Upon a Dark Night (26 page)

‘What do you mean - “some nerd”?’

‘A member of the public, then, sir. Sorry about that.’

‘Sergeant, I’m not complaining. I only want to know what makes him a nerd.’

‘The impression I got, Mr Diamond. I could be mistaken.’

‘You could, but now that you’ve dumped on this public-spirited person, you’d better be more specific.’

‘Well, I think he’s harmless.’

‘A weirdo?’

‘That’s a bit strong.’

‘A nerd, then.’

‘That about sums it up, sir.’

‘Wasting our time?’

‘I wouldn’t know that.’

He said with a sigh, ‘Have him brought up. I’ll see him now.’

‘Not possible, sir. He wouldn’t wait. There was no one here to see him at the time, Mr Wigfull being out and DI Hargreaves as well.’

‘So you didn’t even get a statement?’

“He said he’d be in the Grapes if you wanted to talk to him.’

Diamond made a sound deep in his throat that mingled contempt and amusement in equal measure. ‘That’s why he couldn’t wait. Urgent business at the Grapes. This isn’t a nerd, Sergeant, it’s a barfly. What name does he go under?’

‘Gary Paternoster.’

‘God help us. What’s that - South African?’

Before going out, he phoned the pathologist, Jim Middleton.

‘You got those blood-test results, then,’ Middleton’s rich Yorkshire brogue came down the line, confident that he knew the reason for the call.

‘On the woman, yes,’ Diamond said.

‘So did I. No drugs and very little alcohol, which greatly simplifies your job, doesn’t it?’

‘This isn’t about her. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a question about the other PM you did this morning.’

‘The old farmer? Fire away.’

This required tact from Diamond; the medical profession don’t like laymen giving them advice. ‘I was thinking over what you said, about it being unusual in suicides, aiming the muzzle under the chin.’

‘This one was the first I’ve come across,’ Middleton confirmed, ‘but there’s always something new in this game.’

‘He must have had a long reach. I had a look at the gun earlier. The distance from muzzle to trigger is twenty-eight inches.’

‘Actually, he was on the short side.’A pause. ‘You’ve got a point there, my friend.’ The tone of that ‘my friend’rather undermined the sentiment. ‘I’d better check my measurements.’

‘When the body was found, there wasn’t any sign that he was tied to the chair,’ Diamond started to say.

‘Hold on,’ said Middleton. ‘What the fuck are you suggesting, inspector?’

‘Superintendent.’

‘What?’

‘Peter will do. Is it conceivable that this was set up to look like a suicide when it was something else?’

There was another awkward silence before Middleton said, ‘I found no marks of ligatures, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘He was in a wooden armchair,’ Diamond said. ‘If his arms were pinioned in some way to the chair, he’d be helpless. He was in his seventies.’

‘I said I found no marks.’

‘He was wearing several layers of clothes: jacket, pullover, shirt and long-sleeved vest. If a ligature was over the clothes, would the pressure marks show through?’

‘You’re bloody persistent, aren’t you? It depends how tight this theoretical ligature was, but, no, it need not. This was a corpse after a week of putrefaction. We’re not dealing in subtleties at that stage. What are you suggesting - that he was trussed up for slaughter and then untied after death?’

Twenty minutes and a brisk walk later, Diamond entered the pub in Westgate Street where the Allardyces and the Treadwells had begun their celebrations on the fateful Saturday night. Not many were in. Six-fifteen this Tuesday evening was too early for the youthful regulars who nightly turned the Grapes into Bath’s hottest drinking spot. The sound from the music system was well short of the decibels it would reach later, but still loud for a man whose peaks of listening came on Radio Two.

He sauntered through the narrow low-beamed bar with its low-watt electric lights masquerading as oil-lamps. The dark wood panelling and antique paintings lived up to the claim, inscribed along a crossbeam, that the present facade dated from the seventeenth century; the fruit machines on every side undermined the impression. He saw the TV set at the far end of the bar that must have given the Treadwells and the Allardyces the news of their lottery success. There were bottled drinks he’d never heard of on display behind the bar. A man of his maturity stood out in this place, he thought. Anyone expecting a visitor from the police ought to give him a second glance. No one did. He strolled the length of the bar eyeing all the lone drinkers. He was beginning to take against Gary Paternoster before having met him, which was stupid. This one might be a nerd, and a barfly into the bargain, but he had gone to the trouble of calling at the nick. He could be about to provide the information that would nail a killer.

So quit racing your motor, Diamond told himself. Watch your blood pressure.

He asked a barmaid for help.

‘Dunno, love, but it could be him over there, under the fish.’

The fish was a
trompe l’oeil,
a pike carved in wood to look as if it was in a showcase. It was mounted on the wall near the door. Alone at a table, a youth sat like a more convincing stuffed specimen, staring ahead with glazed eyes. He was in a suit, a businessman’s three-piece, navy blue with a faint white pinstripe. He had an old-fashioned short-back-and-sides and owlish glasses. When Diamond spoke his name, he jerked and stood up.

‘Take it easy,’ Diamond told him. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘Lemonade shandy.’

A pained expression came over Diamond’s features. It was a long time since he’d come across anyone drinking shandy. The very notion of mixing good beer with lemonade…

In his innocence Gary Paternoster added, ‘But one is enough for me, thank you, sir.’

Diamond went back to the bar and collected a pint of best bitter for himself, a chance to focus his thoughts. This wasn’t the class of nerd he’d expected. This was a throwback to some time in the dim past when kids in their teens respected their elders and stayed sober and wore their Sunday best for talking to the police. Did it matter? Not if the boy was reliable as a witness.

At the table again, he perched uncomfortably on a padded stool with his back to a fruit machine called
Monte Carlo or Bust
and said, ‘Didn’t you want to wait at the nick, Mr Paternoster?’

A nervous smile. ‘To be honest, they made me a little uncomfortable. Not the police officers. Some of the people who came in.’

‘I don’t blame you. They give me the creeps. So you offered to wait here. More relaxing, eh?’ They were sitting under a throbbing loudspeaker that didn’t relax Diamond much, but the music did guarantee that their conversation wasn’t overheard.

‘This was the only place I could think of. It’s mentioned in the newspaper.’ The boy took a cutting from his top pocket and passed it across the table. ‘They said you were out making inquiries. They couldn’t tell me where.’

Diamond left the cutting where it was. ‘I see. You thought I might be here.’

‘I thought I’d come and see.’

‘Local, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘From Bath, I mean?’

‘Great Pulteney Street, actually.’

‘Very local, then. Nice address.’

‘It’s my mother’s.’

He lived with his mother, and who would have guessed, Diamond cynically thought. ‘And are you in a job?’

‘I work at the Treasure House.’

‘What’s that - a Chinese restaurant?’

Gary Paternoster blushed scarlet. ‘No. It’s a shop in Walcot Street, for detectorists.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond’s confidence in his star witness plunged another fathom. ‘Like me, you mean?’

‘Are you a detectorist?’

Save us, he thought. ‘Detective Superintendent. Will that do?’

The young man blushed again. ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m talking about people who use metal detectors.’

Normally Diamond was quick, but it took a moment for the penny to drop. ‘What - treasure-hunters? The guys you see on the beach with those probe-things looking for money and watches other people have lost?’

Gary Paternoster swallowed hard and said with disapproval, ‘Those people get us a bad name. Real detectorists aren’t interested in lost property - well, not modern lost property. You’ll find us in a ploughed field looking for ancient relics.’

‘Do you do it?’

‘Quite often, yes.’

‘Detectoring, you call it?’’ Yes.’

‘Ever found anything?’

‘Plenty.’ Self-congratulation lit the boyish features for a moment.

Diamond pretended not to believe. ‘What - horseshoes and nails and bits of barbed wire?’

‘No. Medieval bronze buckles. Roman coins. Brooches and things. You learn a lot about history.’

‘Lonely hobby, I should think, for a young man like you.’

This gentle goading was not wasted. Faint glimmers of a personality were emerging from behind the shop-assistant’s manner. ‘I find it very satisfying, actually.’

‘And profitable?’

‘Not yet, but you never know what you might find - and profit isn’t really the point of it. We’re uncovering the past.’

Uncovering the past summed up Gary Paternoster. He was a relic looking for relics.

‘But you weren’t out with your metal detector last Saturday night,’ Diamond said in an unsubtle shift to the matter under investigation.

He looked at Diamond as if the question did him no credit. ‘It’s no good going out after dark. You wouldn’t find a thing.’

‘Mr Paternoster.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m inviting you to tell me what happened.’

‘Oh.’ He fastened a button on his suit. ‘I was up at the Royal Crescent, at that party.’

Surprised, for Gary Paternoster didn’t look like a party-goer, Diamond said, ‘By invitation?’

‘Not in point of fact. It was open to everyone, wasn’t it? The shop was open late that evening, being Saturday. I was on my way home, about nine, I suppose, when I met some people I knew in Northgate Street. One of them was at school with me, quite a forceful personality. They were all on their way to this party and they asked me to join them. They said things I’m too embarrassed to repeat, about getting…getting…’

‘Laid?’

‘I was going to say getting lucky with girls. I didn’t really want to, and I said I wasn’t invited, but they said none of them were. I’m not very good at standing up to people like that.’

‘So you tagged along.’ Now he understood. The kid had been press-ganged.

‘I thought I’d slip away as soon as I got a chance. Parties make me tense. There seemed to be dozens going up there. They said someone here - in the Grapes - had won the lottery and thrown their house open for a party. That was what I heard and I think it’s true. When we got to the house, the door was open and we just walked in. There was loud music and beer. It seemed to be on several floors. We went upstairs to the first floor and that was where I saw the young lady who was killed.’

‘Already dead?’

‘No, at this point she was alive.’

‘You’re sure it was her?’

‘She’s the one whose picture is in the paper today. She was German, wasn’t she? She had a pink jumper thing and jeans - black or dark blue. A pretty face with dark hair, quite short. My friends seemed to know her from the pub - this place. She used to come here most evenings. It turned out that she didn’t know any English, because they were talking about her, making fun of her, saying suggestive things to her face.’

‘Such as?’

‘Stupid stuff, like she was desperate for…’ He cleared his throat. Simply couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

‘Sex?’

Paternoster took an intense interest in his shandy. ‘And they tried to embarrass me by telling her I wanted to go upstairs with her. She didn’t understand.’

‘She must have guessed what was going on,’ said Diamond. ‘She must have known what it was about from the sniggering. How did she take it? Was she upset?’

‘She ignored it. She seemed to be thinking about other things. She kept looking away, across the room.’

‘What at?’

‘The door, I think. She wasn’t looking at people. After a short time she just turned her back and moved off. They told me to go after her. They said she wanted me to follow her. I didn’t really believe it, but they were making me very embarrassed, so I went, just to get out of the room, really.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want you to think I had anything to do with her falling off the roof.’

‘It hasn’t crossed my mind,’ Diamond said in gospel truth. ‘Did you see where she went?’

‘Upstairs to the top flat. It was open. The party was going on there as well.’

‘And you followed?’

The young man took a deep, audible breath through his mouth. ‘On the stairs she looked round to see who was following. I was at the bottom of the stairs, and our eyes met. I’m not very confident with girls as a rule, and I didn’t really expect anything, but the look she gave wasn’t unfriendly. It was kind of amused, as if she’d expected one of the others to be coming after her and was pleased to find it was me instead. I knew she was foreign and couldn’t speak the language and that was a help actually because I get tongue-tied when I talk to them. She was older than me by a few years and that was nice. Girls my age seem more hostile. Older women like my mother’s friends say I’m nice. She wasn’t as old as Mum’s friends, but she was in her twenties, I should think.’

‘So you began to fancy your chances?’

He fingered his tie. ‘No, don’t misunderstand me. I was pleased because she’d noticed me and hadn’t pulled a face or something. I followed her upstairs. There were quite a number of people in the top flat, drinking and talking. I think some of them were dancing. It’s quite a big room.’

‘I’ve seen it. What did the woman do?’

‘She stood for a bit, watching. She went into the kitchen, I think, and came out.’

‘Was anyone with her?’

‘No.’

‘Are you certain of that? Did you notice a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans?’

‘I wasn’t looking much at the other people there. I was watching her.’

‘Try and remember. It’s important.’