Upon A Dark Night

On his return to Manvers Street Police Station, Diamond was handed a message from the Forensic Science Lab. Tests on the blood sample taken from the dead woman found at the Royal Crescent on Sunday morning had proved negative for drugs and so low for alcohol that she could not have drunk much more than a glass of wine. He gave a told-you-so grunt. Hildegarde Henkel had not fallen off that roof because of her physical state.

The phone had been beeping steadily since he came in. He picked it up and heard from the desk sergeant that ‘some nerd’ had come in an hour ago in response to the appeal for information about the party up at the Crescent.

‘What do you mean – “some nerd”?’

‘A member of the public, then, sir. Sorry about that.’

‘Sergeant, I’m not complaining. I only want to know what makes him a nerd.’

‘The impression I got, Mr Diamond. I could be mistaken.’

‘You could, but now that you’ve dumped on this public-spirited person, you’d better be more specific.’

‘Well, I think he’s harmless.’

‘A weirdo?’

‘That’s a bit strong.’

‘A nerd, then.’

‘That about sums it up, sir.’

‘Wasting our time?’

‘I wouldn’t know that.’

He said with a sigh, ‘Have him brought up. I’ll see him now.’

‘Not possible, sir. He wouldn’t wait. There was no one here to see him at the time, Mr Wigfull being out and DI Hargreaves as well.’

‘So you didn’t even get a statement?’

“He said he’d be in the Grapes if you wanted to talk to him.’

Diamond made a sound deep in his throat that mingled contempt and amusement in equal measure. ‘That’s why he couldn’t wait. Urgent business at the Grapes. This isn’t a nerd, Sergeant, it’s a barfly. What name does he go under?’

‘Gary Paternoster.’

‘God help us. What’s that – South African?’

Before going out, he phoned the pathologist, Jim Middleton.

‘You got those blood-test results, then,’ Middleton’s rich Yorkshire brogue came down the line, confident that he knew the reason for the call.

‘On the woman, yes,’ Diamond said.

‘So did I. No drugs and very little alcohol, which greatly simplifies your job, doesn’t it?’

‘This isn’t about her. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a question about the other PM you did this morning.’

‘The old farmer? Fire away.’

This required tact from Diamond; the medical profession don’t like laymen giving them advice. ‘I was thinking over what you said, about it being unusual in suicides, aiming the muzzle under the chin.’

‘This one was the first I’ve come across,’ Middleton confirmed, ‘but there’s always something new in this game.’

‘He must have had a long reach. I had a look at the gun earlier. The distance from muzzle to trigger is twenty-eight inches.’

‘Actually, he was on the short side.’A pause. ‘You’ve got a point there, my friend.’ The tone of that ‘my friend’rather undermined the sentiment. ‘I’d better check my measurements.’

‘When the body was found, there wasn’t any sign that he was tied to the chair,’ Diamond started to say.

‘Hold on,’ said Middleton. ‘What the fuck are you suggesting, inspector?’

‘Superintendent.’

‘What?’

‘Peter will do. Is it conceivable that this was set up to look like a suicide when it was something else?’

There was another awkward silence before Middleton said, ‘I found no marks of ligatures, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘He was in a wooden armchair,’ Diamond said. ‘If his arms were pinioned in some way to the chair, he’d be helpless. He was in his seventies.’

‘I said I found no marks.’

‘He was wearing several layers of clothes: jacket, pullover, shirt and long-sleeved vest. If a ligature was over the clothes, would the pressure marks show through?’

‘You’re bloody persistent, aren’t you? It depends how tight this theoretical ligature was, but, no, it need not. This was a corpse after a week of putrefaction. We’re not dealing in subtleties at that stage. What are you suggesting – that he was trussed up for slaughter and then untied after death?’

Twenty minutes and a brisk walk later, Diamond entered the pub in Westgate Street where the Allardyces and the Treadwells had begun their celebrations on the fateful Saturday night. Not many were in. Six-fifteen this Tuesday evening was too early for the youthful regulars who nightly turned the Grapes into Bath’s hottest drinking spot. The sound from the music system was well short of the decibels it would reach later, but still loud for a man whose peaks of listening came on Radio Two.

He sauntered through the narrow low-beamed bar with its low-watt electric lights masquerading as oil-lamps. The dark wood panelling and antique paintings lived up to the claim, inscribed along a crossbeam, that the present facade dated from the seventeenth century; the fruit machines on every side undermined the impression. He saw the TV set at the far end of the bar that must have given the Treadwells and the Allardyces the news of their lottery success. There were bottled drinks he’d never heard of on display behind the bar. A man of his maturity stood out in this place, he thought. Anyone expecting a visitor from the police ought to give him a second glance. No one did. He strolled the length of the bar eyeing all the lone drinkers. He was beginning to take against Gary Paternoster before having met him, which was stupid. This one might be a nerd, and a barfly into the bargain, but he had gone to the trouble of calling at the nick. He could be about to provide the information that would nail a killer.

So quit racing your motor, Diamond told himself. Watch your blood pressure.

He asked a barmaid for help.

‘Dunno, love, but it could be him over there, under the fish.’

The fish was a trompe l’oeil, a pike carved in wood to look as if it was in a showcase. It was mounted on the wall near the door. Alone at a table, a youth sat like a more convincing stuffed specimen, staring ahead with glazed eyes. He was in a suit, a businessman’s three-piece, navy blue with a faint white pinstripe. He had an old-fashioned short-back-and-sides and owlish glasses. When Diamond spoke his name, he jerked and stood up.

‘Take it easy,’ Diamond told him. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘Lemonade shandy.’

A pained expression came over Diamond’s features. It was a long time since he’d come across anyone drinking shandy. The very notion of mixing good beer with lemonade…

In his innocence Gary Paternoster added, ‘But one is enough for me, thank you, sir.’

Diamond went back to the bar and collected a pint of best bitter for himself, a chance to focus his thoughts. This wasn’t the class of nerd he’d expected. This was a throwback to some time in the dim past when kids in their teens respected their elders and stayed sober and wore their Sunday best for talking to the police. Did it matter? Not if the boy was reliable as a witness.

At the table again, he perched uncomfortably on a padded stool with his back to a fruit machine called Monte Carlo or Bust and said, ‘Didn’t you want to wait at the nick, Mr Paternoster?’

A nervous smile. ‘To be honest, they made me a little uncomfortable. Not the police officers. Some of the people who came in.’

‘I don’t blame you. They give me the creeps. So you offered to wait here. More relaxing, eh?’ They were sitting under a throbbing loudspeaker that didn’t relax Diamond much, but the music did guarantee that their conversation wasn’t overheard.

‘This was the only place I could think of. It’s mentioned in the newspaper.’ The boy took a cutting from his top