Upon a Dark Night (39 page)

‘Is there independent access to your office, or do you go through their premises to get to yours?’

‘We share a staircase, that’s all.’

‘I expect you know the people reasonably well?’

‘We’re on friendly terms.’

‘Friendly enough to go into their office for a chat sometimes, coffee and biscuits, catch up on the gossip or whatever?’

‘Very occasionally, if something of mutual interest crops up, I may go down and speak to the manager.’

So pompous. He was half Diamond’s age, yet he made the big man feel like a kid out of school. ‘Good. You can help me, then. You know the layout. What do they do with their keys - the keys to the flats they have to let?’

‘They hang them up in a glass-fronted case attached to the end wall.’

‘Does it have a lock?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘I suppose they wouldn’t need to keep it locked while the office is occupied,’ Diamond mused. ‘And your wife - is she on good terms with the Better Let people?’

‘Reasonably good.’

‘Nips down for a chat with the girls in the office?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Emma is a Chartered Surveyor. She doesn’t fritter away her time with office girls.’

Diamond was forced to accept it, put like that. Trapped in his middle-aged perspective of the young, he’d lumped Mrs Treadwell with the legion of women from eighteen to thirty, forgetting that they had a hierarchy of their own. ‘Tell me something else,’ he started up again. ‘I came past your office building tonight. I noticed you have a security alarm.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sensible. I imagine that’s a shared facility.’

‘Yes.’

‘So how does it work? A control panel somewhere inside with a code number you enter if you want to override the system?’

Treadwell nodded.

‘Where’s the control panel housed? Not in the hall, I imagine?’

‘Inside the Better Let premises. I have a key to their office for access purposes.’

‘Exactly what I was about to ask. You keep the key where?’

‘On a ring, in my pocket.’ He took it out and showed Diamond.

‘And does your wife have a key to Better Let for the same reason?’

‘Yes, in case one of us is away. Those alarms have a habit of going off at the most inconvenient times.’

‘I know, sir,’ said Diamond, with a glance at Julie, cock-a-hoop that one of his theories had worked out. ‘There you are, you or Emma, working late, and the darned thing goes off for no reason, disturbing the pigeons and all the old ladies within earshot. But happily you’re safe in the knowledge that either one of you can deal with it. You can get into the Better Let office at times when they aren’t there.’

Guy Treadwell looked at him blankly.

Diamond explained about the basement flat in St James’s Square and the suspicion that Emma had taken the missing woman Christine Gladstone there. ‘She can let herself into Better Let whenever she wants. She could have picked up the keys to this empty flat and used it, you see.’

Treadwell shook his head. ‘Emma isn’t stupid, you know. She wouldn’t risk her career. She doesn’t even know this woman. You’re way off beam here.’

The force of the denial tested even Diamond’s confidence. Surely Treadwell was implicated if Emma was. What else had he thought she was doing on her evenings out? Highland dancing?

‘I’m keeping her here overnight for an identity parade tomorrow.’

‘Do you mean she’s under arrest?’

Diamond gave a nod. ‘She’ll be comfortable.’

‘This is absurd!’

‘We’re not talking parking offences, Guy. Christine Gladstone is wanted on suspicion of murder. We think your wife knows where she is.’

Treadwell looked away and said bleakly, ‘Are you going to lock me up as well?’

‘You’re free to go. We all need some sleep.’ Diamond leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms. ‘Talking of sleep, I noticed you don’t share a bed with your wife.’

He flushed crimson. ‘Bloody hell, what is this?’

‘Don’t share a bedroom, even.’

‘Our sleeping arrangements are nothing to do with the police.’

‘They are if they provide your wife with an alibi. She’s out most evenings. Gets home late. If she isn’t with Christine Gladstone, who is she with?’

Treadwell stared back, his face drained of colour.

‘I’m still trying to understand her behavior,’ Diamond continued in his reasonable tone. ‘Back at your house you told me she’s got this social life that takes her out in the evenings. Forgive me, but you don’t seem to be part of it. Who are these friends?’

Treadwell leaned forward over the table, covered his face, and said in a broken voice, ‘Sod you. Sod you.’

Diamond lifted an eyebrow at Julie, whose eyes were registering amazement. Then he dealt quite sensitively with Treadwell, before the self-pity turned more ugly. ‘It has to be faced, Guy. Not all marriages work. I’m no agony aunt, but maybe you both entered into it thinking you were an ideal team, the architect and the surveyor. Working out of the same office can be a joy when you’re man and wife, but it can also be a strain.’

Without moving his hands from his face, Treadwell said in a low, measured voice, as if he were speaking into a tape-recorder, ‘I knew Emma rejected me physically, but I never thought she was seeing a woman until you told me. I thought she was with men. And now I discover it’s this Gladstone woman and it’s tied in with murder. I’m gutted.’ He looked up, his eyes red-lidded. He hooked a finger behind the bow-tie and tugged the knot apart. ‘I don’t know what else you want from me.’

‘There is one thing: did you stick the knife into your neighbour’s car-tyre?’

His startled gaze flickered between Diamond and Julie. ‘God, no. What makes you think…’ he started to say, then answered his own question. ‘You thought I suspected William and Emma were at it. Well I did, to be honest. There were times when I noticed the pair of them looking at each other as if they knew things I didn’t. He’s more outgoing than I am, smiles a lot, so I couldn’t be sure. Emma laughs at his remarks as if he’s the wittiest man she ever met. And that irritates me. I was jealous, let’s face it. I once saw them by chance coming out of the Hat and Feather in London Street. And quite often she’d come in at the end of an evening and a few minutes later I’d hear the front door open quietly again and he’d creep upstairs to his flat. You can torture yourself imagining things. But I wouldn’t do anything so sneaky as to take it out on his car.’

‘Who did, then?’ said Diamond, more to himself than Treadwell.

‘Sally?’ suggested Julie.

Thirty-one

Treadwell had been silent during the short ride. Diamond left him locked in his own misery until the patrol car swung onto the cobbles in front of the Crescent, jerking them all out of semi-slumber.

‘In the morning we’ll put your wife on an identity parade. These things take hours to set up, so it can’t be much before noon. I advise you to get your solicitor there.’

Troubled questions welled up again. ‘What’s Emma really supposed to have done? You don’t think she was involved in the deaths of these people?’

‘Will you sleep any better if I give you an answer?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, unable to decipher such a Delphic utterance.

‘How’s your cooking?’

‘What?’

‘Cooking. Pretty basic, is it? Boiled eggs and baked potatoes?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Go out in the morning and buy a decent cookbook. She’s not coming home for a long time.’

The wretched man trudged towards the front door like the closing shot of a sombre East European film.

Inside the car, Diamond yawned. ‘My place next.’

Only it was not to be. Julie, seated in the back, with a better view of the house, had spotted something she did not understand.

‘Hold it’

‘What’s up?’

‘The door’s already open. Someone is there.’ She wound down the window for a better view. ‘I’m sure of it.’ Without another word, she got out and crossed the pavement. Guy Treadwell heard her, turned and stopped.

She ran straight past him. The figure she had glimpsed for a moment in the doorway had retreated inside. Shouting, ‘Stop. Police!’ she dashed in and across the hall.

Diamond, still in the car, roused from his torpor, swung open his door and followed.

Treadwell had halted uncertainly outside his house.

Diamond asked him, ‘Who was that?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Which way?’

‘Upstairs.’

Inside, the sounds of a struggle carried down from an upper floor. The place was in darkness. He fanned his hands across the wall for a light-switch and couldn’t find one. Groped his way to the banister rail and took the stairs in twos. The gasps from above sounded female in origin.

Blundered up two flights of stairs.

Moonlight from a window on the second-floor landing revealed two figures wrestling. There was no need to pile in. Julie had her adversary in an armlock. A young woman.

‘You want help?’ Diamond asked. ‘Cuffs?’

‘You don’t have any cuffs,’ Julie reminded him. She eased her grip slightly, allowing the woman to turn her head.

Sally Allardyce’s eyes gleamed in the faint white light, the more dramatically against her black skin. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown over a white nightdress. Her feet were bare.

‘Let her go, Julie.’

Released, Sally sat up and rubbed her left arm, moaning.

‘I called out,’ said Julie. ‘And you took off.’

‘I was scared,’ Sally said. ‘I saw the police car.’

Diamond loyally did his best to justify Julie’s conduct. ‘What were you doing, peeking round the front door?’

‘I thought it was my husband coming in.’

He hesitated, playing her answer over in his head. ‘He’s still out? Where?’

‘God knows.’ Her voice faltered. She swallowed hard, pulling the dressing-gown across her chest, getting command of herself. ‘I heard a car draw up outside. I wanted to catch them sneaking in together.’

‘Catch who?’

‘William and Emma.’ Speaking the names caused a torrent of resentment to pour from her. ‘I’m sick of all the deceit. I’ve known about it for months, the way they look at each other, the secret meetings, the evenings out together, the restaurants on his credit card statements, pretending it’s business when I know bloody well what it is. I want to catch them creeping in. Tonight I was sure. I waited up. I knew they were together.’

So it was cards on the table with a vengeance.

‘But he isn’t with Emma,’ Julie told her.

‘Don’t give me that. I know bloody well he is.’

‘You’re wrong, Sally. Emma came back a good two hours ago and we picked her up. She’s in a cell at the police station.’

Sally stared at her. ‘What for? But I heard her go out at seven, seven-fifteen, or something, and he was looking out of the window, waiting. He didn’t know I was watching. It was like a signal to him, like she was some bitch on heat. He was off down those stairs without even telling me he was going out.’ She paused, letting Julie’s statement sink in. ‘If he isn’t with her, where is he, then? If she’s locked up, where the hell is William? What’s he doing at this hour of the night?’

The same question was troubling Peter Diamond. He thought of a possible answer that would be no comfort to anyone. Instead he asked, ‘Someone slashed a tyre of your husband’s car yesterday night. Was that you?’

‘Me?’ She looked bewildered. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘You’ve just told us. You’re an angry young woman with a two-timing husband, that’s why. You walk to the station early on your way to work, when it’s still dark. You go through the Circus, where you know it’s parked. You could easily—’

‘I didn’t,’ she said in a tight, controlled voice. ‘I wouldn’t demean myself.’

Back in the car, he told the driver, ‘Change of plan. Switch on the beacon and back to the nick. Fast.’

Above the surge in acceleration, Julie said, ‘If this is to do with me—’

‘It isn’t.’

‘I know I was out of order to scrap with her.’

‘Will you listen, for Christ’s sake? Another killing may have taken place tonight.’

‘William Allardyce?’ Her voice rose high. ‘You think he’s been murdered?’

‘No chance. I think he’s the murderer.’

After a pause, to be sure that he was serious, she spoke her mind. ‘This is an about-turn, isn’t it? You’ve been telling all and sundry that Rose is the killer.’

‘Of the farmer, yes.’

‘Is she, then?’

The lack of contact between them had never been so apparent. ‘No, Rose is innocent’

‘After all that you’ve been saying?’

Unwisely, he was still trying to claim some credit. ‘The way I prefer to put it, Julie, is that I confirmed my earlier theory. Allardyce was our main suspect from the day we met him. Remember the missing shoe? You can’t have forgotten us watching his car for hours.’

She said, ‘We were investigating something else.’

‘Right. I hadn’t connected Hildegarde’s death with the farmer’s. This new information that Emma has been hiding Rose stands the whole thing on its head. William is our man.’

‘Both murders?’ she said in disbelief. ‘William Allardyce?’

‘Don’t tell me you like the man.’

‘That’s neither here nor there.’

‘But…?’

‘He was easier to deal with than the rest of them. He went out of his way to be pleasant.’

‘His job,’ Diamond cynically dismissed it. ‘PR.’ He swayed against her as they swung left into George Street. ‘God, don’t you hate being driven fast?’

The car’s speed didn’t bother Julie. Being crushed against the arm-rest didn’t either, but being crushed by force of personality was something else. she said nothing. She was waiting for him to make his case against Allardyce.

Instead, he asked, ‘Did you believe what Sally just told us?’

‘About what - her husband with Emma?’

‘The tyre, Julie. The slashed tyre.’

‘Yes, I believed her.’

He sighed. ‘So did I.’

‘What is it about the damned tyre?’ she asked. ‘You won’t let go.’

‘I won’t let go because it’s crucial to the whole shooting match.’ Competing with the engine, he explained, ‘We have two angry spouses, Guy Treadwell and Sally Allardyce: reason enough to sabotage the car. I put it to them both and they denied it, and we believe them, right?’ Julie nodded.