Big money brings its own temptations.
Next question: did Harry Tasker, boring old Harry who did nothing but pound the beat and go fishing according to his wife, get a sniff of the money? Did he have a passing interest in local customs that Emma had failed to mention?
And if any of this were true, why did all three get murdered?
Another session with Emma Tasker beckoned, and Diamond didn’t relish it. Good thing Stan Richmond hadn’t also left a widow to be interviewed. Be thankful for small mercies.
He looked in at the incident room and was told three times over that Jack Gull had been trying to reach him.
‘Don’t suppose he told you what it was about,’ he said to Ingeborg.
‘No, guv, except it was urgent.’
‘Always is with Jack. Makes him feel important.’
The tension from yesterday’s team meeting hadn’t all evaporated, but at least they were on speaking terms.
‘Did he ask where I was?’
‘We didn’t know,’ Keith Halliwell said, and it felt like a dig.
‘I was in Wells.’ He gave them the gist of what Juliet Hart had told him about the Minehead May Day ritual, adding only one comment. ‘And that, my friends, is how Martin Hart came to be known as Ossy.’
Usually the idea of one of the force up to something eccentric was sure to provoke some laughs. This morning’s response was a few bemused looks.
‘Does it make any difference?’ John Leaman asked in his habitual downbeat tone. ‘This all happened before he joined the police.’
‘The film offer was the new factor,’ Ingeborg said, sharp to the point as always. ‘And he was tempted, by the sound of things.’
Leaman was unmoved. ‘But it didn’t come to anything.’
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘It came up shortly before he was shot and it was big bucks. We all know about trying to survive on a police salary.’
‘Are you saying this led to him being murdered?’
She turned to Diamond. ‘Is that what you’re thinking, guv?’
After yesterday’s dust-up, Diamond wasn’t being drawn. ‘It’s a new angle, that’s all.’
Ingeborg wouldn’t leave it. ‘Okay, let’s talk about Stan Richmond. He was into folklore, too. He’d written articles. Do you think the film man went to him for advice?’
‘I simply don’t know.’
‘It’s worth checking if he ever wrote anything on the Minehead hobby horses.’
‘Could be.’
‘Shall I?’
‘If you want.’ He couldn’t have sounded more neutral. Secretly, he was pleased. ‘Has anything else come up that I should know about?’
‘On your desk, from personnel,’ Leaman said with a look laden with reproach. ‘About thirty pages of names … including all of ours.’
That explained the coolness. Yesterday evening he’d gone ahead and asked Headquarters for the printout. No one here would have printed it for him.
He opened the office door and glanced at his in-tray. The paperwork was spilling out of it. Most would be junk. Headquarters had a whole department called Communications and they justified their existence by making sure everyone was made to feel wanted on an hourly basis. They’d found out he didn’t bother much with emails, so they deluged him with paper. Georgina the ACC (who had probably arranged it) was always leaving him memos. As well as all of that, there were the usual letters the postman had brought, bunched and held in place with an elastic band. Another with no stamp and just Detective Diamond — PERSONAL on the envelope must have been delivered by hand. And there was the sheaf of A4 sheets listing all those names. Thanks to Jack Gull he didn’t have time to start on any of it.
Avoncliff station, Gull’s choice of meeting place, hardly deserved its name. It was that rare thing on the railways, a request stop on the main line between Southampton and Bristol. If you wanted to board a train you were instructed to put out your hand and wave at the driver. There were no train announcements, no display boards and no staff. But it had existed for over a century and the locals would make sure it continued.
One useful facility the station did have was a small car park and Gull was waiting there when Diamond drove in ten minutes late.
‘This had better be good,’ he said as he reached for the walking stick and heaved himself out. ‘The drive down was hairy.’
‘Sod that,’ Gull said. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Not a problem.’ He looked around. ‘Where to? Are you keeping me in suspense?’
‘Not for long. We’re going to follow the railway for a few hundred yards. Are you up for it?’
‘I just said.’ Much more of this and he would be peppering his own speech with obscenities.
‘Let’s go, then.’ Gull had got to know this little area pretty well, taking the soft option last night while Diamond had been overseeing the hunt for the sniper between Westwood and Bradford on Avon. All action now, he headed under the massive Victorian aqueduct that carried the canal over the railway and also served as a passenger bridge. ‘Keep up,’ he called back. ‘It isn’t far.’
Sandwiched between the River Avon and the railway was an overgrown, uneven footpath, not easy to manage with a dodgy leg. Gull was already some distance ahead. Diamond had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘So you took a stroll while you were guarding the aqueduct?’
‘I sent one of the plods on a recce. He made the find. It was too dark to check out yesterday. I had a look for myself this morning.’
Diamond plodded on, managing with the help of the stick. The leg was on the mend, he decided.
Gull stopped to wait for him. ‘This stretch is known as Melancholy Walk. I think I know why.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘If you’re feeling sorry for yourself you’ve got the choice of lying on the railway or jumping in the river.’
‘Charming.’
He pointed. ‘You can see it up ahead. That stone building half-covered in creepers.’
They walked the last stretch in silence and up to a solid, squat concrete block on the railway side of the path.
‘Christ knows what it’s for,’ Gull said.
‘It’s a World War II pillbox,’ Diamond told him, looking at the narrow, elongated space in the front wall, about chest-high, meant for aiming guns. ‘They built hundreds of these in 1940, when the German invasion was expected.’
‘Before my time.’
Before Diamond’s, too, but suddenly the roles were reversed and he was enjoying himself as the one in the know. ‘All along here was the stop-line, the most important one in Britain. Churchill wanted a way of slowing up the panzer tanks, so he asked General Ironside — nice name, that — to build a series of defensive lines northwards from the coast. Pillboxes, stone bollards, trenches, barbed wire. Ironside made good use of what was already in place, and this stretch was perfect: the river and the canal are barriers for miles. The GHQ line, as it was known, ran all the way from Bristol to Kent. There are pillboxes at regular intervals.’
‘How do you know this stuff?’
‘I live nearby. You find things out.’
‘Well, clever-clogs, you don’t know what’s inside. Be my guest.’
Diamond walked around to the back, found the narrow, open doorway, stooped and went in. The light wasn’t good and the smell reminded him of a rugby changing-room after a match. He could make out the dark shape of a bedroll stretched across the end, with a six-pack of beer beside it and some empty cans. There was food also, a half-eaten loaf, apples and the remains of a cooked chicken. A newspaper was tucked between the wall and the bedroll.
‘Yesterday’s Mirror,’ Gull said, coming in behind him. ‘He was here as recently as that.’
‘You think it’s our man?’
‘Someone sleeping rough, isn’t it? We’ve left it like this for when he comes back. I’ve taken one of the empties to get some prints.’