Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘And shoved her out a couple of miles down the road.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Letting her take her chance with the traffic on the A46. Charming. What happened next? You read in the paper that she survived and was the mystery woman who lost her memory, right?’

‘Yes. William saw her picture. He was really alarmed. The report said she’d recovered her power of speech. He didn’t know if she remembered enough to give the police a description of him, or lead them to the farm. People might lose their memory for a short time, but they usually get it back.’

‘So he made the botched attempt to snatch her outside Harmer House – with you at the wheel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Using his red Toyota. If Ada hadn’t dented it, we would have made the connection sooner, wouldn’t we, Julie?’

Julie didn’t look round, or speak.

He turned back to Emma. ‘You drove the car knowing what you’d got yourself into.’

‘No.’ She was adamant. ‘In my worst nightmare I didn’t think Rose would come to any harm. I thought he wanted to talk to her, give her some story that would reassure her and keep her quiet. I was so upset about what had happened already that I didn’t think it through. It was only after he was so violent trying to get her in the car that I knew what danger she was in.’

‘You feared for her life.’

‘And I still do. I fear for it now.’

As if he were tuned in on the radio, the driver in the police car ahead switched on his siren. With blue lights flashing, the convoy of three slipped past the line of traffic at the junction of the London Road with the A46, jumped the traffic lights and started the long climb up Nimlet Hill.

Diamond had to wait for the siren to stop before he picked up the thread. ‘You meant to stop him from harming her. You say you were too upset to think straight, but you must have got your thoughts in order.’

‘I had to.’

‘Your plan was more subtle than his, and it worked. You went to Avon Social Services and told them you were Rose’s stepsister. They were taken in because you had those photos. Where did the pictures come from? Rose’s handbag, I suppose.’

Emma nodded. ‘The bag was in the car the evening he drove her away from the farm. That’s how we found out who she is. Her name, Christine Gladstone, was on a chequebook and the credit cards. William asked me to get rid of it for him. He kept involving me at each stage. Going through the bag, I found the pictures and kept them. Old photos are precious. Everything else is at the bottom of the river.’

‘You won over the social worker with those pictures. She was the crucial person.’

‘Yes. The others were uneasy, I could see, but they weren’t taking the decision.’

‘So you had to hide her away. You nicked a set of keys from Better Let and took her to the basement flat in St James’s Square. But you moved her soon after. Why?’

‘William spotted her in the street.’

He said in surprise, ‘You let her out?’

‘I wasn’t capable of keeping her hidden all the time. She thought I was family and she co-operated. It was just bad luck that William saw her. I suppose it was good luck that he didn’t see me with her. Anyway, he followed her to St James’s Square. He appeared at the window. Of course Rose recognised him as the man who’d tried to snatch her outside Harmer House. She heard someone let him into the house and she panicked. Climbed out of the kitchen window at the back. Those houses are built on a steep gradient and it was a long drop, longer than she expected in the dark. When I found her next morning, she’d spent the night lying in pain in the yard. I had to get her to hospital.’

‘Hospital?’ His voice piped high. ‘Are you saying she’s injured?’

‘A broken ankle.’

‘That’s all we need.’

Julie said, ‘In plaster?’

‘Yes.’

All that softly-softly stuff went out of the window. Diamond clenched a fist and brought it down hard on his thigh. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re telling us she’s immobile?’

‘She has crutches.’

‘Terrific.’

He was temporarily lost for words, so it was Julie who asked, ‘Didn’t the nurses find out who she is?’

‘They’re terribly overstretched. In the Triage Room all they wanted was her name and date of birth. I gave it.’

‘Yes, but in Casualty Reception…?’ Julie knew the procedures at the RUH.

‘I told them we were sisters visiting Bath and made up an address and the name of a GP in Hounslow and they were satisfied.’

‘Rose didn’t speak up?’ said Julie.

‘She didn’t know any different.’

‘They must have asked how the accident happened.’

‘I told the truth, or most of it. A fall from a window. I said she was trying to hide from someone and underestimated the drop. Accidents often sound stupid when they have to be explained.’

‘And Rose went along with this?’

‘She was feeling pretty bad at the time, and was happy for me to do the talking.’

‘She trusted you?’

‘I hadn’t been unpleasant to her. What she couldn’t understand was why we didn’t go back directly to West London, where I said we lived. I’d made up a story about being on holiday with my partner and wanting to spend a few more days in Bath for his sake.’

Diamond chipped in again, needing to press on urgently. Already they had reached the approach to Dyrham. ‘So after she had the foot plastered, you moved her to Prior Park Buildings, to another furnished flat. What about Allardyce? At which point did he start to suspect you were double-crossing him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Emma told him. ‘He heard from somewhere that her family had collected her and she didn’t remember anything and at first he was relieved. I think it must have been the evening of the party when he got suspicious.’

‘Suspicious! He killed the German girl.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

‘That party. Was it really got up that night as you told me, with no planning?’

‘It was just as we told you. Thanks to Guy’s lucky streak we won a small prize on the lottery and our house was taken over. I was glad of the distraction, to tell you the truth. The tensions had been pretty bad in the house.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t tell you much about the poor girl who was killed except that she was behaving strangely, very inquisitive, looking into store cupboards and trying to get into the basement at one point.’

‘And the attic,’ Diamond enlightened her. He had long since worked out what Hildegarde had been up to that night. ‘She was looking for Rose. She didn’t speak much English, but she got about, and she was sharp-eyed. She was a witness to the kidnap attempt outside Harmer House. She tried to report it to us.’

Emma’s eyes registered surprise.

‘We got a translation and filed the statement,’ he said. ‘Put it down as a scuffle in the street, unfortunately. We had the same story from Ada. They both lived in the hostel.’

‘Oh.’

‘Later, Hildegarde thought she recognised you when you came to the hostel to collect Rose. Her suspicions were fuelled, but she didn’t have enough English to discuss it with Ada, who was the obvious person to talk to. Instead, she made the fatal mistake of doing some investigating of her own. She followed you that Saturday night when you met in the Grapes. She was a regular there, and she saw you and the others come in. She was positive she knew you this time, because Allardyce was with you. She was right about so much, but wrong in one crucial matter. She suspected you were keeping Rose at the Royal Crescent, and the chance of getting into your house was too good to miss.’

With an insight that impressed even Julie, he was drawing together strands of the case she had not thought about until now.