Upon a Dark Night (38 page)
Authors: Peter Lovesey
Guy Treadwell ARIBA
Chartered Architect
Emma Treadwell FRICS
Chartered Surveyor
His memory was accurate, then. They did have an office in Gay Street, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t have been at a more interesting address.
Peter Diamond was not built for jogging, nor fast walking, but he covered the distance to Manvers Street in a sensational time by his standards. His brain was getting through some work, too, putting together the case that buried Emma Treadwell up to her neck in guilt. The descriptions of ‘Doreen Jenkins’ from Ada, Imogen Starr and the taxi driver all matched Emma’s solid appearance and svelte grooming; and now he had the damning fact that the Treadwells’ office was in the same building as Better Let. How easy to help herself to the keys to vacant furnished flats.
He called Julie at home.
‘Can you get here fast? I’m about to nick the Treadwells. I want you on board.’
She didn’t take it in fully.
‘They’re the link to Rose.’ He went on to explain why in a few crisp sentences.
The dependable Julie said she would come directly.
What a wimp of a young man, Diamond thought. It was almost eleven when Guy Treadwell, in silk dressing-gown and slippers, opened the door and saw the outsize detective with Julie and two uniformed officers beside him. Treadwell’s hand went to his goatee beard and gripped it like an insecure child reaching for its mother.
‘What is this?’
‘Shall we discuss it inside?’
‘If it’s about the damage to the car, I think you want our neighbours, the Allardyces.’
‘No, Mr Treadwell, this concerns your wife. Is she at home?’
He stared. ‘You’d better come in.’
Diamond gestured to the two officers to wait in the hall. He and Julie followed Treadwell into the living-room.
‘Your wife,’ Diamond prompted him.
‘She isn’t here. I’m expecting her soon. She went out. Some meeting or other.’
Diamond turned immediately to Julie. ‘Tell the lads to move the cars away, or she’ll take fright and do a runner.’
Treadwell looked in danger of bursting blood vessels. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘I have some questions for your wife, sir. And for you, too.’
‘About what?’
‘You might like to get some clothes on. I intend to do this at the police station. You’ll come voluntarily, won’t you?’
Horrified, Treadwell mouthed the words ‘police station’. ‘Are you seriously proposing to arrest us?’
‘Didn’t you hear? This will be voluntary on your part.’
‘We’ve done nothing unlawful.’
‘No problem, then. Shall we go upstairs? If you don’t mind, I’ll stay with you while you put your clothes on.’
Speechless, shaking his head, Treadwell led Diamond to the bathroom on the first floor where his day clothes were hanging behind the door. Diamond waited discreetly on the other side holding it open with his foot.
‘I don’t see the necessity of this,’ the voice in the bathroom started to protest more strongly. ‘Coming at night without warning. It’s like living in a fascist state.’
Diamond chose not to tangle with him over that. In a few minutes the young man came out fully attired. Some of his bluster had returned now that his bow-tie was back in place. ‘I can’t imagine what this pantomime is about, but I tell you, officer, you’re making a mistake you may regret. I need my glasses.’ With Diamond dogging him, he crossed the passage to the bedroom opposite, where a single bed and a single wardrobe made their own statement about the marriage. The half-glasses were on a chest of drawers. He looped the cord over his head and looked ready to play the professor in a college production of
Pygmalion.
On the way downstairs Diamond asked him if his wife made a habit of coming in late.
He said defiantly, ‘There’s no law against it.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘We’re grown-ups. I don’t insist that she’s home by ten.’
‘Was she out last night and the night before?’
‘There’s plenty to do in Bath. Emma belongs to things, she has friends, she doesn’t want to sit at home each evening watching television.’
‘So the answer is “Yes”?’
‘Haven’t I made that clear?’A direct answer seemed impossible to achieve.
They joined Julie in the living-room. While they waited for Emma, Diamond interested himself in the glass-fronted antique bookcase. Two shelves were filled with bound volumes of the
Bath Archaeological Society Journal
.
‘You’re seriously into all this, Mr Treadwell?’
‘The books? I got those for next to nothing at a sale. I don’t have the time to be serious.’
‘I remember someone telling me you’re a whizz at digging up relics.’
‘They were exaggerating.’
‘I’m sure. We were talking about this good luck you seem to be favoured with. If the truth were told, you have to know a bit about the site before you know where to dig. Isn’t that so?’
‘It helps.’
‘It’s like the cards. They call you lucky, but you have to know how to play the hand as well.’
‘That is certainly true.’
He was clearly reassured by Diamond’s change of tone. Then they heard the front door being opened. Treadwell grasped the arms of his chair, but Diamond put out a restraining hand. Instead, he gestured to Julie, who stepped into the hall to explain to Emma Treadwell why there would be no need to take her coat off.
Emma reacted more coolly than her husband had. ‘It’s a little late in the evening for all this, isn’t it?’
She was still composed in the interview room at the police station. She had spent the evening, she claimed, with a woman friend. No, she could not possibly divulge the friend’s name. The poor woman was going through a personal crisis. To pass on her name to the police would be like a betrayal, certain to undo any good she had been able to achieve.
Not bad, young Emma, Diamond thought, not bad at all.
And Julie was thinking that this was the most casual Emma had looked. The baggy sweater and jeans, and the fine, dark hair looking as if it could do with a brushing, supported the story. You don’t get dolled up to visit a distressed friend.
Diamond asked, ‘Is your friend in trouble with the police?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘We only want her to vouch for you.’
She raked some wayward hair from her face, smiled, and said, ‘What am I supposed to have done? Pinched the Crown Jewels?’
‘We just want it confirmed where you were.’
‘At this moment, her situation matters more to me than my own.’
‘You’ve spent a lot of time with her lately, haven’t you?’
Emma had no way of knowing how much her husband had already divulged. Guy Treadwell was seated in another room with a copy of the
Bath Chronicle,
some lukewarm coffee in a paper cup and only a bored constable for company. ‘It’s confidential,’ she insisted.
‘This woman: is she local?’
‘Look, I don’t want to be obstructive, but haven’t I already made clear why I can’t tell you anything about her?’
Reasonable as she appeared to be, she was rapidly sacrificing any rapport with Diamond. What Ada called the lah-de-dah voice grated on him. No doubt she could keep stonewalling
ad infinitum.
He changed tack. ‘You have an office in Gay Street?’
‘Yes.’
‘Above the agency that lets flats. Better Let, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘Obviously, you’re on good terms with the people in Better Let. Is there a business tie-in?’
‘Do you mean are we connected with them? No.’
‘You understand why I’m asking this?’
She said without even blinking, ‘No, I don’t.’
‘One of their flats, a furnished basement in St James’s Square, was used by two women a couple of weeks ago. An unofficial arrangement. The place is supposed to be vacant. The women must have acquired a set of keys. There was no break-in.’
The pause that followed didn’t appear to unnerve Emma Treadwell.
‘One of the women fitted your description,’ Diamond resumed. ‘The other is called Christine Gladstone, known to some people as Rose, or Rosamund Black. She was in the care of Avon Social Services until recently, suffering from some form of amnesia. Do you have any comment?’
She said as though the subject bored her, ‘I did see something in the local paper about a woman who lost her memory.’
‘She was seen in the company of this woman who’s a dead ringer for you. We have three independent witnesses. We can hold an identity parade in the morning if you insist on denying that it’s you.’
‘All right,’ she said, still without betraying the least concern in her still, brown eyes. ‘Let’s do that. May I go home now?’
As neat a hand-off as he’d met, and he was an ex-rugby forward. ‘You don’t seem to realise how serious this is.’ He found himself falling back on intimidation. ‘It isn’t just a matter of illegally occupying a flat. Christine Gladstone is under suspicion of murder - the killing of an old man - her own father - at Tormarton a few weeks ago. If you’ve been harbouring her, this makes you an accessory.’ He watched for her reaction and it was negligible.
‘So?’
‘If there’s another explanation, now is not a bad time to give it.’
Her response was to look up at the ceiling.
He said, ‘I can arrest you and detain you here until we get that identification.’
‘That sounds like a threat.’
He paused, and then tossed in casually, ‘Did you get the fuses you were looking for in Rossiter’s?’
She blinked twice. For a fleeting moment her guard seemed to be down. Then she recovered. ‘What did you say?’
‘The fuses. You were seen in Rossiter’s yesterday afternoon asking for electric fuses. They don’t sell them.’
She managed to smile. ‘I know that.’
‘You don’t deny you were there?’
She gave Julie a glance as if to invite contempt for this man’s stupid questions. ‘It must have been someone else, mustn’t it?’
But he was certain he’d hit the mark. ‘You were seen there by Ada Shaftsbury, who was in the same hostel as Christine Gladstone. She recognised you as the woman who presented herself at Harmer House and claimed she was the sister. I really think you ought to consider your position. I can bring Ada in tomorrow morning.’
That look of indifference remained, so he heaped on everything he had.
‘I can bring in Miss Starr, Christine’s social worker. I can bring in the taxi-driver you hired - the one who waited for you and then drove you both to St James’s Square, to the vacant flat that Better Let had the keys for. St James’s Square - that’s just behind the Royal Crescent, isn’t it? Five minutes from where you live?’
Unperturbed, she rose from the chair. ‘Let me know what time you want me tomorrow, then.’
‘You can’t leave.’
‘Why not?’
‘We haven’t finished.’
Still in control, she said, ‘The hell with that. I’m not sitting here any longer, being put through the hoop about things that don’t concern me. I know my rights, Mr Diamond. I’d like to go home now.’
She managed to seem convincing, whatever she had done.
He said - and it sounded like a delaying tactic even to him: ‘We haven’t talked to your husband yet.’
‘That’s your business.’
‘You wouldn’t want to leave without him.’
‘And that’s mine.’
The flip response revealed more than she intended.
‘Working together, as you do, you must see a lot of each other.’
‘So?’
‘Puts a strain on your relationship, I reckon.’
She gave him a glare. ‘You’re getting personal, aren’t you?’
‘From what he was saying, you don’t share many evenings out.’
Nettled now, she said, ‘Oh, for pity’s sake. I’ve heard enough of this garbage.’ She moved to the door, but the constable on duty barred her way. ‘What is this? Tell this woman to let me pass.’
Diamond said in his most reasonable manner, ‘Emma, you may think this is over, but it’s hardly begun. I’m going to have more questions for you presently, after we’ve spoken to your husband.’
‘You can’t keep me here against my will.’
‘We can if we arrest you.’
‘That would be ridiculous.’
He gave her one of his looks. ‘And that’s exactly what I’m about to do. Emma Treadwell, you are under arrest on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact of murder.’ He turned to Julie and asked her to speak the new-fangled version of the caution he’d never had the inclination to learn. She had it off pat, even if she spoke it through gritted teeth. He supposed she felt put upon.
But outside the interview room, Julie had more than that to take up with him. ‘You won’t like this, but I’m going to say it. I don’t think we can justify holding her.’
‘Have a care,’ he warned. ‘This has been a long day.’
‘It’s a house of cards, isn’t it? The case against Rose isn’t proved yet, and now you’re pulling this woman in as an accessory.’
‘She’s obstructing us, Julie.’
‘All you’ve got is the fact that she works above the agency.’
‘She matches the descriptions of Jenkins: mid to late twenties, sturdy build, with dark, long hair, posh voice.’
She sighed and said, ‘I could find you five hundred women like that in Bath.’
‘Carry on in this vein, Julie, and I may take you up on that.
We may need an identity parade. She’ll go on ducking and weaving until someone fingers her.’
‘Who would do that? Ada?’
‘The husband is worth trying first. He’s brittle.’
‘But how much does he know?’
‘Let’s see.’
In the second interview room, Guy Treadwell had discarded the newspaper and shredded the coffee cup into strips. He told Diamond as he entered, ‘You’ve got a damned nerve keeping me here like this.’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t even told me what it’s about. I have some rights, I believe.’
‘Let’s talk about your business as an architect,’ Diamond said.
‘My practice,’ he amended it.
‘You’re in Gay Street, above Better Let.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re a renting agency, am I right?’
Treadwell’s eyes widened. He said with a note of relief, ‘Are they the problem?’