Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘He terrifies her.’

He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. The tension was getting to him. He was striving to second-guess the outcome of this meeting between the terrified young woman and the double murderer. ‘If she isn’t killed straight off – and I don’t think she has been, because he’ll want to dress it up as a suicide – her only chance is to bluff him. Does she have the self-control to do it?’

He’d been speaking his thoughts and he didn’t expect an answer, but Emma said, ‘To do what?’

‘You say he’s obsessed with the idea of finding a hoard. You mean really obsessed?’

‘It’s taken over his life.’

‘Does Rose know he’s so fanatical?’

‘She’s in no doubt about that. I had to get her to understand why I was trying to protect her.’

Diamond leaned forward and grasped the driver’s shoulder. ‘Tormarton. We’re going up to the farm.’ He lowered the window and shouted to Julie to get in. In seconds, all three cars were moving at speed in convoy, with beacons flashing, up Pulteney Road, heading north.

‘She’s bright enough to have thought of it, but is she cool enough?’ he said to no one in particular.

Julie turned to look at him.

He said, ‘The surefire way to buy time from a killer like this is to offer him the thing he craves – an Anglo-Saxon hoard. She tells him what? What would I tell him? What would either of you tell him in desperation? She bluffs. She says it’s a family secret that the stuff was dug up years ago and stored away in the house. Yes, inside the house. She’s willing to show him. It’s all his if he’ll spare her life.’

Julie digested this. ‘It’s asking a lot – for her to think up a story as good that.’

‘If she hasn’t come up with something, we might as well get some sleep and drag the river in the morning.’

With Emma, the softly-softly approach seemed to be the right one. Diamond spoke with more steadiness than he felt whilst being driven through the cluttered streets of Bath at a speed appropriate to a three-lane motorway.

‘This help you’re giving us won’t be forgotten.’

She didn’t respond.

It was crucial to discover the likely behaviour of the killer they hoped to find at Tormarton.

‘Emma, we’re trying to save Rose’s life. We need to know more about his dealings with her. When did he first meet her?’

‘When she turned up at the farm on the Sunday afternoon.’

He paused, trying to follow the sequence of events. ‘Let me get this straight. You told me old Mr Gladstone was killed on the Friday evening. Now you’re talking about Sunday afternoon?’

She nodded. ‘A couple of days after.’

‘You say William went back to the farm?’

‘He went back on the Saturday and the Sunday.’

‘What for?’

‘To go over the ground. Use the metal detector. Dig for gold or silver or whatever is buried there.’

He breathed out audibly, vibrating his lips. ‘With the old man lying dead in the house? He was taking one hell of a risk.’

Emma, beside him, spread her hands. ‘That’s how fixated he is. I told you it’s an obsession. There’s no other word for it.’

‘The chance to get rich quick? Does he have money problems?’

‘They live beyond their means, but it’s more personal than that. He’s desperate to prove something.’

‘To you?’

‘To himself. Oh, he started out wanting to impress me, to show me that he’s a winner, much smarter than Guy.’

‘By stealing you from your husband?’

She was silent a moment. ‘I haven’t thought of it like that. I was carried along by the passion he put into it. Stupidly, I thought he was doing it all for me. A treasure hunt, with just the two of us sharing a secret. Flattered, yes. Any woman would be, to have a man care so much about her. I let him make love to me. But it’s been brought home to me that I’m of secondary importance. He’ll carry on regardless of anything I say.’

‘An old-fashioned lust for gold?’

She shook her head. ‘It goes much deeper with William. It’s about his self-esteem. He has this terrific opinion of himself and very little to show for it. His public relations business is going nowhere. If he could discover a new planet, or an unknown element, and have his name on it, he would. He’s sure he’s on the brink of a brilliant discovery. You have to know someone as single-minded as that. He thinks about nothing else but the finds he is going to make at that site. With the old man dead, he could get onto the land at last and use his metal detector. That’s how blinkered he is.’

Diamond understood. It was the kind of all-or-nothing motive that made a man into a hero, or a crook. Certain individuals had this supreme belief in themselves that in the right conditions produced great art, huge discoveries and inspiring leadership. But the same self-importance spawned dictators and murderers.

‘So he spent the weekend at the farm, searching,’ he said. ‘Worth the risk, I suppose. It could have been weeks before anyone else turned up there. Old Gladstone didn’t welcome visitors.’

‘Believe me,’ Emma stressed, ‘if it had been Queen Square in the centre of Bath, he would still have been there with his metal detector.’

‘So? Any joy? We saw the places where he dug.’

‘Only bits of scrap.’

‘What a let-down.’

‘He won’t accept that nothing is there. He still believes in this hoard.’

‘That’s the hope we’re hanging onto,’ said Diamond. ‘You were starting to tell me about that afternoon when Rose turned up at the farm.’

‘I’ve only heard William’s side of it. Rose doesn’t remember.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘He told me time was getting on and he’d just about decided to stop for the day, when he heard a car come up the lane. It was a taxi, and it stopped in the yard, right beside William’s parked car. William took cover behind the chicken house. He heard someone get out, and the taxi driving off.’

‘This was Rose?’

‘Yes. William saw this woman arrive and he didn’t know who she was, or what to do. He stayed hidden while she walked up to the cottage and went in.’

‘It was open?’

Julie, in the front passenger seat, turned and reminded him, ‘It doesn’t lock automatically when you close it. There’s a key that works from both sides.’

‘I get you,’ he said. ‘If it had been locked on the outside, then the suicide theory would have looked very dodgy indeed. So she went in.’

Julie put in, ‘Which is why two of her hairs were found at the scene.’

He didn’t like being reminded of his earlier theory. Ignoring that, he asked Emma, ‘What did Allardyce do?’

‘His first impulse was to run back to his car and drive off. But he had his metal detector lying on the ground where he’d left it and he went to pick it up and everything happened too quickly. She came rushing out in a state of hysteria. She saw William and ran towards him, for help, I suppose. She was gibbering, unable to speak. She must have had the most horrendous shock you can imagine, finding her own father like that. He’d been dead for two days. Enough-’

‘To blow her mind?’

Emma returned Diamond’s gaze. ‘That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

‘Something shut down in her brain, for sure.’

‘William didn’t know what to do with this frantic woman. But she calmed down quite quickly, and he tried talking to her, yet still couldn’t get any sense out of her. Couldn’t even get eye contact. He asked who she was, and where she came from, and she just stared ahead, like a zombie, he said. Obviously she was in deep shock at finding the body. That suited William. His best plan was to get her away from the farm while she was still confused. So he put her in the car and drove off.’