Upon a Dark Night (37 page)

‘Did she let them in with a key, or did someone come to the door?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t look.’

‘Is your taxi in our car park?’

‘I bloody hope so. That’s where I left ‘er.’

‘Right. You can drive me to the house. One of our patrol cars will meet us there.’

St James’s Square is one of Bath’s tucked-away Georgian jewels, located on the slope above the Royal Crescent and below Lansdown Crescent. You come to it from the scrappy end of Julian Road, where pasta-coloured housing from the 1960s cuts it adrift from the dignified end of the city. But the spirit soars again when you come upon John Palmer’s charming square dating from the 1790s, noble buildings with Venetian windows and Corinthian pilasters facing across a large lawned garden with mature trees.

John Beever said as he double-parked outside the house with the red door, ‘It be too much to hope that I can charge this to the police, I reckon.’

‘I reckon, too,’ said Diamond, and added, ‘Nice try, m’ dear.’

‘Do I have to stay?’

A patrol car was entering the square on the far side, so he was content to let John Beever drive away in search of a paying passenger.

There were lights at the windows of the two upper floors. The bell-push gave names for all four flats. He pressed the top one first. Angus Little.

Meanwhile the patrol car had pulled up. Two uniformed constables got out and joined him.

‘You know what this is about?’

They did not.

He explained succinctly. There was ample time before anyone came to the door. This house was not equipped with an answerphone.

Angus Little from the top flat was silver-haired, sixtyish and deeply shaken to have the police calling.

Diamond showed his ID and the picture of Rose.

Little took off his glasses and examined the picture. Then shook his head. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Would you mind terribly turning off the flashing light on your car? It’s a bit of a poppyshow, if you know what I mean.’

‘Can’t do that, sir,’ said the driver. ‘We’re blocking the street.’

Diamond asked, ‘Do you live alone, Mr Little?’

He did.

‘Tell me about these other tenants.’

As if he had never previously noticed the names listed against the four bells, Mr Little bent close to inspect them. His own was a printed visiting-card, David Waller’s had been produced on a printer, made to look like italic writing; Adele Paul’s was a peel-off address-label; and Leo and Fiona (no surnames) had typed theirs on pink card.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Who are they? Young people, married couples with kids, pensioners?’

‘There’s only Mr Waller underneath me now. He’s single, like me, and quite a bit younger. The other flats have been empty for months.’

‘So Adele Paul and - who is it? - Leo and Fiona aren’t living here although their names are showing?’

‘That’s my understanding. Nobody has bothered to remove the cards, that’s all. It may be deliberate, for security, you see. You don’t want people knowing that some of the flats are unoccupied. I expect the agent is having trouble finding anyone prepared to pay the rent. It’s pretty exorbitant. I had the impression Miss Paul was a student at the university. Well-heeled parents, I expect. She must have left last June.’

‘Have you noticed anyone using either of the empty flats recently?’

‘I can’t say I have, but then I’m out so much. I’m in the antique business. Buying and selling clocks and watches. You might do better asking Mr Waller. He spends more time here. He’s a computer expert, I believe, and he tells me he can do most of it from home, lucky man.’

Mr Waller could be saved for later, Diamond decided. He wanted to see inside the two allegedly empty flats. The door to the ground floor one was just ahead. He knocked, got no reply, and asked the more solid of the constables to force it.

Mr Little protested at that. ‘Shouldn’t you contact the landlord first?’

‘Who is the landlord?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. But we pay our rent to an agency called Better Let. Do you know it? They have an office in Gay Street.’

‘So we don’t know the landlord, and the agency is closed by now. What are you waiting for, constable?’

The door sprang inwards at the first contact of the constable’s boot.

The flat had the smell of many months of disuse. They didn’t spend much time looking at the even spread of dust on the furniture. ‘We’ll try the basement.’

Mr Little was returning upstairs, probably to confer with Mr Waller. No one had mentioned a search warrant yet, but the computer buff might.

No answer came to Diamond’s rapping on the basement door.

‘Get on with it, lad.’

This one was harder to crack. The door-frame withstood a couple of kicks and it took a kung fu special to splinter the wood.

Diamond felt for the light-switch. The result was encouraging. The mustiness upstairs was not present here, even though the apartment was shuttered and below ground. He stepped through the living-room to the kitchen, confident that the fridge would yield the clue, as it had in Rose’s London flat. But it was switched off, empty, the door left ajar as recommended by the makers.

He looked into the cupboards. There was a tin containing tea-bags, and a jar of instant coffee. The label had a ‘best before’ date of December 1996 - evidently bought some time ago.

The bedroom, then: a small, cold room with a window placed too high to see out of. Twin divans, a wardrobe, dressing-table and two chests of drawers, empty. No sign of recent occupation.

Quite an anticlimax.

As he returned to the living-room, he heard people coming down the stairs. A youngish, cropped-blond man in a blue guernsey and jeans appeared in the doorway. He had a silver earring. ‘Do you mind telling me what this is about?’

‘You are…?’

‘David Waller from upstairs.’

‘The one who works from home? As you see, Mr Waller, we’re police officers. Do you happen to know if anyone has used this flat in the last three weeks?’

Waller answered, ‘The tenants left ages ago.’

‘That isn’t what I’m asking. This doesn’t have the look of a flat that’s been empty for months. Where’s the dust?’

The young man gave a shrug. ‘It’s no concern of mine, is it?’

‘You seem to think it is, coming downstairs to check what we’re doing. I’m not blaming you. It’s the responsible thing to do. I just wonder if you’ve caught anyone else letting themselves in here.’

‘Squatters, you mean?’

‘This is potentially more serious than squatting,’ Diamond told him. ‘Two women were seen entering this building some two weeks ago. We’re anxious to question them both. Did vou see them?’

‘No.’

‘So they weren’t visiting you?’

Waller rolled his eyes as if to say it was obvious that he didn’t entertain women.

‘Nor me,’ said Mr Little, stepping from behind the door, where he must have been waiting unseen, but more out of discretion than deceit. ‘Do you think you might have come to the wrong house?’

Diamond concentrated on Waller. ‘You’re in here working most days, I gather. Are you sure you didn’t hear anyone downstairs?’

‘Have you ever lived in a well-built eighteenth-century building? I’m two floors up, aren’t I? It’s solidly constructed. I don’t hear much at all, except when Mr Little uses a hammer or some such. You could have a rave-up in here, and I don’t think the sound would travel up to me.’ He paused, fingering his earring. ‘But there was something that struck me as strange a couple of weeks ago. We put out our rubbish on Mondays. Black plastic sacks by the front door. Mine was out the night before, and on Monday after breakfast I found I had some other items to throw out, so I went downstairs intending to chuck it in the sack. I unfastened the sack, and much to my surprise it was practically full. I was certain I hadn’t filled it up. There were food cans and a cereal packet and some magazines that I knew hadn’t belonged to me. Very odd - because it was the only sack there. Mr Little hadn’t brought his downstairs at that stage.’

‘What magazines were they?’

‘That was what puzzled me,’ he said. ‘They were women’s magazines:
Cosmopolitan
and
She and Harper’s & Queen.
The current issues, too. Someone had gone to all the trouble of unfastening the wire tag on my sack, adding their rubbish to it and fastening it up again. I didn’t seriously think anyone else had moved in downstairs. I’m not sure what I thought, except it didn’t seem too important. But now that you mention this, I wonder.’

‘So do I,’ said Diamond. ‘But you don’t remember seeing anyone in the building?’

‘No. They’d have needed keys, wouldn’t they? One for the front door and one for the flat - unless they were experts at picking locks.’

‘Tell me about the people who were here before. Leo and, em…’

‘Fiona. They didn’t stay long. Leo was an ex-prisoner, I heard. He did eighteen months in Shepton Mallet for stealing underwear off washing-lines. Fiona worked for the Theatre Royal, didn’t she?’ he asked Little.

‘She was in the box office,’ the older man confirmed. ‘I hinted that I wouldn’t say no to some complimentary tickets, but it didn’t work.’

‘Would their keys have been returned to the agent when they gave up the flat?’

‘That’s the drill,’ said Waller.

‘Better Let, in Gay Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said they weren’t here long. Who were the previous tenants?’

‘An old couple: the Palmers. Mr Palmer died last year and his wife went into a retirement home. After that the place was redecorated and let to Leo and Fiona.’

‘What was their surname?’

‘Leo and Fiona? I didn’t enquire.’

‘Nor I,’ said Little.

‘Were they married?’

‘I never enquired. Did you?’ David Waller asked his neighbour.

‘They were only ever Leo and Fiona to me. Whether they were married is their business.’

Such is the innate respect of the British for their neighbours, Diamond mused. They give you their prison record straight off, but they won’t be drawn on their marital status.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and turned his back on them. He wanted another look at the bedroom. Waller started to follow until Diamond looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Do you mind? This is police business.’

The flat had been used by Rose and Doreen, he felt sure, but why, and for how long? The magazines in the rubbish-bag were about the only clue. If they suggested anything, it was that the women had spent time here and needed something to fend off boredom.

He went into the bedroom and began looking behind cupboards for objects that might have been accidentally left behind. The longer the women had remained, the better chance there was of finding some trace of their stay. They had gone to some trouble to leave the place as they had found it, but things occasionally fall out of sight.

Whilst he worked, pulling out pieces of furniture and feeling along the spaces behind, he pondered the reason why the woman who called herself Doreen Jenkins had gone to such trouble to annexe Rose and bring her here. The cover story had been that they were going back for at least one night to Bathford, where Doreen was staying with her partner Jerry. Patently this had been untrue. Doreen was not a visitor to Bath, here on a weekend break, as she had claimed. It was clear that she had planned all along to bring Rose to this address. Very likely she had brought in food and bedding in advance. To have set it all up, she must have obtained a set of keys, but who from? Mrs Palmer, the old widow, now in a retirement home? Leo, the ex-con? Fiona, former box-office person at the Theatre Royal? Or the agency, Better Let, in Gay Street?

His fingers came in contact with something small, hard and lozenge-shaped behind the wardrobe. ‘Help me, will you?’ he said.

The more burly of the constables tugged the massive piece of furniture away from the wall. Diamond retrieved his find, and held it in his palm. The lozenge-shaped object was a cough lozenge.

He let the two constables go back on patrol, saying he would walk back.

Alone, he searched for almost another hour before giving up. By then he had been through all the rooms and the finds amounted to the cough-sweet, two hairpins that could have belonged to anyone, a piece of screwed-up silver paper and threepence in coppers. Who said police work is rewarding?

David Waller had lingered in the hallway and was waiting for Diamond when he came up the basement stairs. He asked what was going to happen about the doors that had been forced.

Diamond said it would be up to Better Let. He would notify them.

Outside the house, he looked over the railings to see if there was a separate basement entrance. He hadn’t noticed one from inside. If there had ever been one, it was bricked over. The only means of entry was inside. The windows had an iron grille over them.

It was quiet on the streets in this upper part of the city. He supposed it would be around nine-thirty, maybe later. All the night life - and there wasn’t much in Bath - took place in the centre. Facing a twenty-minute walk to the nick, he stepped out briskly. One of Bath’s advantages was that you had the choice of different and interesting routes wherever you were heading. This time he decided to take in Gay Street.

This once-grand street built on a knee-straining slope has a strong literary tradition, home at some point to Jane Austen, Tobias Smollett and Mrs Piozzi, the friend of Dr Johnson. Diamond was on the trail of a less exalted connection. He had a recollection of some information that he scarcely dared hope to confirm: not literary, but commercial. First he had to find the premises of Better Let, the renting agency. It was on the right, almost opposite the George Street turn. A recently cleaned building. Some attempt had been made to display photos of flat interiors at the windows, but it was still essentially residential in appearance. All these houses were protected from the modernisers and developers.

The only other clue to its business use was a plaque on the wall by the door - something about rented accommodation. Peter Diamond didn’t bother to read it. His attention was wholly taken by the distinctly superior brass plaque above the Better Let notice: