‘Carl the gardener.’
She smiled. ‘Before it gets properly dark I want to show you the secret garden. Do you know about night-scented stocks? It’s full of them. Gorgeous. Come on, Pete.’ She took him by the hand. It was a while since anyone had called him Pete or held his hand. ‘Look, the fairy lights are coming on,’ she said. ‘They show us the way.’
She didn’t let go of his hand as she led him across the lawn towards the solar-powered lamps marking the path round one of the borders. The clouds were inky-black tinged with the last suggestions of red and this wasn’t the best light for looking at a secret garden, but he sensed this wasn’t the real object. Paloma had finished the champagne without help from him and was happy, if not merry, if not plastered. Soon it would be make-up-your-mind time. He started mentally rehearsing what to say.
As it turned out, the secret garden had a door set into a brick wall, and the door was locked, so Diamond didn’t get to see inside. What followed was down to his heightened anticipation and her inebriation and would embarrass them both for days to come.
Paloma rattled the door and said, ‘Oh, fuck.’
Diamond made the little speech he’d been struggling to put into words: ‘I really like you, Paloma. It’s just a bit sudden for me.’
She said, ‘That’s not what I meant.’
He said, ‘Nor me.’
Appalled with himself, not knowing how to follow that, and with his dignity in free fall, he leaned towards her and kissed her, but the kiss was clumsy and desperate and didn’t improve matters one bit.
In under ten minutes he was driving home, going over what he’d said and should have said, like a schoolkid who has messed up his first date.
O
ver the next week he plunged himself into his work. He and Halliwell tried to put together enough evidence to show beyond doubt that Danny Geaves had murdered Delia and then hanged himself. The one indisputable fact – that both the principals in the case were dead – made it an unappealing exercise, but it had to be gone through. The forensic reports had come in, and added little to what was already known. Nothing so helpful as a DNA sample had been found to link Geaves to the crime scene in the park.
‘If we knew where he spent the last week of his life we might find something,’ Diamond said.
‘A suicide note that tells all?’ Halliwell said. ‘You’re an optimist, guv.’
‘I was thinking of some trace of Delia. She was away from home on the Tuesday night and found dead on Thursday. If we could show she spent those two nights with Geaves, we’d be home and dry.’
‘Are you thinking they got together? Deep down, guv, I believe you’re a romantic.’
His thoughts strayed back to the secret garden. ‘Some chance.’
‘I thought they’d parted for good.’
‘People change. She wasn’t getting much attention from Ashley Corcoran. Maybe she heard from Danny and decided to see if there was still a spark in their relationship.’ He sketched the scenario. ‘She agrees to meet Danny thinking it might work out, but the magic isn’t there. On their second evening together she tells him she isn’t going back with him. He loses it and strangles her.’
‘I can believe that.’
‘Then there’s the unromantic theory,’ Diamond said. ‘He was planning to kill her from the start. Old wounds. He’d never forgiven her for leaving him the first time.’
‘What – and he has sex with her before he strangles her? That’s sick.’
‘He
was
sick. He was suicidal.’
‘Sometimes,’ Halliwell said from the depth of his experience, ‘it’s no bad thing to admit you’re not one hundred per cent sure.’
Diamond wasn’t having such defeatist talk. ‘Sometimes you have to make more of an effort. There’s going to be an inquest and the coroner will expect more than guesswork. We need to find Danny’s bolt hole. We appealed for help in tracking Delia’s movements. What have we done about Danny? Asked around in Freshford. That’s not enough. What if he was seen in Trowbridge, or Westbury, or Bath, even?’
‘Are you thinking of going on TV again?’
He shook his head. ‘We wouldn’t get air-time. Everyone else thinks the case is done and dusted.’
‘Especially the boss.’
‘Especially her, yes. You and I are supposed to paper over the cracks and tiptoe away.’
Halliwell gave him a speculative look. ‘And we’re not happy with that . . . are we?’
‘You know me, Keith. I have to find out what really happened, even if it turns out exactly as Georgina thinks.’
‘So what’s the next step?’
‘We make an appeal in the local papers: did anyone see Danny Geaves in the week leading up to his death?’
‘Smart move. Have we got a picture? I mean of when he was alive?’
‘I was given one by Amanda. We issue a press release saying we’re keen to trace his movements in the week before his death.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
‘No. We have a tame journalist in our ranks.’
‘Ingeborg?’
‘She knows how to make the front page.’
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing her on page three,’ Halliwell said.
‘I’d keep that to myself if I were you.’
The
Bath Chronicle
ran the piece next day on an inside page. The Danny Geaves story couldn’t compete with a sighting of Jane Austen’s ghost promenading along the Gravel Walk. But there was still a result. Two
Chronicle
readers called the police, positive they had spotted Danny in the village of Bathford in the days before his death.
The first was a woman who had seen a man of Danny’s description loitering, as she put it, near the school. She’d taken note of him because she was a parent and felt it was up to parents to be vigilant. The man hadn’t approached any children or she would have reported him, but he looked in need of a shave (a sure sign of decadence in Bathford), and was ‘unkempt’, apparently unlike any of the parents meeting their children. Her description of the man’s clothes matched those found on the body at the viaduct.
The second sighting was more promising still. Two days running a postman had noticed someone looking like Danny walking along Farleigh Rise, the road to Monkton Farleigh. Postmen are usually reliable witnesses. They know the locals. Anyone else stands out. This postman described the man as looking ‘up to no good’. When the post van stopped across the road the stranger had gone behind some bushes as if trying to avoid being spoken to. There was nothing there except scrub and trees, the postman said. It looked suspicious, but people sometimes go behind bushes for calls of nature, so he hadn’t followed. He’d decided simply to take note. When he’d seen the picture in the
Chronicle
he’d recognised the man for certain.
Armed with a stack of copies of the picture of Danny Geaves, Diamond drove out with Halliwell and a minibus loaded with uniformed officers. Bathford is built on a rise bounded by the confluence of Box Brook and the Avon to the north and Bathford Hill to the south. They parked above the village at the top end of Farleigh Rise and began a search on both sides for evidence of someone living rough. Flattened vegetation and the remains of a bonfire would be a good indicator.
Inside the first half-hour one of the search party found the ashes of a bonfire close to a hut.
‘We may have got lucky,’ Diamond said.
‘I don’t think so, guv,’ Halliwell said when they reached the place. ‘The burnt area is too big. This is a forester’s fire, used to burn unwanted timber.’
‘So how long were you in the boy scouts?’
‘There’d be signs of food in the embers.’ Untroubled by the sarcasm, Halliwell spread the ashes with his foot. Then he tested the padlock on the door of the hut. ‘It hasn’t been tampered with.’ He looked through the window at the side. ‘I can see a crosscut saw.’
‘All right. You made your point.’
The searchers fanned out again and moved on. After another hour Diamond left the party and returned to the minibus. He asked the driver if the tea was brewing.
‘What tea, sir?’
‘Are you telling me you don’t carry an urn? I’ve got sixteen men and women gasping for a cuppa.’
‘It wasn’t mentioned, sir. I’m the driver, not—’
Diamond held up a menacing finger. ‘What are you about to say? You’re not the teaboy? I’m sorry, sunshine, but I just promoted you. You’d better motor back to Bath and get something organised. I wouldn’t say no to some cheese and pickle sandwiches while you’re at it.’
The searchers wouldn’t be getting their tea for a while, but they deserved a break, so he returned to them and ordered one.
Someone asked if there was a toilet in Bathford.
‘Five or six hundred at a guess,’ Diamond said, ‘but if you think I’m going to knock on someone’s door and ask if sixteen coppers can use the bathroom, you’re mistaken. What do we use?’
One of the sixteen said, ‘Our initiative, sir.’
‘I couldn’t put it better myself. Well away from the bit we’ve been searching, right?’
It was a good thing he’d ordered the tea. Morale ebbed at a worrying rate after the search resumed. Several were complaining that this could go on for days without anything turning up. Then someone stepped in a wasps’ nest and three people were stung. The first-aid kit was in the minibus somewhere on the road to Bath.
‘Try rubbing it with a dock leaf,’ Diamond said.
‘That’s for stinging nettles,’ Halliwell said.
‘You’re not much support.’
‘Where’s the bloody driver when we need him?’
The eventual return of the minibus was greeted with ironic cheers.
‘I’m worried, guv,’ Halliwell said when everyone had tea. ‘They were almost mutinous.’
‘I was thinking the same.’ He announced to them all that he was calling a halt, and got a cheer of his own. ‘It’ll be dark in another hour. We’re back tomorrow morning.’
There were groans.
‘Doing house-to-house.’
If there is one thing policemen like less than searching fields, it is knocking on doors.
DI John Leaman had been holding the CID fort while Diamond and Halliwell were out. He was well capable of directing operations. The main responsibility was to take any more calls that came in as a result of the piece in the
Chronicle
. The phone kept buzzing, but most calls that came through had nothing to do with Danny Geaves. Leaman started to suspect that the switchboard operator was routinely diverting every outside call to CID. In the middle of the afternoon someone with a voice that oozed elegance asked to speak to the ‘senior officer’.
‘At your service,’ Leaman said.
‘Forgive me, but are you the chief constable?’
‘Chief constable? No, sir. You’re through to CID.’
‘You don’t mind if I enquire what rank you hold?’
‘Only detective inspector, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ said the caller. ‘This couldn’t be better. Detective Inspector . . . ?’
‘Leaman.’
‘Well, inspector, this could be your lucky day. My name is Charles Fetherington-Steel and I’m publicity director for the Theatre Royal. As you probably know, next week sees the opening of our main summer production,
An Inspector Calls
, the J. B. Priestley play that has been revived with such spectacular success.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘But you will shortly. That’s my job, publicity. You see, we’ve had this rather special idea of inviting a real police inspector to the press night – with a partner of his choice, of course – and getting his impressions of the play. We’ll take a couple of photos with some of the cast, and then the local paper will do a follow-up piece.’
‘Before you go any further,’ Leaman said, ‘that’s not my thing at all. You’ve been put through to the wrong person. Hold on while I get you reconnected.’
‘But you’re a real inspector and you sound ideal.’
‘You’re mistaken, sir. We don’t do PR work in CID. You want our press office by the sound of things. Hold the line, please.’ He pressed the button for the operator and said, ‘Someone’s got their switches in a twist. All the flaming outside calls are coming straight to us. Some luvvie from the Theatre Royal just got through. You’d better sort yourself out, and fast.’
The female voice that responded said, ‘I don’t think you know who you’re addressing.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘Dallymore.’
Georgina, the ACC. Leaman held the phone away from his mouth and said, ‘Oh my sainted aunt.’ Then he spoke into it again. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Crossed line.’
‘You made that very clear,’ Georgina said. ‘I’m through to CID, aren’t I? You’re DI Leaman, are you not?’
Nailed.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I want to speak to your superior. Put Superintendent Diamond on.’
‘Ma’am, the Theatre Royal is on an outside line.’
She said, ‘I don’t want the theatre. Where’s Diamond?’
‘He’s out, ma’am, on a job.’
‘Out where?’
‘Bathford.’
‘Does this have anything to do with a vanload of uniformed officers being driven away from here this morning?’
‘Quite possibly, ma’am.’
‘So that’s why I can’t get hold of anyone. This is too much.’
Then Leaman heard another voice. The theatre man was back on the line. ‘There you are. I seem to have been talking to myself for the past two minutes. Who is this?’
‘ACC Dallymore.’
‘How charming. Assisi as in St Francis of? Well, my dear, this could be your lucky day.’
Leaman gently replaced the receiver.
B
athford has about eight hundred houses. ‘That’s a mere fifty each,’ Diamond told his team, assembled in the Crown car park at eight thirty next morning. He wanted to be positive from the start. ‘No challenge at all. DI Halliwell will tell you the streets you are covering and issue you with a mugshot of Danny Geaves. You ask if they’ve seen him around the village over the past ten days. And – this is important – if they have, you find out if he was seen with anyone else. Report every sighting to me at the first opportunity.’
Wonderful the difference a night’s sleep can make. They listened without a murmur, picked up their streetmaps and mugshots and moved off briskly as if house-to-house was as good as a pub crawl. And results started coming in almost at once. A stranger in a village stands no chance of staying undercover. Five sightings were reported in the first hour. Diamond spoke to each witness himself. By their accounts Geaves had been in the area for about a week to ten days, mostly on the southern outskirts in the area where the postman had seen him. One woman complained that two of her chickens had been taken, and not by a fox. (‘How do you know a fox didn’t take them?’ ‘Because I’ve never come across a fox with size-nine footprints.’) No one could say where Geaves was spending the nights. And no one had seen him with Delia, or any other woman.
Diamond looked up the steep ascent of Bathford Hill. ‘What’s up there?’
‘The church.’
‘Past it, I mean.’
Halliwell had the map open. ‘Farleigh Rise, where we were yesterday.’
‘To the right.’
‘Mountain Wood. There’s a footpath.’
‘And what’s that tower thing at the top?’
‘Browne’s Folly, it says.’
Jutting above the foliage was this lone grey building with a flat Italianate roof and arched windows.
‘I didn’t notice it yesterday.’
‘We were on the other side. Am I wrong, or have you just had an idea, boss?’
After the house-to-house was completed, and lunch eaten, Diamond led his little army up the hill. One of them had grown up in Bathford and was able to make the stiff climb more bearable for everyone by relating the history. A quarry owner called Wade Browne had built the tower in 1848. The official story was that he was a public-spirited man who gave employment to local workers in a time of depression. In the more cynical version he was a self-admirer who wanted a memorial as impressive as William Beckford’s tower on Lansdown. Probably there was truth in both.
Twice Diamond called a halt to admire the scenery, as he put it. ‘You can probably see the way my mind is working,’ he said to Halliwell between gasps.
‘Yes, but could he get inside the tower, guv?’
‘A desperate man can get inside anything.’
On the ridge of the hill the going got easier. The tower was about fifty feet high and Browne’s initials and the date 1848 were on a plaque over the door. Unfortunately the door was made of iron, and locked, and there was no sign of a forced entry. The only windows were at the top, out of reach of anyone except Spiderman.
The searchers stood at a distance and looked on while Diamond slowly circled the building. Good thing he couldn’t hear what was being said about follies.
Halliwell went over and said in confidence, ‘We marched them up to the top of the hill. What now, guv?’
‘Ask that local lad to come over.’
The constable looked nervous, as if fearing something he’d said had been overheard by the detective superintendent.
‘What’s your name?’ Diamond asked.
‘PC Flint, sir.’
‘And you grew up in Bathford?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You must have come up here a few times.’
‘Years ago, I did, sir. I knew it as the pepperpot. That was the local name.’
‘Did you ever see inside?’
‘Being kids, we were curious, like. In those days the door was off its hinges.’
‘And what’s it like in there?’
‘Nothing much to see. Stone steps going round the inside walls to the top. We climbed up them. The rail was broken in places. There was a wooden viewing platform up at the top once, built across two iron girders, but it had all rotted when I looked in. There were bits of it at the bottom. Old rubbish and all sorts.’
‘Not a good place to hole up in?’
‘Definitely not. Damp, cold and nowhere to lie down. Mind, they tidied it up since and repaired the roof, and the door, of course.’
‘And made it secure. Who would have the key?’
‘The Wildlife Trust people. It’s all part of the nature reserve.’
‘Where do we find them – in the village?’
‘I think their office is in Bath.’
Diamond’s options were running out. ‘As a local man, Flint, if you were on the run and wanted a place to hole up, where would you go?’
Flint gave it some thought. ‘An empty house, sir?’
‘Where the neighbours would spot you soon enough. They haven’t. I don’t think he was in a house.’
There was a longer pause.
‘The only other hidey-hole I can think of is the caves, sir.’
This was more promising. ‘There are caves up here?’
‘Underneath us. This is quarrying country. The hill is riddled with them. At one time it was all linked up with Monkton Farleigh mine.’
‘I know about Monkton Farleigh.’ The vast subterranean stone workings there had been used in the war to store munitions and the place had since been opened as a tourist attraction, with rides on the underground tramway.
Flint added, ‘The Browne’s Folly quarries were just as well known in their day. There are entrances all along the Pepperpot Trail.’
‘Come again.’
‘The path along the ridge. We’re on it.’
‘Show me, then.’
PC Flint strode out, puffed up with his importance on the team.
‘Don’t stand there like a load of bollards,’ Diamond yelled to the rest of them. ‘We’re on the Pepperpot Trail.’
The little path led south, towards Warleigh, and the views of the city testified to the height they had climbed.
‘Caves up here?’ Diamond said. ‘I find that hard to credit.’
‘You have to look out for them. Some of the entrances are overgrown,’ Flint said. After just a few minutes of walking he stopped and said, ‘Through there.’
Half hidden by a crop of nettles was a dark hollow that plunged deep into the hill.
‘Is that it?’ Diamond said. ‘It’s got a grille over it.’
‘That’s for protection, sir.’
‘Protecting stupid people like us from getting inside.’
‘Protecting the bats.’
‘Bats?’ The word impacted in Diamond’s brain.
‘They nest in there, don’t they?’ Flint said. ‘Ten or twelve species, I was told. The grille is big enough for them to fly in and out. The trust does its best to stop them being disturbed.’
Diamond wasn’t too concerned at this stage about the welfare of bats. He went closer and took a grip on the grille. It was very secure. ‘Our man had a picture of a bat in his room. He must have known about these caves. There are other entrances, you said?’
‘Four or five.’
‘Let’s look at the others.’
At first sight the next cave entrance was just as secure. But when Diamond shook the bars there was some movement. He pulled sharply and the whole thing came away from the rock. ‘Someone had this out and replaced it,’ he said, laying the grille on the ground.
He ducked and looked inside – except that looking wasn’t any use. Couldn’t see a thing. Just felt the chill. Then he was aware of something soft against his foot.
In a cave?
He gave a yelp and stepped away. Backed out into the daylight and asked with a transparent attempt at dignity if anyone had a lighter.
The only smoker in the party had a rare boost to his self-esteem.
With more caution, he tried a second time. The flame made the experience easier to endure. Nothing was moving on the floor, which was a relief. He was not overfond of things that lived in caves. He could see the soft object he had touched: a folded blanket. There were candles, some spent matches and a plastic bottle of water. There was an inflatable pillow.
He stepped outside and said to Halliwell, ‘We may have found his sleeping quarters. Ask the men in white suits to do a job in there.’
While Halliwell was phoning for the crime scene investigators, Diamond prowled around outside. ‘You lot make yourselves useful,’ he told the team. ‘There’s got to be the remains of a fire around here.’
They soon discovered it, not twenty yards from the cavern entrance. Of even more interest, in the embers, along with chicken bones and orange rind, were some fragments of newspaper, and even though it was scorched almost black, they could see that it was the Saturday edition of the
Daily Mail
, the day before Danny Geaves’s body was found suspended from the viaduct.
Diamond stayed kneeling and presently picked out a piece of cardboard about three inches by four. Just visible under the scorch-marks was an embossed design of a coat of arms.
‘Now we know what happened to his passport,’ he said. There were other printed papers too far gone to be recognisable, but forensic scientists can do amazing reconstructions.
‘So – assuming this was Danny – he quits his comfortable cottage in Freshford to live in a cave. He takes his personal papers with him and makes a bonfire of them at some stage. He strangles Delia in Bath and rigs it up to look like a suicide. Three days later, he hangs himself. What’s it all about, Keith?’
‘Mental breakdown?’
‘Possible. The balance of his mind was disturbed, as they used to say when a nutter was sent to Broadmoor. Has anyone mentioned previous mental problems? Amanda didn’t.’
‘I can check.’
‘Do that. Even if it’s true, we still have another mystery. Where was Delia on the two nights before her death? She didn’t come home. I can’t believe she was sleeping in this horrible cave with Danny. It knocks my theory on the head.’
The CSI team arrived within the hour and were set to work in and around the cave. Diamond showed them the site of the bonfire. The senior man said, ‘I notice your fingertips are black, sir.’
‘And?’
‘Would you, perhaps, have done some rooting in the fire already?’
Diamond gave him a look like a cat accused of chasing birds. ‘Don’t come onto me as if I contaminated the scene. If I hadn’t done some rooting I wouldn’t know there was a passport and I wouldn’t have called you out.’
‘No offence. I just need to know what we’re dealing with.’
‘Right. And I suppose it will take days before I hear from you.’
‘If you want the job done properly.’
He left them to get on with it.
In a more upbeat mood, the search party descended the hill. The mission had been a success. In the van on the return to Manvers Street, Diamond discussed the day with Halliwell.
‘I’ve been thinking about your theory.’
‘Which theory was that, guv?’
‘Nervous breakdown. It’s too easy.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘There was planning involved. Cool, deliberate planning.’
‘Madmen can plan stuff.’
‘I know. I just want to dig around. I’d rather you didn’t mention the nervous breakdown to Georgina.’
‘Why is that?’
‘She’ll jump at it. She wants this whole thing sorted, so she can go to choir practice and tell her friend Amanda she’s completed the job.’
‘And you believe there’s more to it?’
‘I looked inside that cave. It wasn’t a nice place to spend one night. We now know Geaves was sleeping rough for about a week, at the end of which he was found hanging. About a week, Keith. That takes it back to before Delia was murdered, so he didn’t go into hiding as a result of the murder. Why did he quit his comfortable house in Freshford to act like a fugitive in Bathford? I think he was afraid. Terrified.’