Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

Diamond concentrated on Waller. ‘You’re in here working most days, I gather. Are you sure you didn’t hear anyone downstairs?’

‘Have you ever lived in a well-built eighteenth-century building? I’m two floors up, aren’t I? It’s solidly constructed. I don’t hear much at all, except when Mr Little uses a hammer or some such. You could have a rave-up in here, and I don’t think the sound would travel up to me.’ He paused, fingering his earring. ‘But there was something that struck me as strange a couple of weeks ago. We put out our rubbish on Mondays. Black plastic sacks by the front door. Mine was out the night before, and on Monday after breakfast I found I had some other items to throw out, so I went downstairs intending to chuck it in the sack. I unfastened the sack, and much to my surprise it was practically full. I was certain I hadn’t filled it up. There were food cans and a cereal packet and some magazines that I knew hadn’t belonged to me. Very odd – because it was the only sack there. Mr Little hadn’t brought his downstairs at that stage.’

‘What magazines were they?’

‘That was what puzzled me,’ he said. ‘They were women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan and She and Harper’s & Queen. The current issues, too. Someone had gone to all the trouble of unfastening the wire tag on my sack, adding their rubbish to it and fastening it up again. I didn’t seriously think anyone else had moved in downstairs. I’m not sure what I thought, except it didn’t seem too important. But now that you mention this, I wonder.’

‘So do I,’ said Diamond. ‘But you don’t remember seeing anyone in the building?’

‘No. They’d have needed keys, wouldn’t they? One for the front door and one for the flat – unless they were experts at picking locks.’

‘Tell me about the people who were here before. Leo and, em…’

‘Fiona. They didn’t stay long. Leo was an ex-prisoner, I heard. He did eighteen months in Shepton Mallet for stealing underwear off washing-lines. Fiona worked for the Theatre Royal, didn’t she?’ he asked Little.

‘She was in the box office,’ the older man confirmed. ‘I hinted that I wouldn’t say no to some complimentary tickets, but it didn’t work.’

‘Would their keys have been returned to the agent when they gave up the flat?’

‘That’s the drill,’ said Waller.

‘Better Let, in Gay Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said they weren’t here long. Who were the previous tenants?’

‘An old couple: the Palmers. Mr Palmer died last year and his wife went into a retirement home. After that the place was redecorated and let to Leo and Fiona.’

‘What was their surname?’

‘Leo and Fiona? I didn’t enquire.’

‘Nor I,’ said Little.

‘Were they married?’

‘I never enquired. Did you?’ David Waller asked his neighbour.

‘They were only ever Leo and Fiona to me. Whether they were married is their business.’

Such is the innate respect of the British for their neighbours, Diamond mused. They give you their prison record straight off, but they won’t be drawn on their marital status.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and turned his back on them. He wanted another look at the bedroom. Waller started to follow until Diamond looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Do you mind? This is police business.’

The flat had been used by Rose and Doreen, he felt sure, but why, and for how long? The magazines in the rubbish-bag were about the only clue. If they suggested anything, it was that the women had spent time here and needed something to fend off boredom.

He went into the bedroom and began looking behind cupboards for objects that might have been accidentally left behind. The longer the women had remained, the better chance there was of finding some trace of their stay. They had gone to some trouble to leave the place as they had found it, but things occasionally fall out of sight.

Whilst he worked, pulling out pieces of furniture and feeling along the spaces behind, he pondered the reason why the woman who called herself Doreen Jenkins had gone to such trouble to annexe Rose and bring her here. The cover story had been that they were going back for at least one night to Bathford, where Doreen was staying with her partner Jerry. Patently this had been untrue. Doreen was not a visitor to Bath, here on a weekend break, as she had claimed. It was clear that she had planned all along to bring Rose to this address. Very likely she had brought in food and bedding in advance. To have set it all up, she must have obtained a set of keys, but who from? Mrs Palmer, the old widow, now in a retirement home? Leo, the ex-con? Fiona, former box-office person at the Theatre Royal? Or the agency, Better Let, in Gay Street?

His fingers came in contact with something small, hard and lozenge-shaped behind the wardrobe. ‘Help me, will you?’ he said.

The more burly of the constables tugged the massive piece of furniture away from the wall. Diamond retrieved his find, and held it in his palm. The lozenge-shaped object was a cough lozenge.

He let the two constables go back on patrol, saying he would walk back.

Alone, he searched for almost another hour before giving up. By then he had been through all the rooms and the finds amounted to the cough-sweet, two hairpins that could have belonged to anyone, a piece of screwed-up silver paper and threepence in coppers. Who said police work is rewarding?

David Waller had lingered in the hallway and was waiting for Diamond when he came up the basement stairs. He asked what was going to happen about the doors that had been forced.

Diamond said it would be up to Better Let. He would notify them.

Outside the house, he looked over the railings to see if there was a separate basement entrance. He hadn’t noticed one from inside. If there had ever been one, it was bricked over. The only means of entry was inside. The windows had an iron grille over them.

It was quiet on the streets in this upper part of the city. He supposed it would be around nine-thirty, maybe later. All the night life – and there wasn’t much in Bath – took place in the centre. Facing a twenty-minute walk to the nick, he stepped out briskly. One of Bath’s advantages was that you had the choice of different and interesting routes wherever you were heading. This time he decided to take in Gay Street.

This once-grand street built on a knee-straining slope has a strong literary tradition, home at some point to Jane Austen, Tobias Smollett and Mrs Piozzi, the friend of Dr Johnson. Diamond was on the trail of a less exalted connection. He had a recollection of some information that he scarcely dared hope to confirm: not literary, but commercial. First he had to find the premises of Better Let, the renting agency. It was on the right, almost opposite the George Street turn. A recently cleaned building. Some attempt had been made to display photos of flat interiors at the windows, but it was still essentially residential in appearance. All these houses were protected from the modernisers and developers.

The only other clue to its business use was a plaque on the wall by the door – something about rented accommodation. Peter Diamond didn’t bother to read it. His attention was wholly taken by the distinctly superior brass plaque above the Better Let notice:

Guy Treadwell ARIBA

Chartered Architect

Emma Treadwell FRICS

Chartered Surveyor

His memory was accurate, then. They did have an office in Gay Street, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t have been at a more interesting address.

Peter Diamond was not built for jogging, nor fast walking, but he covered the distance to Manvers Street in a sensational time by his standards. His brain was getting through some work, too, putting together the case that buried Emma Treadwell up to her neck in guilt. The descriptions of ‘Doreen Jenkins’ from Ada, Imogen Starr and the taxi driver all matched Emma’s solid appearance and svelte grooming; and now he had the damning fact that the Treadwells’ office was in the same building as Better Let. How easy to help herself to the keys to vacant furnished flats.