Upon a Dark Night (33 page)

‘So are you suggesting we look for another motive?’ said Julie, now that the discussion was becoming rational again. ‘Why else would anyone have wanted to kill the old man?’

‘What do we know about him, apart from the fact that he lived here all his life?’

‘And was unfriendly to archaeologists?’

He talked through her comment. ‘Who did we put onto researching the victim’s life history? Jerry Hansen.’

‘Sir?’ The quiet man of the squad, Jerry, got up from his desk and came over.

‘Where are we on Gladstone?’

‘Piecing his story together, sir, from local knowledge and documentation. It’s still patchy.’

‘Let’s have what you’ve got.’

Jerry launched smoothly into it. Nobody was better at ferreting for information. ‘The Gladstone family have been at Marton Farm for generations. He was born in 1923, the only child of Jacob and Esther, and went to school in Tormarton. Left when he was fourteen, and worked for his father. Seems to have joined in village life in those days.’

Diamond gave a nod. ‘Young and carefree, according to the vicar. That’s a tearaway in the language you and I speak.’

‘Well, he certainly married young, at nineteen, in 1943. In fact, they were both nineteen. She was May Turner, a London girl who was living in the village during the war.’

‘It was her family Bible I found.’

‘Yes, sir, that was helpful.’

‘How about war service?’

‘He was exempt. Farming was a reserved occupation. They rented rooms in a house in Tormarton. But the marriage wasn’t happy. He seems to have been difficult all his life.’

‘Unfaithful?’

‘I don’t know about that, but unbearable, it’s fair to say,’ said Jerry. ‘This is gossip, but several elderly people in the village told us the same things. He was constantly picking on her, complaining of this and that. And he worked her hard. His mother died in 1944, so he and May moved into Marton Farm to care for the old father, who couldn’t even boil an egg. May took on the job, but she didn’t last long. She died two or three years after the marriage. We don’t have the date yet.’

‘What cause?’

‘Bronchial pneumonia. The locals insist that she was ill before they moved to the farm. The lodgings were never heated properly. He would only buy so much paraffin.’

The detail opened a small window into the short, tragic marriage.

‘Any children?’

‘Not by the first wife.’

‘And after she died, father and son fended for themselves?’

‘Until 1953, when old Jacob passed on. Daniel managed the farm alone for some years. He married for the second time in 1967, to the local publican’s daughter, Margaret Torrington, known as Meg. A child, a daughter, came along in 1970.’

‘Christine. I saw her entry in the Church Register.’

‘Yes. Soon after that, they separated. Life on the farm must have been hard.’

‘Life with the farmer, more like. Do we know what became of Meg and her child?’

‘We’re piecing it together. Her parents have long since gone from the village to manage other pubs. No one knows where they ended up.’

‘You could try the brewers.’

‘We did. No joy. And none of the family kept in contact with anyone else in Tormarton. There was just the photo you found, and the message in the Christmas card.’

Diamond repeated the forlorn words, ‘“I thought you would like this picture of your family.”’

‘But it’s not a total blank. Someone in the Post Office reckons they moved to London.’

‘London’s a big place, Jerry.’

‘I was going to add Wood Green.’

‘Better.’

‘They also heard that Meg - the second wife - died of leukemia in January. We checked the registers and it seems to be true. A married woman called Margaret Gladstone died in St Ann’s Hospital, Harringay - that’s close enough to Wood Green - on January 28th, aged forty-nine.’

‘Is that all?’

Jerry’s face clouded. Clearly he thought he had done a reasonable job.

Diamond said, ‘Her age, Jerry. I mean forty-nine is no age at all.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘And he outlived her.’

Jerry said hesitantly, ‘I found it rather a sad touch that on the death certificate she is still described as a barmaid.’

‘You’re too sentimental for a young man,’ Diamond told him. ‘She probably enjoyed working in bars. Do you know what I’m about to ask you?’

‘The daughter Christine?’

‘Spot on.’

‘There is something to report. I contacted the hospital for Mrs Gladstone’s next of kin. They confirmed the name on their file as Christine Gladstone, daughter, and gave me an address in Fulham. Gowan Avenue. I asked the Met to check and I’m waiting for a call.’

‘We’ll all be waiting,’ said Diamond, rubbing his hands. ‘God, yes. How old would this young woman be now?’

‘We have the date of her baptism as February, 1970, so assuming she was baptised soon after birth she’s about twenty-seven.’

‘Near enough for me.’

No one else spoke. Each of them had made the connection. If it emerged that Christine Gladstone had been missing from home for the past four weeks, then it was a fair bet that she was the young woman known to them as Rose. And Diamond’s insistence that Rose was the principal suspect suddenly looked reasonable.

Twenty-seven

‘Pete!’

Diamond drew back, shocked by the panic in his wife’s voice. A steel kitchen knife was in his hand.

Stephanie Diamond moved fast to the electric point and switched it off.

‘You damned near electrocuted yourself, you great ninny. What were you thinking of?’

Thinking of using the knife to prise out the piece of toast stuck in the toaster and starting to smoke? Or not thinking?

With her slim fingers Steph picked out the charred remains and tossed them into the sink. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll cut you a fresh piece. You’ve never been able to cut bread evenly.’

He said, ‘If we used a cut loaf…’

‘You know why we don’t,’ she said, trimming off the overhang he had left on the loaf. ‘What’s the matter with you? I nearly had a corpse of my own to deal with.’

‘Thinking of other things.’

She cut an even slice and dropped it into the toaster and switched on again. She didn’t ask any more. If he wanted to tell her, he would. ‘Other things’ probably meant the details of his work that Steph preferred not to know. On the whole she was happier being given gossipy news of the Manvers Street staff: Wigfull, the ambitious one Peter called ‘Mr Clean’, making it sound like a term of abuse; or ‘Winking, Blinking and Nod’, the three Assistant Chief Constables; and Julie Hargreaves, the plucky young inspector who smoothed the way, dealt with the murmurings in the ranks and made it possible for her brilliant, but testy and brutally honest boss to function at all.

‘I’m sleeping better, Steph.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

‘I reckon the tension isn’t hyper any more. Things are humming nicely again.’

‘You’re doing an honest day’s work?’

‘Tell me this, if it doesn’t ruin your breakfast. Why would a woman murder her father of seventy-one who she hasn’t seen since she was a small child?’

Ruin breakfast? Lunch as well, she thought. But he seemed to need her advice. ‘This is the one whose picture is in the local paper?’

He nodded.

‘Insanity?’

His eyebrows popped up. ‘That’s a theory no one has mentioned up to now.’

‘She looks confused.’

‘She is. She lost her memory, allegedly. But people who met her say she’s rational.’

‘And you think she shot that old man at Tormarton?’

Now he looked at her in awe. She’d just made a connection it had taken him days to arrive at. ‘Crosswords getting too easy, are they? You’re having to read the rest of the paper?’

She smiled faintly.

‘You’re spot on,’ he said. ‘She’s the daughter and she was found wandering a mile or so from the scene on the day of the murder. Today I expect to get the proof that she was present in the farmhouse. I’m still uncertain as to her motive. What does it take for a woman to tie her father to a chair and fire a shotgun at his head?’

‘Did he abuse her as a child?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘That’s something you might consider,’ Steph said. ‘Anger surfacing after many years.’

‘She’s supposed to have lost her memory.’

‘That could be due to repression. She blocks it all out after killing him. She wants to cleanse herself. The mind can act as a censor. Is it a possibility here?’

‘Could be. The mother left him only a few years after they married.’

Steph spread her hands. ‘If the mother found out…’

‘But then she sent him a Christmas card with a photo of herself and the child. “I thought you would like this picture of your family. God’s blessings to us all at this time.” Would an angry mother do that?’

She thought for a moment and said, ‘I doubt it. Maybe she never knew of the abuse.’

He tried his own pet theory on Steph. ‘This woman, the mother. She died in January of leukemia. This is speculation, but I wonder if Rose, the daughter, sorting through her mother’s things as she would, being next of kin, found something, a letter, say, or a diary, that revealed some family secret.’

‘Such as?’

‘Cruelty to her mother is the best bet. A history of violence or meanness that outraged her when she discovered it. She’d watched her mother die prematurely, at forty-nine. Now she discovered things that made her angry enough to find the old man and kill him.’

‘You could be onto something there.’

‘You really think so?’

‘But you’re not going to know the answer until you find her.’

‘True.’

‘Instead of trying to work out why she killed him, isn’t it better to focus on finding her?’

‘You mean she’ll roll over and tell all? I guess you’re right, as ever.’

He spread marmalade on his beautifully even piece of toast and left for work soon after.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed overnight that Christine Gladstone had not used her flat in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, since at least the last week in September. They had found a heap of unopened mail waiting for her. Her landlord knew nothing about her absence because she paid her rent by banker’s order. The people in the other flat thought she was on a foreign holiday.

Diamond handed the fax back to Halliwell. ‘We’re closing in, Keith. I’ll get up to London today and look at the flat. Julie can drive me. You’re in charge here, at the cutting edge.’

Halliwell grinned. ‘Expecting results from our press conference?’

Diamond was determined to be upbeat. ‘I said we’re closing in, Keith. It’s all coming together. For example, I’m about to get the latest from Jim Marsh.’

But Jim Marsh, the pathologist, wasn’t about. He wasn’t at the lab, either.

Undaunted, Diamond asked the exchange to get his home number.

‘Who’zzz zizzz?’ The voice of a man on Temazepam. Or gin.

‘Shouldn’t you be in work like the rest of us? I’m sitting here like a buddha waiting for results from you.’

‘Gave them to Ju - Ju—’

‘Julie?’

‘Couldn’t get hold of you last night. Called her at home.’

‘She isn’t in yet. Have we come up trumps?’

Marsh was becoming more coherent, and he didn’t sound like a man with a winning hand. ‘Worked until bloody late. Three of us.’

‘And?’

‘I took a sleeper when I got home. If I work late I can’t get off to sleep.’ He was off on a tangent.

‘What about the hairs, Jim?’

‘Hairs?’

‘The tests you were doing.’

‘Tests, yes. I told you I found how many specimens of hair?’’ Seventeen.’

‘Seventeen. Eleven from the owner of the car.’’ Imogen Starr.’

‘That left…’

‘Six.’

‘Six, and when we analysed them, they came from three subjects. You’re going to be pissed off, Mr Diamond. None of them matched the two hairs we found in the farmhouse.’

He couldn’t believe it. ‘You drew a complete blank?’

‘It doesn’t prove a thing either way. She could have sat in the car without losing a hair.’

‘What do I do now?’

‘Find the lady, I reckon.’

‘Oh, cheers!’

‘We still have the two hairs from the scene,’ Marsh reminded him. ‘That’s the good thing about NAA. We don’t destroy the evidence in the test. Those hairs will be useful at the trial.’

‘What trial?’

After he’d slammed the phone down, he realised he had not actually thanked Marsh and his team for working overtime. For once he remembered his manners, pressed the redial button and rectified that. Marsh listened and said, ‘Mr Diamond.’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you get off my phone now?’

He gave the disappointing news to the others in the incident room, and then added, ‘It’s not all gloom and doom. With the Met’s help, we’ve confirmed that Christine Gladstone, alias Rose Black, the victim’s daughter, has been missing from home since the end of September. I’m off to London shortly to search her flat. Meantime, Keith will take over here. Since we went public yesterday, a number of possible sightings have come in.’

Halliwell summed up the paltry results. Seven reported sightings and two offers of help from psychics. The missing woman had apparently shopped in Waitrose and Waterstone’s, cycled down Widcombe Hill, eaten an apricot slice in Scoffs, appeared at a bedroom window in Lower Weston, studied Spanish in Trowbridge and walked two Afghan hounds on Lansdown. One of the psychics thought she was dead, buried on the beach at Weston-super-Mare, and the other had a vision of her with a tall, dark man in a balloon. All of it, however unlikely, was being processed into the filing system, and would need to be followed up.

The squad heard the results in silence. Appeals for help from the public had predictable results. You had to hope something of substance would appear. As yet, it had not.

‘Do we go national now?’ Halliwell asked.

‘No. We knock on doors in Tormarton,’ said Diamond.

‘House-to-house?’

‘Someone up there knows about the digging, if nothing else. There were seven large holes, for God’s sake, and they didn’t have a JCB. It took days. They were tidy. They filled in after. Covered over any footprints. Get a doorstepping team together, Keith, and draw up some questions that we can agree.’