Upon A Dark Night

hunters. I had no idea this is such a popular thing. Getting on for fifty names, and clubs in Bath, Bristol and Chippenham. Do you think it pays?’ He was trying manfully to appear untroubled at being caught out.

‘No word from Jim Marsh?’

‘About the hair Julie found? No.’

‘Have you called him?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You finish your break, then,’ said Diamond. After a pause of merciless duration, he added, ‘Your lunchbreak, I mean.’

On the way upstairs they met Ada Shaftsbury of all people. ‘What idiot let her in?’ he muttered to Julie. Then, to Ada, with an attempt at good humour, ‘You’re out of bounds, you know. This is strictly for the Old Bill.’

Ada twitched her nose, a dangerous sign. She also took a deep breath before sounding off. ‘Do you think I’m here out of choice? Don’t you know what’s going on in your own festering nick? Well, obviously you don’t. You’re the bullshit artist who wouldn’t listen when I came in about my friend Rose. She’s all right, you said, talking down your nose at me. All done through Social Services, so there can’t be nothing wrong. What do I see now? Rose’s picture all over the papers. Missing woman. “Grounds for concern, says Superintendent Peter Diamond.” Pity you didn’t show some bleeding concern when I told you she was in trouble.’

‘Ada, this isn’t helping her. What are you doing here anyway?’

‘Like I said, you don’t even talk to each other, you lot. I was brought in. You grab an innocent woman off the street and throw garbage at her for the fun of it. Just because I’m homeless you think you can walk all over me. I’m going straight from here to see a lawyer. I’m going to get on television and tell my story.’

‘What exactly is the trouble, Ada?’

‘False arrest is the trouble. Invasion of civil liberties. Getting me in an arm-lock and forcing me into the back of one of your poky little panda cars, so I got bruises all over my body, and dragging me up here and strapping me about things I wouldn’t do if I was paid.’

‘What things?’

‘Only vandalising a car, like I’m some hopped-up kid, that’s what.’

‘What did you do – lean on it?’

‘Piss off. I didn’t do nothing. Haven’t been near the place. Stupid berk.’

‘Who are you talking about now?’

‘Him with the face-fungus. Wigwam.’

‘Chief Inspector Wigfull?’

‘I told you it was barmy letting him take over. He’s got sod-all interest in how my friend Hilde died. All he cares about is a frigging flat tyre. Bastard. Well, he’s got egg all over his mean face now, because I had a copper-bottom alibi, didn’t I? I was doing my night job.’

‘You’ve got a job?’

She sniffed and drew herself up. ‘Two nights a week, ten till six. I sit in a shabby little office in Bilbury Lane answering the phone and talking to taxi-drivers over the radio. So I’ve got ten to fifteen blokes who can vouch for me last night. They all know when I’m on duty. We have some good laughs over the short wave, I can tell you.’

‘And Chief Inspector Wigfull is investigating damaged cars now? Are you sure of this, Ada?’

‘Sure? Of course I’m bloody sure. I wasn’t brought in here for my health. I’m his number one suspect, or I was until I put him straight.’

This was difficult to believe. No officer of Wigfull’s rank looked into minor acts of vandalism unless there was an overriding reason. ‘Do you happen to know whose car it was? Not a police vehicle, I hope?’

She told him. ‘One of them people up the Crescent. Alley something, is it?’

‘Allardyce, I expect.’ Diamond was intrigued.

‘That was it and that’s why Wigwam fingered me. He reckons I got a grudge against them because of my friend Hilde dying up there. It’s not true, Mr Diamond. I don’t blame them for what happened to Hilde. I never even met them.’

Diamond turned to Julie. ‘Would you see Ada safely to the door?’

Julie gave him a mutinous look.

He explained, ‘I want to get things straight with JW. This is a development I hadn’t expected.’

Ada said, ‘Throw the book at him. He’s out of order, victimising innocent women.’

‘Come on, love,’ said Julie. ‘Don’t waste our valuable time.’

‘And you’re no better,’ Ada shouted at Diamond as she was led away. ‘What about poor Rose, then? If you lot had the sense to listen to me, you’d solve your bleeding cases and have time to spare,’ was Ada’s parting shot.

He spent twenty minutes with Wigfull, going over the implications of the slashing of Allardyce’s tyre. Now that Ada had been eliminated as the suspect, Wigfull fell back on his original theory that it had been a random act by a teenager.

Diamond was like a dog with a bone. ‘Did you ask Allardyce if he could think of anyone holding a grudge against him?’

‘I did.’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘Negative.’

‘Was he being totally honest?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Was he hiding anything? Bad feelings with someone else?’

‘Why should he?’ Wigfull said, reasonably enough. ‘If he’d wanted to keep it quiet he wouldn’t have come to me in the first place. A slashed tyre is no big deal. He could have put on the spare and got on with his life.’

‘You see, if it was deliberate, the circle of suspects is fairly small. Not many people knew where he’d left his car last night. Not many would know his car anyway. You said it was new.’

‘He’s not the sort who makes enemies of his neighbours,’ said Wigfull. ‘There’s nothing to dislike in him. The only person I could think of who might have taken against him was Ada. She’s still upset about Hildegarde Henkel’s death at the party they had, and she’s an unstable personality anyway, but she’s got this alibi for last night. I really think we’re wasting our time talking about it.’

Diamond carried on as if nothing had been said. ‘Is the car still up there at the Circus?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did you go to see it?’

‘What would have been the point?’

He picked up Wigfull’s phone. ‘Get me William Allardyce, will you?…The Crescent, yes.’

Wigfull tapped his fingers on the desk and looked out of the window at the early evening traffic jam, trying to appear nonchalant while listening keenly to Diamond’s end of the conversation.

‘Who is this?…Mrs Allardyce. Peter Diamond here, from Bath Police…He isn’t? Well, I have the pleasure of speaking to you instead. I was perturbed to hear about the damage to your husband’s car this morning…After you’d left for work? You must start early. Of course, you do. I forget the television runs right through the day. Personally I prefer the radio in the morning…Do you have a car of your own?…I agree. The train is much the best way to travel if you can…Yes, it only just reached my attention. We’re having a meeting about it right now. Tell me, has he had the tyre fixed yet?…He has? No use me trotting up to the Circus to look at the damage, then…I dare say the filming has finished in the Crescent, so he’ll be able to park in his usual spot tonight…These things happen, sadly, but I think it’s unlikely. Just in case, I’ll ask our night patrol to keep a lookout…No trouble at all. Just tell him we’re working on it, would you? Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Perturbed, are you?’ said Wigfull.

‘Yes, John, I am. Let me know if you get any further with it, won’t you?’

He returned to the incident room, now transformed into a bustling workplace. Halliwell had a message from Jim Marsh: would Mr Diamond call if convenient?

‘If convenient?’ He snatched up the phone and got through. ‘Well, John?’

‘It’s a match, Mr Diamond. The hair from the clothing comes from the same individual as the two hairs found at the scene of the murder.’