Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘Unlikely, though.’ He stretched and yawned. ‘He made such a brilliant start, too, all that stuff about the shotgun. No one else in CID would have sussed that it was murder. John Wigfull didn’t, and he was supposed to be handling the case.’

Julie declined the invitation to rubbish Wigfull.

Halliwell continued to fret about Diamond’s startling theory. ‘I mean, all he’s got on the woman is that she was in the area – well, a couple of miles away – at the time of the killing, give or take a few days.’

‘Behaving strangely.’

‘Okay. Give you that.’

‘With loss of memory. And then she gets spirited away by someone telling a heap of lies.’

He laughed. ‘I should have known you’d back the old sod.’

‘The thing is,’ Julie said, ‘he’s not often wrong.’

John Wigfull was pencil thin and a brisk mover, so Diamond was breathless when he finally drew level on the stairs.

‘A word in your ear, John.’

Wigfull stopped with one leg bent like a wading bird. He didn’t turn to look.

Diamond spoke more than a word into the ear. ‘I didn’t mention this in the meeting, but I need to take over any exhibits you picked up at the scene. Gladstone’s personal papers. Prints, fibres, hairs. Can I take it that the Sellotapers went through the farmhouse?’

‘Sellotapers?’

‘The scenes of crime lads.’

‘SOCOs.’

Diamond nodded. Something deep in his psyche balked at using the acronyms accepted by everyone else in the police. ‘I was sure you must have called them out, even though it looked like a routine suicide.’

‘A suspicious death. I know the drill.’

‘I never doubted.’

There was a glint in Wigfull’s eye. ‘Forensic had a field day. The place hadn’t been swept or dusted in months. The bloodstains alone are a major task. So if you’re looking for results, you may have to wait a while.’

‘I’ll check with them.’

‘You could try.’

‘Is the rest of the stuff with you?’

‘Yes. You can have it. Is that all?’ The bent leg started to move again.

‘Not quite. There’s the question of the other inquiry, into Hildegarde Henkel’s death.’

Wigfull turned to look at Diamond. ‘What about it?’

‘Difficult for me to manage at the same time as the Tormarton case.’

Wigfull’s eyebrows reared up like caterpillars meeting. ‘You want me to take it back?’

‘I do and I don’t. It could well be another murder.’

‘Work under your direction?’

‘I know. You’d rather have a seat in a galley-ship. Listen, all I want is a watching brief. You tell me what progress you make and I won’t interfere. We’ve had our differences, but, sod it, John, you ran the squad when I was away.’

‘I’m not saying I couldn’t do it.’

‘Shall we square it with the boss, then?’

‘Would you give me a free hand?’

Diamond swallowed hard.

‘And a team?’

‘The pick of the squad, other than Keith and Julie.’

Thoughtfully Wigfull preened the big moustache. This was an undeniable opportunity.

‘I could have taken on that job,’ said Julie when he told her.

‘I know.’

‘Well, then?’ Her blue eyes fixed him accusingly.

‘I need you on this one.’

‘Nobody would think so.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You assigned responsibilities to practically everyone else.’

‘I don’t want you tied down. That’s the reason.’

She was unconvinced, certain he was punishing her for speaking out of turn in the meeting. He always expected her to back him, or at least keep quiet. He was so pig-headed that he didn’t know most of the squad agreed he was way off beam when he linked Rose Black to the murder.

Oblivious to all this, he said, ‘These stories that the old man had money tucked away – I’d like to know if there’s any foundation for them. Would you get on to it, Julie? Find out if he had a bank account. He must have received the Old Age Pension. What did he do with it?’

In front of him was the deed-box that Wigfull had removed from the farmhouse. ‘There’s precious little here. His birth certificate. Believe it or not, his mother gave birth to him in that squalid house.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t so squalid in the nineteen-twenties. Do we know when the parents died?’

‘There’s nothing in here about it. Some Ministry of Agriculture pamphlets he should have slung out years ago. Remember the Colorado Beetle scares? A parish magazine dated August, 1953. Instructions for a vacuum cleaner – much use he made of that. And some out-of-date supermarket offers.’

‘I expect the parents are buried in the churchyard.’

‘Probably. Is that any use to us?’

‘I suppose not. May I see the box?’

Diamond pushed it across to her. ‘Be my guest. I want to put a call through to Chepstow. It’s high time I fired a broadside at forensic.’

While he was on the phone demanding to be put through to the people carrying out the work on the Tormarton samples, Julie sifted through the papers. She took out the old parish magazine and skimmed the contents. The Church was St Mary Magdalene, Tormarton. In a short time she discovered why Daniel Gladstone had kept this copy. Towards the back was a section headed ‘Valete’, a list of recent deaths, and among them appeared Jacob Gladstone, 1881-1953. A few lines recorded his life:

Jacob Gladstone, farmer, of Marton Farm, passed away last January 8th, of pneumonia. A widower, he lived all his life in the parish. For many years he served as sidesman. In September, 1943, Mr Gladstone unearthed the Anglo-Saxon sword known as the Tormarton Seax, and now in the British Museum. He is survived by his beloved son Daniel.’

Julie read it again. She leaned back in her chair, absorbing the information. If Gladstone’s father had made an archaeological find during the war, perhaps it had some bearing on the case. Eager for more information, she scanned the rest of the magazine and found only a piece about the meaning of Easter, written by the vicar, and reports on the Mothers’ Union and the Youth Club.

Diamond was still sounding off to Chepstow about the urgency of his inquiry. Through sheer bullying he had got through to someone actually at work on the case. He stressed several times that this was now upgraded to a murder, and surely it warranted a higher priority. ‘Can’t you even give me some preliminary findings?’ he appealed to the hapless scientist on the end of the line. ‘Like what? Well, like whether anything so far suggests the presence of someone else in the farmhouse. You don’t have to tell me it was a Welsh-speaking Morris-dancer with size nine shoes and a birthmark on his left buttock. I’ll settle for anyone at all at this stage.’ He rolled his eyes at Julie while listening. ‘Right, now we’re getting somewhere,’ he said presently. ‘Two, you say, definitely not the farmer’s. What colour?…Brown? Well, you could have told me that at the outset. Male or female?…How long?…Yes, I understand…No, we won’t. We’re not exactly new in this game…Thanks. And sooner if you can.’ He slammed down the phone. Julie looked up.

‘They have two hairs from the scene that didn’t belong to the victim,’ he summed up. ‘Brown, three to four inches. They warned me that there’s no way of telling how they got there. They could have come from some visitor weeks before the murder. They’re doing some kind of test that breaks down the elements in the hair.’

‘NAA,’ said Julie.

‘Come again.’

‘Neutron Activation Analysis.’

‘Sorry I asked.’

‘It was part of that course I did at Chepstow last year. You can find up to fourteen elements in a single inch of hair. If you isolate as many as nine, the chance of two people having the same concentration is a million to one.’