This was an underestimate. It would have taken a relay of stone throwers to span the three-quarters of a mile across Horsecombe Vale, but the two places were close enough for comment.
‘Let’s go. You can do the driving.’
‘Me?’ Leaman said.
‘Why not? The phone calls must have tailed off by now.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
‘Delegate, man. The first principle of management.’
Leaman looked for the office dogsbody, Paul Gilbert, but he was busy on Agnes Tidmarsh’s statement. One of the civilian staff offered to oversee the taking of calls. ‘The boss sounds hearty,’ she said.
‘He’s expecting a result,’ Leaman said.
‘The ram raids?’
‘I should live so long.’
Combe Down was once a quarrymen’s outpost of eleven cottages to the south of the city. When Bath stone was in heavy demand for the great Georgian phase of building, the place grew into a mining village. Only after the mining industry declined in the nineteenth century were the south-facing slopes developed for suburban living, ideal, potential buyers were told, for sun-seekers and convalescents. In the second world war the Admiralty decamped from London and set up a vast establishment on the Fox Hill side. Now Combe Down is indistinguishable from Bath’s urban sprawl except that it has a hidden hazard. Its glory and its undoing is below ground, the gorgeous cream- coloured oolitic limestone that can be sawn or squared up with relative ease regardless of the alignment of the joints. Fine buildings across Britain — Buckingham Palace and Brighton’s Royal Pavilion among them — are mainly of stone mined in huge quantities from the workings there. The downside is that the 45-acre honeycomb underground created a huge problem of subsidence. Subterranean roof collapses happened too often for comfort. Something had to be done. Various schemes for infilling and reinforcement were debated for years. To complicate the problem, the mine-owners could not be held responsible; the workings were abandoned half a century before. In law, the landowners above ground owned what was — or was not — beneath them. Trying to negotiate with hundreds of house-owners was a planner’s nightmare. Finally in the twenty-first century government funds were secured for a stabilisation project and a programme of infilling with ‘foam concrete’ was started. Over a hundred miners, most of them Welshmen, had been at work for some years using timber and steel platforms. They were likely to be employed for some time yet.
The unique character of the place was on Diamond’s mind as Leaman drove them up the steep, narrow rise of Prior Park Road. What if Harry Lang had found a way into one of those disused mines and was holding Martin Steel down there? The job of finding them would be daunting and dangerous. Nobody knows the full extent of the workings. Attempts to map them are foiled by roof collapses and the waste rock dumped by the original miners. You can get a certain way if you are willing to take risks and squeeze through narrow openings, but it is a job for cavers, not policemen. For a fugitive it offers the chance of hiding up for a long time.
He hadn’t forgotten that Danny Geaves had holed up in the mine above Bathford at the Browne’s Folly quarry, a few miles east of here. Had Geaves unwittingly given his killer the idea of using these quarries?
You have to be positive in this job, Diamond told himself, or you go bananas. Maybe Lang was still above ground.
He was getting to know this area south of Bath better than he’d ever done. A sign to Lyncombe came up and he realised they were passing close to Paloma’s place. He looked forward to telling Paloma how Jerry’s help had been crucial to the inquiry, leading them directly to Lang. Better nick Lang first, though.
They linked up with Ralph Allen Drive where the gatehouse signified that this was once the carriage road to Prior Park, the quarry-owner’s Palladian villa. Not only was it graced with pillars, long since gone, but a tramway ran beside it to bring freshly mined stone from the quarries down to the river.
Half a mile on, they reached the Avenue and spotted the police car next to Harry Lang’s silver Subaru Legacy.
Diamond was muttering as he got out. If the officers who’d found the car thought they were due for a pat on the back they were mistaken.
‘Why haven’t you got tapes round this?’
‘We weren’t told, sir.’
‘Weren’t told? What have you got between your ears? You know the driver is a suspected killer. It may have been used to transport corpses. Get it done now. Have you checked for witnesses?’
‘Interesting question. In point of fact we don’t know how long the car’s been here,’ the same officer said.
Lippy. Diamond could imagine this jobsworth holding forth in the Manvers Street canteen. ‘That isn’t what I asked.’
The second constable had the sense to say, ‘No witnesses as yet, sir.’
‘So when you’ve secured the car, start knocking on doors. Soon as you find some curtain-twitcher who saw the driver, call me over.’
‘We’re supposed to be on patrol,’ motormouth said.
‘My heart bleeds.’
The two glanced at each other, no doubt wondering how this would play with their supervisor.
Diamond at a crime scene was a formidable presence. He gave them a look that ended the exchange. They went to their car to collect those tapes.
To Leaman, he said, ‘Try the boot. If it’s locked, force it.’
Leaman was bold enough to say, ‘Guv, don’t you think we should let forensics have first crack?’
‘Get with it, John.’
‘Just playing it by the book.’
‘And what does the book say if Martin Steel is in there coughing his last?’
Leaman tried the boot, found it locked and set to work with a crowbar while Diamond called for back-up, the full works, not forgetting hard hats, flashlights and the local cave-rescue team.
The doorstepping got under way while Leaman mangled the boot-lid of the car. Subaru make sturdy locks but brute force eventually triumphed. The lid sprang up. There was nobody inside.
Just a holdall with some gym kit.
Across the street one of the uniformed officers shouted, ‘Over here, sir.’
Diamond went over.
A man in a singlet and shorts was at his front door and — praise be — keen to pass on information. ‘Like I just said, I saw him drive up getting on for an hour ago. Short hair, jeans, black top. He seemed in a hurry. Went that way.’ He pointed his thumb up the street.
‘Have you seen him before?’
‘No, mate. He’s not from round here.’
‘The car?’
‘Bit flash for here.’
‘In a hurry, you say. Was he running?’
‘If he wasn’t, he was walking at a good rate.’
‘Was he carrying anything?’
‘Nothing I noticed.’
‘What’s the road to the left?’
‘Williamstowe. Doesn’t lead nowhere.’
‘Are there mines under this part?’
‘Is the Pope a Catholic? The man two doors up lost half his garden the year before last. Straight down the hole. It’s a disgrace. His kiddie could have been playing there.’
‘Where’s the nearest entrance?’
‘Try stamping your foot, mate.’
‘Proper entrance.’
‘Behind the pub, top of Firs Field. Same way the bloke went.’
They went to check. The landlord of the Hadley Arms confirmed that there was an entrance in his yard. ‘I can open it if you want and show you where the steps are, but you won’t go anywhere. It’s blocked now.’
