Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman

by Peter Lovesey

  The searchers wouldn’t be getting their tea for a while, but they deserved a break, so he returned to them and ordered one.

  Someone asked if there was a toilet in Bathford.

  ‘Five or six hundred at a guess,’ Diamond said, ‘but if you think I’m going to knock on someone’s door and ask if sixteen coppers can use the bathroom, you’re mistaken. What do we use?’

  One of the sixteen said, ‘Our initiative, sir.’

  ‘I couldn’t put it better myself. Well away from the bit we’ve been searching, right?’

  It was a good thing he’d ordered the tea. Morale ebbed at a worrying rate after the search resumed. Several were complaining that this could go on for days without anything turning up. Then someone stepped in a wasps’ nest and three people were stung. The first-aid kit was in the minibus somewhere on the road to Bath.

  ‘Try rubbing it with a dock leaf,’ Diamond said.

  ‘That’s for stinging nettles,’ Halliwell said.

  ‘You’re not much support.’

  ‘Where’s the bloody driver when we need him?’

  The eventual return of the minibus was greeted with ironic cheers.

  ‘I’m worried, guv,’ Halliwell said when everyone had tea. ‘They were almost mutinous.’

  ‘I was thinking the same.’ He announced to them all that he was calling a halt, and got a cheer of his own. ‘It’ll be dark in another hour. We’re back tomorrow morning.’

  There were groans.

  ‘Doing house-to-house.’

  If there is one thing policemen like less than searching fields, it is knocking on doors.

  DI John Leaman had been holding the CID fort while Diamond and Halliwell were out. He was well capable of directing operations. The main responsibility was to take any more calls that came in as a result of the piece in the Chronicle. The phone kept buzzing, but most calls that came through had nothing to do with Danny Geaves. Leaman started to suspect that the switchboard operator was routinely diverting every outside call to CID. In the middle of the afternoon someone with a voice that oozed elegance asked to speak to the ‘senior officer’.

  ‘At your service,’ Leaman said.

  ‘Forgive me, but are you the chief constable?’

  ‘Chief constable? No, sir. You’re through to CID.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I enquire what rank you hold?’

  ‘Only detective inspector, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said the caller. ‘This couldn’t be better. Detective Inspector . . . ?’

  ‘Leaman.’

  ‘Well, inspector, this could be your lucky day. My name is Charles Fetherington-Steel and I’m publicity director for the Theatre Royal. As you probably know, next week sees the opening of our main summer production, An Inspector Calls, the J. B. Priestley play that has been revived with such spectacular success.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘But you will shortly. That’s my job, publicity. You see, we’ve had this rather special idea of inviting a real police inspector to the press night – with a partner of his choice, of course – and getting his impressions of the play. We’ll take a couple of photos with some of the cast, and then the local paper will do a follow-up piece.’

  ‘Before you go any further,’ Leaman said, ‘that’s not my thing at all. You’ve been put through to the wrong person. Hold on while I get you reconnected.’

  ‘But you’re a real inspector and you sound ideal.’

  ‘You’re mistaken, sir. We don’t do PR work in CID. You want our press office by the sound of things. Hold the line, please.’ He pressed the button for the operator and said, ‘Someone’s got their switches in a twist. All the flaming outside calls are coming straight to us. Some luvvie from the Theatre Royal just got through. You’d better sort yourself out, and fast.’

  The female voice that responded said, ‘I don’t think you know who you’re addressing.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Dallymore.’

  Georgina, the ACC. Leaman held the phone away from his mouth and said, ‘Oh my sainted aunt.’ Then he spoke into it again. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Crossed line.’

  ‘You made that very clear,’ Georgina said. ‘I’m through to CID, aren’t I? You’re DI Leaman, are you not?’

  Nailed.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I want to speak to your superior. Put Superintendent Diamond on.’

  ‘Ma’am, the Theatre Royal is on an outside line.’

  She said, ‘I don’t want the theatre. Where’s Diamond?’

  ‘He’s out, ma’am, on a job.’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘Bathford.’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with a vanload of uniformed officers being driven away from here this morning?’

  ‘Quite possibly, ma’am.’

  ‘So that’s why I can’t get hold of anyone. This is too much.’

  Then Leaman heard another voice. The theatre man was back on the line. ‘There you are. I seem to have been talking to myself for the past two minutes. Who is this?’

  ‘ACC Dallymore.’

  ‘How charming. Assisi as in St Francis of? Well, my dear, this could be your lucky day.’

  Leaman gently replaced the receiver.

  15

  Bathford has about eight hundred houses. ‘That’s a mere fifty each,’ Diamond told his team, assembled in the Crown car park at eight thirty next morning. He wanted to be positive from the start. ‘No challenge at all. DI Halliwell will tell you the streets you are covering and issue you with a mugshot of Danny Geaves. You ask if they’ve seen him around the village over the past ten days. And – this is important – if they have, you find out if he was seen with anyone else. Report every sighting to me at the first opportunity.’

  Wonderful the difference a night’s sleep can make. They listened without a murmur, picked up their streetmaps and mugshots and moved off briskly as if house-to-house was as good as a pub crawl. And results started coming in almost at once. A stranger in a village stands no chance of staying undercover. Five sightings were reported in the first hour. Diamond spoke to each witness himself. By their accounts Geaves had been in the area for about a week to ten days, mostly on the southern outskirts in the area where the postman had seen him. One woman complained that two of her chickens had been taken, and not by a fox. (‘How do you know a fox didn’t take them?’ ‘Because I’ve never come across a fox with size-nine footprints.’) No one could say where Geaves was spending the nights. And no one had seen him with Delia, or any other woman.

  Diamond looked up the steep ascent of Bathford Hill. ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘The church.’

  ‘Past it, I mean.’

  Halliwell had the map open. ‘Farleigh Rise, where we were yesterday.’

  ‘To the right.’

  ‘Mountain Wood. There’s a footpath.’

  ‘And what’s that tower thing at the top?’

  ‘Browne’s Folly, it says.’

  Jutting above the foliage was this lone grey building with a flat Italianate roof and arched windows.

  ‘I didn’t notice it yesterday.’

  ‘We were on the other side. Am I wrong, or have you just had an idea, boss?’

  After the house-to-house was completed, and lunch eaten, Diamond led his little army up the hill. One of them had grown up in Bathford and was able to make the stiff climb more bearable for everyone by relating the history. A quarry owner called Wade Browne had built the tower in 1848. The official story was that he was a public-spirited man who gave employment to local workers in a time of depression. In the more cynical version he was a self-admirer who wanted a memorial as impressive as William Beckford’s tower on Lansdown. Probably there was truth in both.

  Twice Diamond called a halt to admire the scenery, as he put it. ‘You can probably see the way my mind is working,’ he said to Halliwell between gasps.

  ‘Yes, but could he get inside the tower,
guv?’

  ‘A desperate man can get inside anything.’

  On the ridge of the hill the going got easier. The tower was about fifty feet high and Browne’s initials and the date 1848 were on a plaque over the door. Unfortunately the door was made of iron, and locked, and there was no sign of a forced entry. The only windows were at the top, out of reach of anyone except Spiderman.

  The searchers stood at a distance and looked on while Diamond slowly circled the building. Good thing he couldn’t hear what was being said about follies.

  Halliwell went over and said in confidence, ‘We marched them up to the top of the hill. What now, guv?’

  ‘Ask that local lad to come over.’

  The constable looked nervous, as if fearing something he’d said had been overheard by the detective superintendent.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘PC Flint, sir.’

  ‘And you grew up in Bathford?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You must have come up here a few times.’

  ‘Years ago, I did, sir. I knew it as the pepperpot. That was the local name.’

  ‘Did you ever see inside?’

  ‘Being kids, we were curious, like. In those days the door was off its hinges.’

  ‘And what’s it like in there?’

  ‘Nothing much to see. Stone steps going round the inside walls to the top. We climbed up them. The rail was broken in places. There was a wooden viewing platform up at the top once, built across two iron girders, but it had all rotted when I looked in. There were bits of it at the bottom. Old rubbish and all sorts.’

  ‘Not a good place to hole up in?’

  ‘Definitely not. Damp, cold and nowhere to lie down. Mind, they tidied it up since and repaired the roof, and the door, of course.’

  ‘And made it secure. Who would have the key?’

  ‘The Wildlife Trust people. It’s all part of the nature reserve.’

  ‘Where do we find them – in the village?’

  ‘I think their office is in Bath.’

  Diamond’s options were running out. ‘As a local man, Flint, if you were on the run and wanted a place to hole up, where would you go?’

  Flint gave it some thought. ‘An empty house, sir?’

  ‘Where the neighbours would spot you soon enough. They haven’t. I don’t think he was in a house.’

  There was a longer pause.

  ‘The only other hidey-hole I can think of is the caves, sir.’

  This was more promising. ‘There are caves up here?’

  ‘Underneath us. This is quarrying country. The hill is riddled with them. At one time it was all linked up with Monkton Farleigh mine.’

  ‘I know about Monkton Farleigh.’ The vast subterranean stone workings there had been used in the war to store munitions and the place had since been opened as a tourist attraction, with rides on the underground tramway.

  Flint added, ‘The Browne’s Folly quarries were just as well known in their day. There are entrances all along the Pepperpot Trail.’

  ‘Come again.’

  ‘The path along the ridge. We’re on it.’

  ‘Show me, then.’

  PC Flint strode out, puffed up with his importance on the team.

  ‘Don’t stand there like a load of bollards,’ Diamond yelled to the rest of them. ‘We’re on the Pepperpot Trail.’

  The little path led south, towards Warleigh, and the views of the city testified to the height they had climbed.

  ‘Caves up here?’ Diamond said. ‘I find that hard to credit.’

  ‘You have to look out for them. Some of the entrances are overgrown,’ Flint said. After just a few minutes of walking he stopped and said, ‘Through there.’

  Half hidden by a crop of nettles was a dark hollow that plunged deep into the hill.

  ‘Is that it?’ Diamond said. ‘It’s got a grille over it.’

  ‘That’s for protection, sir.’

  ‘Protecting stupid people like us from getting inside.’

  ‘Protecting the bats.’

  ‘Bats?’ The word impacted in Diamond’s brain.

  ‘They nest in there, don’t they?’ Flint said. ‘Ten or twelve species, I was told. The grille is big enough for them to fly in and out. The trust does its best to stop them being disturbed.’

  Diamond wasn’t too concerned at this stage about the welfare of bats. He went closer and took a grip on the grille. It was very secure. ‘Our man had a picture of a bat in his room. He must have known about these caves. There are other entrances, you said?’

  ‘Four or five.’

  ‘Let’s look at the others.’

  At first sight the next cave entrance was just as secure. But when Diamond shook the bars there was some movement. He pulled sharply and the whole thing came away from the rock. ‘Someone had this out and replaced it,’ he said, laying the grille on the ground.

  He ducked and looked inside – except that looking wasn’t any use. Couldn’t see a thing. Just felt the chill. Then he was aware of something soft against his foot. In a cave? He gave a yelp and stepped away. Backed out into the daylight and asked with a transparent attempt at dignity if anyone had a lighter.

  The only smoker in the party had a rare boost to his self-esteem.

  With more caution, he tried a second time. The flame made the experience easier to endure. Nothing was moving on the floor, which was a relief. He was not overfond of things that lived in caves. He could see the soft object he had touched: a folded blanket. There were candles, some spent matches and a plastic bottle of water. There was an inflatable pillow.

  He stepped outside and said to Halliwell, ‘We may have found his sleeping quarters. Ask the men in white suits to do a job in there.’

  While Halliwell was phoning for the crime scene investigators, Diamond prowled around outside. ‘You lot make yourselves useful,’ he told the team. ‘There’s got to be the remains of a fire around here.’

  They soon discovered it, not twenty yards from the cavern entrance. Of even more interest, in the embers, along with chicken bones and orange rind, were some fragments of newspaper, and even though it was scorched almost black, they could see that it was the Saturday edition of the Daily Mail, the day before Danny Geaves’s body was found suspended from the viaduct.

  Diamond stayed kneeling and presently picked out a piece of cardboard about three inches by four. Just visible under the scorch-marks was an embossed design of a coat of arms.

  ‘Now we know what happened to his passport,’ he said. There were other printed papers too far gone to be recognisable, but forensic scientists can do amazing reconstructions.

  ‘So – assuming this was Danny – he quits his comfortable cottage in Freshford to live in a cave. He takes his personal papers with him and makes a bonfire of them at some stage. He strangles Delia in Bath and rigs it up to look like a suicide. Three days later, he hangs himself. What’s it all about, Keith?’

  ‘Mental breakdown?’

  ‘Possible. The balance of his mind was disturbed, as they used to say when a nutter was sent to Broadmoor. Has anyone mentioned previous mental problems? Amanda didn’t.’

  ‘I can check.’

  ‘Do that. Even if it’s true, we still have another mystery. Where was Delia on the two nights before her death? She didn’t come home. I can’t believe she was sleeping in this horrible cave with Danny. It knocks my theory on the head.’

  The CSI team arrived within the hour and were set to work in and around the cave. Diamond showed them the site of the bonfire. The senior man said, ‘I notice your fingertips are black, sir.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Would you, perhaps, have done some rooting in the fire already?’

  Diamond gave him a look like a cat accused of chasing birds. ‘Don’t come onto me as if I contaminated the scene. If I hadn’t done some rooting I wouldn’t know there was a passport and I wouldn’t have called you out.’

  ‘No offence. I just ne
ed to know what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Right. And I suppose it will take days before I hear from you.’

  ‘If you want the job done properly.’

  He left them to get on with it.

  In a more upbeat mood, the search party descended the hill. The mission had been a success. In the van on the return to Manvers Street, Diamond discussed the day with Halliwell.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your theory.’

  ‘Which theory was that, guv?’

  ‘Nervous breakdown. It’s too easy.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘There was planning involved. Cool, deliberate planning.’

  ‘Madmen can plan stuff.’

  ‘I know. I just want to dig around. I’d rather you didn’t mention the nervous breakdown to Georgina.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘She’ll jump at it. She wants this whole thing sorted, so she can go to choir practice and tell her friend Amanda she’s completed the job.’

  ‘And you believe there’s more to it?’

  ‘I looked inside that cave. It wasn’t a nice place to spend one night. We now know Geaves was sleeping rough for about a week, at the end of which he was found hanging. About a week, Keith. That takes it back to before Delia was murdered, so he didn’t go into hiding as a result of the murder. Why did he quit his comfortable house in Freshford to act like a fugitive in Bathford? I think he was afraid. Terrified.’

  16

  The mid-week tea dance was in progress at the Melksham assembly hall. Sixteen couples quickstepped to a Victor Silvester arrangement of ‘Ain’t She Sweet’, watched by an appreciative audience seated at card tables. The average age must have been close to seventy and the majority were women. The arrival of Peter Diamond, not much over fifty and not bad-looking either, created a certain amount of interest.

  Which was a pity because he’d come to look for a man.

  Jim Middleton was a retired forensic pathologist and this other blue-rinsed and sequinned world he inhabited had been unsuspected by Diamond until this afternoon. Wanting advice from one of the few scientists he respected, the big policeman had called at Middleton’s house on spec, tried the doorbell and got no answer. The neighbour had told him where to find old twinkletoes on a Saturday afternoon.