Upon A Dark Night
Page 35
‘Isn’t that something?’
‘You’re right, sir. He’s switched off his lights, bloody idiot. He’s all over the road.’
As they got nearer, they could make out the outline of a car without lights veering erratically between the lanes.
Roberts said, ‘I think his electrics are buggered. He braked just then and the brake lights didn’t come on.’
‘Flash him. Let him know we’re here.’
‘He knows that, sir. My God, he’s going!’
They watched the car sheer towards the crash-barrier in the centre, hit it in a shower of sparks and skew left across three lanes and the hard shoulder. It thudded into the embankment, reared up like a whale, rolled over and slid upside down with a sickening metallic sound, spinning back across two lanes of the motorway.
In trying to avoid it they got into a skid themselves. Their vehicle did a three-quarter turn before coming to a halt.
Diamond hurled open the door, got out and sprinted towards the up-ended Toyota on legs that didn’t feel like his own, only to discover that the impact had pancaked the superstructure to the level of the seats. The driver and anyone inside must have been mangled.
PC Roberts joined him and warned, ‘You can’t do anything. It could easily catch fire, sir. I’ve radioed for help.’
It was good advice which he ignored, for he had noticed something Roberts had not. The force of the crash had ripped open the Toyota’s luggage compartment. The lid was hanging open under the upturned wreck and a dark form wrapped in a roll of fabric was lying in the angle. Projecting from it was a white tubular object shaped like an angled section of drainpipe, but it was patently not a drainpipe because just visible at the end were five toes.
‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘She’s wrapped in something.’
Steam was rising from the wreck, but it had not yet caught fire. On his knees, Diamond reached into the darkness and got his arm around the body. Roberts was beside him.
‘I’ve got her legs, sir.’
Diamond tried talking to Rose and got no response. The hope was that the limited size of the compartment had restricted her movement as the car somersaulted. She was wrapped in the felt lining.
They prised her out and carried her to a place of relative safety on the grass embankment.
Diamond gently removed part of the felt that was covering her face. She had a bloody nose, but she was breathing. Her eyes opened.
‘You’ll make it, love,’ he told her.
‘Allardyce? The fire service got him out eventually, sir, what there was of him,’ he told the Assistant Chief Constable next morning.
‘Looking at it from a cost-effectiveness standpoint,’ said the ACC, who usually did look at things that way, ‘I suppose it saves the community the expense of a long trial and keeping him in prison for a life term. And the woman?’
‘Do you mean Emma Treadwell? We’re still holding her. We’ll send a report to the CPS, but I can’t see them proceeding on any of the more serious charges.’
‘I meant the woman you rescued.’
‘Christine Gladstone? They kept her overnight in the RUH. She escaped with some ugly bruises. Being in the luggage compartment, where Allardyce put her, she was in the one reasonably secure part of the car.’
‘Secure? I’d say she was damned lucky.’
‘Some people are, sir. You’re right. Considering she caused the crash, she was bloody lucky.’
‘She caused it, you say?’
‘Being in the boot, she grabbed the wiring and ripped it out. His lights went, and the next thing he hit the barrier.’
The ACC cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. ‘Good thing you were close behind. I think it’s in order to congratulate you on your prompt action, Peter.’
‘No need, sir. It was a team effort.’
‘Yes, that’s a fact. You and John Wigfull between you.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond half-smiled, suspecting that this was humour.
But it was not. The ACC was serious. ‘I think of you two as the Castor and Pollux of Bath CID.’
‘The what?’
‘Castor and Pollux. It’s a compliment, Peter. They were the twin sons of Jupiter, a formidable duo.’
‘I see,’ said Diamond. ‘And which is which?’
The ACC frowned. ‘I don’t think it matters.’
‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll take Castor, and Pollox to John Wigfull.’
At home the next evening, he was less buoyant. He ate one of his favourite meals of salmon en croute almost in silence. Stephanie didn’t need telling that he was badly shaken.
She suggested an evening walk.
‘If you like.’
They had not gone far when he said, ‘Julie’s leaving. She asked for a transfer and they’ve found her a job at Bristol. No warning. It’s fixed.’
‘I know,’ Stephanie admitted.
‘You do.’ He stopped.
‘She came to see me, Pete.’
‘To see you? When?’
‘A couple of days ago. She was pretty unhappy. She has a lot of respect for you, but she feels too much of her time is spent smoothing the way.’
‘For me, you mean?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. You know you’re hell to work with. She’s young for an inspector, ambitious. She’s entitled to move on.’
‘We were a bloody good team.’
‘Too good for your own good.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You told me yourself that you’re underworked most of the time, and it’s bad for your health. Julie in her quiet way has been batting for you all the time, making your life easier. I didn’t tell her about the hypertension, of course, though it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s aware of it. But we agreed that a trouble-free life isn’t necessarily what you want.’
‘It’s what I expect from my deputy.’
‘She’s too good at it. Let her go, Pete.’
He sniffed. ‘When she meets that lot at Bristol, she’ll realise I’m not such an ogre.’
‘She didn’t say you were. she said some very complimentary things.’
They walked on for some distance before he spoke again.
‘It’s going to be tough without Julie. I’ll keep an eye on what happens at Bristol.’
Stephanie said, ‘No. When the path is slippery it is safer to go two paces forward than one pace back.’
‘Who says that?’
‘The book you keep by the bed.’
‘Kai Lung? I don’t subscribe to everything he says.’
Thirty-five
At the other end of winter, when millions of daffodils were brightening all the approaches to Bath, a visitor came to Harmer House and called on Ada Shaftsbury.
‘Bless your little cotton socks,’ said Ada, with a bear-hug. ‘If it isn’t my mate Rose!’
‘Christine, actually.’
‘I know, petal. I saw it in the papers. You’re looking well, Rose. Did you get your memory back?’
‘In time for Christmas.’ She laughed, so much more relaxed now. ‘I was in Oxford Street looking at the lights, and suddenly I knew I’d been there years ago with my mother. It was amazing, just like the clouds parting. And now I know why I came to Bath. It was to see my father. After Mother’s death I had a difficult time, but I felt closer to my dad than I ever had. I really wanted to see him. Then finding him dead like that, with the shotgun at his side, I blamed myself for neglecting him so long. I just blanked everything out. Anyway, I’ve picked up my life as it was, living in my flat in Fulham and working again.’
‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘Two things. I’ve just been to see that policeman who pulled me out of the crash. I wanted to thank him.’
‘Old gutso? What did he suggest as a thank-you – a jumbo burger and chips?’
‘Oh, Ada.’
‘Say it, blossom. Next to me, he’s a sparrow. What’s the other thing you came for?’
; ‘To sort out the farmhouse. It’s officially my property now.’
‘Are you selling the farm?’
‘Definitely. I’m having the house demolished first. The solicitor advised it after what happened there.’
‘And all the furniture?’
‘I’ve arranged for one of those house clearance firms to take it all away. I’m meeting them there this afternoon.’ Christine nervously touched her hair, twisting a length of it between her finger and thumb. Her new, confident look softened into something like the diffidence Ada remembered. ‘I’m a bit uncomfortable about going there alone. Would you have the time to come with me?’
Invited to choose a present from the farmhouse, Ada picked an old milking stool, which she said she would rest her feet on while thinking of all the years of honest work it represented.
‘It isn’t much. Don’t you want anything else?’
‘You know me, love. I only ever take what I can carry away. I’d have the kitchen range if I could. I was born in a cottage. Spent the first ten years of my life in a place like this.’
‘You’re welcome to take the range if you want. The clearance people won’t have any use for it.’
‘Can you see Imogen’s face if I had it sent up to Harmer House?’
They decided to light a last fire while waiting for the van. Soon the flames were giving an orange glow to the dark room.
‘Have I got it right?’ Ada asked. ‘Allardyce brought you here to look for some old treasure your dad was supposed to have salted away?’
‘That was only delaying tactics on my part. I made it up, telling him there were hiding places in old cottages.’
‘There wasn’t anything?’
‘Only the Seax, and that was dug up half a century ago.’
‘Two innocent people died for bugger all?’
‘I’m afraid that’s true.’
They watched the flames for a while. Finally Ada said, ‘All this was an open hearth once. In the old days they used to roast on a spit, over an open fire. You can see where they bricked in the space they didn’t need any more.’ She picked up her milking stool by one leg and tapped it firmly against the wall to the right of the range. ‘Hear it? Hollow.
I’ll tell you for nothing, blossom, it’s a perfect place to hide anything. If I had some hot stuff I wanted to salt away – not that I ever do, mind – I’d chip out a couple of bricks and put it in there.’
They both looked at the wall. Each of them spotted the loose bricks at floor level on the left of the range.
‘Well, if you’re not going to look, I am.’
Ada planted her stool by the bricks and lowered herself onto it. She withdrew the bricks with ease and put her hand into the space behind. ‘Wouldn’t it take the cake if there really was…’ Her voice trailed off and she stared at Rose with saucer eyes. She took out her hand and showed something that glinted gold in the fire’s glow.
Peter Lovesey
***
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