Dana Didrikson's bedroom revealed little about the character of its owner, unless it was that she was tidy- minded and self-effacing. Emulsioned walls in the magnolia shade so popular with decorators. Fitted shelves, wardrobes and a double bed. Free-standing dressing table. A wall-to-wall carpet in a neutral stone colour. And matching curtains. No pictures, photos, books, stuffed animals or discarded clothes. Perhaps the reason why it so resembled a hotel room was that Mrs Didrikson's work as a chauffeur allowed her little time for anything but sleeping there.
She took a bag from the top shelf of the wardrobe and put in a few things. 'Now may I pack a bag for Matthew?'
Diamond gave his consent. He could hear Wigfull still on the phone downstairs.
They had to go up another flight to the boy's room, which had a more lived-in look. Cardboard birds and bats, made from modelling kits, were strung from the ceiling. Pop posters adorned the walls and socks and record- sleeves were scattered about the floor. An unfinished chess game stood on the top of a desk. Decidedly more lived- in, not least because its occupant was lying on the bed behind the door.
'Mat – I thought you were out,' his mother said. 'I called out and you didn't answer.'
He was on his stomach leafing through a comic, only his dark hair visible. He didn't look up. dark hair visible. He didn't 'Mat – do you hear me?'
Still without turning to look at her, the boy said, 'They're the fuzz. They knocked me over and forced their way in. I asked them for a warrant, but they took no notice.'
'Knockedyoa over?'
Diamond explained, 'I pushed him aside when he aimed a kick at me.'
'Against the wall,' Matthew stated vehemently. 'You bashed my head against the wall and knocked me over.
What do you want, anyway?'
'Your mother is going to give us some help with a matter we're investigating,' Diamond said, expressing it more sensitively than he thought the kid's attitude deserved. This looked a prime example of a boy in want of a father's authority and playing hell with his hapless mother. He went out to the landing and called downstairs, 'John, the kid's up here. He was here all the time.'
Back in the boy's bedroom, Mrs Didrikson was explaining to her son why it would be necessary for him to spend a night at school. Matthew made an unsuccessful appeal to be allowed to remain alone in the house, then turned his back on everyone and went back to his comic. His mother packed a bag for him, watched indulgently by Diamond, who felt a stirring of pity for the kid, in spite of everything. One night as a boarder was likely to be an underestimate.
PART FOUR
Dana
Chapter One
THIS IS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED to Geraldine Jackman, isn't it? You want to know how I got involved with the Jackmans. I'm willing to talk about it now, if you'll let me tell it in my own way, but this is going to be quite an effort for me. I'm not one of those twittering women who broadcast their life stories to everyone in the supermarket queue. By nature I'm a private person, which sounds like a way of keeping people at a distance and often is, but I wouldn't describe myself as shy, which always makes me think of a five-year-old covering her face at a birthday party. It's more true to say that it doesn't come naturally to me to confide in anyone else. As a result, I'm sometimes accused of being unfriendly, or stand-offish. I constantly struggle to break out of it because, believe me, when you're a single parent, you have to speak up for yourself and your child.
After Sverre, my former husband, left me three years ago, I drove taxis, and you might think that was a peculiar way for a social misfit to earn a living. Actually it was my salvation. I learned to put up a front and shelter behind it. I could hear myself playing the part of the taxi driver and saying these mundane things about the traffic and the tourists and what I'd just heard on the radio, knowing all the time that the real me was a million miles back from the action. None of it touched me personally. But this situation is another thing altogether. Blood from a stone.
All right, let's plunge in. At the time I met the Jackmans I'd given up the taxi-driving. I had a job as chauffeur with Mr Stanley Buckle, the managing director of Realbrew Ales. That's how I got to drive the Mercedes. It doesn't belong to me.
I was offered the job by Mr Buckle himself one evening when he used my cab for a trip from Bath to his home in Bristol. On a few previous occasions he had been my passenger and I'd got into conversation and found him pleasant enough, with just a suggestion of the mild flirting a woman cabbie gets from middle-aged males. Nothing I could take exception to. At that time I didn't know he was the Realbrew boss. I had a vague idea he had stakes in several businesses in Bath and Bristol, and of course I'd seen his beautiful house overlooking Clifton College, so I was pretty certain he wasn't stringing me along when he offered me the job. At the end of the run home, he simply asked me how much I took in fares in a good week and offered to match it with a regular salary in return for a six- day week and no nights. I would be allowed to use the company car whenever I wished, as long as I kept an accurate log of mileage.
I didn't hesitate. The taxi-driving had been a living, but it was a treadmill. Until that evening I'd seen no possibility of escape.
Of course you know about my son's fortunate rescue from drowning last July. You'll have heard about it from Greg – Professor Jackman. That was one of the most horrible days in my life, and not just because of what happened to Mat. I was in trouble with the police before I even heard about Mat. Not here in Bath, or you'd have known about it, wouldn't you?
I'm sorry. This doesn't sound very coherent, does it? I'd better tell you exactly how that day turned out, because it all links up with what happened later on.
Early in the morning, Mr Buckle rang me. He needed the car, so would I drive over to his house at Clifton by 9 a.m.?
This usually meant that he was making a business trip to London, and wanted to be ferried to Bristol Parkway in time to catch the train; the InterCity service was a full hour quicker than a belt along the motorway. But when I arrived at the Buckle residence that morning I had to revise my ideas. It was building up to be a really hot day, by the way. Not a cloud in the sky. The Filipino maid escorted me to the rear of the house, where my boss, flaunting a straw hat, powder-blue shorts and mirror sunglasses, was stretched out on a lounger beside the swimming pool. The only concession to business was a cellphone within arm's reach on the paving. He waved me towards a metal chair.
Mr Buckle was in a mood to match the weather. He apologized for bringing me out so early and offered me a fresh grapefruit juice. Then he asked me if my son had got his Common Entrance result yet.
I told him Mat wasn't taking the exam until next year when he'd be thirteen.
He said, 'In that case, take a tip from me, Dana. Give him a rest from books now. Let him get out and enjoy the summer.'
I nodded. Men are always giving me advice I don't ask for, as if male solidarity requires that Mat doesn't end up as that reviled creature, a mother's boy.
With that off his chest, Mr Buckle pitched his voice lower. 'The reason I asked you to come is confidential.' To reinforce the point he tapped the side of his nose. 'Family jewels, right?'
I shaped my mouth into an 'O' that was meant to imply that I understood without agreeing to anything.
'Far be it from me to lead young ladies off the straight and narrow,' he confided to me with a wolfish grin. The irony was that he was right. Charmian, the tigress he lived with, would claw out his vitals at the swerve of a roving eye. She'd made that very clear to me the first time we had met. 'What I'm proposing is rather naughty,' Mr Buckle went on. 'You're a Realbrew driver, and the Merc is a Realbrew car, but I have other stakes in business, as I'm sure you know. I want to borrow you for the day, so to speak. There's a small consignment of goods awaiting
