Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

The news buoyed everyone up. Few had been willing to back Diamond when he picked on Rose as the main suspect. Now they had to admit he was justified. It wasn’t quite the surge of exhilaration that comes when a case is buttoned up. They didn’t shake him by the hand or pat him on the back, but they clustered around him, united in support. Then in the passion of the moment the computer operator who had called him a great oaf gave him a hug and retired immediately to the ladies.

He took the whole thing equably (even the hug, which no one would forget), reminding everyone that the time to celebrate would be when they picked up Rose and she admitted everything.

So there was no popping of corks. Just a quiet coffee in Bloomsburys. Alone.

This should have been a defining moment in the inquiry. It was…and yet. He found himself thinking increasingly not of Rose, but the people in the house in the Royal Crescent – the Allardyces and the Treadwells. The trivial incident of the ripped tyre would not bed down with the rest of the day’s events. It niggled. It had brought the two couples back into the frame, his frame, anyway. Speaking on the phone to Sally Allardyce, the slim, softly spoken black woman working in television, he was reminded of the tensions he had noticed. Superficially, they were good neighbours and firm friends. Their ill-starred weekend had started with an evening in the pub. Together they had coped with a party much larger than they anticipated. In the aftermath they shared the inconvenience of policemen taking over their apartments. They had got up a card game to pass the time when their Sunday was so disrupted. But under questioning, the men, in particular, had taken different stances over the party, Turnbull agitated and resentful, while Allardyce was more tolerant.

If anyone had deliberately slashed Allardyce’s tyre, the betting was strong that it was somebody from that house. Who else would have known where it was parked on that one night? Another neighbour, maybe. Less likely, though.

Why was it done then, then?

Out of malice, sheer frustration, or for a practical reason?

In his mind he could cast Guy Treadwell as a tyre-slasher with no difficulty. The young man bristled with resentment. Exactly why it should be directed at his neighbour was another question, except that people like Treadwell rarely got on with their neighbours.

Emma Treadwell? A woman could rip a tyre with a sharp blade as easily as a man. If anything, she was a more forceful personality than Guy. ‘Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.’

And what of Sally Allardyce? She had left early for work that morning. Her walk to the station would have taken her through the Circus, very likely when it was still dark. If she had wanted, for some reason, to limit her husband’s movements that day, she could have done the deed.

The motive? In each case he could only guess, and he didn’t do that.

He would find out.

He crossed the street from Bloomsburys and returned to the police station the quick way, by the public entrance. Before going home, he meant to have a few pointed words with Halliwell about manning the incident room at all times. But he got no further than the enquiry counter. The sergeant on duty had spotted him.

‘Mr Diamond.’

‘At your service.’

‘You’re wanted upstairs, sir. A taxi-driver came in ten minutes ago, reckons he knows where your missing lady is.’

Caught in freeze-frame, as it were, Diamond let the magic words sink in. In his experience taxi-drivers didn’t volunteer information unless it was reliable. This had to be taken more seriously than the so-called sightings up to now.

Two old men and a dog were waiting by the enquiry window. As one, they turned to see who it was who needed to find a missing lady. And he was so elated by the news that he performed a slow pirouette for them – with surprising grace for a big man.

‘The incident room?’

‘Your office.’

‘I’m on my way.’

Upstairs, Halliwell, caught off guard again, sprang up from Diamond’s chair and introduced Mr John Beevers, from Astra Taxis.

John Beevers did not spring up. He was in the one comfortable armchair in the room, basking in limelight and cigar smoke. He took a cellophane-wrapped corona from an inside pocket and held it out to Diamond in a way that was faintly vulgar.

‘Non-smoker. What have you got to tell us?’

Now the driver produced the Bath Chronicle from his car-coat. ‘This woman in the paper. You want to find her, m’ dear?’

Diamond had worked in the West Country long enough to be used to being a stranger’s ‘dear’ or ‘love’, but it grated when coming from someone he disliked on sight. ‘That’s the general idea.’

‘Well, I got news for you. I had her in my cab. Her and another woman.’

A vulgar quip would have been all too easy. ‘When was this?’

‘Two and a half weeks back, I reckon. It was her, no question.’

Diamond’s hopes plummeted. ‘As long ago as that?’

‘If ‘tis no use, m’ dear, I’ll save my breath.’

‘It could still be useful. Go on.’

The driver exhaled copiously in Diamond’s normally smoke-free office. ‘I can’t tell you the date. ‘Twere the afternoon and it had been raining. The first woman – not her you’re looking for – hailed me in Laura Place, by the fountain. She wanted Harmer House, the women’s hostel in Bathwick Street.’

So it was that far back in Rose’s history. Diamond’s elation was ebbing away.

‘I gave her a close look to see if she were a paying customer. You hear the word “hostel” and you got to be careful, if you understand me. She were quite respectable actually. Mind, I weren’t over-pleased with the job. It were no fare at all from Laura Place. No more than six hundred yards, I reckon. I told her, polite like, she’d do better to walk it and save herself the fare, but she said she were picking someone up, with luggage. She wanted me to bide awhile outside, and then we’d go up St James’s Square.’

‘Tucked away behind the Royal Crescent?’

‘Right. That sounded more like a job of work to me. I warned her it would all be on the clock, and she weren’t bothered. So that’s what we did.’

‘What was she like?’

‘The one who hired me? Now you’re asking. This were some days back, you know.’

‘Try.’

‘Dark-haired, I b’lieve. Thirty, maybe. Bit of a madam. She weren’t having no lip from a common cabbie.’

‘The hair. Can you tell me anything about it?’

‘What do you mean, m’dear? I said it were dark. I can’t tell one style from another.’

‘Curly?’

‘No, not curly. Straight, and combed back, fixed behind her head. What do they call that?’

Diamond knew, but he wasn’t going to put words into the witness’s mouth.

Beever was getting there by stages. ’’ Orse-tail. Is that it?’

Halliwell looked ready to supply the word, so Diamond cut in, ‘We’ve got to hear it from you to be of any use, Mr Beever.’

’’ Orse-tail, I said. No, that b’ain’t right. Pony-tail. She had a pony-tail. If you ask me, pony-tails look nice on little girls and really scrawny women. Her’d had too many good dinners to get away with it.’

‘And the face. Can you picture the face?’

‘You want a lot for nothing. ‘Twere the other woman I came in about. Well, I don’t know if this be any help, but she made me think of them women in boots.’

‘Boots?’ said Diamond.

‘The tarty ones on the make-up counters. Heavy on the war-paint.’

‘Ah, Boot’s the chemist.’

‘I was telling thee what happened. She made a great to-do about could she rely on me to wait. I told her if she were paying, I didn’t mind how long it took. So that’s what happened. We drove to Bathwick Street. I bided my time outside Harmer House, reading my paper for a good half-hour, maybe longer. Then she came out with this other woman, the one you’re trying to find. She’d said sommat about luggage, but it were only a couple of carrier bags, so I didn’t open the boot. I drove them up to St James’s Square-’