Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill

‘Real casualties?’

She flapped her hand. ‘A few dents and bruises. Nothing serious. If there is, I wave to the St John Ambulance man. There’s always one on hand.’

‘So you didn’t spot anyone behaving suspiciously in the battle?’

‘I’d remember if I did. It all passed off very smoothly and we had a lovely write-up in the paper. If you ask me, the Sealed Knot had nothing to do with that skeleton, whoever it is.’

If that’s the truth, he thought, I’m wasting my time here and so is Ingeborg. Soon after, he slipped out of the building and drove home.

Before ten next morning, DC Paul Gilbert called the incident room and asked to speak to the boss. There was such a rasp of excitement in the young man’s voice that Diamond moved the phone away from his ear and still heard everything. ‘Guv, I’m at Lower Swainswick with a lady by the name of Mrs Jarvie. She worships at St John’s in South Parade. She had Nadia as a house guest for two weeks in 1993. It’s proof positive that she came to Bath.’

Diamond wasn’t immune to excitement himself. His voice gave nothing away, but his arms and legs were prickling. All the years of experience didn’t suppress the adrenalin surge that came with a discovery as big as this. ‘What’s the address? I’ll come now.’

Lower Swainswick is a one-time village long since absorbed by Bath’s urban sprawl, on rising ground to the north-east. He kept telling himself to think about his driving as he headed out along the London Road and between the lines of parked cars in the built-up streets of Larkhall, but of course the reason for the trip kept breaking his concentration. This was it. The timing was right – 1993, nicely inside the time span Lofty Peake had given for the death of the skeleton woman. And it fitted what he’d learned in London about the Ukrainian call girl who’d made her escape to the West Country. This local landlady sounded like a terrific find. With any luck she’d finger Nadia’s murderer.

Paul Gilbert’s car was outside a cottage in Deadmill Lane that was almost entirely covered in clematis. The young constable himself came to the door – the man of the hour, in Diamond’s estimation.

He was a shade less triumphant than he’d sounded on the phone. ‘I’d better warn you, guv. She’s elderly – well, very old, in actual fact – only I feel sure she’s all there mentally.’

‘That’s okay, then.’

‘She’s also deaf.’

‘I can cope with that. Are you going to let me in, or do you want to go over her entire medical history?’

A sheepish smile from Gilbert. He reversed a step and started to lead the way in. Remembering something else, he turned and started up again. ‘Incidentally, I haven’t told her what happened to Nadia.’

‘If you know for sure, I wish you’d tell me,’ Diamond said.

He hadn’t got far when his eyes started to water. The cottage reeked of cat pee. Or was it curtains in need of laundering?

‘Pongs a bit.’

‘You get used to it,’ Gilbert said, leading the way through a short passage into a back room where the old lady evidently sat by day and slept by night. She was out of bed, dressed in a pink cardigan and blue tracksuit trousers and seated in a rocking-chair with a large white cat on her lap. Two tortoiseshells perched on the windowsill and a sleeping Persian had the eiderdown to itself. The odds had lengthened against the curtains as the source of the odour.

Paul Gilbert hadn’t exaggerated. Mrs Jarvie was very old. She looked halfway to heaven already. The chalk-white skin hung in overlapping folds under the eyes and below the jaw.

Gilbert introduced Diamond and the only reaction this prompted was some adjustment to the hearing aid. At least she could move her hands.

‘He wants to ask you about Nadia,’ Gilbert shouted.

The old lady opened her eyes and spoke, and it was only to say, ‘You don’t have to shout.’

‘Nadia,’ Gilbert shouted again. To Diamond he said, ‘I don’t think the hearing aid works.’

Mrs Jarvie said, ‘I was ninety-six in July.’

‘It takes an effort,’ Gilbert said to Diamond, ‘but it’s worth it.’ He moved closer. ‘Nadia, the Ukrainian girl.’

‘Are you asking about Nadia again?’ she said. ‘I told you all about her.’

‘You said she was here in 1993. Is that right?’

‘I gave her the spare room,’ Mrs Jarvie said. ‘She wasn’t with me very long. She was easier than some of my guests because she spoke good English.’

‘How do you know it was 1993?’ Confirming which year Nadia came to Bath was fundamental to the enquiry and couldn’t be bypassed, so after getting a blank look he nodded to Gilbert to come in with his toastmaster impression.

This time the message seemed to get through. ‘I had my eightieth birthday the weekend before she came. I particularly remember giving her a piece of my birthday cake and a glass of sherry when she arrived.’

‘So which year were you born?’ Diamond asked, not entirely convinced.

No reaction at all.

Gilbert rose to the challenge again.

‘I just told you,’ Mrs Jarvie said with a sigh, as if all the aggravation was coming from the visitors. ‘I’m ninety-six. If I get to a hundred I get a telegram from the Queen.’

‘Yes, but which year?’

‘Guv,’ Gilbert said.

Diamond looked to where the young DC was pointing. On a wall above the bed was a framed sampler in needlework with the letters of the alphabet and under it the words Bless this house . Julia Mary Jarvie, born 23rd July, 1913.

The mathematics checked. Somebody up there had pity on us, Diamond thought. Bless this house and bless you too, Julia Mary Jarvie. We’ve got a date to work to.

The old lady had noticed what they were looking at. ‘I worked that when I was only eight years old.’

‘Marvellous. Would you tell us about Nadia?’

‘Who?’

He raised the decibels. ‘The Ukrainian.’

‘Is it? I hardly ever go outside, and neither do the cats. They hate getting wet.’

This would not have been an easy process for a patient man, and Diamond wasn’t that. Gilbert stooped close to the old lady’s ear and repeated Nadia’s name with more success.

‘She was a refugee. What do they call them now?’

‘Asylum seeker?’

‘She didn’t have anything except the clothes she was wearing. I took her in as a Christian duty.’

‘For the church?’

‘Father Michael was always asking me to take in homeless girls. He’s crossed the River Jordan now.’

‘Popped his clogs,’ Gilbert explained in an aside, in case Diamond had missed the meaning.

Mrs Jarvie continued: ‘I must have had more than a dozen staying here over the years. Do you want to know about the others?’

As one, her visitors raised their palms to discourage her.

Diamond said to Gilbert, ‘Ask her if Nadia said anything about herself.’

This was a complex question for someone who heard about one word in five and didn’t always get that right, but this time there was a result.

‘She was working in London before she came here, but she didn’t like it there. Someone told her Bath was nice. Well, it is, isn’t it?’

‘Did she talk about her life in the Ukraine?’

She lowered her eyes and stroked the cat. ‘It was all very sad. She didn’t remember her mother and father. She grew up in an orphanage and when she got to sixteen a man came and took her away.’

This tallied closely with Vikki’s information. Any lingering doubt that they were speaking of the same Nadia could safely be dismissed. He listened keenly to every word.

‘He was a stranger, she said, and she had to go to work for him. She didn’t tell me what kind of work it was, but I had my own thoughts about that.’