Питер Ловси - The Stone Wife

‘I see it as an opportunity,’ Diamond said. ‘If I wasn’t running the show, I’d take it on myself. Somebody has to.’

Halliwell stared at the road ahead. He knew better than to show a scintilla of interest after such a statement.

Then Diamond surprised him by saying, ‘I’ve had an offer already.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not my number one choice.’

‘You don’t say?’ The response sounded feeble even to the man who made it.

‘I might as well tell you. Young Gilbert.’

‘Good lad.’

‘Up to a point, but…’

A long pause. Clearly Diamond wasn’t going to complete the statement. He could play this game for as long as both men were strapped into their car seats. The pressure on Halliwell was unrelenting.

‘But what?’

‘It’s not a risk I’m willing to take,’ Diamond said. ‘However…’

Halliwell waited yet again, flogging his brain for cast-iron reasons to reject what was coming.

‘… he did make one telling point. He’s not known to the local godfathers.’

‘Very true.’ This could be a lifeline. ‘You and I have tangled with too many of them, guv. We’d never get away with it.’

‘Not in a million years.’

Mightily relieved that he seemed to be off the hook, Halliwell asked, ‘Who were you thinking of — John? He’s more of a backroom man.’

‘Leaman? Too inflexible. He has qualities, certainly. Great in the office beavering away, but I can’t see him rubbing shoulders with crooks.’

‘Ingeborg?’

This time Diamond’s silence was as good as a nod.

‘She’s the only one I can think of,’ Halliwell said with more confidence. ‘More streetwise than Leaman, for sure.’

‘But she hasn’t volunteered. I was hoping she might. I’m not going to pressgang anyone into something as dangerous as this.’

‘She’s bright enough to carry it off,’ Halliwell said. ‘I don’t think she’s known to any of the mob. The only one she met was Soldier Nuttall and we put him away last year.’

‘What’s going on in her life these days? Is she in a relationship?’

‘If she is, she hasn’t spoken about it. Blokes come and go, I think. She lives alone, doesn’t she?’

‘A year ago, she would have been the first to volunteer. She’s more cagey since she got to sergeant. Doesn’t need to impress, I suppose.’

‘I can sound her out if you like,’ Halliwell said. ‘See what’s holding her back.’

‘Would you?’

They ignored the first sign on the M4. Driving anywhere near the centre of Reading is enough to reduce even long-serving policemen to quivering wrecks. Five miles further along the motorway, just when you think you’ve overshot, the next exit brings you without much hassle to the campus at Whiteknights Park, southeast of the town. It wasn’t long before they were seated in the office of the lecturer put up by the university as the colleague Gildersleeve had known best.

‘Unfortunate name,’ Diamond commented to Halliwell while they waited for Dr. Poke to finish a seminar.

‘I’ve heard worse.’

‘There was a story at police college about a new instructor on his first day. The old hands on the staff had already looked at the intake and handpicked his class to embarrass him when he first called the register. As far as I remember, it went Adcock, Allcock, Badcock, Balls. At that point he lost control and fled the room.’

Diamond had barely finished the story when Dr. Poke entered his office, a short man with a shock of fine, flame-red hair in a bouffant extravagance. ‘Don’t get up, gentlemen,’ he said in a voice that could only be described as precious. ‘I’m Archie Poke. I gather you’re here to enquire about the unfortunate John Gildersleeve, late of this parish.’

Diamond wasn’t new to academics. There were plenty in Bath. In their own surroundings their status gave them an air of importance not easily blown away — and their desire to impress could be useful when you wanted inside information. He identified himself and Halliwell. ‘The professor was a close colleague of yours, I was told.’

‘Depends what you mean by close,’ Poke said with a sharp glance. ‘We had adjoining offices with the same entrance, but that wasn’t our doing. They removed his name from the door only this morning. All his things are still in there.’

‘We’ll look inside presently, in that case. Is this the Chaucer suite, then? Are you another expert?’

‘Not to the extent Gildersleeve was. The Anglo-Saxon language is my specialty, but I do some lecturing in Middle English to take up the slack in the timetable.’ He made it sound like slumming.

‘Did you know about his trip to Bath for the auction?’

‘Everyone in the senior common room knew. He made no secret of his ambition to — how shall I put it? — possess the Wife of Bath .’ There was a twitch of the lips in case the visitors had missed the innuendo.

‘Put it any way you like,’ Diamond said. ‘Was he bidding on behalf of the university? Do you have a museum here?’

Poke raked a hand through the spectacular hair. ‘I’m not Gildersleeve’s spokesman, you know. I was asked to meet you because I saw more of him than anyone else. From all I can gather, his interest was entirely selfish. Quite where he intended to keep the lady he coveted so much, he didn’t ever say. She’s substantial, I was told.’

‘He’d have a job carrying her upstairs. So he was bidding with his own money?’

‘His wife’s, more likely. She’s comfortably well off. I can’t imagine any bank would have given him a loan.’

‘Is there any way he could have sold the carving on? He’d bid twenty-four thousand when the gunmen arrived.’

Each time Poke shook his head, the locks sprang out like solar flares. ‘I don’t think he had the slightest intention of making a profit. Owning her was the prize. From the way he was boring us all with his raptures about the wretched thing, he would have bought her at any price.’

‘What exactly was he saying?’

‘How miraculous it was that this amazing relic had been sitting in a small town museum for donkey’s years and no one had appreciated its importance. You’d think it was Tutankhamun’s tomb.’

‘But it wasn’t his discovery, was it?’

Dr. Poke laughed. ‘You’re right. The credit for that went to some sharp-eyed fellow who was working at the museum and is probably blissfully unaware of the curse of the Wife of Bath .’

‘The what ?’ Diamond felt a creeping sensation down his spine.

‘Do I have to explain everything? A clumsy attempt at wit. Another allusion to Tutankhamun.’

‘Okay.’ Mostly reassured, Diamond said, ‘I still can’t understand why this lump of stone was so important to him.’

‘Possibly he knew something the rest of us didn’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘A connection to Chaucer himself. It’s old enough.’

‘Is there any chance of that?’

This was greeted with an indrawn, cynical laugh. ‘I can’t imagine how one would find out after so long.’

‘What sort of connection?’

Dr. Poke gave a shrug. Having raised this hare, he didn’t want to run with it.

Diamond refused to let it rest. ‘Is much known about Chaucer’s life?’

‘Considerably more than we know about Shakespeare’s. He had a public profile. Diplomat, justice of the peace, customs officer, member of parliament, clerk of the king’s works. The poetry was only a sideline. I can’t help wondering how he fitted in the time.’

‘When did he write The Canterbury Tales ?’

‘Towards the end of his life. It was a hugely ambitious project that was not even a quarter finished when he died in 1400. He makes clear in the prologue that each of the pilgrims was to tell four tales, two on the journey to Canterbury and two on the return, making about a hundred and twenty in all.’