Authors: Peter Lovesey
When Jim Marsh came in to report that he’d finished his examination of the car, he didn’t have the look of a man who has just earned a double Scotch.
‘No joy?’ said Diamond.
‘It’s been vacuumed inside,’ said the SOCO, ‘and very thoroughly.’
Diamond turned to look at Dunkley-Brown. ‘Is that a fact?’
A shrug and a smile. ‘There’s no law against Hoovering one’s car, is there?’
‘I know why you did it.’
‘You may well be right, Mr Diamond. We’d have been fools to have left any evidence of the girl there.’
‘May we see your Hoover?’
‘Certainly, only at the risk of upsetting you I’d better admit that we emptied the dust-bag right away. It was collected by the dustmen the same week.’
Diamond was not at his best during the drive back to Bath. Not a word was said about the abortive search of the Bentley’s interior. Nothing much at all was said. Each of them knew how essential it was to find a sample of Rose’s hair. Diamond’s far-from-convincing theory linking her to Gladstone’s murder could only be taken seriously if the hairs found at the farmhouse were proved to be hers. The idea behind the trip to Westbury had been an inspiration, but unhappily inspirations sometimes come to nothing.
He rallied his spirits for the press conference, held in a briefing room downstairs at Manvers Street. He needed to be sharp. His purpose in talking to the media was simply to step up the hunt for Rose. He didn’t intend to link her disappearance to any other crime. However, he was meeting a pack of journalists, and the modern generation of hacks were all too quick to make connections. Their first reaction would be that the head of the murder squad wouldn’t waste time on a missing woman unless he expected her to be found dead. From there, it was a short step to questioning him about other recent deaths: Daniel Gladstone and possibly Hildegarde Henkel. These same press people had reported the finding of the bodies. It was all too fresh in their memories.
He handled the session adeptly, keeping Rose steadily in the frame. It was obvious from the questions that Social Services would be in for some stick. They were used to being in the front line. Poor buggers, they came in for more criticism than any other organisation.
He was about to wrap up when the inevitable question came, from a young, angelic-featured woman with a ring through her right nostril. Nothing made him feel the generation-gap more than this craze for body piercing. ‘Would you comment on the possible connection with the death of the German woman, Hildegarde Henkel, at the Royal Crescent?’
He was ready. ‘I’d rather not. That case is being handled by another officer.’
‘Who is that, please?’
‘DCI Wigfull.’
‘But you were seen up at the Crescent at the weekend. You made more than one visit.’
‘That’s correct. I’m now on another case. If that’s all, ladies and gentlemen…’
She was persistent. ‘It may be another case, Mr Diamond, but you must have taken note that the missing woman Rose was staying in Harmer House at the same time as Ms Henkel.’
‘Yes.’
‘There were only three women staying in the hostel,’ she said evenly, watching for his reaction, ‘and one of them is missing and one is dead.’
‘I wouldn’t read too much into that if I were you. Harmer House is used as a temporary refuge for people in the care of Social Services. Some of them are sure to be unstable, or otherwise at risk.’
She had thought this through. ‘There was a superficial similarity between Rose and Hildegarde Henkel. Dark, short hair. Slim. Aged in their twenties. Is it true that there was speculation at the weekend that the body at the Royal Crescent was that of Rose?’
‘If there was,’ answered Diamond evenly, ‘it was unfounded. I don’t really see what you’re driving at.’
‘I thought it was obvious. You’ve made no announcement about the cause of Ms Henkel’s death.’
‘She fell off the roof.’ The slick answer tripped off his tongue, but even as he spoke it, he knew he shouldn’t have. Several voices chorused with questions.
‘I’m answering the lady,’ he said, and provoked some good-natured abuse from her professional colleagues.
She was not thrown in the least. ‘The fall is not in doubt, Mr Diamond. The question is whether she fell by accident or by design, and when I say by design I mean by her design or someone else’s. In other words, suicide or murder.’
He gave a shrug. ‘That’s for a coroner’s jury to decide.’
‘Come on,’ she chided him. ‘That’s a cop-out, if ever I heard one.’
This scored a laugh and cries of ‘cop-out’ from several of the press corps.
He wanted an out and he couldn’t find one without arousing universal suspicion that he hadn’t been honest with them.
She wasn’t going to leave it. she said, ‘If it was murder, have you considered the possibility that Ms Henkel was killed by mistake because she resembled Rose, the other woman, and they lived at the same address? If so, you must be extremely concerned, about the safety of Rose.’
The opening was there, and he took it. ‘Of course we’re concerned, regardless of this hypothesis of yours. That’s why I called this conference. We’re grateful for any information about Rose. The co-operation of all of you in publicising the case is appreciated.’ He nodded across the room, avoiding the wide blue eyes of his inquisitor, and then quit the room fast.
‘Who was she?’ he asked the press sergeant.
‘Ingeborg Smith. She’s a freelance, doing a piece on missing women for one of the colour supplements, she says.’
‘If she ever wants a job on the murder squad, she can have it.’
He sought out Julie, and found her in the incident room. ‘When you spoke to Ada yesterday, did she say anything about the press?’
‘She may have done. She did go on a bit.’
‘She went on a bit to a newshound who goes under the name of Ingeborg Smith, unless I’m mistaken.’
‘What about?’
‘The possibility that Hilde was killed in error by someone who confused her with Rose.’
Julie said, ‘It sounds like Ada talking, I agree.’ She picked up the phone-pad. ‘There’s a large package waiting for you in reception.’
‘That’ll be my two-box. I’ll leave it there for the present.’
‘Your what?’
‘Two-box.’
‘It sounds slightly indelicate.’
‘Wait till you see it in action. Has anything else of interest come in?’
She made the mistake of saying, ‘It’s early days.’
‘What?’ His face had changed.
‘I mean all this was only set up a couple of hours ago.’
‘All this?’ He flapped his arm in the general direction of the computers. ‘You think this is going to work some miracle? We’ve got a corpse that was rotting at the scene for a week and you tell me it’s early days. The only conceivable suspect has vanished without trace. Forensic have gone silent. Julie, a roomful of screens and phones isn’t going to trap an old man’s killer.’
‘It can help.’
He turned and looked at the blow-up of Rose’s face pinned to the corkboard. ‘What I need above all else is to get a hair of her head. One hair.’
Julie said nothing. They both knew that the best chance had gone when Rose’s room at the hostel was cleared for another inmate. Dunkley-Brown’s car had been a long shot that had missed.
He wouldn’t leave it. ‘Let’s go over her movements. She’s driven to the Hinton Clinic in the Bentley, but we know that’s a dead pigeon. The people at the Clinic put her to bed.’
‘Three weeks ago,’ said Julie. ‘They’ll have changed and laundered the bedding since then - or it’s not the kind of private hospital I’d want to stay in.’
‘Two dead pigeons. They send her to Harmer House, and that’s another one.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Julie. ‘How did she get there?’
‘To Harmer House? That social worker - Imogen - collected her.’
‘In a car?’
‘Well, they wouldn’t have sent a taxi. Funds are scarce.’ His brown eyes held hers for a moment. ‘Julie, I’m trying not to raise my hopes. I think we should contact Imogen right now.’
Imogen was not optimistic. ‘I don’t recall Rose combing her hair in the car, or anything. I doubt if you’ll find a hair.’
‘People are shedding hair all the time,’ Diamond informed her. ‘She wouldn’t have to comb it to leave one or two in your car.’
‘In that case, you’re up against it. I’ve given lifts to dozens of people since then. I’m always ferrying clients around the city.’
‘We’d still like to have the car examined.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘How long does it take? I wouldn’t want to be without wheels.’
‘We’ll send a man now. Collecting the material doesn’t take long. It’s the work in the lab that takes the time.’
‘I don’t like to contemplate what he’ll find in my old Citroën. Some of my passengers - you should see the state of them.’
‘Just as long as you haven’t vacuumed the interior recently.’
‘You’re joking. I have more important things to do.’
He asked Julie to drive him out to the farm to check the mobile operational office, or so he claimed. She suspected he wanted to try out his new toy.
The van was parked in the yard and manned by DS Miller and DC Hodge, the only woman of her rank on the squad. They were discovered diligently studying a large-scale Ordnance Survey map, no doubt after being tipped off by Manvers Street that Diamond was imminent. What were telecommunications for, if not to keep track of the boss?
When asked what they were doing they said checking the locations of nearby farms. Someone had already called at the immediate neighbour and spoken to a farmhand called Bickerstaff who was the only person present. He had confirmed that the owners were a company known as Hollandia Holdings, based in Bristol. Bickerstaff and his ‘gaffer’, a man from Marshfield, the next village, worked the land for the owners. It was a low-maintenance farm, with a flock of sheep, some fields rented out to the ‘horsiculture’- the riding fraternity - and some set-aside. Bickerstaff had heard about old Gladstone’s death and was sorry his body had lain undiscovered for so long, but expressed the view that local people couldn’t be blamed. Gladstone had long been known as an ‘awkward old cuss’ who didn’t welcome visitors.
‘Have you got a fire going in the house?’ Diamond asked Miller.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. I’m going in there to put on my wellies.’
Julie and the sergeant exchanged glances and said nothing. He was back in a short time shod in green gumboots and carrying a T-shaped metal detector with what looked like a pair of vanity cases mounted at either end of the metre-length crosspiece. ‘You’ll want a spade, Sergeant.’
‘Will I, sir?’
‘To dig up the finds.’
‘Old coins and stuff?’
‘No, this super-charged gizmo is too powerful for coins unless they’re in a pot, a mass of them together. It ignores small objects. I’m after bigger things. It works at quite some depth, which is why you need the spade. Julie, there’s a ball of string in the car with some skewers. You and the constable can line and pin the search area. We don’t want to go over the same bit twice. Follow me.’ He clamped a pair of headphones over his ears and strode towards the edge of the field. Clearly he had spent some time studying the handbook that came with the two-box.
‘What does he expect to find?’ Cathy Hodge asked Julie. ‘Treasure, I think,’ said Julie, ‘if there’s any left.’
‘Has someone else been by?’
‘Get with it, Cathy. You must have seen the evidence of recent digging. We don’t know how thorough they were, or how much of the ground they covered.’
Diamond was already probing the field with the detector, treading an unerring line towards the far side. Julie sank a skewer into the turf, attached some string and started after him. ‘Put more skewers in at two-foot intervals,’ she called back to Hodge.
They completed about six shuttles of the field before something below ground must have made an interesting sound in Diamond’s ear-phones. He stopped and summoned Sergeant Miller, who at this stage was watching the performance from the comfort of the drystone wall. ‘I don’t know how deep it is, but I’m getting a faint signal. Get to it, man.’ Then, with the zest of a seasoned detectorist, he moved on with the two-box in pursuit of more finds.
Julie was beginning to tire of the game. She wasn’t wearing boots and the mud was spattering her legs as well as coating a passable pair of shoes. ‘Your turn with the string,’ she told young Hodge.
‘Ma’am, you said we don’t know how much of the ground was searched by whoever did that digging.’
‘Yes?’
‘I just thought I ought to tell you that someone has marked this up before. If you look along here, there’s a row of holes already.’
Julie saw for herself, circular holes in the earth at intervals of perhaps a metre, along the length of the hedge.
‘Should we tell Mr Diamond?’ Hodge asked. ‘I mean, he could be wasting his time.’
‘Tell him if you’re feeling strong,’ said Julie. ‘I’m not.’
On consideration, nothing was said at that stage. Julie strolled over to the farmhouse, removed her shoes, went inside, filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. A reasonable heat was coming up from a wood fire. There was a teapot on the table, with a carton of milk and some teabags and biscuits. The two on duty had wasted no time in providing for creature comforts. She found a chair - not the armchair - and sat with her damp feet as near the iron bars of the fire as possible.
She had always lived in modern houses, so the cottage range was outside her experience. She saw how it was a combination of boiler, cooking fire and bread oven. A great boon in its time, no doubt, with everything positioned so neatly around and over the source of heat: hot plate rack, swing iron for the meat, dampers and flue doors set into the tiled back. This one must have been fitted some time in the nineteenth century; the farmhouse was two or three hundred years older. Earlier generations would have cooked in the open hearth where the range now stood. She reckoned from the width of the mantelpiece over the hearth that in those days the fireplace must have stretched a yard more on either side. The ‘built-in’ range had been installed and the spaces filled in. It was obvious where the joins were.