Peter Diamond - 09 - The Secret Hangman (9 page)

‘What – outspoken?’

‘No. Up with the times.’

On the drive back to Bath he weighed what he had heard about Danny Geaves: caring, quiet, supportive, a far cry from Corcoran’s version of the jerk who’d never shown any interest. But then you couldn’t expect Corcoran to give a glowing testimonial to the ex-lover. On the other hand, it was disputed by no one that Danny had ceased to take an interest in his daughters after Delia left him. That suggested callousness rather than caring. Perhaps the truth lay somewhere between.

13

T
hat evening he drove up the steep rise of Lyncombe Hill to where Paloma lived. He’d always thought of Lyncombe Vale as aloof from Bath, once promoted as a spa in rivalry to the city amenities, with a public house and pleasure garden grandiosely called King James’s Palace. A local legend persisted that King James II went into hiding in Lyncombe after abdicating in 1688, but the royal connection didn’t bear examination. Even so, in the jargon of estate agents, Lyncombe was still a sought-after residential area.

He saw at once that Paloma had a house better described as dreamed-of than sought-after, a three-storey building with a fine Georgian front and a cobbled drive in a large circle around well-kept lawns. Paloma’s silver Porsche was in front of the house and so was a blue Nissan Pathfinder. With a sudden dip in confidence he wondered if this evening would turn out to be a dinner party. She’d surprised him once before.

After ringing the doorbell he had a moment of near panic when he heard her say, ‘That’ll be Peter. I’ll get it.’ Visions of other guests in suits and long dresses. He’d gone for the casual look: short sleeves and light-coloured trousers.

There wasn’t time to cut and run. She was opening the door.

She did look dressy, in a black creation trimmed with pink chiffon. But her smile made him feel she’d dressed for him alone.

He handed her a bottle of red wine, a good one, they’d said at the off-licence. ‘Just in case you’re not into light American beer,’ he said.

‘Come in and meet Jerry,’ she said and added in a whisper, ‘He’s on his way out.’

So that was who she’d been talking to. Jerry was the son, he remembered. The personal trainer. He was standing in the room to the right, dark, with designer stubble. He was in faded jeans and a T-shirt. He had blue eyes like his mother and the same set of dimples when he smiled.

Diamond said, ‘How are you?’ and Jerry said, ‘Hi,’ and gripped his hand with a force that spoke of the hours in the gym.

Paloma said, ‘Jerry dropped in some shopping for me. He’s on his way to hospital.’

What can you say to that? Nothing. But you might be thinking that fit people who pushed themselves physically and got injuries shouldn’t be using the National Health Service.

‘He’s a volunteer,’ Paloma added, and Diamond took back the thought and felt mean.

‘Driving patients around?’

‘Nothing so useful as that,’ Jerry said. ‘It’s low-key stuff, mine. Mostly I go round with my book trolley, and sometimes I get lucky and I’m on tea and biscuits.’

Paloma chimed in, ‘Jerry, you make it sound as if you drink the tea yourself.’

‘I do in slack moments. It’s allowed. Are you local?’ he asked Diamond.

‘Weston.’

‘That’s local. I’ve drunk at the Old Crown.’

‘Peter is in the local police,’ Paloma said to her son. ‘At Manvers Street.’

Jerry gave one of the standard responses every off-duty copper is used to hearing. ‘We’d better watch out then.’

‘No need,’ Diamond said and trotted out the standard reassurance. ‘Like everyone else, we try and leave the job behind at the end of the day. I like a drink at the Old Crown, too.’

‘Hey, I’m obviously missing something,’ Paloma said. ‘I must try this pub.’

‘You’d love it, Mother,’ Jerry said. ‘Quaint old building. Terrace garden looking out across the Locksbrook valley. A pleasure in store, perhaps.’ He grinned at Diamond, man to man, and then looked at his watch. ‘I’d better shoot if I’m going to get round all the wards.’

Jerry wished them a good evening and left.

‘You must be proud of him,’ Diamond said to Paloma. ‘At his age my life consisted of rugby, girls and beer.’

‘I don’t know about the rugby,’ she said, ‘but I think the girls and the beer feature in his life. Still, he’s a good son. He’s always looked out for me.’

‘That’s his four-by-four, then?’ Diamond said, hearing the deep thrumming of the engine. ‘Personal training must pay all right.’

‘Jerry’s well qualified. Sports science at Loughborough. I couldn’t see where it was leading at the time, but when he got his degree it was perfect timing because everyone was suddenly into fitness. Do you think it will last? I sometimes wonder what he’ll do if everyone turns to meditation, or gardening.’

‘He’ll adapt.’

‘Yes, but to what?’

‘Teaching higher thoughts while using the treadmill.’

She laughed.

‘Or how to mow the lawn without bringing on a coronary.’

‘You wouldn’t be mocking my son’s career?’

‘Making light of your concern. His generation don’t know what the next trend is, but they take it on. I admire them. And Jerry must be OK if he gives up his time to a good cause.’

‘It’s quite a commitment,’ she said, nodding. ‘He visits most of the hospitals in the area. The books are collected mainly by young people in his church, all in nice condition. The books, I mean.’ She laughed. ‘Well, I guess the young people must be in good condition, too.’

‘He is, obviously.’

‘Yes, I suspect some of the female patients look forward to seeing him with his trolley.’

‘If he needs more books I might be able to find some.’ He’d just remembered Steph’s Agatha Christies at home. She would have wanted them used for a good cause.

‘That would be great. It’s run like a library, but they lose a fair number. It’s properly managed, though, from a depot on some trading estate. Now what about you?’ she said. ‘Are you happy in your work?’

‘Me, I’m stuck in a rut.’

‘But you like being in the police, don’t you?’

‘It’s what I do. I try and make a fist of it. Yours is the ideal job, turning your hobby into a thriving business.’

She looked pleased. ‘Want to see where it happens?’

‘I’d love to.’

She led him across the hall and up a wide staircase. The wall to their right was lined with photos of Edwardian beauties in fine clothes, but he was watching the swing of Paloma’s hips as she ascended. Maybe she took lessons from her son, because she moved well and had a good figure.

At the top was a room that must have been two large bedrooms knocked into one and they were lined with shelves. Books, filing boxes and bound magazines filled the space from floor to ceiling with an impression that everything had its place. Many were old, yet there was no smell, no sign of dust. At one end facing a window was a huge antique desk, its surface clear.

‘That’s what I use when I’m opening books, looking for items,’ she said. ‘The office bit is through here.’ She opened a door between the shelves and showed him a room set up with computer, printer and scanner, photocopier, filing cabinets and phone.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, looking at a square screen with some kind of winding gear at its base.

‘My microfilm viewer. I have a run of the
Illustrated London News
up to 1940 and various journals too big to store next door. About a thousand reels.’

‘I’m reeling, too.’

‘There’s another room with scrapbooks, but I’m not taking you in there. I’m ashamed of it. They come in all sizes and they’re the devil to keep tidy.’

‘You obviously like order,’ he said thinking of the tip that was his own work space at home.

‘Without it, I’d disappear under a million newspaper cuttings.’

‘So this is where you tracked down the Müller cut-down. It didn’t take you long.’

‘It was in one of my fashion encyclopedias. It’s funny. Top hats were supposed to be the mark of a well-dressed man, yet they have quite a sinister reputation.’

‘As worn by undertakers?’

‘True, but I’m talking about what happened to the people who made them. They treated the felt with salts of mercury, so they were breathing in poisonous fumes. They’d get the shakes and twitch. That’s how the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’ is supposed to have originated.’

‘I thought that was
Alice in Wonderland
.’

‘No it goes back a good thirty years before Lewis Carroll.’

‘I’ve learned something new, then.’

‘Shall we go downstairs? I’ve got a quiche warming up. I thought it might go nicely with the beer.’

The living quarters were on a scale he’d not often seen. The kitchen was like a Zanussi showroom, big enough for a double-door fridge to slot in among fitted units and not be noticed until Paloma took out a bowl of salad. Two trays were ready on the work surface in the centre.

‘As it’s a nice evening I thought we’d eat on the terrace.’

‘Seems a good idea,’ he said, as if he was well used to eating on terraces.

‘As I warned you in Strada the other night, I don’t have much time for cooking.’

‘Heating up the quiche is more than I do,’ he said.

‘You warm up those baked beans you told me about, don’t you?’

‘The beans, yes,’

‘So don’t undersell yourself, Peter Diamond. I have no doubt you have talents you keep well hidden.’

They took the trays through a sitting room bigger than some hotel foyers and set them outside on a wrought-iron table under a green and white striped canopy. The garden, all trimmed lawns and well-stocked borders, stretched away to a grove of beech trees. No other house was in sight.

She took champagne from an icebox and asked him to open it.

‘Funny kind of beer.’

‘You don’t have to drink it.’ She produced a can of Miller Lite from the same box.

‘I can’t let a lady drink champagne alone.’ He popped the cork and poured two glasses and handed her one. He lifted his own. ‘To my gracious hostess.’

She said, ‘You have a nice way with a woman.’

He laughed. ‘Then I must have learned something in more than fifty years.’

‘Did you go to a co-ed school?’

‘Actually, no. I grew up with a sister. That makes a difference. And I was married twelve years. Steph took me on and I won’t say she turned the frog into Prince Charming, but I’m not the yob I once was. What else? My boss is a woman of a totally different sort. I treat her as a challenge. And the best detective I ever had in my team was called Julie.’

‘No stranger to the fair sex, then. Must be useful in your work.’

‘You mean understanding the criminal mind?’

She smiled. ‘Not all women are baddies, are they?’

‘No, but I have to be on my guard.’

‘Against feminine wiles?’

‘I try not to get sidetracked.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re speaking of your work in the police?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you’ve left the job behind, as you put it to Jerry, are you just as cautious?’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I was.’

‘That’s true.’ She lifted her glass again. ‘Here’s to leaving the job behind.’

‘As often as possible.’ He lifted his and touched hers. When they’d drunk some he topped up her glass.

‘Give yourself some.’

He smiled. ‘What’s left is yours. I brought the car with me.’

‘And it wouldn’t do for a policeman to get over the limit. So you don’t actually leave the job behind.’

‘Anyone in charge of a car should watch his intake.’

‘Now you’re talking like a policeman. No, that’s unfair.’ She gave a light slap to the back of her hand. ‘I’d do precisely the same, except if I’m going for a few drinks with someone I travel by taxi.’

After they’d finished the quiche, she brought a selection of sorbets. ‘You mentioned your wife again,’ she said when she’d served them, ‘but you haven’t said much about her.’

‘Steph died three years ago,’ he said without elaborating.

‘And you told me you have no children? By choice?’

‘She miscarried several times.’

She looked at him for a moment in silence. ‘That must have been dreadful for you both.’

‘More so for Steph,’ he said, remembering, and he started to speak more freely. ‘Each time she went for four or five months and then at one routine appointment the medical professionals listened for the heartbeat or did a scan and the heart wasn’t beating.’

This time she didn’t speak at all. Her hand went to her mouth.

He hadn’t talked of these painful memories with anyone before. Here in this peaceful garden with this calm, interested woman, it was all right. It was more than that. It was a help to him. ‘They gave her a tablet to induce labour and sent her home to wait. That’s the worst time, the two days before we went back to hospital and our dead baby was born.’

‘Were they kind to her?’

‘Immensely. And after the delivery they make sure you’re kept busy with all the arrangements, the form-filling about the postmortem and funeral. Good psychology, I suppose.’

‘But the grief catches up with you?’

‘Mm.’ He exhaled quite sharply. ‘Sorry, I don’t know how I got started on this.’

‘It was me,’ she said. ‘I asked.’ She looked across the lawn without focusing on anything. ‘My experiences couldn’t be more different. Jerry was born precisely nine months after I married Gordon, the man I told you about, who dumped me later. I was a failure as a mother. Some women have this powerful maternal instinct. I’d hoped when I had the baby that the mothering, nurturing thing would magically take me over, but it didn’t. I was uncomfortable even holding the child. I didn’t want another.’ She sighed.

Blackbirds in the garden were outdoing each other in joyous song that was a counterpoint to the confidences being exchanged.

Paloma went on, ‘But then we slipped up, as they say. I opted for a termination. When you hear something like that – after your experiences – it must make you angry.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We all have to cope with what life throws at us.’

She turned to face him and her blue eyes held his for a moment. ‘In the choice versus life debate, I’d have thought you’d be pro-life.’

He shrugged. ‘In my job you see so much that’s gone wrong in families, unwanted, abused kids, that you can’t take such a firm line. I can think of situations when my values tell me abortion is morally right. But as a routine procedure, I’m not so comfortable with it.’

‘I can understand why.’

Later, when the sun and the champagne had almost sunk from view, he asked how she managed the house and garden and she said she had a treasure called Rita who was in every morning and Carl the gardener came in twice a week. Diamond praised the state of the lawns and said he thought of his own as a wild flower meadow. She took him seriously and asked if he was an environmentalist and he laughed and said he was sorry to disillusion her, but no. He’d have a show garden himself, but he lacked one vital element. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.