Skeleton Hill (30 page)

‘And Nadia?’

‘Must have been taken with them.’

‘She was found on the battlefield, buried,’ Diamond said, as the interrogation became more of a consultation. ‘They couldn’t have buried the horse there without a mechanical digger. Anyway, we’d have found evidence that the earth had been excavated. So the horse was taken elsewhere, sold on to breed secretly on some criminal stud farm, if Sir Colin Tipping’s theory is right. He was the owner. Did he hold you and your father responsible?’

‘He was gutted when Dad told him. He lost a million or more in stud fees. The deal with Sheikh Abdul was all agreed and wasn’t signed.’

‘Was it really worth as much as that?’

‘Dad swore it was. There was going to be money on signing and then a percentage of every stud fee the horse earned.’

‘Did your father take it out on you?’

‘Actually, no. He blamed himself for the lax security. I’d followed his instructions. Of course he knew nothing about Nadia.’

‘How long was it before you quit?’

‘A matter of months. I was through with being treated as a fourteen-year-old. I left home, dropped out for a while, did some part-time jobs and then joined the force. These have been good years. Now that I’ve messed up, I guess I ought to resign before they sack me.’ He was red-eyed.

‘I’d wait and see if I were you,’ Diamond said.

36

Hearing this from his superior, Paul Gilbert took a sharp breath. He’d had a testing day as Diamond’s chauffeur. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Like I said. Over Lansdown.’

‘Bit out of our way, isn’t it?’

‘Take the A431 and turn off shortly after Bitton. If you don’t trust me, you can use that satellite gadget of yours.’

‘I trust you, guv.’ Said with a faint sigh.

This would add at least twenty minutes to the journey, but it was futile to protest. Much as Gilbert was looking forward to getting home (and out) for Saturday night, he’d learned that the working day wasn’t over.

‘Being driven like this, at a sensible speed, has given me a chance to think,’ Diamond said, deciding after all to say more. ‘We know Rupert found that horse rug somewhere on the hill. I’ve got a new thought where it might have been.’

So instead of the fast route home they took the old Bath Road and diverted up Brewery Hill and through the village of Upton Cheney, swinging along the western side of Hanging Hill to climb the steep western ridge where the royalist army had once fought its way to the top at such a cost in lives.

Gilbert’s little Honda chugged steadily upwards until Lansdown’s battlefield came into view, benign, tinted gold by the evening sun. You wouldn’t have guessed at its savage history.

‘Are you thinking of stopping here?’ he asked.

‘I’ll say when.’ Diamond was preoccupied with a piece of information he’d learned days earlier. Once more it was from the calendar of events Ingeborg had put together for Keith Halliwell when he was briefly in charge of the case. One of the first entries he’d seen scrolling down the screen had not made sense. He hadn’t questioned it at the time because it didn’t have any obvious relevance to the investigation. He was interested now and he could picture it. The date would have been early in 1991, the year he’d first looked at.

Lansdown Road subsidence causes traffic chaos

Subsidence on Lansdown? He didn’t know of any mining under Lansdown Road. In centuries past, there had been open quarrying for Bath stone towards the top of the hill, but nothing underground. All the local mines below the surface, some of them notorious for caving in and alarming the residents when sudden craters appeared, were on the south-east side of the city at Combe Down and Odd Down and all the way out to Corsham and Bradford on Avon.

They motored in silence past the racecourse where Hang-glider had been paraded and the golf club where Swithin and Tipping outdid each other in bending the rules. A mile or more ahead, the landlocked lighthouse that was William Beckford’s folly appeared on the horizon. The gilded cast-iron columns of the lantern were catching the low sun.

‘That’s where we stop,’ Diamond said.

‘The tower? Will it still be open?’

‘We’re not going inside.’

Considering how productive the day had been, he was subdued, locked into his own thoughts. Paul Gilbert, uncertain how to deal with the man, chose to say the minimum.

They approached the tower and parked in the space in front of the gatehouse where poor Rupert Hope had passed his nights on a concrete bench with the horse rug as his covering.

Diamond spoke again. ‘Do you carry a torch?’

‘A flashlight, in the boot.’

‘Bring it with you.’

While Gilbert rummaged through the clutter in the boot, Diamond opened the gate and went in. Relieved to find that the flashlight still worked, Gilbert followed, stepping through the cheerless little room.

The stone memorials of the Victorian cemetery appeared theatrical in the orange sunset glow, taller than before, casting long shadows. Gilbert glanced up at a windblown, crumbling angel, its arm pointing heavenward. This was not a comfortable place to be so late in the day – or any time, he thought.

Diamond was a short way ahead, stock-still, looking towards the tower. In a low voice, speaking more to himself than Gilbert, he started on a barely audible monologue. ‘People have been telling me about Beckford from the start. I was even given a book to read. Stupidly I didn’t open it. No, that’s not quite true. I looked at the pictures. It seemed to me he was extra lumber and now I’m not so sure. Do you know anything about him?’

Realising he was being spoken to, Gilbert uttered a feeble, ‘Not much.’

‘He was rich, filthy rich, and full of himself. Strutted around Bath in a pea-green tailcoat with his four dogs and a dwarf in tow. Building towers was his thing and this was the last of them. Am I boring you?’

‘No, guv.’

‘You have to know this stuff, or you could miss the very thing we’re looking for. In the eighteen-twenties Beckford buys a house in Lansdown Crescent. Smart address, hundred metres above the city. Quite a stiff climb. Any idea why he chose to live so high?’

‘The air was nicer?’

‘You’ve got it. A dirty great cloud from hundreds of coal fires hung over the city most days. Being Beckford, he also buys a house across the street in Lansdown Place and has a bridge built to link them. Do you know it?’

‘I think I’ve seen it.’

‘Then he builds this, his tower, a mile up the hill, with a view to die for. Not content with that, he buys all the land between his house and here and shuts off the footpaths and makes this private walk. Landscaping, they called it in those days. If you had pots of money that was what you did. These days he’d buy an airline or a football club. Down the bottom near the house he puts up weird buildings like a mini-mosque and a gateway dressed up as a castle. He steps through the gate with his dwarf and his dogs and heads across country to the plantation. Come on, I’ll show you.’ He set off at a brisk pace down the path through the cemetery, with Gilbert a couple of yards behind. Below them to their right, the crimson disc of the sun was directly over Bath.

At a point where the trees permitted a view, he stopped. ‘In that book I was telling you about there’s a plan of Beckford’s walk and I’m trying to work out where we are. Below us would have been a shrubbery, bushes and plants from all over the world chosen because they smelled nice. Lower down in that middle area was an open quarry that he didn’t change because it reminded him of some ruined baths in Rome.’

‘The Caracalla Baths, I expect,’ Gilbert said, the first intelligent response he’d managed.

Wrong-footed, Diamond turned to face him. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘Where the three tenors did their first big concert.’

‘Is that so? You’re taking this in, I hope.’ He stepped out again, and the Victorian cemetery gave way to rows of more modern graves. ‘Good thing we didn’t leave it any later,’ he said. ‘Another half-hour and we’d be tripping over this lot. The walk got fancy again this side of the quarry with more gateways leading you through flower gardens and an orchard. He brought in fifty-year-old apple trees, would you believe? They blossomed all right, but never formed fruit. Keep up, will you? I’m not talking to myself.’

But for an interval he stopped speaking and marched purposefully down the slope.

‘Isn’t this private land?’ Gilbert asked.

‘I expect so.’

‘I don’t think we’ll get much further.’

They were blocked by a dense patch of brambles more than head high, sprouting a few pathetic blackberries, as if all their strength had gone into creating sturdy, vicious-looking shoots.

‘This wasn’t here in Beckford’s day,’ Diamond said. ‘The walk must have gone straight through this. Check the road, will you? See how close we are to the Granville Road turn. Is that Charlcombe on the other side?’

‘I’ll find out,’ Gilbert said, glad of a break. The boss in this tour-leader mode wasn’t easy to take, particularly when the tour party consisted of only one individual.

@@@@@He didn’t need to go far to the left to see the lights of a car moving along Lansdown Road. On the other side were the offices used by the Admiralty. He also spotted a road opposite.

Returning to Diamond, he reported what he’d seen.

‘This is the place, then. Somewhere in this area, Beckford sunk a large pond filled with gold and silver fish.’

‘Is that what we’re looking for?’

‘Quiet, I’m getting my bearings. Nearby he came to a major obstruction in the shape of a lane leading to a farm. It was one right of way he couldn’t ignore. To continue the walk he was forced to go underground. So what did he do? He made a virtue out of necessity and created a seventy-foot grotto. You know what a grotto is?’

‘Like a cave?’

‘Except this one had to be a tunnel. That’s what I hope to find if it’s still here. Where’s the flashlight?’

Gilbert switched it on and passed it over.

Diamond swung the beam this way and that, patrolling the margins of the thicket. ‘Some time in 1991 there was subsidence along the road and it caused major traffic problems. My hunch is that it happened around here due to Beckford’s tunnelling. The walk went very close to the road at this point.’

The significance of the grotto wasn’t lost on Gilbert. He could see what was coming. He didn’t fancy plunging into the brambles and getting scratched all over just to satisfy a theory of Diamond’s.

‘I think there’s a gap here,’ Diamond called from the other side. ‘I can’t get through myself, but you might.’

Resigned, Gilbert joined him and saw where the beam was picking out a space between the long, prickly shoots. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘I’m not sure. Hole in the ground. Steps, maybe. Mind you don’t fall in. Take the flashlight.’

More intent on avoiding injury than finding anything, Gilbert dipped his head and edged under a vicious-looking branch. If he showed willing, he might get a reprieve. ‘Can’t see much,’ he said, rubbing spiderwebs from his face.

‘There’s a way through. There has to be,’ Diamond told him.

A thorn pierced Gilbert’s trousers and dug into his leg. ‘I think I’ve reached my limit, guv.’

‘You’re shining the light the wrong way. Look to your left. Isn’t that a way through?’

Gilbert turned and got his face scratched. Wrestling with brambles would have been unwise by day. In this light it was madness. He was about to say so when he noticed something he was bound to report. ‘Some of these are bent right over. It looks as if someone else has been here before me.’

‘We must be close, then.’

We
? Gilbert thought. There’s only one of us getting scratched to pieces.

Easing to his right to duck under an arch of thorns, he felt his foot against a hard, straight edge. ‘There may be something here.’ Gingerly he pushed his leg forward into a space above a flat, solid surface. ‘Steps, I think.’

‘Give me some light. I’m coming in,’ Diamond said, then swore as the first thorns made contact. By attacking the bush like a rugby forward he powered through to Gilbert’s side regardless of dis-comfort. ‘What I’d give for a chainsaw.’

With a probing foot he located the step for himself. ‘Let’s get down there.’

Together they battled the last of the prickles and forced their way down a flight of about ten steps.

‘Flashlight.’

They had reached an impasse. The light shone on a mass of ivy with branches like cables.

‘What’s behind it?’ Diamond thumped the butt end of the flashlight against the surface.

‘That’s the only light we’ve got,’ Gilbert warned him.

‘If we could rip some of this away . . .’ He tried getting a grip on the ivy. It didn’t yield.

‘Can I have the flashlight a moment? I think I can see what’s in the way.’

Low down, the beam showed what looked like vertical indented bands, largely covered in moss and creepers, but recognizable as corrugated iron.

‘Find the edge,’ Diamond said.

Not only did the light show them the limit of the iron barrier. It revealed a gap wide enough to squeeze through.

‘Someone has definitely been here.’

Gilbert went through and forced the gap wider for Diamond to follow.

‘Bloody hell.’

There was no longer any doubt that they’d found Beckford’s grotto, a tunnel stretching ahead for about twenty feet to where the roof seemed to have collapsed. There was rubble, too, imme-di ately in front of them.

‘Take care,’ Gilbert said.

Diamond wasn’t listening. He stumbled inside, picking a way over the debris with the flashlight and intermittently pointing the beam ahead towards a tall structure blocking the way.

Coated in dust, at first it looked like an extension of the rock all around it, but then he saw the faint gleam of metal and recog-nised the obstruction for what it was.

A horse trailer.

37

W
ithout the flashlight, Paul Gilbert struggled to keep his footing while crossing the rubble. Up ahead, Diamond was oblivious to him, squeezing between the side of the trailer and the flints on the grotto wall.

‘This is what Rupert found,’ his voice carried back. ‘God knows how. Picking blackberries, maybe.’ He reached the back end where the door was. ‘A cheap little one-horse trailer, not the transport a top racehorse is used to. Do you carry a handkerchief?’

Gilbert edged along the wall and joined him. ‘Will tissues do?’

Diamond took what was offered and used it to avoid direct contact with his hand as he pulled open the door and shone the lamp inside.

Neither man spoke. The sight that confronted them demanded an interval of respect.

The remains lay along the left side of the trailer floor, pathetically like the proverbial bag of bones, recognisably equine, manifestly long dead, part skeleton, part leathery tissue. The legs, reduced mostly to bone, were bent under the torso and still covered to the knees in padded travel boots made from some artificial fabric. Anything left of the tail was entirely enclosed in a matching tail guard.

Diamond finally said, ‘No dignity in death, is there?’

‘Is it Hang-glider?’

‘Must be.’

‘Well preserved, considering.’

‘Partial mummification,’ Diamond said. ‘In conditions like this, cool and dry, it can happen, especially if there’s a through draught.’

‘So Rupert took the rug off a dead horse,’ Gilbert said, the distaste clear in his voice.

‘Shows how desperate he was. Give me a hand up. I’m going to check the head.’ Diamond climbed into the trailer, moved to the front and crouched down. ‘Not pretty, but more skin than bone,’ he informed Gilbert. ‘The bridle still fits snugly. Ah – and I see how it was done. The hole is precisely where it should be, front of the skull, just above midway between the ears and the eyes. They knew what they were doing.’

‘Destroying a champion,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s what they were doing.’ He was in danger of getting emotional – not advisable in police work.

‘Don’t let it get to you, lad.’

‘I can’t see the logic in it.’

‘There’s a reason. There must be. Whether it rates as logic is another question.’ Diamond stood up and passed the light beam across the rest of the interior, looking for anything else that would yield information. ‘How the heck did they get the trailer in here?’ Automatically they’d slipped into speaking of more than one perpetrator. A set-up as complex as this was too much to have attempted alone.

‘You could drive an SUV across the field, no problem,’ Gilbert said without realising Diamond was steering him back to practicalities. ‘If the brambles and the barrier weren’t in the way, you could reverse the trailer part way down the stairs and then unhitch it and let it roll down. I’m assuming they killed the horse above ground?’

‘Seems likely.’

‘And after it was done they must have sealed the tunnel opening to cover up the crime.’

‘I doubt if anyone else did.’ He clambered out and joined Gilbert. ‘Let’s hope we haven’t buggered up the crime scene. I’ll have to call in Duckett and his layabouts. They made a picnic out of the human skeleton. I wonder what they’ll do with a dead horse.’

‘Do you want to wait for them?’ Gilbert said, despairing of his Saturday night out.

‘No.’

‘So we’re going back to the nick?’ His hopes revived.

‘I am. I’ll borrow your car, if you don’t mind.’

‘What about me?’

‘Sorry, Paul. I’m not waiting, but someone has to. Give me a call when Duckett shows up and I’ll send a car to pick you up. Shouldn’t take long.’ He took out the mobile, called Duckett and ruined his Saturday evening. ‘You heard me right the first time,’ he said. ‘A horse. But there’s a definite link to the two murders. Even if you don’t start work tonight, you’d better get there and seal the place. Don’t be long. My man is waiting for you.’ He ended the call and said with a smile, ‘Shame, I forgot to mention leather gloves.’

Buoyed up, he did more phoning. ‘I don’t care if you have to break your date, miss your dinner, turn your car round halfway up the motorway,’ he said into the phone. ‘Get to Manvers Street fast. There’s work to do.’

‘Who was that?’ Gilbert asked.

‘John Leaman, moaning as usual.’

He was less abrasive with Ingeborg and Septimus, but the message was essentially the same. Crunch time had come. ‘You wouldn’t want to be left out, would you?’ he said to Septimus.

If there was an answer, it wasn’t audible.

‘Are you going to inform the ACC?’ Gilbert asked.

‘Georgina?’ Diamond just laughed. ‘I’m off now. You did a fine job today, lad. Bangers and mash for supper when you get back to the nick.’

‘Thanks,’ Gilbert said bleakly. He added, as the big man turned away, ‘May I have the flashlight?’

‘Sorry, lad. I don’t fancy that graveyard in the dark.’

All the key members of the team were at Manvers Street to be briefed within twenty minutes of his return. He updated them fully and set out his plan of simultaneous arrests and house searches. ‘It isn’t just about question and answer, or even confessions. It’s an evidence-gathering operation. Let’s remember we’re building a case for the prosecution. We’ve done the groundwork. We know the perpetrators. They’re clever, manip-u lative and they may yet have more tricks to pull. Now let’s nail them.’

He and Septimus drove to a street of detached houses on the side of Lansdown Road opposite the Royal High School. The lights were on inside and security lights beamed down outside, yet there was a delay before the sound of unbolting relieved the tension a little. The door opened a few inches on a safety chain and Major Swithin’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

They were admitted and shown into a large sitting room smelling faintly of cigars. Brown leather armchairs, standard lamps and gilt-framed prints of hunting scenes. It put Diamond in mind of a club room.

In a knitted cardigan, cords and carpet slippers, the major looked and sounded out of sorts. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘Actually, we want your wife.’

‘Agnes? What does she have to do with it?’

‘We’re about to find out. We’ll speak to her alone, if you don’t mind.’

‘I most certainly do. I object, in fact.’

‘In that case, we’ll arrest you now and put you in the car outside.’

‘On what grounds?’

Septimus, quick as one of those hounds in the pictures, said, ‘Wilfully obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty under section eighty-nine of the Police Act, 1996.’

The major gave a nervous twitch. ‘You’re not planning to arrest Agnes?’

‘I was referring to you, sir.’

‘Yes, but if you need to see her alone . . .’ He did an about-turn, literally and figuratively. ‘Damn it, I’ll fetch her.’

Diamond exchanged a high five with Septimus.

Agnes Swithin came in, frowning. She had a towel round her head and was wearing a pink dressing-gown. ‘I was washing my hair,’ she said in an accusing way as if they’d deliberately picked this inconvenient time.

Diamond turned to Septimus and asked him to speak the words of the official caution to Mrs Swithin.

‘What on earth . . .?’ she said, and was silenced by the officialese.

Diamond took over again. ‘We’ve spoken before about your part in the recent re-enactment of the Battle of Lansdown—’

‘I did nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘You were an angel of mercy, you told me. Was that right?’

She opened her mouth to confirm it, stopped herself and sighed. ‘Strictly speaking, the term may not be historically accurate. The regiment prefer “camp follower”, but that has vulgar connotations I don’t care for.’

‘Whatever you call yourself, you go out on the field of battle and pretend to be dressing their wounds and looking after them?’

‘That’s what women have done for centuries in warfare, picking up the pieces, ministering to the wounded and dying. We also search for our menfolk among the slain.’ Agnes Swithin was over the first shock of policemen invading her home, and starting to give back as good as she was getting.

‘Right, and to carry out all these duties you need supplies.’

‘Of course.’

‘Which you carry in a shoulder bag?’

‘A knapsack, or a snapsack, to use the authentic term.’

‘And it doesn’t get inspected by the officers, so you can carry some modern items as well as rolls of bandage?’

‘I suppose that’s true.’

‘Did you have a mobile phone with you?’

She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t everyone these days?’

‘So the answer is yes. Did you also have your binoculars?’

An impatient sigh. ‘To save us time, I also carried my purse, make-up, comb, glasses, deodorant, camera and certain pills I take for a medical condition. Is there anything else you want to know?’ ‘Did you confirm the binoculars?’

‘The re-enactment is a spectacle. One likes to enjoy it.’

‘That’s a yes?’

‘It is.’

‘We’ve come to the nub of this,’ Diamond said. ‘After the fighting moved up the field, did you see two of the cavaliers going the other way, down the slope?’

‘There was a lot going on. I don’t recall everything.’

‘Men on your own side acting like deserters? They must have caught your attention.’

‘At the time, possibly.’

‘Anyway, they stopped by the fallen oak tree, an important landmark to the Lansdown Society because of its rare lichen.’

‘I’m not a member of the society.’

‘But your husband is. And you keep the major informed of everything you see through those strong binoculars of yours. I’m suggesting you watched the two men acting oddly, burrowing in the earth, and you decided the Lansdown Society should be informed immediately. Your phone company keeps a record of the calls, you know.’

She caught her breath. ‘You’ve been checking my phone calls? That’s outrageous. Anyway, we could have been talking about anything.’

‘If you don’t want your actions to be misinterpreted, Mrs Swithin, I suggest you stop this stonewalling and give me the truth. One of those men was beaten over the head and later murdered.’

She’d gone as white as the towel on her head. ‘I didn’t witness that. What are you trying to pin on me?’

‘Tell me exactly what did happen.’

‘I didn’t see any violence. Just as you said, I saw what was going on by the fallen tree and phoned Reggie.’

‘Where was he at the time?’

‘The golf club.’

‘With Sir Colin Tipping?’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

Diamond nodded to Septimus, who stepped to the door and jerked it open. Predictably, the major was there, eavesdropping. ‘Step inside, major,’ Diamond said, ‘and let’s hear it from you.’