Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘Exactly what I was about to ask. You keep the key where?’

‘On a ring, in my pocket.’ He took it out and showed Diamond.

‘And does your wife have a key to Better Let for the same reason?’

‘Yes, in case one of us is away. Those alarms have a habit of going off at the most inconvenient times.’

‘I know, sir,’ said Diamond, with a glance at Julie, cock-a-hoop that one of his theories had worked out. ‘There you are, you or Emma, working late, and the darned thing goes off for no reason, disturbing the pigeons and all the old ladies within earshot. But happily you’re safe in the knowledge that either one of you can deal with it. You can get into the Better Let office at times when they aren’t there.’

Guy Treadwell looked at him blankly.

Diamond explained about the basement flat in St James’s Square and the suspicion that Emma had taken the missing woman Christine Gladstone there. ‘She can let herself into Better Let whenever she wants. She could have picked up the keys to this empty flat and used it, you see.’

Treadwell shook his head. ‘Emma isn’t stupid, you know. She wouldn’t risk her career. She doesn’t even know this woman. You’re way off beam here.’

The force of the denial tested even Diamond’s confidence. Surely Treadwell was implicated if Emma was. What else had he thought she was doing on her evenings out? Highland dancing?

‘I’m keeping her here overnight for an identity parade tomorrow.’

‘Do you mean she’s under arrest?’

Diamond gave a nod. ‘She’ll be comfortable.’

‘This is absurd!’

‘We’re not talking parking offences, Guy. Christine Gladstone is wanted on suspicion of murder. We think your wife knows where she is.’

Treadwell looked away and said bleakly, ‘Are you going to lock me up as well?’

‘You’re free to go. We all need some sleep.’ Diamond leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms. ‘Talking of sleep, I noticed you don’t share a bed with your wife.’

He flushed crimson. ‘Bloody hell, what is this?’

‘Don’t share a bedroom, even.’

‘Our sleeping arrangements are nothing to do with the police.’

‘They are if they provide your wife with an alibi. She’s out most evenings. Gets home late. If she isn’t with Christine Gladstone, who is she with?’

Treadwell stared back, his face drained of colour.

‘I’m still trying to understand her behavior,’ Diamond continued in his reasonable tone. ‘Back at your house you told me she’s got this social life that takes her out in the evenings. Forgive me, but you don’t seem to be part of it. Who are these friends?’

Treadwell leaned forward over the table, covered his face, and said in a broken voice, ‘Sod you. Sod you.’

Diamond lifted an eyebrow at Julie, whose eyes were registering amazement. Then he dealt quite sensitively with Treadwell, before the self-pity turned more ugly. ‘It has to be faced, Guy. Not all marriages work. I’m no agony aunt, but maybe you both entered into it thinking you were an ideal team, the architect and the surveyor. Working out of the same office can be a joy when you’re man and wife, but it can also be a strain.’

Without moving his hands from his face, Treadwell said in a low, measured voice, as if he were speaking into a tape-recorder, ‘I knew Emma rejected me physically, but I never thought she was seeing a woman until you told me. I thought she was with men. And now I discover it’s this Gladstone woman and it’s tied in with murder. I’m gutted.’ He looked up, his eyes red-lidded. He hooked a finger behind the bow-tie and tugged the knot apart. ‘I don’t know what else you want from me.’

‘There is one thing: did you stick the knife into your neighbour’s car-tyre?’

His startled gaze flickered between Diamond and Julie. ‘God, no. What makes you think…’ he started to say, then answered his own question. ‘You thought I suspected William and Emma were at it. Well I did, to be honest. There were times when I noticed the pair of them looking at each other as if they knew things I didn’t. He’s more outgoing than I am, smiles a lot, so I couldn’t be sure. Emma laughs at his remarks as if he’s the wittiest man she ever met. And that irritates me. I was jealous, let’s face it. I once saw them by chance coming out of the Hat and Feather in London Street. And quite often she’d come in at the end of an evening and a few minutes later I’d hear the front door open quietly again and he’d creep upstairs to his flat. You can torture yourself imagining things. But I wouldn’t do anything so sneaky as to take it out on his car.’

‘Who did, then?’ said Diamond, more to himself than Treadwell.

‘Sally?’ suggested Julie.

Treadwell had been silent during the short ride. Diamond left him locked in his own misery until the patrol car swung onto the cobbles in front of the Crescent, jerking them all out of semi-slumber.

‘In the morning we’ll put your wife on an identity parade. These things take hours to set up, so it can’t be much before noon. I advise you to get your solicitor there.’

Troubled questions welled up again. ‘What’s Emma really supposed to have done? You don’t think she was involved in the deaths of these people?’

‘Will you sleep any better if I give you an answer?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, unable to decipher such a Delphic utterance.

‘How’s your cooking?’

‘What?’

‘Cooking. Pretty basic, is it? Boiled eggs and baked potatoes?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Go out in the morning and buy a decent cookbook. She’s not coming home for a long time.’

The wretched man trudged towards the front door like the closing shot of a sombre East European film.

Inside the car, Diamond yawned. ‘My place next.’

Only it was not to be. Julie, seated in the back, with a better view of the house, had spotted something she did not understand.

‘Hold it’

‘What’s up?’

‘The door’s already open. Someone is there.’ She wound down the window for a better view. ‘I’m sure of it.’ Without another word, she got out and crossed the pavement. Guy Treadwell heard her, turned and stopped.

She ran straight past him. The figure she had glimpsed for a moment in the doorway had retreated inside. Shouting, ‘Stop. Police!’ she dashed in and across the hall.

Diamond, still in the car, roused from his torpor, swung open his door and followed.

Treadwell had halted uncertainly outside his house.

Diamond asked him, ‘Who was that?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Which way?’

‘Upstairs.’

Inside, the sounds of a struggle carried down from an upper floor. The place was in darkness. He fanned his hands across the wall for a light-switch and couldn’t find one. Groped his way to the banister rail and took the stairs in twos. The gasps from above sounded female in origin.

Blundered up two flights of stairs.

Moonlight from a window on the second-floor landing revealed two figures wrestling. There was no need to pile in. Julie had her adversary in an armlock. A young woman.

‘You want help?’ Diamond asked. ‘Cuffs?’

‘You don’t have any cuffs,’ Julie reminded him. She eased her grip slightly, allowing the woman to turn her head.

Sally Allardyce’s eyes gleamed in the faint white light, the more dramatically against her black skin. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown over a white nightdress. Her feet were bare.

‘Let her go, Julie.’

Released, Sally sat up and rubbed her left arm, moaning.

‘I called out,’ said Julie. ‘And you took off.’

‘I was scared,’ Sally said. ‘I saw the police car.’