Soon enough, the outlines of the object were revealed.
‘It
‘A tibia,’ Ingeborg said.
Soon some foot bones were unearthed at the lower end of the tibia.
‘Can we get someone else clearing at the top end where the skull is?’ Diamond asked. The painstaking progress frustrated him.
‘We’ll do this in our own good time,’ Duckett said. ‘In all probability it’s been here for hundreds of years. An hour or two more isn’t going to make much difference.’
Almost as if it was done to provoke the police, the excavation slowed. Brushes, rather than trowels, were being used. At regular intervals photos were taken.
‘What time is it?’ Duckett eventually asked.
‘Three thirty, just gone,’ Diamond said.
‘Is it, by Jove? Take a break, people. We’ve been going two hours.’
‘You’re on a job,’ Diamond said.
‘Yes, and it’s back-breaking work. You should try it.’
‘All right, then.’
‘I didn’t mean that literally.’
The police were forced to watch the CSI team sit down, open their flasks and look at newspapers. Suspicion hung in the air that the break was being prolonged just to spite Diamond. ‘At this rate, we’ll be here all night,’ he said to Halliwell.
‘I heard that,’ Duckett said, looking up from his crossword. ‘You don’t have to worry. We stop at five.’
‘
‘Terms and conditions of employment. We’re a private firm. Will you be guarding the site overnight?’
‘He’s winding you up, guv,’ Halliwell said.
‘I think he means it,’ Ingeborg said.
Duckett hadn’t finished. ‘Now that we’ve located remains, we’ll need to put up a tent to screen off the trench.’
‘How long will that take?’ Diamond asked.
‘Half an hour, no more.’
‘We can do that, me and my officers.’
‘No, thanks. Not while we’re at work in the trench.’
‘But you’re not in the trench now.’
‘It’s a specialised job.’
‘What – putting up a bloody tent? Ridiculous.’
‘This isn’t one of your boy scout tents, officer. This is a metal-framed inflatable job, property of the firm. I can’t allow any untrained person to handle it.’
Diamond was about to erupt, but Halliwell said, ‘Leave it, guv. He’s going to have the last word whatever you say.’
‘How do they find these people?’
The break came to an end about four. Ingeborg phoned the station to get a man out to guard the site.
‘I was expecting answers by now,’ Diamond said, pacing the turf. ‘All I’m getting is high blood pressure.’
After another twenty minutes there was a clicking sound from the trench. Duckett was snapping his fingers.
Ingeborg said, ‘I think he’s asking for you.’
‘He’s asking for something, that’s for sure,’ Diamond muttered.
He went over. More of the skeleton had been revealed, enough to see that the leg bones were at an angle, as if the body had lain on its side in a foetal position.
Work on the dig was about to stop for the day. More photographs were being taken and one of the CSI team was unloading the protective tent from the van.
Diamond stood over the trench with arms folded. ‘You’ve got something to tell me?’
‘Only if you’re still interested,’ Duckett said. ‘You asked about the skull. There isn’t one – not where it ought to be, anyway. This would appear to be a headless corpse.’
That evening Peter Diamond had a pub meal with Paloma Kean, the one woman he’d been out with since his wife Steph had died six years ago. Their friendship – still more of a friendship than a relationship, although they’d slept together – had got them both through a testing beginning and tough times since. They drew strength from each other. She understood his moods, his brash manner, even his conviction that no one would ever replace Steph as the ideal woman. And he treated Paloma with the warmth that sprang from a shared sense of humour and physical attraction.
They managed to get a candlelit table on the patio at the Hop Pole, in Albion Buildings, off the Upper Bristol Road. This warm summer evening had brought out drinkers and diners in large numbers. With a pint of Barnstormer real ale in front of him and steak pie on order, Diamond was more expansive than usual, telling Paloma about his frustrating day.
‘You got out of the office, anyway,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘It wasn’t a bad day to be getting some fresh air.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘A simple walk across the down would have been very agreeable. Instead, we were standing around like dummies all afternoon in the hope that the crime scene people would find something.’
‘Well, they did.’
‘In the end.’
‘It could have been worse, then.’
He gave a grudging nod.
‘Personally, I like Lansdown,’ Paloma said, doing her best to lighten his mood. ‘The history isn’t as obvious as it is down here among all the old buildings, but you get a sense of it whichever way you look.’
‘The Civil War, you mean?’
‘The Civil War, ‘Not just that.’
‘Iron Age settlements?’
Her eyes widened. ‘You have hidden depths.’
‘I was briefed today by Ingeborg, our pet culture vulture.’
‘Did she mention Beckford’s Tower?’
He’d often driven past the folly towards the city end of the hill, two miles from the crime scene. On the hill today he’d noticed its octagonal gilt lantern on the skyline catching the sunlight. ‘He was a weirdo, wasn’t he, William Beckford?’
‘An extremely rich weirdo,’ Paloma said. ‘I provided some costume drawings for a TV company doing a documentary on him, so I read the books.’ She had amassed a huge collection of archive material on historical costume and built a successful company much used by the lucrative film and television markets. ‘An amazing man. He had a much taller tower built at his family seat, at Fonthill Abbey, twice the height of Nelson’s Column. Can you imagine that?’
‘A Victorian skyscraper.’
‘Pre-Victorian. Early nineteenth century. But it lasted only about thirty years. Soon after he sold up, it collapsed.’
‘Why?’
‘Poor building, bad foundations, something like that. He’d moved to Bath by then.’
‘He wasn’t so daft, then.’
‘Weird, but not daft.’
‘You’re well up on all this.’
