Skeleton Hill (2 page)

His conscience troubled him a little. He and Dave had talked about putting the dead soldier’s femur to rest where they’d found it. He’d gone along with the suggestion. To return to the place and secretly retrieve the bone would be underhand. Dave wouldn’t approve, but then who was Dave? Just a simple guy who liked playing soldiers. He wouldn’t understand the pursuit of historical truth.

Rupert joined in the barbecue for a while, made himself a burger and chatted to the others, then slipped away as if for a call of nature. Using the parked buses to shield his movements, he crossed the car park and the golf course and made a detour so as to cross the road out of sight of everyone. The flat top of Lansdown Hill was all too open for his liking, so he moved in the direction that had the steepest descent until he could be certain he was no longer visible from the car park.

The light was softer now, fading slowly, a glorious summer evening, cooler by some degrees and comfortable for walking. The birds were putting on a show of diving and soaring after the insects. Below was a valley through which one of the tributaries of the Avon flowed and beyond that a steep rise to the old RAF station at Charmy Down. Rupert had studied the map only the previous evening to get a full appreciation of the battleground and its all-important contours. Disappointingly, the re-enactment had not followed the original action with any precision. If he ever had any say in the planning, he’d insist on a more authentic approach, but he doubted if he’d want to play soldiers again.

He had entered a field, staying roughly parallel with the road, when there was a rich splash of red in the evening sun as a fox broke from its cover and dashed in front of him only a few yards ahead. The sight uplifted him. He didn’t have the countryman’s contempt for such animals. Anything that survived in the wild by its own efforts would get his support. This one seemed symbolic of the lone adventurer, encouraging him to complete the mission – or so he told himself, preferring not to think about the fox’s reputation for slyness.

He crossed two stiles, still well short of the true site of the infantry action, the valley between Lansdown and Freezing Hill where a counter attack by the royalists had forced Sir William Waller’s army to retreat. The terrain had played a key role in the battle. Fighting up those steep slopes, with little more than drystone walls for cover, must have been hellish. At the end the royalists were in control of Lansdown, but at the cost of the most casualties. It was believed Waller had lost as few as twenty men, with about sixty injured.

The uprooted tree came into view and he quickened his step. Nobody was in sight and the light was fading fast. Higher up the slope, on Lansdown Road, the drivers were using their headlights as they travelled down into Bath for their Saturday night out.

The vast root system was silhouetted like some beached sea creature with tentacles, sinister and monstrous. In its shadow he had difficulty locating the precise place where the bone was buried. He knelt and poked his fingers in to find where the earth was loose. There was a place where both hands sank in easily.

Terrier-like, he scooped out a sizeable hole. This wouldn’t take long.

His fingers touched something solid and bulbous. Definitely one end of the femur. He got a grip and pulled the bone from the hole.

Job done.

He brushed off the dirt. Sorry to disturb you again, my friend, he addressed it in his thoughts. Just finding out if you’re a victim of the real battle.

He stood up again – and froze.

A hand was on his shoulder.

2

‘F
or a start, you’re overweight,’ the doctor said.

‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’

‘Quite a bit over for a man your height. How do you exercise?’

‘I lift the odd pint.’

‘It’s not funny, Mr Diamond. You could be killing yourself. Your blood pressure’s too high. Are you regular?’

‘What?’

‘Motions.’

There was no answer.

‘Big jobs,’ the doctor explained.

Peter Diamond said after a crushing pause, ‘Young man, how old are you?’

The doctor twitched. ‘My age isn’t under discussion.’

‘Well, let’s discuss big jobs, seeing that you mentioned them. Mine is a big job. I’m in charge of CID in the city of Bath.’ He’d slipped his thumbs behind his braces – ridiculous for a man without a shirt, so he removed them. ‘My employers are the Police Authority and they insist on this annual medical. And your not-so-big job is to give me the once-over and declare me fit for work. Correct?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Okay, the fitness is not guaranteed.’

‘Agreed.’

‘But let’s get one thing clear. You’re not my doctor. I haven’t come to you for treatment or advice about my bowel movements or my blood pressure or my weight. I just need your signature on that form.’

‘You may see it that way.’

‘Believe me, I know about forms. I spend a large part of my time filling them in and most of them are pointless. I should be catching criminals and you should be looking after people who are sick.’

‘You won’t catch anyone if you’re unfit.’

‘I don’t run after them. Younger men and women do that. Most of my work is done in my head, or on paper. Yes, I’m a few pounds overweight and have been for years. Some of us are built that way. It doesn’t stop me doing my job. So why don’t you sign me off and call in the next guy?’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

This doctor wasn’t completely cowed. ‘Unless you take your state of health more seriously, it may not be just your job you lose.’

Diamond picked up his shirt. ‘Are you telling me I’m ill?’

‘Unfit is a more accurate term.’

‘And we all know what happened to the man who wrote that famous book on jogging.’

‘I wouldn’t suggest you take up jogging, Mr Diamond, not in your present condition. Some sensible eating would be a start.’

‘Don’t go there,’ Diamond warned him.

But the doctor was back on the attack. ‘A brisk walk at least once a day. Do you drive to work?’

‘I live in Weston, over a mile away.’

‘Ideal.’

‘I don’t have the time to walk.’

‘Get up earlier. Do you live alone?’

‘These days, yes.’

‘Then you won’t disturb anyone by setting the alarm.’

‘Didn’t I make myself clear? I don’t need you to tell me how to run my life.’

‘You need somebody, Mr Diamond. That’s
my
job.’

‘Are you going to sign that certificate?’

‘With misgivings.’ The doctor picked up his pen.

Diamond should have left it there. Instead, he asked, ‘Why didn’t they send the regular man? Hold on, I don’t mean regular in your understanding of the word. The doc we’ve seen for years, about my own age, who I sometimes meet in the Crown & Anchor?’ ‘He died.’

‘Oh.’

‘Heart. He didn’t look after himself.’

Difficult to top that. ‘Well, at least he had warm hands.’

The doctor looked over his half-glasses. ‘Not any more.’

Back with his team, still buttoning his shirt, he said, ‘Passed.’

‘With flying colours?’ Halliwell asked.

‘With misgivings.’

‘Miss who?’

‘He’s not the quack we usually get. Looks fifteen years old, just qualified, out to make an impression.’

‘He didn’t impress you?’

‘That’s putting it mildly. How about you? Have you been in yet?’

‘Next but one.’ An anxious look crossed Halliwell’s features. ‘It’s just pulse and blood pressure, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what I thought, until . . .’

Halliwell’s eyes were like port-holes. ‘Until what?’

‘He put on the surgical glove.’

‘He’s kidding,’ John Leaman said. ‘Can’t you see the grin?’

Diamond switched to Leaman. ‘So when’s yours?’

‘I’m excused. They gave me a medical at Bramshill when I did the weapons training.’

Diamond rolled his eyes. Typical, somehow, that Leaman should escape. ‘You can hold the fort, then. I need some lunch after what I’ve been through.’

Still nettled by the young doctor, he asked for extra chips with his burger. ‘I just passed my medical,’ he told Cressida in the canteen. ‘While I’m at it, I’ll have an extra spoonful of beans.’

‘Building up your strength?’ she said, smiling.

‘It’s a good principle. In my job, you never know what’s round the next corner.’

‘Could be a nice young lady, Mr D.’

‘I’ll need the strength, then.’

‘If you like I’ll spread the word among the girls that you passed your medical.’

His romantic prospects were fair game. The kitchen girls knew about his friendship with Paloma Kean. What they didn’t know was how much he missed his murdered wife Steph.

He paid, picked up his cutlery and looked for a table, always a tricky decision. If he joined other people, they would be lower ranks and uncomfortable in the presence of a superintendent, but an empty table left him vulnerable to Georgina, the Assistant Chief Constable. Many a burger and chips had been ruined by Georgina arriving with her salad and some sharp questions about the way he was running his department.

A face from the past looked up from a newspaper, not a face to be recalled with much affection, yet not easy to ignore. A Lord Kitchener moustache flecked with silver. Brown, unforgiving eyes. The man had once been Head of CID Operations.

‘John Wigfull, for all that’s wonderful. I thought you’d long since left the madhouse and gone back to Sheffield, or wherever it is.’ Diamond placed his tray on the table.

Chief Inspector Wigfull had been given extended sick leave three or four years ago after receiving a head injury and being left for dead in a cornfield near Stowford. He’d spent almost a week unconscious in Bath’s Royal United Hospital.

Wigfull didn’t move. There was no handshake, let alone a hug. They’d never been that friendly.

‘They brought me back as a civilian,’ he said.

‘You were always good at paperwork,’ Diamond said, and it wasn’t meant as an insult. No one had ever come near to Wigfull in filing and form-filling. ‘What will you be doing?’

‘I’m the new media relations manager.’

‘Are you, indeed? I should have realised when I saw you reading the
Sun
.’ He popped a chip into his mouth. ‘So I can look forward to you keeping the press boys off my back.’

‘That’s not the idea at all,’ Wigfull said. ‘In the modern police we encourage openness.’ He’d always had this talent for making Diamond feel he was one of a dying breed.

‘You feed them stories, do you? We’ve had some juicy ones since you were here.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Like the crossbow killer we called the Mariner. And the Secret Hangman. You could have made something of those.’

‘I don’t “make something”, as you put it. I communicate facts.’

‘Too right you do’

‘In the past we haven’t maximised our use of the media,’ Wigfull said, and the phrase could have come straight from his job interview. ‘It’s a two-way process. There’s potential for information-gathering from the public.’

‘Like the old Wanted posters?’

Wigfull looked puzzled, then pained. ‘We’re more sophisticated.’

‘
Crimewatch
?’

‘We’re in the twenty-first century. My brief is to make the police more approachable.’

‘You wouldn’t be thinking of giving out my phone number?’

‘Not at all, but I may at some point arrange for you to be interviewed by a magazine or newspaper.’

‘You’re joking. What about?’

‘About you – as a human being. They’ll do a full page profile.’

Diamond frowned. ‘You can stuff that.’

‘You are a member of the human race.’

‘Yes, and I value my privacy.’

‘Don’t look so worried, Peter. You’re not top of my list. Not even halfway up, in fact.’

A putdown calculated to injure Diamond’s pride, and it succeeded. ‘What’s the matter with me? Okay, you don’t have to answer that question.’

‘The interviews are only one of many innovations I’m making.’

Diamond lifted the top from the burger and and poured on some ketchup. He wished he’d sat with someone else.

‘I’m feeding titbits to the media as well,’ Wigfull added. ‘Human interest stories like the missing cavalier.’ He spoke the last two words in a throwaway tone, as if Diamond should have known all about it.

‘What’s that – an oil painting?’

‘Please.’

‘A dog, then?’

‘Dog?’

‘Cavalier King Charles spaniel.’

‘It’s what I said – a missing cavalier. You won’t have heard of this because it hasn’t come to CID. There’s no crime that we know of . . . yet.’

‘But it could come to pass?’

‘When I release the facts to the press there’s a chance they’ll take up the case and someone will know something.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Two weekends ago they re-enacted the Civil War Battle of Lansdown.’

‘Missed it.’

‘You would, when all you think about is rugby and old films. The real thing was in 1643 and they had a major muster three hundred and fifty years on, in 1993.’

‘A what?’

‘A muster. That’s the term they use. It made a very colourful spectacle, I’m told. There are societies like the Sealed Knot who take it very seriously.’

‘Pathetic,’ Diamond said. ‘Cut to the chase.’

‘As I was trying to tell you, they had another muster this year. One of them fell in the battle and hasn’t been heard of since.’

‘Killed?’

‘If he had been, you’d have heard about it. There would have been a real corpse when the fighting came to an end and they all got up and marched away. No, this man doesn’t seem to have been injured.’

‘You just said he fell in the battle.’

‘It’s all pretence. They lie down for a while and then get up and join in again. Somehow this one went missing. No one reported it at the time, but two days later his car was found in the racecourse car park. His armour, the authentic costume, was in the boot.’

‘Pity.’

‘Why?’

‘It spoils your story, doesn’t it? You’re not looking for a missing person in a big hat with a feather.’

‘He was an infantryman. They wore helmets.’

‘Doesn’t matter, does it, if his stuff was in the car? You say his motor was found, so you must have checked with Swansea for his name.’

‘Yes, we know who he is. Rupert Hope, a history lecturer at Bristol University. They have no idea where he is.’

‘Family?’

‘Parents living in Australia. They haven’t heard from him since the incident. Neither have any of his university colleagues.’

‘Another missing person. I expect he’ll turn up.’

‘But why would he abandon his car?’

‘Any number of reasons,’ Diamond said. ‘Has anyone tried it, to see if it starts?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘If the car was giving trouble, he may have got a lift with someone else.’

‘That doesn’t explain why he disappeared.’

‘You asked me why he left the car there.’

‘He’s been gone twelve days.’

‘Try this for size, then. After the battle, they all get together for a few drinks. What’s the pub up there? The Blathwayt. Your cavalier gets stonkered and in no state to drive. One of his mates offers to drive him home, but on the way back to Bristol they have an accident.’

‘We’d have heard.’

‘Hold on. His friend the driver is killed, but your man gets out and walks away. He’s hit his head, lost his memory. Nobody knows there was a passenger.’

‘So where is he now?’ Wigfull said with scorn.

‘In the funny farm. Check for the guy with delusions that he’s a cavalier.’

Wigfull took him seriously, as usual. ‘We don’t have time for that. After all, he’s only a missing person, not a suspect on the run. But if the press take up the story, they might make something of it.’

Diamond smiled. ‘John, they’d make something of that little patch of shaving foam under your tash.’

The satisfaction of watching Wigfull check with a finger brightened Diamond’s day.