Skeleton Hill (14 page)

Somewhere between Saltford and Keynsham his thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumbling from the car. The drive had been blissfully smooth up to now. His first reaction was that his handling of the controls was at fault. He wasn’t used to an automatic and he knew they could engage a lower gear by some small movement of the gear shift. Once or twice his hand had gone there out of habit and his left foot had pressed on an invisible clutch-pedal. Had he put the thing in third?

No.

Something else was wrong. The car was slowing perceptibly. He glanced in the mirror and signalled that he was moving over and stopping. Even the steering seemed to be playing up. He braked and put on the hazard lights. This wasn’t the ideal place to stop – on a busy dual carriageway with minimal space at the side.

He waited for his chance to get out. He guessed what was wrong: a flat tyre. When he eventually – and painfully – hauled himself out he found he was right. The nearside rear wheel was right down. A perfectly good tyre with plenty of tread had run over a nail. He could see it embedded in the rubber.

I could have done without this, he thought.

What now? He didn’t fancy changing the tyre while his back was still giving twinges. Other drivers were zooming past at a rate suggesting he shouldn’t count on a good Samaritan. Better phone for assistance.

Fortunately he had his under-used mobile with him. Unfortunately it needed charging. He sighed, flung the phone on the back seat and went to look for the spare tyre and the jack. Lifting the tyre wasn’t easy. He managed to stand it upright and rotate it out of the boot and onto the roadside. Georgina’s instruction book was in the glove compartment. He had a look and tried assembling the jack. At the sixth attempt he fathomed how to open it and slot it into the jacking point. There was a handle to turn: no problem if your back was functioning normally. But by degrees he succeeded in getting the punctured tyre clear of the ground and faced the next ordeal of using the wrench to loosen the wheel bolts.

No one looked like stopping. He couldn’t blame them. It would be dangerous to park anywhere near.

Could have been raining, he told himself to raise morale while freeing the first of those bolts. The raised morale didn’t last long. The swearing got stronger as he applied himself to the task, regardless of what further damage it would do to his back. He removed them all and with a supreme effort lifted off the damaged wheel and hoisted up the spare and shoved it into place.

Nice work, Diamond, he said to himself. All it needs now is to tighten the five bolts and lower the jack. For a technophobe this isn’t a bad effort.

There was one more hitch. The bolts didn’t behave. They wouldn’t tighten properly. He kept turning the wrench and feeling resistance but they wouldn’t go all the way in.

‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

A voice behind him said, ‘In trouble, are we?’ It sounded familiar.

He turned and found himself eye to eye with the same traffic cop who’d stopped him the evening before. The sense of surprise was mutual.

‘You?’ the cop said. ‘I booked you last night. What’s this – your second car?’

‘It belongs to the Assistant Chief Constable.’

‘Oh, yes?’

He recalled that the cop hadn’t inspected his ID last night. Probably thought he was a fantasist.

‘Is it taxed?’

‘Of course. Thanks to you, I had to borrow this one and it got a puncture.’

‘On a dangerous stretch of road,’ the cop said.

‘I couldn’t help that, could I? If you’ll lend me a hand tightening these bolts I’ll be on the road again.’

‘The back’s giving trouble again, is it?’ the cop said with sarcasm.

‘That’s immaterial. The bloody bolts won’t tighten.’

The cop tried and didn’t succeed and Diamond felt justified.

‘Is that the owner’s manual on the ground?’

‘Well, it’s not the works of Shakespeare.’

‘Let’s have a look.’ The cop thumbed through the pages covering advice on changing a tyre. ‘You know what? You’re using the wrong set of bolts.’

‘No I’m not. They’re the ones I took off.’

‘These are alloy wheels.’

‘And what’s that got to do with it?’

‘What it says here. “Be sure to use the correct wheel bolt type. Light alloy wheels require different wheel bolts”. You’re trying to put on the spare with the wrong bolts. I wouldn’t mind betting there’s a different set for use with the spare. Have you looked in the box where the jack is kept?’ He went to the boot and came back in triumph with a set of bolts in an unopened bag. ‘These are at least an inch shorter. You know what you’ve been doing? Driving the bolts into the hub. Wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve done some serious damage. Did you say this car belongs to your boss?’

It took another hour, but eventually a breakdown lorry came out from Georgina’s Mercedes dealer in Bath and took the stricken car away. Diamond rode with the driver. ‘Any idea what this will cost me?’

‘The call-out? About a hundred and ninety.’

‘The damage to the hub.’

‘Not my job, mate, but I guess you’ll need a new sub-frame and with it the flange, angular contact and rim lock. After they’ve added the tax you won’t get much change out of a grand.’

‘Jesus!’

‘That’s not counting the new tyre. You’ll want a new tyre by the looks of the old one.’

He didn’t ask the price.

16

T
he good news, he stressed to Georgina when he got back at lunchtime, was that the garage was fixing everything. He would collect the car at five and drive it back to Manvers Street for her to use at the end of the day – as good as new.

She listened to his account in a stunned state. He told her everything and admitted full responsibility and said he’d pay for all the repairs. He was out of the office and on his way downstairs before her mouth closed.

Fish and a double portion of chips went some way to absorbing his own shock.

Now that he’d informed Georgina, he was feeling better about the whole sorry episode. You have to be positive. As his mother had been fond of saying in times of trouble, the sharper the storm, the sooner it’s over. Writing the cheque and going deeper into overdraft would be a pain, but, hell, there were bumps along the way in everyone’s life. He’d been right about misfortunes coming in threes. He’d had his three now. He could move on with confidence. He’d already called Bristol and asked Septimus Ward to stand in as senior investigating officer for the rest of the day. There was plenty to keep the team busy.

So he left the canteen with a smile. He felt free to pass on his story to Keith Halliwell and anyone else who would be amused by it. Most experiences are better for being shared.

The incident room was buzzing. Civilian staff he’d not seen before were working computers. A large map of Lansdown was fixed to a pinboard and covered in markers he didn’t understand. There were photos of the skeleton hunched up in its grave and laid out later in the lab. Some sort of chart listing events year by year was on another wall. Halliwell was holding a phone to his ear, too busy, it seemed, to listen to stories of Georgina’s car.

Ingeborg came in holding a sheaf of papers. She, at least, recog-n ised her boss. ‘Hi, guv. I thought you were in Bristol.’

‘I was. You seem to be busy.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Are you getting anywhere?’

‘Keith thinks so. He’s really upbeat.’

‘What’s happening then?’

‘We had a new witness in this morning. He only just left. I don’t know what it was about, but Keith and John Leaman took the statement and they seem fired up.’

‘I think I met the guy. He was in first thing.’

‘You know more than I do, then.’

‘No. I stayed well out of it.’

‘I’d better get on,’ she said. ‘I’m doing the map.’

‘The coloured pins? What’s that about?’

‘Locating incidents reported in the press in a five-year period. Everything from a car shunt to an unexploded bomb.’

‘What’s that supposed to achieve?’

‘It’s visual, isn’t it?’

‘Okay,’ he said, giving nothing away of his private thoughts. He decided to leave them to it. The story of the Mercedes could wait for a better moment.

In the less frenetic confine of his office, he tried some cautious movements to see if his back had worsened as a result of the tyre change. If anything, the discomfort had eased a little. Encouraged, he placed a hand on the filing cabinet and tried performing a gentle plié, like a ballet dancer at the barre.

Behind him came the sound of a throat being cleared.

He turned to find Halliwell standing in the doorway. ‘Am I interrupting, guv?’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘You should see my Nutcracker.’

Halliwell didn’t get it.

Diamond said, ‘I looked in at the incident room a short while back. You were up to your eyes in work.’

‘Inge told me you came in. Is everything okay?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘Car trouble.’

‘Ah. Too bad. But as you’re here, I can pass on something of interest. We took a witness statement this morning.’

‘Dave?’

‘You know already?’

Diamond shook his head. ‘I met him briefly.’

‘Well, I don’t know how much he told you, but you might like to read the statement. He was there when they re-enacted the battle and it seems he teamed up with Rupert Hope.’

‘My man?’ Diamond’s interest quickened.

‘They were both in the royalist army, as Dave calls it, and they were killed – pretend killed – if you follow me. He offered your man a lager. He’d hidden a six-pack before the battle, buried it at the base of a fallen tree.’

‘Our tree?’

‘My tree now,’ Halliwell was sharp to point out. There were territorial issues here. ‘They quit the battlefield for a while and went to look. Two cans were there and they found them and had a drink and then felt in the hole for the others and they’d gone. Someone must have seen him bury them and helped themselves. Dave started burrowing. He didn’t ever find the other tins, but he pulled out a bone that seems to have been the femur – my femur.’

‘You’d better rephrase that.’

‘You know what I mean, guv. The femur from the skeleton.’

‘I thought the dog found that.’

‘I’m coming to that.’

‘Did they know what it was?’

‘They worked out that it was human and they assumed, like us, that it was old and probably belonged to some soldier killed in the real Civil War. They agreed that the decent thing was to let him rest in peace, so they buried it again.’

‘In the same place?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did they do then?’

‘Both went back to the battle and Dave never spoke to Rupert again. He didn’t know he was dead until I told him. He doesn’t read the papers, he said.’

‘It’s been all over the television.’

‘I doubt if he bothers with the box. He’s the outdoor type. Likes his riding and shooting and his beer. Someone told him in the pub last night that a skeleton was found and it was part of a murder investigation and that’s why he came forward.’

‘Are you sure he knew nothing of Rupert Hope’s death?’

‘It came as a shock when I told him.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘He’s a bloody good actor if it was put on.’

‘What’s Dave’s job?’

‘Farrier.’

‘Say that again.’ Diamond had heard furrier and it didn’t seem to go with the outdoor life.

‘Blacksmith. He’s got the smithy at Bradford on Avon.’

‘Got you.’ His thoughts went briefly to blunt instruments and then moved on. ‘What’s he doing playing soldiers if he’s got a smithy to run?’

‘Why does anyone play soldiers?’

‘Rupert did it for the history. It went with the job. I’d better read that statement. This could change everything, Keith.’

But the change Diamond had in mind hadn’t yet dawned on Halliwell.

After speed-reading Dave the blacksmith’s statement, Diamond took it upstairs for another session with Georgina.

Her door was open and she was on the phone to her garage, talking about rim locks and flanges, getting their version of the damage. She waved Diamond away and he took a step back but remained in the room. ‘And can you assure me that everything is being put right? I don’t want any short cuts . . . At his expense, yes . . . And how much for the labour? . . . Very well . . . Yes, he’ll be collecting it. Thank you.’ She put down the phone.

‘Didn’t you believe me?’ he asked.

‘That’s not the point, Peter. They’re the experts. I wanted to hear it from them. I was thinking of calling my insurance company, but I don’t suppose I can claim, seeing that the damage was self-inflicted.’

‘You didn’t cause it.’

‘I was unwise enough to let you use the car, so I must take my share of the responsibility.’

‘I don’t know about “unwise”. You were being helpful.’

‘If the truth be told, my motive wasn’t as praiseworthy as that. What have you got there? The estimate?’

‘No, ma’am. It’s a witness statement taken this morning from a blacksmith by the name of Dave Barton.’

‘He saw you changing the wheel with the wrong bolts?’

She couldn’t get the damaged Mercedes out of her head.

He tried again. ‘This is the murder investigation. May I suggest you read it for yourself?’ He held it out.

While she was reading, he idled away the time looking at a black and white photo on the wall of a passing-out parade at one of the police training colleges. A much younger Georgina was saluting in the front row of the march-past. She was probably fifty pounds lighter in weight but she still had the outstanding chest of her year.

‘Do you think it’s significant?’ she said.

‘I certainly do,’ he said and got his thoughts back on track. ‘We’ve been appealing for witnesses for days without success.’

‘There are witnesses and witnesses, Peter. He doesn’t appear to have seen anything unlawful.’

‘With respect, that isn’t the point. He and Rupert found the skeleton – well, a part of the skeleton.’

‘The leg bone, it says here. And they put it back.’

‘Yes, and some time after that, Rupert was attacked.’

‘What are you suggesting – that this Dave was the assailant?’

‘That’s speculation. I wouldn’t be coming to you without proof, ma’am. No, it’s more basic than that.’

‘What is?’

‘Don’t you see? We thought the leg bone was found by a dog. We didn’t know these two guys found it first. What we have now is a definite link between the skeleton and the cavalier.’

She was frowning. ‘There’s a difference of twenty years between the two deaths.’

Georgina was intelligent, but there were times when she closed her mind to reason. All of this would work so much more smoothly if she came to her own decision and believed she had made it independently. To encourage the process, Diamond spaced his words. ‘Rupert had the femur in his hands and not long after that he was attacked and later murdered.’

‘That isn’t in dispute.’

She still hadn’t cottoned on.

He was forced to spell it out for her. ‘Ma’am, I need an operational decision from you. We can’t go on treating these cases as separate incidents. They have to be brought together. I’m asking you to centralise both investigations in Bath from one major incident room.’

He didn’t say who should be in charge. She may have worked that out for herself.