Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill

‘You’re sure to hear of it,’ he said, ‘so I thought I’d tell you first. I was booked by a traffic cop on the way home last night. One of my brake lights had gone.’

She flapped her hand dismissively. ‘That can happen to anyone.’

‘He happened to notice my tax disc was out of date.’

‘Oh.’

‘Carelessness on my part.’

‘Have you applied for a new one?’

‘I did when I got home. It takes a couple of days to come through, as you know.’

‘Stick a note on your windscreen.’

‘My tyres need renewing as well. I’m off the road until I can get it all sorted. What I’m saying is that I won’t be going into Bristol today.’ Chew on that, Georgina, he thought.

‘Ah.’ She placed her hands palm down on her desk and slapped them several times on the surface. ‘Have a word with George Pallant. He’ll fix up a ride for you.’

George Pallant was the inspector in charge of transport. Diamond had covered this.

‘They’re doing a vehicle check on the London Road today. You know what that does to manpower. It’s all right. I’ll phone Bristol and tell them to manage without me. There’s plenty they can get on with.’

Georgina took an audible breath. She was being outsmarted and she didn’t like it. ‘We can’t have that. Where is your car?’

‘At home. I came in by bus. I don’t intend to spend the day twiddling my thumbs. I can make myself useful to Keith Halliwell.’

‘He doesn’t need you interfering.’ A sound of exasperation came from deep in her throat. She plunged her hand into her pocket. ‘Here. Take mine.’ She tossed a car key across the desk.

This was a development he hadn’t prepared for. ‘Your Mercedes? You’re lending it to me?’

‘I am,’ she said with an air of righteousness. ‘I have a meeting here tonight of the Crime Prevention Panel and I won’t be needing the car until late. Let’s have no more shilly-shallying. Get to your duties, Peter.’

He couldn’t believe she’d entrusted him with her gleaming silver Merc, a measure of how much she wanted him out of Bath and out of her hair. More than that, she’d outfoxed him. He’d be going to Bristol after all.

His mood was down and he gritted his teeth and swore a few times. Yet he drove carefully, not only because it was Georgina’s car, but because he always did. Speed on the roads wasn’t in his repertoire. Even though this one was capable of rapid acceleration he wouldn’t put his foot down. And somewhere at the back of his mind was a superstition that bad luck comes in threes. First he’d hurt his back and then he’d been booked. If a third mishap was coming it had better not involve the Mercedes.

He tried to be more constructive. An action plan for the day was needed. The information-gathering on Rupert Hope couldn’t last much longer. The enquiry needed a sense of direction. Paloma may well have been right when she said that the last days at Lansdown could be the key to the mystery, a spur-of-the-moment killing by someone Hope had upset. Running the investigation from Bristol meant that a different agenda was being set, with heavy emphasis on former contacts and earlier events. Was that all a waste of time?

Somewhere between Saltford and Keynsham his thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumbling from the car. The drive had been blissfully smooth up to now. His first reaction was that his handling of the controls was at fault. He wasn’t used to an automatic and he knew they could engage a lower gear by some small movement of the gear shift. Once or twice his hand had gone there out of habit and his left foot had pressed on an invisible clutch-pedal. Had he put the thing in third?

No.

Something else was wrong. The car was slowing perceptibly. He glanced in the mirror and signalled that he was moving over and stopping. Even the steering seemed to be playing up. He braked and put on the hazard lights. This wasn’t the ideal place to stop – on a busy dual carriageway with minimal space at the side.

He waited for his chance to get out. He guessed what was wrong: a flat tyre. When he eventually – and painfully – hauled himself out he found he was right. The nearside rear wheel was right down. A perfectly good tyre with plenty of tread had run over a nail. He could see it embedded in the rubber.

I could have done without this, he thought.

What now? He didn’t fancy changing the tyre while his back was still giving twinges. Other drivers were zooming past at a rate suggesting he shouldn’t count on a good Samaritan. Better phone for assistance.

Fortunately he had his under-used mobile with him. Unfortunately it needed charging. He sighed, flung the phone on the back seat and went to look for the spare tyre and the jack. Lifting the tyre wasn’t easy. He managed to stand it upright and rotate it out of the boot and onto the roadside. Georgina’s instruction book was in the glove compartment. He had a look and tried assembling the jack. At the sixth attempt he fathomed how to open it and slot it into the jacking point. There was a handle to turn: no problem if your back was functioning normally. But by degrees he succeeded in getting the punctured tyre clear of the ground and faced the next ordeal of using the wrench to loosen the wheel bolts.

No one looked like stopping. He couldn’t blame them. It would be dangerous to park anywhere near.

Could have been raining, he told himself to raise morale while freeing the first of those bolts. The raised morale didn’t last long. The swearing got stronger as he applied himself to the task, regardless of what further damage it would do to his back. He removed them all and with a supreme effort lifted off the damaged wheel and hoisted up the spare and shoved it into place.

Nice work, Diamond, he said to himself. All it needs now is to tighten the five bolts and lower the jack. For a technophobe this isn’t a bad effort.

There was one more hitch. The bolts didn’t behave. They wouldn’t tighten properly. He kept turning the wrench and feeling resistance but they wouldn’t go all the way in.

‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

A voice behind him said, ‘In trouble, are we?’ It sounded familiar.

He turned and found himself eye to eye with the same traffic cop who’d stopped him the evening before. The sense of surprise was mutual.

‘You?’ the cop said. ‘I booked you last night. What’s this – your second car?’

‘It belongs to the Assistant Chief Constable.’

‘Oh, yes?’

He recalled that the cop hadn’t inspected his ID last night. Probably thought he was a fantasist.

‘Is it taxed?’

‘Of course. Thanks to you, I had to borrow this one and it got a puncture.’

‘On a dangerous stretch of road,’ the cop said.

‘I couldn’t help that, could I? If you’ll lend me a hand tightening these bolts I’ll be on the road again.’

‘The back’s giving trouble again, is it?’ the cop said with sarcasm.

‘That’s immaterial. The bloody bolts won’t tighten.’

The cop tried and didn’t succeed and Diamond felt justified.

‘Is that the owner’s manual on the ground?’

‘Well, it’s not the works of Shakespeare.’

‘Let’s have a look.’ The cop thumbed through the pages covering advice on changing a tyre. ‘You know what? You’re using the wrong set of bolts.’

‘No I’m not. They’re the ones I took off.’

‘These are alloy wheels.’

‘And what’s that got to do with it?’

‘What it says here. “Be sure to use the correct wheel bolt type. Light alloy wheels require different wheel bolts”. You’re trying to put on the spare with the wrong bolts. I wouldn’t mind betting there’s a different set for use with the spare. Have you looked in the box where the jack is kept?’ He went to the boot and came back in triumph with a set of bolts in an unopened bag. ‘These are at least an inch shorter. You know what you’ve been doing? Driving the bolts into the hub. Wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve done some serious damage. Did you say this car belongs to your boss?’