Down Among the Dead Men

by Peter Lovesey

“I did. I got on to Companies House and got the names. There are two directors: Ferdinand and Thomas Standforth.”

  “Ferdie and Tom? How odd.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. I don’t know how these deals are done, but it looks as if they took over an existing company that owned the place while Mrs. Shah was alive. Buying the property next door makes sense if they plan to expand.”

  “But they’ve done nothing to it.”

  “And now they seem to have a squatter. You want a lift to the cottage? I’m up for it.”

  32

  Georgina wasn’t on the trip. If Diamond had learned anything in recent days, it was the wisdom of keeping two strong women apart. Almost certainly she would have vetoed more trespassing at Holly Blue Cottage.

  Hen drove while Diamond talked, making sure he kept off the topic of the bodies under the sea. Small talk didn’t come naturally to him. He treated her to his opinions on films of the 1940s, notably Odd Man Out and The Wicked Lady and for some reason she was amused. She was still chuckling when she stopped the car in front of the cottage.

  He got out beside the nameboard. “Daft name—Holly Blue. The only holly I’ve ever seen is green, with red berries.”

  “Shows your ignorance, city slicker,” Hen said. “It’s a butterfly. Look at the picture underneath.”

  “But why give a butterfly a name that makes no sense?”

  “It’s blue—a gorgeous silver blue, much more delicate than the picture.”

  “I get that part.”

  “And it feeds on holly leaves. Satisfied?”

  “How the heck do you know about the holly leaves?”

  “Are you questioning my countryside cred? I’m a Sussex woman. I get about, go for walks, notice things and look them up when I get home. Townies like you spend all your time indoors watching old films. You wouldn’t know a holly blue from a silver-spotted skipper.”

  “The clouded yellow,” he said, “I know that.”

  “Cripes! There’s hope yet.”

  “Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard. 1951.”

  “God help us, not another old film.”

  The cottage looked every bit as derelict as when they’d seen it last. They decided to try the back door. Hen stepped out confidently without any pretence of subterfuge. Diamond, a couple of paces behind, could only admire this forthright little woman, the set of her shoulders and the head held high. This was the DCI Mallin he knew, on the case and primed for action.

  She stopped. “Did you hear something?”

  “My phone?” His hand went to his pocket. It was high time Dave Albison called. But nothing had come through.

  “Voices,” Hen said.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m not making this up.”

  “Inside the cottage?”

  “No, in the open. From next door, I expect.”

  They waited a few seconds. Whatever Hen had heard wasn’t repeated, so they pressed on, tangling with spiderwebs, brambles and overgrown shrubs to get to the back door.

  “This was the window I looked through,” she said.

  He put his face close to the dusty glass. “I don’t know how you saw anything.”

  “Outlined in the doorway.”

  “The door’s closed.”

  “Get away. It wasn’t when I was last here.” She peered in, shading her eyes with her hand. “Well, there’s a thing. Someone was inside, or I’ve gone squiffy.”

  He approached the back door. “Let’s see if we can get in.”

  “Notice the cat flap,” Hen said. “I didn’t imagine that.”

  “I can’t squeeze through there. You might manage.” He tried the handle, but the door was locked. It was a simple, old-fashioned mortice lock set into the wood. He bent to look through the keyhole.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” He stepped back and felt in his pocket. “There’s a way of picking a lock like this.”

  “Tell me about it, Houdini. I don’t think the credit card trick is going to work. All you’ll do is damage your card.”

  “Do you have a nail file?”

  “Do I look like a woman who carries a nail file?”

  “I may have to use brute force.”

  “Before you do,” she said, “look under the doormat.”

  After giving her the look that said even in rural Sussex keys under doormats were a thing of the past, he stooped to lift a corner of the filthy old coconut mat. Underneath were a few dead earthworms and a large family of woodlice. He lifted the whole mat. More wildlife. No key. He dropped the mat, making his feelings clear.

  “Try the ledge above the door.”

  Swearing under his breath, he felt with his fingertips and touched something that moved, fell and hit the mat.

  A rusty key.

  “How did you know?”

  “Old cottage, old custom.”

  He used the key and it worked. “Hen, I owe you a beer.”

  “Make that Sussex Pride.”

  They stepped inside the kitchen and saw at once that it had been in use not long ago. A bowl of fresh cat food was on the floor to the right. The sink was damp and there was a mug with the dregs of some coffee. Diamond found the fridge and opened it. The interior light came on.

  “They have a power supply.”

  They also had eggs, butter, milk, yoghurt, an opened tin of apricots and some grapefruit.

  He said, “I’m starting to feel like Goldilocks.”

  She eyed his scant hair and said, “No comment.”

  He crossed the room and stepped through a door.

  It’s strange how violence announces itself. For a split second he sensed imminent danger. He ducked, but couldn’t stop something heavy and hard impacting with his head. A starburst was followed by oblivion.

  Somebody was speaking his name. He tried to respond and couldn’t. His voice wasn’t working.

  He felt the chill of water splash his face. He shook his head and opened his eyes. Focusing was difficult. A shape materialised and sharpened. A face close to his.

  “Get a grip for God’s sake, Goldilocks.”

  Only one person ever spoke to him like that.

  He managed to whisper to Hen, “What happened?”

  “You got taken out with a frying pan.”

  It took an effort to work out that he was lying on the floor. A cushion had been placed under his head. It felt like a cement block. He tried to move.

  “Keep still,” Hen said. “Don’t force it.”

  “Who . . . ?”

  “Can’t tell you. They’re not here any longer. Belted out through the front. I didn’t get much of a look. He must have been poised right here with the frying pan. Can’t really blame him. We’re intruders.”

  “You didn’t give chase?”

  “Seeing to you was more urgent.”

  “Am I bleeding?”

  “You’ll have a bump the size of a plum.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “More than the official count. It was one hell of a crack. Do you want a drink now? I can prop you up a bit.”

  “I’d rather get after him.”

  “You’re in no shape.”

  “Never was.” He propped himself up on one elbow. The head was sore, but clearing. “I’ll be all right. I took harder knocks in my rugby-playing days.”

  “Not with a three pound frying pan you didn’t. Feel the weight of that.” She held out the offensive weapon, black and solid-looking.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” He sat up fully. “Let’s at least take a look outside. He can’t be far off.” He braced his legs, grabbed the doorpost and hauled himself up. Briefly he thought his balance was going, and then he stood firm.

  “Crazy guy,” Hen said. “You’re not ready.”

  The
fresh air helped his head. In the hayfield that had once been a garden, they looked for signs of disturbance. The beaten paths to the front gate, the garden hut and the door in the wall were the obvious routes his attacker might have taken.

  “Stay here while I check the back. Give a yell if you see him,” Hen said. She was in charge and he was in no shape to argue.

  The front gate wasn’t far off, and he didn’t feel quite so bad, so he stepped out on those shaky legs to get a better view. Hen’s car stood in the lane. No other vehicle had been in sight when they arrived, making it unlikely anyone had escaped on wheels. He managed a few more steps, looking to both sides. There weren’t many places for his attacker to hide.

  As he was turning to go back he thought he heard a sound like someone clearing their throat.

  He stopped to listen. It may have come from the woods fringing the road. Possibly a deer or a fox. Hen, the countrywoman, would know one animal sound from another. She’d laugh if he’d been taken in.

  He started to move on, then felt unsteady, so he stopped by the car and leaned his back against it, thinking Hen had been right. He should have waited longer before trying to move.

  He felt in his pocket for the phone. Albison still hadn’t called. Had the thing been damaged when he fell? He checked and it seemed to be functioning normally. No calls had been received.

  Then a disembodied voice said, “Are you all right?”

  He turned.

  A woman stood up on the other side of the Fiat. She must have been crouching out of sight behind it. Middle-aged, with owlish round glasses and her dark hair in a coiled plait, she was in a jumper and skirt—unsuitable for outdoors on a cool autumn afternoon—so he had to assume she was the squatter.

  “Was it you in there?” he asked.

  She clutched both hands to her chest. “I’m so sorry. You frightened me, coming into the cottage suddenly like that.”

  He returned the phone to his pocket, trying to decide how he should deal with this.

  “You’re terribly pale,” she said. “You ought to lie down.”

  As if he wasn’t confused enough, his attacker was troubled about the state of his health. “What were you doing in there?”

  “I’m living there. Who are you?”

  The question he’d been on the point of asking her. Saying he was from the police would surely panic her. He didn’t trust his legs to go in pursuit. “You don’t know me. My name’s Peter.”

  “Did Tom send you?”

  So she knew young Standforth. And well enough to call him by his first name.

  She expected an answer, so he gave one. “Not exactly, but I know him. Shall we talk in the cottage?”

  “I don’t wish to talk.”

  He took a small step to his left, meaning to move around the car, and she took a step of her own the other way. They were like a pair of kids playing chase—a game he certainly couldn’t win.

  Keep her talking, he told himself. Hen will be back shortly. “You’re living in a cottage that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Is that any business of yours?”

  She had to be told. “It is—because I’m a police officer.” He turned his head and yelled, “Hen, we’re over here, by the car.”

  Instead of running off, she put her hands to her face and sobbed, shaking convulsively.

  When Hen appeared round the side of the cottage, he was already steering the distressed woman towards the open door.

  “Christ, Peter, did you give her a clout?”

  “I told her we’re police, that’s all.”

  She took the woman’s hand and helped her inside. “It’s all right, my love. He’s not going to do you for cracking him over the head. He’d be a laughing-stock. I’ve often felt like clonking him and you’ve beaten me to it. Let’s all have a friendly chat in the front room.”

  “Friendly” would have been overstating it and the chat had to wait some minutes, but Hen dusted off three chairs and brewed some tea and the woman dried her eyes.

  The homely touch was working.

  “He’s Peter and I’m Hen and we’re not here to evict you or anything. What shall we call you?”

  She hesitated before saying, “I’m Constance.”

  “Then I know who you are,” Diamond told her. “You’re the missing schoolteacher—Miss Constance Gibbon.”

  She blinked twice and said nothing.

  “So do we call you Connie?” Hen asked as she filled the three mugs.

  “No one calls me that,” Miss Gibbon said with disdain.

  Connie or Constance, it didn’t bother Diamond. He’d worked out her identity. And he felt more comfortable seated. “So this is a sort of grace and favour home for you, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” she said. “It’s more of a refuge. I’m not ungrateful, but that’s what it is.”

  “You didn’t want anyone to know you’re here?”

  “That was the intention. I’ve been in a dreadful state of mind for weeks, close to a breakdown. I needed privacy, a place to shut everything out and Tom kindly suggested here.”

  “So you leave the mail on the mat to make it look as if it’s still empty?”

  “Nobody except Tom knew until you came along.”

  “Something must have gone badly wrong for you.”

  “That’s an understatement. I was lured into a situation that was dishonest and impossible to cope with. I was so cruelly treated that I almost lost my sanity.”

  Almost lost it? Diamond was asking himself if she’d already gone beyond. “What happened?”

  She closed her eyes for some seconds as if the memory was too painful to recall. Finally, she spoke in an expressionless voice. “It goes back three years, to a time when I was unemployed. I’m a trained teacher, but there weren’t any jobs where I was, in Fulham. I lived alone in a bed-sit. It was so depressing. I was in debt, but I just had to get out sometimes and go for a drink. When I say “a drink” I mean exactly that, a single glass of red wine. I’d visit a gay and lesbian bar in Soho—that’s the way I am, in case you hadn’t realised.”

  Diamond wasn’t in realising mode. He had given no more thought to Miss Gibbon’s sexuality than to her size in shoes.

  “One Saturday evening,” she went on, “I met this woman called Olivia who unexpectedly took an interest in me. She was strong and attractive and I thought she was out of my league. She was dressed in the latest clothes and wearing jewellery that was clearly the real thing. She didn’t seem to mind that I couldn’t pay for drinks. She took me to a club I’d never heard of and we danced and had more drinks and spent the night together. She paid for everything. In the morning I thanked her, thinking that would be the end of it, but to my astonishment she said she’d like to do the same thing the following weekend. I told her I felt uncomfortable not paying my share, but she brushed that aside.”

  “Had you told her your situation?” Hen asked.

  “Oh, yes. But she didn’t say much about her own, simply that she had a well-paid job and money to burn. She charmed me. I had more compliments from Olivia the first two evenings we were together than I’ve had in the whole of my life. I was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? I’m not promiscuous. I’ve been with two other women—brief affairs—and I’m almost forty now.”

  “How old was Olivia?”

  “Forty-seven. She didn’t say, but I found out later. To be fair, she looked marvellous. She went to beauticians and the best hairdressers and of course her clothes were superb. My worry was that I was so drab beside her. I had one black dress, basically, for nights out, and the only changes were scarves and shawls I bought from a trader in the North End Road market. Olivia didn’t complain. That second weekend she gave me a present, beautifully wrapped in a giftbox, and it was . . . clothes.”

  “Intimate clothes?” Hen said.

 
Miss Gibbon turned sunset red.

  Diamond stared into his tea.

  “They were exquisite. Our Saturday meetings in the West End went on through the spring. Blissful, but soon both of us were finding it a strain meeting only at weekends. We wanted to be together all the time. Then Olivia asked me to move in with her. She said she had plans for me. I felt I knew her so well by then that whatever she was thinking of could only be something wonderful.”

  “A civil partnership?”

  “It crossed my mind, but I didn’t like to ask. She made the decisions in our relationship and I wanted it to stay that way. It’s my nature.”

  “Did you take her up on the offer?” Diamond asked.

  “I did. I moved in at the end of the week. She had a large house in Bosham overlooking the harbour.”

  “Down here?”

  “It’s a lovely spot.”

  “I know it well,” Hen said. “Bit different from the gay scene in London.”

  “Different from a Fulham bed sit, too,” Constance Gibbon said. “I loved it as soon as I saw it. She made me very welcome. The house is palatial inside, Scandinavian in style and beautifully furnished.”

  “Did you discover where her money came from?”

  “She said it was from a legacy, but I found out later it wasn’t. Anyway, I had no intention of being a kept woman, so I thought I’d look for a teaching position in a local school, in the hope that there were some openings here in Sussex. I went online and started actively searching, wanting to surprise Olivia by announcing that I’d joined the employed once again. It was midsummer and the schools were recruiting for the new session.”

  “Were jobs more plentiful here than in Fulham?”

  “Not really. The government is always saying there’s a shortage of maths teachers, but when it comes to finding a school that wants one, it’s a different story.”

  “Maths?” Diamond said. “But you teach art.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “That’s where I went wrong. I was persuaded to teach art, but no, all my experience is in maths. Where was I? I’m telling this in the wrong order. Olivia caught me leafing through the Times Educational Supplement one morning and asked what I was up to, so I had to tell her I’d put several applications in, but hadn’t been shortlisted. She gave me a hug and said she had been secretive, too, but now she was compelled to tell me the plan she’d mentioned before I moved in. To my utter amazement she told me she was the head of a private school for girls in Chichester.”