Upon a Dark Night (19 page)

‘What’s your gripe, Ada?’ Diamond asked.

‘No gripe.’

‘Apart from being kept waiting.’

A brief smile escaped. ‘Well, that. I’m bothered something chronic about my friend, that’s the problem. I live in one of them social security hostels, Harmer House, up Bathwick Street. Do you know it?’

He gave a nod.

‘A couple of weeks ago - it was on the Wednesday - a social worker brought in this girl who’d lost her memory - all of her memory, up to when she was dumped in some private hospital grounds, with broken ribs, bruising, all the signs of an accident. She couldn’t remember a sodding thing, not even her name. Seeing that she wasn’t a paying patient, this hospital patched her up and passed her on to Social Services, which is how she came to us. She’s in your records. Your people photographed her and everything. Don’t know what you called her. She was Rose to us in the hostel. I shared a room with her.’

Diamond warned her, ‘I said three minutes, Ada.’

‘I’m keeping it short, Kojak. Rose was desperate to get her memory back and no one seemed to care. The best hope the hospital could hold out was sending her to a shrink, and she’d have to wait weeks - just to be made even more confused. Not bloody good enough, I said, and rolled up my sleeves and did something about it - what you lot should have been doing - tracking down the old lady who found her in the hospital grounds, and the car that brought her there and the toe-rags who knocked her down.’

‘You did all this, Ada?’ he said in a flat tone, thinking with resignation of the chain of false assumptions and mistaken identities that it probably represented.

‘Yes, and there’s more to it than a road accident, I promise you. We was coming back to the hostel - Rose and me - in broad daylight, when some yobbo jumped out of a car and grabbed her. He talked like he knew her. Said he was taking her home. She told me later she’d never clapped eyes on him before. He’d just about bundled her into the back seat before either one of us caught our breath. There was another oik driving and they would have got clean away if I hadn’t taken a hand. I managed to hook her out in time.’

‘You saved her?’

‘I can knock the stuffing out of most men.’

‘What did they do about it?’

‘Drove off like it was the bloody Grand Prix.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Think, dark-haired, early twenties. A hard case. I’d know him again.’

‘And is this what you’ve waited all day to tell me?’

‘I haven’t come to the main part,’ said Ada, moving on without pausing for breath. ‘Like I said, we found these people who ran into Rose in their car. This happened early one evening way up the A46, between that poncy great house that’s open to visitors - what’s it called?’

‘Dereham Park?’

‘Between there and the motorway. They said she stepped out of nowhere, right in front of their car. Could have killed her. As it was, they managed to brake and she wasn’t hit too hard.’

‘Did they report it?’

‘Get wise, Mr Diamond. They wouldn’t have left her lying dead to the world in the hospital grounds if they’d reported it, would they?’

‘You say they admitted all this? You’re quite sure they didn’t say it under duress?’

‘Duress? What’s that when it’s at home? Listen, we were on track, Rose and me, steaming along, getting to the truth, when - boom! - we ran into a buffer. We got back to the hostel right after seeing these two, to find the social worker in our room with some woman claiming to be Rose’s sister, or stepsister, or something. She seemed to know all about her. Brought out some photos that were definitely Rose with some old woman she said was their mother, at Twickenham. Where’s that?’

‘West London.’

‘She said Rose lived in Hounslow.’

‘Not far from Twickenham,’ said Diamond.

‘This woman said her name was Jenkins, Doreen Jenkins. she said she’d come to Bath with her boyfriend especially to look for Rose. Mind, Rose didn’t seem to know her.’

‘But Rose had lost her memory.’

‘Right.’

‘So she wouldn’t have recognised her.’

‘Let me finish, will you? I could see Rose was really unhappy. She wouldn’t have gone with the Jenkins woman, I’m sure, but that silly cow Imogen forced the issue.’

‘Imogen?’

‘The social worker. The case was closed, in her opinion. Her office wasn’t responsible no more. Rose had been claimed. So she had to go. Rose was cut up about it, I can tell you. Now this is the worrying bit. She promised to keep in touch whatever happened. We both promised. I gave her a postcard specially. She was going to write to me directly she got back to Hounslow. I’ve heard sod all, Mr Diamond, and it’s been the best part of two weeks.’

‘Is that it?’ he asked.

Ada thrust out her chin. ‘What do you mean - “Is that it?”’

‘You’ve come to us simply because you haven’t had a card from your friend? Ada, she had a lot on her mind. People forget.’

‘I never liked the look of that sister,’ said Ada.

‘You’re wasting my time.’

‘Wait,’ said Ada. ‘I tried writing to her - Miss Rosamund Black, Hounslow, and the letter came back yesterday with “return to sender” written on it.’

‘What do you expect? There are probably thirty or forty people called Black in Hounslow. The postman isn’t going to knock on every door.’

‘I looked in the phone book and there’s no Miss R. Black in Hounslow.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t have a phone. Ada, I said three minutes and you’ve had ten.’

‘She’s been abducted.’

‘Oh, come on. You just told me what happened and it was her choice.’

‘Hobson’s bloody choice. What about the bloke who tried to drag her into the car?’

‘Ada, that was another incident. You’re not suggesting the sister had any connection with him? She behaved properly. She went to Avon Social Services. They were satisfied she was speaking the truth.’

Ada was outraged. ‘Rose could be dead for all you care, you idle slob. If you’re the best Bath can afford, God help us all. You don’t know sheepshit from cherrypips.’

He stood up. ‘Out.’

‘Dorkbrain. Something’s happened to my friend, and when I find out the truth you’ll wish you hadn’t been born, you…you feather-merchant.’

Before drafting the rest of the press release, he sent one of the police cadets shopping. The recent extension in Sunday trading was a lifesaver to anyone whose eating arrangements were as makeshift as Diamond’s.

When he returned to the house in the Crescent at the end of the afternoon, he was holding two plastic carriers. Julie met him in the entrance hall, which was now restored to something like a respectable state. She told him the search squad had left a few minutes before with a vast collection of rubbish.

He set the bags down on a marble-topped table. ‘No shoe?’

‘We went through the place with a small-tooth comb, the attic to the basement. I’m positive it isn’t here.’

‘Outside?’

‘I had six men out there for two and a half hours.’

He ran his fingers through what remained of his hair. ‘I’m mystified, Julie. I can think of three or four ways the shoe may have come off. I’m trying to think of one good reason why anyone would wish to remove it from the scene.’

She shook her head and shrugged. ‘One shoe’s no use to anyone.’

‘If it incriminated someone, I’d understand,’ he said. ‘But how could it? Let’s take the extreme case, say she was murdered, shoved off the balustrade after a struggle in which the shoe came off. What does her killer do with the shoe? He’d sling it after her, wouldn’t he, down into the basement? Then we’d assume it got knocked off her foot when she hit the ground. It would still look like an accident, or suicide. Keeping it, hiding it, disposing of it, is self-defeating. It announces that someone else was involved.’

‘People aren’t always rational,’ Julie pointed out. ‘This killer - if there is one - may have been drunk.’

‘Could have been.’ Diamond didn’t say so, but he thought it unlikely that a drunk would bother to pick up a shoe and smuggle it out of the house.

‘Have we finished here?’ she asked.

‘Where are the tenants - still upstairs?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are they taking it?’

‘They’re not happy, but would anyone be? They couldn’t understand the reason for the search. They’re just ordinary people - well, not all that ordinary, or they wouldn’t be living at an address like this - but you know what I mean. They were really unlucky the way this party came about.’

‘Or unwise.’

Julie didn’t agree. ‘I doubt if anyone could have prevented what happened.’

He showed his disagreement with a sniff. ‘If you won the lottery, you wouldn’t shout it out in a pub.’

‘I might. Anyway, their luck was really out when the woman was killed. You can’t dispute that.’

‘You’ve obviously come to like these people.’

‘They’ve been helpful, making tea and things. I’m hungry, though.’

His eyes slid away, to a framed print of John Wood’s 1727 plan of Queen Square. ‘The Treadwells are architects, right?’

‘Yes, and making a good living at it, I get the impression. They have an office in Gay Street. He designs those enormous out-of-town supermarkets. She’s the surveyor. Knows all about maps and land use and so on. She sizes up the site and he draws the plans.’

‘Cosy.’

‘I think they’re doing all right. Not much of the building industry is booming these days, but supermarkets are going up everywhere.’

‘Red-brick barracks with green-tiled roofs.’ Diamond had no love of them, whatever their design. He knew them from the inside, as a trolley-man in his spell in London. ‘It’s a cancer, Julie, scarring the countryside and bleeding the life out of the city centres. So the geniuses who design them choose to live in a posh Georgian terrace and work in a building that was here when Beau Nash was alive. I bet they don’t drive out of town to do their shopping.’

‘They don’t have a car.’

‘There you are, then.’

She hesitated. ‘Does it matter how they make their living?’

‘They’ve won you over, haven’t they?’

‘I take people as I find them, Mr Diamond.’

He was forced to smile. She’d scored a point. Here he was, ranting on again, no better than a feather-merchant, whatever that was. Thank God there were people like Julie to nudge him out of it. ‘And you find them more agreeable than your boss?’

She blushed deeply. ‘Actually, the couple upstairs are the friendlier ones. Mr Treadwell is still angry about having his house invaded and I think his mood rubs off on her, although she does her best to sound civilised. The Allardyces seem to take a more fatalistic view of the whole weekend.’

‘It was fatal for someone, anyway. They’re the people in public relations, aren’t they?’ He held up a pacifying hand. ‘All right, Julie, I won’t give you my views on public relations. Remind me of their first names.’

‘Sally and William.’

‘And they’re still approachable, after having their house turned over? It beggars belief.’

‘It’s in the breeding. Grin and bear it.’

‘Let’s go up and pay our respects to these models of restraint.’ He picked up his shopping. He was feeling chipper. Not a hint of hypertension.

Sally Allardyce admitted them to the living-room that featured the acanthus-leaf ceiling. Both couples were present. The lights were on and a simulated fire was flickering yellow and blue in the grate. A game of cards was in progress at the round table at the end nearest the main casement window.

Emma Treadwell had changed from her bath-robe into a pale blue dress. Made-up, bright-featured and pretty, she still showed some strain, fingering the ends of her long, dark hair.

Diamond glanced at the way the cards were arranged. ‘Whist?’

‘Solo whist, actually,’ said William Allardyce. His tracksuit top was unzipped lower than before and the lettering entirely revealed. Aptly for the man Julie had found the more friendly, it read MR RIGHT.

‘Finish the hand, then,’ Diamond urged them. ‘You can’t stop in the middle. Is someone on an abundance?’

‘Misère
,’ said Treadwell, without looking up from the cards in his hand. ‘It’s me, and it just about sums up the weekend.’

Sally Allardyce said, ‘We were only filling in time. Your inspector -Julie - said you’d be along soon. I’ll make some fresh tea.’

Diamond seized his opportunity to earn some goodwill. He became masterful. ‘No, you won’t. You’ll take your place at the table and give Mr Treadwell the chance to glory in his
misère.
Where’s the kitchen? Through there?’

‘What exactly…?’

‘Julie and I will prepare - what is it you call it in all the best circles? - high tea. I heard you were cleaned out by all your visitors, so I brought some food in. Is anyone game for scrambled eggs on toast? My specialty.’

After some hesitation, it was agreed. They would finish the game and take their chances with Peter Diamond’s specialty.

In the kitchen, he grabbed an apron off the back of the door and tied it on. ‘I’m a clumsy bugger,’ he explained to Julie as if it were news to her. ‘This is my best suit. There’s a cut loaf in the bag. Why don’t you get some toast and tea on the go and leave the eggs to me?’

Mastering the cooker was the first challenge. It was electric and easy and he popped in half a dozen plates, informing Julie that nothing was worse than serving a warm meal on a cold plate. The gas hob proved less amenable. The spark wouldn’t ignite the burner for some seconds, and when it finally did with a small explosion, there was a distinct whiff of singed hair. He rubbed the back of his right hand.

Sally Allardyce called out from the card-game, ‘Are you managing all right?’

Julie answered that they were and Diamond began robustly cracking eggs into a large bowl and tossing the shells across the room, aiming for - and not always reaching - the sink. ‘You need a dozen for a party this size, so I got some extra in case of accidents,’ he informed Julie with a wave of his sticky hand covered in bits of broken shell. But he seemed to know what he was doing. When she offered to pass him the milk he said, ‘Never use milk in scrambled eggs. Cream, if you want them rich. But I prefer to serve them fluffy. A little water, that’s the secret. The whole thing will be light as air.’ He found an old-fashioned whisk and attacked the mixture vigorously. ‘How’s the toast?’