he said when she got inside. ‘I’m supposed to be watching my weight. Haifa grapefruit and some toast for breakfast. I was fading fast.’
‘A diet?’ said Julie, surprised.
‘Nothing so drastic.’ He forked up another mouthful. ‘Just being sensible. Doctor’s orders.’
‘I see.’ Really, she didn’t see at all. Diamond kept away from doctors. And missing his cooked breakfast was on a par with the Pope cutting Mass. She explained about the detour with the German woman.
‘Probably wanting to find Marks and Spencer,’ he said amiably. The omelette was improving his mood. ‘They come over here and buy all their underwear at M and S, Steph informs me.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘Coffee and a scone, is it?’
‘Just the coffee, thanks. She wasn’t a tourist.’’ Student, then.’
‘Different age group.’
Immediately the order had been taken, he dropped the subject of the German woman. ‘What’s the inside story on the dead farmer?’
‘You’re going to be intrigued. According to the blokes who drove out there, the place is really isolated. Only a few acres, a couple of fields. The farmhouse is a tumbledown ruin. He’s lived there all his life, just about.’
‘I got most of this from Wigfull,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t shoot the pianist – she’s doing her best,’ Julie countered. ‘There’s something he didn’t tell you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m coming to it. I haven’t even got my coffee yet. The old man has lived at this dump all his life, just about. He used to work the land and keep a few animals, but he gave up the heavy work a few years ago, when he got arthritis of the hip. Now there are a few pathetic chickens, and that’s all. The lads are not surprised he decided to end it all. They say there’s no electricity or gas. Damp everywhere, fungus growing on the ceiling.’
‘You don’t have to be so graphic. I just had a mushroom omelette.’
‘Some time last week, he sat in a chair, put the muzzle of his twelve-bore under his chin and pulled the trigger.’
‘I know that. Did he leave a note?’
‘No.’
‘Any family?’
‘They’re checking. His name was Gladstone, like the old Prime Minister.’
‘Before my time.’ He leaned back as the waitress placed a toasted teacake in front of him and served the coffee. When they were alone again, he said, ‘But what’s the ray of sunshine in this squalid story? What brought John Wigfull hotfoot from Bath?’
Julie added some milk to her coffee, taking her time. ‘They only discovered that by chance. It was pretty overpowering in the house while the pathologist was doing his stuff. One of the constables, Mike James, felt in urgent need of fresh air.’
‘A smoke, more like.’
‘Anyway, he went outside and took a stroll across the field.’
‘Found something?’
‘As I said, the land hasn’t been farmed for some years, so it was solid underfoot. He hadn’t gone far when he noticed his feet sinking in.’
‘Moles.’
‘No, Mr Diamond. Digging had taken place.’
‘Ploughing, you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘This was definitely done with a spade.’
‘The old boy buried something before he topped himself?’
‘They’re not sure. This was recent digging. It could even have been done
He paused in his eating. Julie, is that likely?’
‘You know what freshly dug soil is like,’ she said, as if Diamond spent all his weekends in gumboots. ‘After a few days the top hardens off and gets lighter in colour. Some shoots of grass appear. This wasn’t like that. Anyway, with his arthritis the old man was in no condition to dig holes.’
‘Are you saying there was more than one?’
‘Mike found another patch, yes.’
She had his full attention now. ‘I can’t picture this, Julie. Is it just a spade’s depth, like a gardener turning over the soil, or something deeper?’
‘I’m only reporting what they said. I wasn’t there. From the look of it, deep digging. Holes that had been dug and filled in.’
‘What size?’
‘I got the impression they were large. They think something could be buried there.’
‘Or someone.’ This was the head of the murder squad speculating.
Julie said, ‘All I know is that when it was reported to John Wigfull he drove out especially to look.’
‘If these are graves, I should have been told,’ said Diamond.
A couple of heads turned at the next table. ‘I think we should lower our voices,’ Julie cautioned.
‘What’s Wigfull playing at, keeping this to himself?’
‘Give them a chance. They haven’t dug anything up yet. They’ve been too busy inside the house. There are only two of them. He’s talking about sending some more fellows out with spades.’
‘Sod that for a game of soldiers.’
Overhearing the sounds of displeasure, the waitress paused at the table and asked if anything was wrong.
‘It is, my dear,’ Diamond said, ‘but it has nothing to do with the food. That was not a bad omelette, not bad at all.’
When the waitress was out of earshot, Julie said, ‘Unless they find human remains, he’s within his rights, surely. He is head of CID operations.’
‘There’s such a thing as consultation.’
Wisely, she refrained from comment.
‘I might just take a drive in that direction when I get an hour to spare,’ he said.
Some of the bored outpatients in the waiting area stirred and looked across with interest when Rose’s name was called as ‘Miss X’, but she’d been through this before. She was past the stage of embarrassment.
She was required to give samples of blood and urine – not exactly the way she had visualised the day. Another hour went by before she got in to see Dr Grombeck.
He was not the earnest, bespectacled little man she anticipated from his name. He looked as if he had wandered in after driving from London in a vintage sports car. Young, ruddy-faced and with black, unruly curls, he had the sort of smile that would have made you feel good about being told you only had hours to live. He glanced up from the card in front of him.
‘Well, Miss X, I don’t know much about you, but it seems you don’t know much about yourself.’
‘That’s right.’ She told him about waking up in the Hinton Clinic and knowing nothing at all.
‘This was when?’
‘Last Tuesday morning.’
‘That isn’t long.’ He asked her a series of questions to elicit information about her family, education and friends, and got nothing. But when he turned to matters of general knowledge like the names of the royal princes and the Rolling Stones, she supplied the answers with ease.
He enquired about her injuries and she told him about the cracked ribs and the bruising.
‘Nothing to show on the head? No sore spots?’
‘No.’ She told him Dr Whitfield’s theory that concussion can be caused by a sudden jerk of the head.
He didn’t comment. He asked to examine her head. Probing gently with his fingertips, he said, ‘You’re quite certain you were unconscious when they brought you into the Clinic?’
‘Well, I can’t be certain.’
‘Dumb question. Sorry.’ He flashed that smile. ‘That’s what they told you, is it?’
‘Yes.’
