Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘You did all this, Ada?’ he said in a flat tone, thinking with resignation of the chain of false assumptions and mistaken identities that it probably represented.

‘Yes, and there’s more to it than a road accident, I promise you. We was coming back to the hostel – Rose and me – in broad daylight, when some yobbo jumped out of a car and grabbed her. He talked like he knew her. Said he was taking her home. She told me later she’d never clapped eyes on him before. He’d just about bundled her into the back seat before either one of us caught our breath. There was another oik driving and they would have got clean away if I hadn’t taken a hand. I managed to hook her out in time.’

‘You saved her?’

‘I can knock the stuffing out of most men.’

‘What did they do about it?’

‘Drove off like it was the bloody Grand Prix.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Think, dark-haired, early twenties. A hard case. I’d know him again.’

‘And is this what you’ve waited all day to tell me?’

‘I haven’t come to the main part,’ said Ada, moving on without pausing for breath. ‘Like I said, we found these people who ran into Rose in their car. This happened early one evening way up the A46, between that poncy great house that’s open to visitors – what’s it called?’

‘Dereham Park?’

‘Between there and the motorway. They said she stepped out of nowhere, right in front of their car. Could have killed her. As it was, they managed to brake and she wasn’t hit too hard.’

‘Did they report it?’

‘Get wise, Mr Diamond. They wouldn’t have left her lying dead to the world in the hospital grounds if they’d reported it, would they?’

‘You say they admitted all this? You’re quite sure they didn’t say it under duress?’

‘Duress? What’s that when it’s at home? Listen, we were on track, Rose and me, steaming along, getting to the truth, when – boom! – we ran into a buffer. We got back to the hostel right after seeing these two, to find the social worker in our room with some woman claiming to be Rose’s sister, or stepsister, or something. She seemed to know all about her. Brought out some photos that were definitely Rose with some old woman she said was their mother, at Twickenham. Where’s that?’

‘West London.’

‘She said Rose lived in Hounslow.’

‘Not far from Twickenham,’ said Diamond.

‘This woman said her name was Jenkins, Doreen Jenkins. she said she’d come to Bath with her boyfriend especially to look for Rose. Mind, Rose didn’t seem to know her.’

‘But Rose had lost her memory.’

‘Right.’

‘So she wouldn’t have recognised her.’

‘Let me finish, will you? I could see Rose was really unhappy. She wouldn’t have gone with the Jenkins woman, I’m sure, but that silly cow Imogen forced the issue.’

‘Imogen?’

‘The social worker. The case was closed, in her opinion. Her office wasn’t responsible no more. Rose had been claimed. So she had to go. Rose was cut up about it, I can tell you. Now this is the worrying bit. She promised to keep in touch whatever happened. We both promised. I gave her a postcard specially. She was going to write to me directly she got back to Hounslow. I’ve heard sod all, Mr Diamond, and it’s been the best part of two weeks.’

‘Is that it?’ he asked.

Ada thrust out her chin. ‘What do you mean – “Is that it?”’

‘You’ve come to us simply because you haven’t had a card from your friend? Ada, she had a lot on her mind. People forget.’

‘I never liked the look of that sister,’ said Ada.

‘You’re wasting my time.’

‘Wait,’ said Ada. ‘I tried writing to her – Miss Rosamund Black, Hounslow, and the letter came back yesterday with “return to sender” written on it.’

‘What do you expect? There are probably thirty or forty people called Black in Hounslow. The postman isn’t going to knock on every door.’

‘I looked in the phone book and there’s no Miss R. Black in Hounslow.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t have a phone. Ada, I said three minutes and you’ve had ten.’

‘She’s been abducted.’

‘Oh, come on. You just told me what happened and it was her choice.’

‘Hobson’s bloody choice. What about the bloke who tried to drag her into the car?’

‘Ada, that was another incident. You’re not suggesting the sister had any connection with him? She behaved properly. She went to Avon Social Services. They were satisfied she was speaking the truth.’

Ada was outraged. ‘Rose could be dead for all you care, you idle slob. If you’re the best Bath can afford, God help us all. You don’t know sheepshit from cherrypips.’

He stood up. ‘Out.’

‘Dorkbrain. Something’s happened to my friend, and when I find out the truth you’ll wish you hadn’t been born, you…you feather-merchant.’

Before drafting the rest of the press release, he sent one of the police cadets shopping. The recent extension in Sunday trading was a lifesaver to anyone whose eating arrangements were as makeshift as Diamond’s.

When he returned to the house in the Crescent at the end of the afternoon, he was holding two plastic carriers. Julie met him in the entrance hall, which was now restored to something like a respectable state. She told him the search squad had left a few minutes before with a vast collection of rubbish.

He set the bags down on a marble-topped table. ‘No shoe?’

‘We went through the place with a small-tooth comb, the attic to the basement. I’m positive it isn’t here.’

‘Outside?’

‘I had six men out there for two and a half hours.’

He ran his fingers through what remained of his hair. ‘I’m mystified, Julie. I can think of three or four ways the shoe may have come off. I’m trying to think of one good reason why anyone would wish to remove it from the scene.’

She shook her head and shrugged. ‘One shoe’s no use to anyone.’

‘If it incriminated someone, I’d understand,’ he said. ‘But how could it? Let’s take the extreme case, say she was murdered, shoved off the balustrade after a struggle in which the shoe came off. What does her killer do with the shoe? He’d sling it after her, wouldn’t he, down into the basement? Then we’d assume it got knocked off her foot when she hit the ground. It would still look like an accident, or suicide. Keeping it, hiding it, disposing of it, is self-defeating. It announces that someone else was involved.’

‘People aren’t always rational,’ Julie pointed out. ‘This killer – if there is one – may have been drunk.’

‘Could have been.’ Diamond didn’t say so, but he thought it unlikely that a drunk would bother to pick up a shoe and smuggle it out of the house.

‘Have we finished here?’ she asked.

‘Where are the tenants – still upstairs?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are they taking it?’

‘They’re not happy, but would anyone be? They couldn’t understand the reason for the search. They’re just ordinary people – well, not all that ordinary, or they wouldn’t be living at an address like this – but you know what I mean. They were really unlucky the way this party came about.’

‘Or unwise.’

Julie didn’t agree. ‘I doubt if anyone could have prevented what happened.’

He showed his disagreement with a sniff. ‘If you won the lottery, you wouldn’t shout it out in a pub.’

‘I might. Anyway, their luck was really out when the woman was killed. You can’t dispute that.’

‘You’ve obviously come to like these people.’

‘They’ve been helpful, making tea and things. I’m hungry, though.’

His eyes slid away, to a framed print of John Wood’s 1727 plan of Queen Square. ‘The Treadwells are architects, right?’