Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘The old farmer? Fire away.’

This required tact from Diamond; the medical profession don’t like laymen giving them advice. ‘I was thinking over what you said, about it being unusual in suicides, aiming the muzzle under the chin.’

‘This one was the first I’ve come across,’ Middleton confirmed, ‘but there’s always something new in this game.’

‘He must have had a long reach. I had a look at the gun earlier. The distance from muzzle to trigger is twenty-eight inches.’

‘Actually, he was on the short side.’A pause. ‘You’ve got a point there, my friend.’ The tone of that ‘my friend’rather undermined the sentiment. ‘I’d better check my measurements.’

‘When the body was found, there wasn’t any sign that he was tied to the chair,’ Diamond started to say.

‘Hold on,’ said Middleton. ‘What the fuck are you suggesting, inspector?’

‘Superintendent.’

‘What?’

‘Peter will do. Is it conceivable that this was set up to look like a suicide when it was something else?’

There was another awkward silence before Middleton said, ‘I found no marks of ligatures, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘He was in a wooden armchair,’ Diamond said. ‘If his arms were pinioned in some way to the chair, he’d be helpless. He was in his seventies.’

‘I said I found no marks.’

‘He was wearing several layers of clothes: jacket, pullover, shirt and long-sleeved vest. If a ligature was over the clothes, would the pressure marks show through?’

‘You’re bloody persistent, aren’t you? It depends how tight this theoretical ligature was, but, no, it need not. This was a corpse after a week of putrefaction. We’re not dealing in subtleties at that stage. What are you suggesting – that he was trussed up for slaughter and then untied after death?’

Twenty minutes and a brisk walk later, Diamond entered the pub in Westgate Street where the Allardyces and the Treadwells had begun their celebrations on the fateful Saturday night. Not many were in. Six-fifteen this Tuesday evening was too early for the youthful regulars who nightly turned the Grapes into Bath’s hottest drinking spot. The sound from the music system was well short of the decibels it would reach later, but still loud for a man whose peaks of listening came on Radio Two.

He sauntered through the narrow low-beamed bar with its low-watt electric lights masquerading as oil-lamps. The dark wood panelling and antique paintings lived up to the claim, inscribed along a crossbeam, that the present facade dated from the seventeenth century; the fruit machines on every side undermined the impression. He saw the TV set at the far end of the bar that must have given the Treadwells and the Allardyces the news of their lottery success. There were bottled drinks he’d never heard of on display behind the bar. A man of his maturity stood out in this place, he thought. Anyone expecting a visitor from the police ought to give him a second glance. No one did. He strolled the length of the bar eyeing all the lone drinkers. He was beginning to take against Gary Paternoster before having met him, which was stupid. This one might be a nerd, and a barfly into the bargain, but he had gone to the trouble of calling at the nick. He could be about to provide the information that would nail a killer.

So quit racing your motor, Diamond told himself. Watch your blood pressure.

He asked a barmaid for help.

‘Dunno, love, but it could be him over there, under the fish.’

The fish was a trompe l’oeil, a pike carved in wood to look as if it was in a showcase. It was mounted on the wall near the door. Alone at a table, a youth sat like a more convincing stuffed specimen, staring ahead with glazed eyes. He was in a suit, a businessman’s three-piece, navy blue with a faint white pinstripe. He had an old-fashioned short-back-and-sides and owlish glasses. When Diamond spoke his name, he jerked and stood up.

‘Take it easy,’ Diamond told him. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘Lemonade shandy.’

A pained expression came over Diamond’s features. It was a long time since he’d come across anyone drinking shandy. The very notion of mixing good beer with lemonade…

In his innocence Gary Paternoster added, ‘But one is enough for me, thank you, sir.’

Diamond went back to the bar and collected a pint of best bitter for himself, a chance to focus his thoughts. This wasn’t the class of nerd he’d expected. This was a throwback to some time in the dim past when kids in their teens respected their elders and stayed sober and wore their Sunday best for talking to the police. Did it matter? Not if the boy was reliable as a witness.

At the table again, he perched uncomfortably on a padded stool with his back to a fruit machine called Monte Carlo or Bust and said, ‘Didn’t you want to wait at the nick, Mr Paternoster?’

A nervous smile. ‘To be honest, they made me a little uncomfortable. Not the police officers. Some of the people who came in.’

‘I don’t blame you. They give me the creeps. So you offered to wait here. More relaxing, eh?’ They were sitting under a throbbing loudspeaker that didn’t relax Diamond much, but the music did guarantee that their conversation wasn’t overheard.

‘This was the only place I could think of. It’s mentioned in the newspaper.’ The boy took a cutting from his top pocket and passed it across the table. ‘They said you were out making inquiries. They couldn’t tell me where.’

Diamond left the cutting where it was. ‘I see. You thought I might be here.’

‘I thought I’d come and see.’

‘Local, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘From Bath, I mean?’

‘Great Pulteney Street, actually.’

‘Very local, then. Nice address.’

‘It’s my mother’s.’

He lived with his mother, and who would have guessed, Diamond cynically thought. ‘And are you in a job?’

‘I work at the Treasure House.’

‘What’s that – a Chinese restaurant?’

Gary Paternoster blushed scarlet. ‘No. It’s a shop in Walcot Street, for detectorists.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond’s confidence in his star witness plunged another fathom. ‘Like me, you mean?’

‘Are you a detectorist?’

Save us, he thought. ‘Detective Superintendent. Will that do?’

The young man blushed again. ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m talking about people who use metal detectors.’

Normally Diamond was quick, but it took a moment for the penny to drop. ‘What – treasure-hunters? The guys you see on the beach with those probe-things looking for money and watches other people have lost?’

Gary Paternoster swallowed hard and said with disapproval, ‘Those people get us a bad name. Real detectorists aren’t interested in lost property – well, not modern lost property. You’ll find us in a ploughed field looking for ancient relics.’

‘Do you do it?’

‘Quite often, yes.’

‘Detectoring, you call it?’’ Yes.’

‘Ever found anything?’

‘Plenty.’ Self-congratulation lit the boyish features for a moment.

Diamond pretended not to believe. ‘What – horseshoes and nails and bits of barbed wire?’

‘No. Medieval bronze buckles. Roman coins. Brooches and things. You learn a lot about history.’

‘Lonely hobby, I should think, for a young man like you.’

This gentle goading was not wasted. Faint glimmers of a personality were emerging from behind the shop-assistant’s manner. ‘I find it very satisfying, actually.’

‘And profitable?’

‘Not yet, but you never know what you might find – and profit isn’t really the point of it. We’re uncovering the past.’