Cop to Corpse (23 page)

Better do what I came here to do, he decided. He started the car and drove north to the estate where Ossy had lived. A small end-terrace house with a door painted red.

9:43
A.M
. He’d spent longer contemplating the crime scene than he realised. He hadn’t made an appointment. He’d fixed 9.30 in his own mind as a reasonable time to call, after the kids had been taken to school.

Sounds from inside came as a relief. Juliet Hart opened the door and she was not the red-eyed widow he expected. Flushed with health, lean as a streak, bright-eyed and welcoming. Natural red hair combed back and fastened with a green ribbon. Silver jumpsuit, matching Nike trainers.

‘Hi.’

His hand went to raise a non-existent hat before he remembered his trilby was on the back seat of the car. He tried a polite smile. ‘Mrs. Hart? Sorry to bother you so early in the day. Sorry to bother you at all.’ He felt in his pocket for the ID. ‘But it’s necessary.’

‘Are you collecting for something?’ she asked, not unfriendly. She must have seen his stick and decided he was disabled.

‘No, ma’am. Surprising as it may seem, I’m a police officer.’

‘You’re on the investigation. Good for you,’ she said without looking at his warrant card. ‘But I doubt if there’s anything more I can tell you.’

‘I’m not from Wells Police. I expect you heard about the shooting in Bath at the weekend. That’s why I’m here.’

‘You’re over from Bath? Did you know the man who was killed there?’

‘Not all that well. I’m CID. He was uniform.’

‘Same as my Ossy.’ Said in as measured a tone as if she was talking about matching hats.

She’s over-compensating, he thought, remembering the sudden avalanche of anger from Emma Tasker. He prepared for something similar, or tears, at the very least.

But she added as if discussing last night’s TV, ‘Do you think it was the same gunman who shot Ossy?’

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, the interviewee asking the questions. ‘Everything points to it.’

‘They don’t seem to have made much progress.’ She glanced at his stick again. ‘You’d better come in and sit down. I was exercising, skipping in the garden. It’s my chance, when the children are in school.’ She led him into an open plan kitchen-diner and cleared newspapers from a chair. ‘Do you drink juice? I have beetroot, cranberry or pomegranate.’

‘I’ll pass, thanks. You carry on. You must be thirsty.’

‘Am I in a sweat, then? Is it so obvious?’

‘Glowing.’ Steph had taught him that refinement.

She smiled, took a jug from the fridge and filled a glass with pink liquid that could have been any of the three on offer.

He took note of his surroundings. Mainly wood. Pine in the kitchen, beech slats along one wall. A wood-framed sofa and low tables. Parquet floor. Even the pictures on the wall were of forest scenes.

‘In case you’re wondering, I had a lot of sympathy cards, getting on for two hundred, but I don’t display them,’ she said. ‘Ossy had so many friends. However, I don’t need to be reminded that he’s gone, and I’m trying to get the children back to some kind of normality.’

‘I understand,’ he said. And he did. On the day after Steph’s funeral, he’d stuffed all the cards into a carrier bag and stowed them in the loft.

‘I’m not ungrateful for all the support. They gave him a mega send-off.’ There was pride in her voice. ‘When it comes to something like this, the police are brilliant. They offered to take over, and I’m so glad I let them. The funeral was in the cathedral. The Chief Constable came, and the Lord Lieutenant and lots of local people we didn’t know who just wanted to show respect, I suppose. Well, after that, I spent a week dealing with everything, writing letters and filling in forms. You wouldn’t believe all the paperwork there is when someone dies. But it stopped me feeling sorry for myself. And then I started my life again. That’s what Ossy would
have wanted. He always believed in moving on, whatever problems cropped up.’

‘Sensible,’ Diamond said, thinking sensible if you can be like that. Grief makes its own agenda. For Emma Tasker, anger. For this woman, refusal to be downed. With three children to care for, she was forced to be forward-looking, but there would be an undercurrent of pain.

And in a strange way, he found the steely exclusion of grief just as difficult to deal with as the anger.

She brought the drink over to the armchair opposite him and sat with her legs curled under her.

This time he got a question in first. ‘Do you mind going over some things you may have been asked before?’

‘Not at all, if they lead to a result.’

‘Let’s hope so. Did Ossy ever speak of Stan Richmond, or Harry Tasker?’

She shook her head. ‘Not to me.’

‘Stan Richmond was the Radstock victim. Did Ossy visit Radstock?’

‘On the odd occasion. It’s not one of our favourite places.’

‘Bath?’

‘Rather more often. We’d go there for the sports facilities sometimes. The theatre, around Christmas, for the pantomime, but Wells has most of what we want.’

‘I’m wondering if he went there alone.’

‘To Bath? Hardly ever. Days off were precious, what with all the overtime and shift work, so we did things as a family.’

‘I heard he was keen on his job.’

‘That’s for sure. He was studying for the sergeants’ exam, hoping to get his stripes next year.’

‘He got along with the Wells lads, did he?’

‘Lasses, too. Yes, they’re a friendly lot.’

‘Nobody got up his nose?’

She shook her head. ‘He never mentioned anyone.’

‘And in his dealings with the public, did he make any enemies?’

‘A few, I expect. You’re bound to, if you’re doing your job and nicking people.’

‘Did anyone threaten him?’

‘I was asked this before. It’s obvious they could have, some of the hard lads he dealt with. If so, he didn’t tell me and her didn’t let it bother him. His years as a teacher helped him deal with
troublemakers. He was quite a disciplinarian. Too much so, for schooling in the twenty-first century.’

‘Were there any feuds hanging over from his time as a teacher? Former pupils who still bore a grudge?’

‘I doubt that. Ossy always dealt with misbehaviour on the spot, twenty press-ups or whatever. Then it was over and forgotten. The Minehead kids respected him.’ She glanced down at her polished fingernails. ‘I understand where you’re coming from. I just think it’s not a profitable line of enquiry.’

‘Do you have a theory of your own?’

‘As to why he was shot? It was the uniform, wasn’t it? Someone hated the police and Ossy happened to be on duty that night. Simple as that.’

The standard line. Diamond didn’t want to dent her confidence with his disturbing theory of the killer targeting certain individuals. He was warming to this upbeat young woman and her positive way of dealing with her loss. ‘I’m curious to know where his nickname came from. He was Martin by birth, wasn’t he?’

She laughed. ‘The “Ossy”? The kids he taught called him that and it stuck. He quite liked it and so did I. It seemed to suit him.’

‘But how did it start? These names generally mean something in the first place.’

‘Don’t they just? It was a very big deal at the time.’ She paused and looked away, clutching the back of her hair in the first suggestion of nervousness she’d shown. ‘After he came here and joined the force he played it down. I doubt if he told anyone.’

He waited while she composed herself. This wouldn’t be easy for her if Ossy himself had been guarded about the name.

‘No harm in talking about it now he’s gone,’ she said finally. She’d reached her decision and recovered her equilibrium. ‘Minehead, where he was teaching, has a rather special May Day celebration. Actually it goes on for several days. The first we knew of it was when one of our neighbours knocked on our door and said he was on the organising committee and he’d like to propose my husband for the Sailor’s Horse.’

‘What on earth …?’

This relaxed her again and she smiled. ‘That was exactly our reaction. It’s an honour, actually, but you have to be fit to do it. They have this age-old ritual involving people dressed as hobby horses, or ’obby ’osses, in the good old Zummerzet dialect.’

Diamond raised his thumb. ‘Got you.’

‘Have you heard of it?’

‘Vaguely. Tell me more.’

‘The Sailor’s Horse is the main one. He wears a brightly coloured headpiece with an ostrich feather plume. It’s supposed to be a horse’s head but actually is more like a clown’s face. Then he has a large wooden frame strapped to his shoulders supporting something that’s a cross between a boat, a horse and a party frock. The best you can say for it is that it’s colourful. It’s made up of thousands of ribbons and a fabric skirt with the words “Sailor’s Horse” written on it in big letters, in case anyone misses the point – which is quite possible.’

‘He agreed to do it?’

‘He had to parade around the town for several days dancing to a special tune played on drums and a squeeze box. What’s the proper name for those things?’

‘Accordion?’

‘That’s it. The men are dressed as sailors. They’re collecting for charity – the lifeboats, I think – and if people don’t pay up they’d better look out, because they’re likely to be harassed by the ’oss.’

‘Strictly speaking, that breaks all the rules about collecting,’ he said, tongue in cheek.

‘Yes, and it gets worse. Any man refusing to pay up is liable to get a few lashes from the ’oss’s long tail. And just to add to the mayhem, the horse is supposed to chase the women and children.’

‘He’s a threatening figure, then?’

‘Certainly was in times past. He was backed up by men known as gullivers, armed with whips and huge pincers. They put a stop to that after one of the local townspeople was killed.’

‘Killed? When was this?’

She laughed and flapped her hand. ‘Not what you’re thinking. Way back in the eighteen hundreds.’

‘Even so, if someone died I’m surprised it was allowed to continue.’

‘They changed the way it was done. Nowadays the Sailor’s Horse just has some jolly jack tars in tow. I think the two rival horses are allowed to have their gullivers, but they dress in fancy costume and don’t threaten people. It’s pure carnival these days and stage-managed.’

‘What part do these rivals play?’

‘The Traditional Sailor’s Horse and the Town Horse? They appear from time to time and have ritual fights with the Original Sailor’s Horse, the one Ossy played.’

‘I can see why a PE teacher was picked for the job.’

‘Yes, it’s quite demanding physically, but Ossy didn’t mind. The worst bit was getting up really early on May Day to greet the sun at 5
A.M
. Nobody seems to know for sure how far back the whole thing goes or what it represents, except that it ushers in the start of spring.’ She took a sip of her juice. ‘Do you really want to know about this? I doubt if it has anything to do with the shooting.’

‘Everything you can recall about it,’ Diamond said, trying to contain his excitement. He’d already made a link with Stan Richmond, the folklore enthusiast. The weird ceremonies in Minehead must have been followed with interest by the loner from Radstock.

‘Well, they’d start off at the Old Ship Aground on April 30
^th
, known as Show Night, or Warning Eve, doing the rounds of the pubs, rattling the tins. Then, like I just said, he had to be up early next morning and in costume bowing three times to salute the sunrise at a crossroads. May Day was really quite a marathon. He’d dance all around Minehead seeing off the other horses and chasing the kids and scaring me silly by dancing ever so close to the water’s edge at the harbour. The whole thing would go on like that each evening until May 3
^rd
, visiting all the outlying places, including Dunster Castle, except if he was lucky and there was a Sunday in between, when the Sabbath had to be observed.’

‘Hard work.’

‘He was knackered by the end.’

‘From what you say, it sounds as if he did it more than once.’

‘He became the regular Sailor’s Horse for two or three years before we left Minehead and they would have had him back even after we moved here, but he decided it wouldn’t be the thing for a policeman to be demanding money with menaces and chasing women and children, even for a good cause.’

Diamond smiled. ‘He had a point.’

‘People were sorry when he gave it up.’

‘I expect you’ve got photos.’

‘You can find them on the internet if you want.’

‘Don’t you have any yourself?’

‘Ossy had a scrapbook with lots of pictures and cuttings, but it was borrowed a couple of months ago and I haven’t got it back.’

‘Why not?’

‘Some American wanted it. He was talking big about filming the whole thing for a scene in a Hollywood action movie.’

He leaned forward. ‘Who was this?’

‘I don’t think I discovered his real name. Ossy called him Cubby.’

‘Not
that
Cubby?’

A giggle. ‘No, he’s dead, isn’t he? That was Ossy’s sense of humour. We took everything this man said with a large pinch of salt. I mean he was offering silly money, thousands of dollars, if Ossy would go back to Minehead and wear the costume and do the dance.’

‘Wasn’t he tempted?’

‘He didn’t believe it would happen. He said – pardon my language – these film people are bullshit artists. And he wouldn’t risk losing his stripes through becoming a laughing-stock.’

‘So he turned it down?’

She paused as if choosing her words. ‘He didn’t sign anything or get paid any money for sure, but the door wasn’t entirely closed. Cubby suggested using a stage name to protect his identity. They were really keen to get Ossy. He was the best Sailor’s Horse for years, everyone said.’

‘And this all happened recently, you said?’

‘Just a few weeks before Ossy died.’

‘Did Cubby say if he was talking to other people?’

‘I got the impression he’d already been to Minehead to look at the location, as he called it.’

‘Presumably the Minehead people put him in touch with Ossy?’

‘Must have.’