The two-box was a source of much interest for Diamond. He could see a plausible explanation for the digging at the farm. If some treasure-hunter had ambitions of finding a hoard, the most promising site, surely, would be one that had already yielded a famous find, and the best machine for the job was the two-box. And if the site- owner was a stubborn old farmer who steadfastly refused to allow anyone on his land, the first opportunity would have come after his death.
Was it, he wondered, sufficient motive for murder?
‘Have you sold any of these things in the last year or so?’
‘Two-boxes? No. This hasn’t been in the shop long.’
‘Can people hire them?’
‘I suppose we might come to an agreement, but we haven’t up to now.’
‘You just have, Gary. I’ll send someone to collect it.’
Twenty-five
‘Up and running,’ Keith Halliwell announced with some pride.
Nobody was quicker than Halliwell at furnishing an incident room. Phones, radio-communications, computers and filing cabinets were in place. The photos and maps from the briefing session were rearranged on an end wall. Two civilian computer operators were keying information into the system. Having ordered all this, Diamond could not allow himself to be intimidated by it, even though he was a computer-illiterate. He mumbled some words of appreciation to Halliwell and even dredged up a joke about hardware: he hadn’t seen so much since his last visit to the ironmonger’s. The younger people didn’t seem to know what an ironmonger’s was, so it fell flat. Then he spotted Julie sitting with a phone against her ear. He went over. Telephones he could understand.
‘Who are you on to?’
She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Acton Turville Post Office. Gladstone used to collect his pension from there. They’re checking dates.’
‘When you come off…’
She nodded, and started speaking into the phone again.
In the act of moving towards the sergeant who was handling press liaison, Diamond caught his foot under a cable and cut off the power supply to the computers.
‘Who the blazes did that?’ said one of the civilian women when her screen whistled and went blank. She was new to the murder squad.
‘I did, madam,’ he told her. ‘I almost fell into your lap. Next time lucky.’
‘You great oaf.’ Clearly she had no idea who she was addressing.
Halliwell zoomed over to prevent a dust-up. ‘I should have warned you, sir.’
‘About this abusive woman?’
‘About the cable. It needs a strip of gaffer tape.’
‘Bugger the cable,’ said Diamond. ‘She thinks you should tape the gaffer.’
‘His mouth, for starters,’ said the woman, before it dawned on her who this great oaf was.
With timing that just prevented mayhem, Julie finished on the phone and called across, ‘He last drew his pension on September 18th.’
‘In cash?’
‘He used to cycle in to Acton Turville once a week. He’d do some shopping and then cycle back.’
Stepping more carefully than before, he moved between the desks to where Julie was. ‘Didn’t anyone notice when he stopped coming in?’
‘Sometimes he would let it mount up for two or three weeks. People do.’
‘How would he manage for shopping?’
‘Tinned food, I suppose. The chickens supplied him with eggs. And another thing, Mr Diamond. I’ve called all the local banks and building societies and none of them had any record of him as an account-holder.’
He glanced up at the clock. ‘What time is my press conference?’
‘Two-fifteen, sir,’ the press liaison sergeant told him. ‘The hand-outs are ready if you want to see them. Everyone gets a head-and-shoulders of Rose.’
He scanned the press release. ‘Fine.’ He turned back to Julie. ‘There’s time for you to drive me out to Westbury. A pub lunch with the double-barrels.’
‘The who?’
‘Dunkley-something. The people who ran into Rose on the A46. Oh, and there will be another passenger, a scene of crime officer.’
The ex-mayor and his lady were, as Diamond anticipated, having a liquid lunch at the Westbury Hotel. The barmaid pointed them out at one of the tables under the Spy cartoons, a grinning, gnome-ish man opposite a dark-haired woman wearing enough mascara for a chorus-line.
‘We’ll leave you here at the bar,’ Diamond said quietly to Jim Marsh, the SOCO he had recruited for this exercise. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘It had better be a grapefruit juice, sir.’
‘God help us. What are you – a blood-pressure case?’
‘I’m working, sir.’
The affable mood at the table changed dramatically when Diamond announced who he was and introduced Julie.
The gnome, Ned Dunkley-Brown, reddened and said, ‘I told you we hadn’t heard the last of it, Pippa. All that malarkey about things spoken in confidence.’
His wife said, ‘Ned, I think we should hear what they have to say.’ She gave Diamond a patronising stare. ‘My husband is an ex-mayor of Bradford on Avon. He served on the police committee.’
‘But that was Wiltshire County,’ said Dunkley-Brown. ‘These officers are from Bath.’
‘Avon and Somerset,’ she corrected him.
‘Now we’ve got that straight,’ Diamond said, under some strain to stay civil with this couple, ‘I’d like to hear about the evening you had the accident on the A46. That’s inside our boundary, by the way.’
‘Accident?’ shrilled Pippa Dunkley-Brown, folding her thin arms.
‘Don’t say another word,’ Dunkley-Brown commanded his wife. ‘No comment.’
Diamond took a long, therapeutic swig of beer. ‘We’re not from Traffic Division, sir. We’re CID. People’s mistakes at the wheel are someone else’s pigeon.’
The Dunkley-Browns exchanged looks.
‘We’re investigating the young woman you met that evening. Called herself Rose.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Dunkley-Brown in a faraway tone.
‘She’s a mystery all round. Lost her memory, or so she claimed. And now she’s missing.’
Pippa Dunkley-Brown was still coming to terms with an earlier statement. ‘What do you mean – “mistakes at the wheel”? There was no question of a mistake.’
‘Leave it,’ said Dunkley-Brown through his teeth. The training in local politics took over as he diverted along the safer avenue. ‘Missing, you say. But she was in here speaking to us, with a large woman.’
‘Ada Shaftsbury, yes. Rose hasn’t been seen since the day you spoke to them.’
Julie put in quickly, ‘We’re not accusing you of anything.’
‘I should damned well hope not!’ said the wife.
Indifferent to the mood of mild hysteria, Diamond explained patiently, ‘We’re retracing Rose’s movements, as far as they’re known. It all started with you meeting her on the road and transporting her to the hospital. We don’t know anything about her before that evening.’
‘Nor do we,’ said Dunkley-Brown. ‘She was unconscious.’
‘Unconscious when she walked into the road?’
‘Not then, but after. We didn’t get a word out of her. We took her to the nearest hospital.’
‘Hospital car park.’ In spite of his efforts Diamond was getting increasingly irritated with this couple.
Julie said, ‘Did she appear to be waving you down?’
