Upon A Dark Night

by Peter Lovesey

  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 noti
ced 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:

  Guy Treadwell ARIBA

  Chartered Architect

  Emma Treadwell FRICS

  Chartered Surveyor

  His memory was accurate, then. They did have an office in Gay Street, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t have been at a more interesting address.

  Part Four. Upon a Dark Night

  Thirty

  Peter Diamond was not built for jogging, nor fast walking, but he covered the distance to Manvers Street in a sensational time by his standards. His brain was getting through some work, too, putting together the case that buried Emma Treadwell up to her neck in guilt. The descriptions of ‘Doreen Jenkins’ from Ada, Imogen Starr and the taxi driver all matched Emma’s solid appearance and svelte grooming; and now he had the damning fact that the Treadwells’ office was in the same building as Better Let. How easy to help herself to the keys to vacant furnished flats.

  He called Julie at home.

  ‘Can you get here fast? I’m about to nick the Treadwells. I want you on board.’

  She didn’t take it in fully.

  ‘They’re the link to Rose.’ He went on to explain why in a few crisp sentences.

  The dependable Julie said she would come directly.

  What a wimp of a young man, Diamond thought. It was almost eleven when Guy Treadwell, in silk dressing-gown and slippers, opened the door and saw the outsize detective with Julie and two uniformed officers beside him. Treadwell’s hand went to his goatee beard and gripped it like an insecure child reaching for its mother.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Shall we discuss it inside?’

  ‘If it’s about the damage to the car, I think you want our neighbours, the Allardyces.’

  ‘No, Mr Treadwell, this concerns your wife. Is she at home?’

  He stared. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Diamond gestured to the two officers to wait in the hall. He and Julie followed Treadwell into the living-room.

  ‘Your wife,’ Diamond prompted him.

  ‘She isn’t here. I’m expecting her soon. She went out. Some meeting or other.’

  Diamond turned immediately to Julie. ‘Tell the lads to move the cars away, or she’ll take fright and do a runner.’

  Treadwell looked in danger of bursting blood vessels. ‘What on earth is going on?’

  ‘I have some questions for your wife, sir. And for you, too.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You might like to get some clothes on. I intend to do this at the police station. You’ll come voluntarily, won’t you?’

  Horrified, Treadwell mouthed the words ‘police station’. ‘Are you seriously proposing to arrest us?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear? This will be voluntary on your part.’

  ‘We’ve done nothing unlawful.’

  ‘No problem, then. Shall we go upstairs? If you don’t mind, I’ll stay with you while you put your clothes on.’

  Speechless, shaking his head, Treadwell led Diamond to the bathroom on the first floor where his day clothes were hanging behind the door. Diamond waited discreetly on the other side holding it open with his foot.

  ‘I don’t see the necessity of this,’ the voice in the bathroom started to protest more strongly. ‘Coming at night without warning. It’s like living in a fascist state.’

  Diamond chose not to tangle with him over that. In a few minutes the young man came out fully attired. Some of his bluster had returned now that his bow-tie was back in place. ‘I can’t imagine what this pantomime is about, but I tell you, officer, you’re making a mistake you may regret. I need my glasses.’ With Diamond dogging him, he crossed the passage to the bedroom opposite, where a single bed and a single wardrobe made their own statement about the marriage. The half-glasses were on a chest of drawers. He looped the cord over his head and looked ready to play the professor in a college production of Pygmalion.

  On the way downstairs Diamond asked him if his wife made a habit of coming in late.

  He said defiantly, ‘There’s no law against it.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  ‘We’re grown-ups. I don’t insist that she’s home by ten.’

  ‘Was she out last night and the night before?’

  ‘There’s plenty to do in Bath. Emma belongs to things, she has friends, she doesn’t want to sit at home each evening watching television.’

  ‘So the answer is “Yes”?’

  ‘Haven’t I made that clear?’A direct answer seemed impossible to achieve.

  They joined Julie in the living-room. While they waited for Emma, Diamond interested himself in the glass-fronted antique bookcase. Two shelves were filled with bound volumes of the Bath Archaeological Society Journal.

  ‘You’re seriously into all this, Mr Treadwell?’

  ‘The books? I got those for next to nothing at a sale. I don’t have the time to be serious.’

  ‘I remember someone telling me you’re a whizz at digging up relics.’

  ‘They were exaggerating.’

  ‘I’m sure. We were talking about this good luck you seem to be favoured with. If the truth were told, you have to know a bit about the site before you know where to dig. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘It helps.’

  ‘It’s like the cards. They call you lucky, but you have to know how to play the hand as well.’

  ‘That is certainly true.’

  He was clearly reassured by Diamond’s change of tone. Then they heard the front door being opened. Treadwell grasped the arms of his chair, but Diamond put out a restraining hand. Instead, he gestured to Julie, who stepped into the hall to explain to Emma Treadwell why there would be no need to take her coat off.

  Emma reacted more coolly than her husband had. ‘It’s a little late in the evening for all this, isn’t it?’

  She was still composed in the interview room at the police station. She had spent the evening, she claimed, with a woman friend. No, she could not possibly divulge the friend’s name. The poor woman was going through a personal crisis. To pass on her name to the police would be like a betrayal, certain to undo any good she had been able to achieve.

  Not bad, young Emma, Diamond thought, not bad at all.

  And Julie was thinking that this was the most casual Emma had looked. The baggy sweater and jeans, and the fine, dark hair looking as if it could do with a brushing, supported the story. You don’t get dolled up to visit a distressed friend.

  Diamond asked, ‘Is your friend in trouble with the police?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘We only
want her to vouch for you.’

  She raked some wayward hair from her face, smiled, and said, ‘What am I supposed to have done? Pinched the Crown Jewels?’

  ‘We just want it confirmed where you were.’

  ‘At this moment, her situation matters more to me than my own.’

  ‘You’ve spent a lot of time with her lately, haven’t you?’

  Emma had no way of knowing how much her husband had already divulged. Guy Treadwell was seated in another room with a copy of the Bath Chronicle, some lukewarm coffee in a paper cup and only a bored constable for company. ‘It’s confidential,’ she insisted.

  ‘This woman: is she local?’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to be obstructive, but haven’t I already made clear why I can’t tell you anything about her?’

  Reasonable as she appeared to be, she was rapidly sacrificing any rapport with Diamond. What Ada called the lah-de-dah voice grated on him. No doubt she could keep stonewalling ad infinitum. He changed tack. ‘You have an office in Gay Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Above the agency that lets flats. Better Let, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Obviously, you’re on good terms with the people in Better Let. Is there a business tie-in?’

  ‘Do you mean are we connected with them? No.’

  ‘You understand why I’m asking this?’

  She said without even blinking, ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘One of their flats, a furnished basement in St James’s Square, was used by two women a couple of weeks ago. An unofficial arrangement. The place is supposed to be vacant. The women must have acquired a set of keys. There was no break-in.’

  The pause that followed didn’t appear to unnerve Emma Treadwell.

  ‘One of the women fitted your description,’ Diamond resumed. ‘The other is called Christine Gladstone, known to some people as Rose, or Rosamund Black. She was in the care of Avon Social Services until recently, suffering from some form of amnesia. Do you have any comment?’

  She said as though the subject bored her, ‘I did see something in the local paper about a woman who lost her memory.’