Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

He found the year 1960 and began turning the pages.

‘So many familiar names.’ He stopped at 1967. ‘Here we are. 15th July. Daniel Gladstone, forty-four - no spring chicken – widower, farmer. That’s one question answered, then. The first wife must have died. Margaret Ann Torrington, twenty, spinster, barmaid .’

‘Do you have the record of Baptisms? While you’ve got the books out, I’d like to see if we can find the child’s name.’

They started on another register and eventually found the entry for Christine Gladstone, baptised 20th February, 1970. ‘They stayed together this long, anyway,’ said the vicar. ‘What is it – two and a half years?’

Diamond thanked him for his trouble, still wondering if there was more to be discovered here about Gladstone’s death. ‘Who are the neighbours? Were they on good terms with the old man?’

‘You’ve put your finger on one of the problems,’ said the vicar. ‘The adjacent farm, Liversedge Farm, changed hands a number of times in recent years. It’s much larger in acreage than Gladstone’s. His is no more than a smallholding, as you’ve seen, and the way it is placed is just a nuisance to the neighbours. If you took an aerial view, you’d see it’s in the shape of a frying pan, slightly elongated – the handle being the access lane – almost entirely surrounded by Liversedge land. He was approached a number of times about selling up, but he refused.’

‘Who are the present owners?’

‘A company. One of these faceless organisations. They do rather nicely out of the European farm subsidies. Much of their land isn’t being farmed at all.’

‘“Set-aside”?’

‘Yes. The rationale is beyond me, paying farmers not to grow things when much of the world is starving.’

‘Some of their land must be in use.’

‘For grazing, yes. Low maintenance. Nice for the share-holders.’

Diamond had a bizarre mental picture of some portly shareholders on their knees nibbling the grass. ‘Isn’t it good land for farming?’

‘Not the easiest. Remember we’re six hundred feet high up here, being on a scarp of the Cotswolds, but it’s all there is.’

‘A time-honoured occupation, like yours and mine.’

‘Indeed. Farming has gone on here for thousands of years. There has been human occupation in the area since the mesolithic period. Stone Age flints are picked up from time to time. Why, only as recently as 1986, when some work was being done in a barn, a stone coffin was excavated containing the skeleton of a child aged about five. They estimated it as 1,800 years old.’

Another disturbing mental image. Having just looked at the photograph of Gladstone’s daughter Christine with her mother, Diamond had no difficulty picturing a small, dead girl of about that age. ‘There’s evidence of recent digging on Gladstone’s farm. Quite recent. Since his death, I mean. Would you know anything about that?’

The vicar closed the safe and locked it. ‘I heard that you policemen were busy with spades. Everyone in the village has a theory as to what you will unearth. I hope they’re wrong.’

‘It’s all but finished now. We found nothing.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘But we’d like to know who disturbed the land in the first place, and why.’

‘I’ve heard nothing about that.’

‘No stories of people digging?’

‘Not until you folk arrived. I wonder who they were. Do you think someone had a theory that the old man had buried his money there?’

‘That’s one possibility.’

‘It’s very peculiar. Whatever the purpose of the digging was, they must have known he was dead, or they wouldn’t have started digging. Why didn’t they notify anyone if they knew poor old Daniel was lying inside the farmhouse?’

‘They wouldn’t, would they, if they were nicking his savings?’

‘Good thinking,’ said the vicar. He smiled. ‘Perhaps I should stick to preaching and leave the detecting to people like you.’

The drive back to Bath found Diamond in a better frame of mind. He had made real progress over the mystery of the farmer’s death. Pity it was the one case he had no business investigating. John Wigfull would not be happy. But then Wigfull had virtually written off the farmer as a suicide victim. And as Diamond had decided there was a strong suspicion of murder, it would be out of Wigfull’s orbit.

He had not driven far along the A46 when he recalled that this was a significant stretch of road, the long approach to Dyrham where Ada’s friend Rose had wandered into the path of an approaching car. Some way short of the Crown Inn, he pulled off the main carriageway and got out to look around.

It was a bleak, windswept spot, one of those vast landscapes that made you feel insignificant. Miles of farmland lay on either side of the road and a row of power-lines on pylons stretched almost to infinity. The traffic sped by, oblivious, intent on reaching the next road-sign. He had often driven through himself without ever noticing anyone on foot along here.

Where had she come from that night? There were only two possibilities he could think of: one was that she had been set down at the motorway junction and walked this far, the other that she had made her way from the nearest village, perhaps a mile and a half back along the road. And that village was Tormarton.

On his return to Manvers Street Police Station, Diamond was handed a message from the Forensic Science Lab. Tests on the blood sample taken from the dead woman found at the Royal Crescent on Sunday morning had proved negative for drugs and so low for alcohol that she could not have drunk much more than a glass of wine. He gave a told-you-so grunt. Hildegarde Henkel had not fallen off that roof because of her physical state.

The phone had been beeping steadily since he came in. He picked it up and heard from the desk sergeant that ‘some nerd’ had come in an hour ago in response to the appeal for information about the party up at the Crescent.

‘What do you mean – “some nerd”?’

‘A member of the public, then, sir. Sorry about that.’

‘Sergeant, I’m not complaining. I only want to know what makes him a nerd.’

‘The impression I got, Mr Diamond. I could be mistaken.’

‘You could, but now that you’ve dumped on this public-spirited person, you’d better be more specific.’

‘Well, I think he’s harmless.’

‘A weirdo?’

‘That’s a bit strong.’

‘A nerd, then.’

‘That about sums it up, sir.’

‘Wasting our time?’

‘I wouldn’t know that.’

He said with a sigh, ‘Have him brought up. I’ll see him now.’

‘Not possible, sir. He wouldn’t wait. There was no one here to see him at the time, Mr Wigfull being out and DI Hargreaves as well.’

‘So you didn’t even get a statement?’

“He said he’d be in the Grapes if you wanted to talk to him.’

Diamond made a sound deep in his throat that mingled contempt and amusement in equal measure. ‘That’s why he couldn’t wait. Urgent business at the Grapes. This isn’t a nerd, Sergeant, it’s a barfly. What name does he go under?’

‘Gary Paternoster.’

‘God help us. What’s that – South African?’

Before going out, he phoned the pathologist, Jim Middleton.

‘You got those blood-test results, then,’ Middleton’s rich Yorkshire brogue came down the line, confident that he knew the reason for the call.

‘On the woman, yes,’ Diamond said.

‘So did I. No drugs and very little alcohol, which greatly simplifies your job, doesn’t it?’

‘This isn’t about her. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a question about the other PM you did this morning.’