ‘But then she sent him a Christmas card with a photo of herself and the child. “I thought you would like this picture of your family. God’s blessings to us all at this time.” Would an angry mother do that?’

  She thought for a moment and said, ‘I doubt it. Maybe she never knew of the abuse.’

  He tried his own pet theory on Steph. ‘This woman, the mother. She died in January of leukemia. This is speculation, but I wonder if Rose, the daughter, sorting through her mother’s things as she would, being next of kin, found something, a letter, say, or a diary, that revealed some family secret.’