“Don’t you remember anything?” he chided her. “It’s where Jake Pinkerton has his recording studio. In the woods at Conkwell.”
She said icily, “I wasn’t there when you interviewed Pinkerton. “
“Where were you, then?”
“Don’t you remember?” She echoed his words of a moment before, without adding the “anything.” “I was sent to meet Prue Shorter, much to my disappointment. I haven’t ever spoken to a pop star.”
“You didn’t miss anything special,” he said.
She inhaled sharply. “Ten years ago I would have scratched your eyes out for saying that. I had him on a poster in my bedroom.”
“Was that a four-poster?”
She thawed and laughed. “At the time, I wouldn’t have minded.”
“They’re dumbos, most of these pop stars.”
“He must know how many beans make five to have survived this long.” She joined the right-hand stream of traffic that was waiting to cross the bridge. “So you’re willing to gamble that Jake Pinkerton is the fellow who helped Britt over this problem, whatever it was?”
“Gamble-no,” said he. “It’s a mathematical certainty. We know this person was a friend, male, lives locally, was in a position to help and knew Britt a couple of years before the murder. How many points of similarity is that?”
She declined to answer.
“It’s all coming together,” Diamond said. “Seeing those young girls with their roses at the horse funeral reminded me of something Pinkerton told me. He said some idiot-some nerd, I think, was the word he used-sent a dozen red roses to Britt’s funeral. So Pinkerton was in my mind, you see.”
“Nerd is probably right,” said Julie. “How insensitive!”
“Unless it was deliberate,” Diamond said. “Unless the murderer sent them.”
“Is that likely?”
“I don’t know about likely, but it’s possible.” He looked ahead, at the line of cars. “Move it. The lights are changing. We’re dealing with the kind of weirdo who turns a corpse into a flower arrangement, so what’s strange about sending more roses to the funeral?”
After Windsor Bridge the traffic was moving again, but remained heavy. They progressed steadily along the Lower Bristol Road as far as Widcombe Hill, then made the shortcut over Claverton Down only to find another tailback at the bottom of Brassknocker, where it linked with the A36. Diamond was drumming his fingers on the head restraint in front of him. “Do we have a torch on board?” he asked.
“I haven’t looked,” said Julie.
“We’re going to need a torch.”
In motion again, they made a detour to the post office in Limpley Stoke and bought a serviceable lamp with a good beam that they tested on the wall of the pub across the street. By now it was pitch dark outside.
“Do you know the way from here?” Diamond asked, as Julie was turning the car.
“I think I can get you to Conkwell,” she said. “I’ve often passed the sign on the Winsley Road.”
“There’s a good walk to Conkwell,” he said. “You start at the Dundas Aqueduct and make your way across a field and up a steep track through the woods. Not today, though.”
Another insight into his private life? “I didn’t know you were a walker,” Julie remarked.
“My neighbor,” he explained. “Boots, knapsack, flat cap, walking stick, the lot. What a pillock!”
They located the turn and started up a one-track lane between high hedges. A mist was making driving difficult; the full beam of the headlight simply exaggerated the effect. Julie settled for dipped lights, giving visibility of twenty yards or so. Driving at forty in these conditions seemed an act of folly. The lane was so narrow that they couldn’t even have passed a cyclist. Summoning some self-control, Diamond was silent, allowing Julie to concentrate. He was playing his own mind-game of willing all other traffic to stay clear of this small lane for the next five minutes, and simultaneously willing Julie to keep her foot on the accelerator.
A mile or so along the lane they reached a cluster of buildings. A sign warned that there was no turning point in the lane to their left, so they drove onto a verge and got out. The lamp was about to prove its worth.
Conkwell is a hamlet of stone-built cottages stacked a hundred and fifty feet up the steep escarpment of the Avon valley. By day it is a joy to visit, by night daunting. At this early stage of the evening there were lights at several windows. Diamond knocked at one of the first they came to and asked the elderly man who came to the door to direct them to the recording studio. The old fellow knew what they were asking about. It was a walk of less than a mile, they were told, but he wouldn’t advise going through the wood after dark.
They thanked him and ignored his advice, taking a footpath that looked as if it might lead into someone’s garden, yet presently brought them into Conkwell Wood. With the flashlight picking out the path, Diamond strode ahead, forcing his feet through inches of leaves. “At certain times of the year, you can still hear nightingales,” he informed Julie, as if he were leading a nature ramble, then added, “so my neighbor told me.” The only sound on this particular evening was the steady drone of traffic across the valley cruising along the A36. Occasionally they saw the moving headlights, for the wood dipped sheerly to their right.
Diamond was still on his nightingale theme. “These days, in this neck of the woods, you’re more likely to have your eardrums blasted by rock music.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Julie told him. “The studio must be soundproofed.”
Every few steps, he raised the torch beam to see what was ahead, but for the present there was no variation in the tree trunks and bushes except that some of the trees were dead and had fallen at odd angles against the branches of others and become festooned with creepers. The path was reasonably clear thanks to regular use by walkers and horse riders, but there was thick scrub on either side, mainly of brambles. Once they disturbed a roosting bird and sent it screeching in search of a safer place.
After some minutes of careful walking, because hidden rocks were a real hazard, they passed a six-foot chain-link fence with a triple band of barbed wire along its top. Examination with the flashlight revealed that it was too thick in rust to have been erected by Jake Pinkerton, who had built his studio in the mid-eighties. The path skirted the fence, so they moved on.
Pinkerton’s fence, when it came in sight, was taller, clear of rust, and electrified along the top. The name of a security firm was displayed at intervals. They walked around it looking for the entrance. From time to time Diamond waved the flashlight across a section of the interior.
“Looking for something in particular?” Julie asked.
“Maybe,” he muttered. “But it’s going to be well hidden.”
“Difficult with a torch.”
“Yes.”
A moment later, almost at the highest point of the wood, they activated a double set of floodlights. Dazzled and immobilized as rabbits on a motorway, they had found the entrance. A respectably wide road led up to the studio.
“So I needn’t have ruined these shoes,” Julie commented in an effort to reduce the whole expedition to basics and restore her nerve.
Diamond wasn’t listening. He had found a box with a two-way communication system and a surveillance camera above it. “Police,” he said after the speaker had crackled, “for Mr. Jake Pinkerton.”
“Mr. Pinkerton has left,” came the answer.
“We’d still like to come in.”
“Wait for the barrier, then.”
They passed through a security gate. Ahead, a man in a silver-buttoned black uniform and peaked hat opened a door and asked if he could be of some assistance-but in a manner that made clear that the “some” was meant as a limitation rather than infinite generosity.
“I’m sure you can,” said Diamond, who in his time had done a similar job and knew about dealing with visitors without appointments. “This is Inspector Hargreaves and my name is Diamond. Show him your ID, Julie, would you? How long ago did Mr. Pinkerton leave?”
“At least an hour.”
“Was he going home?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
