“Is that what you told them upstairs?”
“Not the last part. The rest is all documented and you know it’s true, but I’ll repeat it for the panel and you’ll have an opportunity to defend yourself.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“It’s typical, somehow, that you should be on crutches on the day the lift breaks down. Nothing is ever straightforward with you. It wouldn’t surprise me if you could get up the stairs as well as anyone else.”
“Is that also on the charge sheet?”
“Don’t be sarcastic. Because of you the hearing will have to be downstairs. I came down to arrange the change of room.”
“Good thinking, ma’am.”
Georgina marched across to the desk to try her luck with the hard-nosed receptionist. A grizzled police sergeant joined them, a self-important twit, to Diamond’s eye. He seemed to be responsible for the use of rooms on the ground floor. He was shaking his head a lot. Georgina flapped her hands a lot. The receptionist passed the phone to Georgina and she spoke earnestly into it. Her face was a study in frustration. Finally she stepped over to Diamond and said, “It appears no rooms down here are available until noon. The Chief Constable has another appointment, so the hearing will be put off for another day.”
“So be it,” Diamond said. “More man-hours, more travel expenses, but heck, who am I to complain?”
In Paloma’s car on the drive back, he told the story of the aborted disciplinary hearing and finished with, “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“I wasted your morning.”
“It’s Hartley you should make your peace with. He missed his morning walk.”
“But you have a business to run. I appreciate this.”
“You can do me a favour then. Come back to the house and join me for a spot of lunch.”
“And face Hartley? I don’t know if I dare.”
“He’s very forgiving. He’ll lick you all over.”
A mile or so farther along the road, the rain bucketed down. Diamond scarcely noticed in his satisfaction at the outcome.
Paloma said, “I was all set to offer words of comfort. It sounds as if Georgina needs more comforting than you do.”
He smiled.
“What was she hoping to get out of this?”
“They could reprimand me or transfer me to another station. I doubt if they’d put me back into uniform or dismiss me.”
“Does she really want that?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I think it’s a love — hate relationship. She wouldn’t care to admit it, but she’d miss you terribly. I do have sympathy for her. I wouldn’t wish to be your boss.”
Halfway down the A4, he started thinking about the things Georgina had said. Man-hours had been wasted. And he should have informed her what was going on. He’d be the first to complain if his team failed to communicate. He took out his phone and switched it on.
“What do you know?” he said presently.
“What’s that?” Paloma asked.
“Would you mind if we had that lunch another day? I’d be mighty grateful if you’d drop me off at Combe Down.”
“Why?”
“Message from Keith Halliwell. They found a body in Vinegar Down Quarry.”
25
Vindicated.
He hadn’t hallucinated while dosed on morphine. A body was down there. Not Belinda’s, obviously, so whose?
From Summer Lane, where Paloma stopped the car, he could see several four-by-fours and a crime scene van parked on the far side of Shepherd’s Field near a wooded area. This had to be the copse containing the shaft entrance Halliwell and the search team had discovered at the end of the previous week. No one seemed to be about and it was still raining steadily.
“Let’s go.”
“We’re going nowhere,” Paloma said. “My car won’t go through mud like that and you’ll be no help when I get stuck.”
He looked at the state of the ground and the tracks left by the vehicles that had made it to the top of the field, all four-wheel drives.
“Help me out, then.”
“You’re not aiming to cross the field on crutches, I hope?”
“Try and stop me.”
“You haven’t even got a mac.”
“Don’t wait,” he said. “Someone else will see that I get home.”
He set off at a speed that would have confirmed Georgina’s worst suspicions about his ability to climb stairs. Keeping out of the ruts left by the vehicles and going like a crane fly at a window, he managed without falling once. The action wasn’t elegant. Single-minded intent got him there.
Through the trees ahead was a wide area marked off with police tape. On getting close, he saw that a mass of tangled ivy had been dragged away to reveal the hole that was the outlet to the shaft. The protective grille had been lifted and a rope ladder was in place.
He spotted some of his team in a Range Rover and banged the side with his crutch. A steamed-up window was wound down and Halliwell looked out at his bedraggled boss. “Didn’t expect to see you, guv. Don’t you have an umbrella?”
“How could I with these?”
“You’d better get in. We’ll make room.”
Ingeborg and Paul Gilbert slid closer to make a space on the back seat.
“Don’t bother,” Diamond said. “I won’t be able to climb in. What’s happening? Is someone down the shaft? Someone living, I mean.”
“Stanley, with the guts man,” Halliwell said.
“Who did you get?”
“Dr. Sealy.”
“Him.” Bertram Sealy was a complainer with an acid tongue, not Diamond’s favourite forensic pathologist. His one redeeming quality was that his thoroughness couldn’t be doubted.
Ingeborg said, “You’re getting soaked, guv. You’ll ruin that suit. We must have an umbrella in the back. Paul, why don’t you see if you can find it?”
“Don’t fuss. I’ll survive. Stanley, you said. You do mean the lad I was underground with?”
“He discovered the body,” Halliwell said.
“How was that? I called off the search.”
“It seems he came back yesterday and went down for a look. He’s not much of a talker, as you know, but he’s the go-to person if you want to see down a quarry and it gives him status in the village.”
“He found the body and called us?”
“Nothing so simple as that. Sod-all was done about it until this morning. The call came from that old guy you visited last week.”
“Seymour Ramsay.”
“Stanley must have spoken the word ‘body’ to someone in the pub last night and the news got back to Mr. Ramsay and he decided it was a matter for the police.”
Knowing the personalities involved, Diamond had to agree that this was the likely scenario. “So what are we dealing with, Keith? Is this a fresh corpse or a skeleton? Clothed? Male or female?”
“Mr. Ramsay didn’t seem to know. You’d think Stanley would have told him.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“We’ll know shortly, anyhow.”
“Hasn’t anyone taken a picture yet?”
“The photographer is sitting in the forensics van waiting for his chance to go down. Nothing can be rushed. It’s dangerous down there.”
“I’ll vouch for that.”
“Old Mr. Ramsay said the quarry has a sad history. There are stories of roof falls going back to the eighteen-hundreds. It was reopened about 1912 and then closed again a year later after a fatal accident.”
“Did they get the guy out?”
“Don’t worry, it’s not his body. But the mine was too dangerous to work. The entrance was sealed and the ground levelled. The only access point is here.”