“Something like that.”
“But at some stage she gives up the sex trade and finds work as a housekeeper.”
“Housekeeper so-called,” Palmer said with a sneer.
Diamond wasn’t having that. “She really was a carer by the end of her life. The old guy was ninety. It was a proper job with a regular wage paid for out of his late wife’s estate.” He dragged a hand over the dome of his head. “I need more about her time in Britain and how she got to be in the West Country. If she was here any time at all, she must have had some run-ins with the police.”
“Probably under another name.”
“There was a time when every force had its vice squad and you’d know who to ask. These days the only vice squad left in Britain is a punk band.”
Palmer grinned.
“Avon and Somerset must have someone with responsibility for policing the sex industry in our manor.”
“Here in Bath it’s me,” Palmer said.
“You? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I don’t crow about it.”
“Who are the major pimps, then?”
Palmer blew a soft raspberry. “It all changed when Bob Sabin died.”
“Everyone’s heard of Sabin.”
“He had an empire that stretched way beyond Bath, did Bob. After he died, the bulk of it was taken over by his sidekick, Eddie Woodburn.”
“Woodburn. The name is familiar.”
“You can forget it now. Eddie took a bullet to the head shortly after and there was mayhem. We thought we were in for a gang war, but it was settled. I won’t say peacefully because I don’t believe for a moment it was peaceful. Charles Gaskin divided the spoils with Gerry Onslow.”
Diamond knew both names and thought of them as pond life, but hadn’t needed to meet them. Organised crime was a constant menace dealt with on a regional basis by a unit known as Zephyr. Palmer would be reporting to them. “How long have Onslow and Gaskin been running the show?”
“Woodburn was shot at the end of last year, so it’s three or four months. Not long.”
“Long enough. Which of them should I speak to?”
“You’re not serious, Peter?”
“Got to find out if they regarded Jessie as unfinished business and put out a contract on her. If they didn’t, it’s odds on that my man Pellegrini is her killer.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to ask him when he comes out of the coma? It would be safer, for sure.”
“No. I need to know the score before I speak to him. Who shall I try, Onslow or Gaskin?”
“I don’t know about Gaskin, but Onslow is local.”
“That settles it, then. Where does Onslow hang out?”
23
Bath has many amusing ironies. The best is the fact that thousands of tourists arrive because of the Jane Austen connection while the author herself could hardly wait to quit the place with “happy feelings of escape.” Another is that for three decades no one could bathe in Bath-because the spa water was deemed dangerous.
This was remedied in 2006 when the New Royal Bath opened. The massive glass cube a few steps across the street from the Pump Room has a clean bill of health, is stunningly modern and houses five floors of pools and treatment rooms using the warm spring water that fell as rain ten thousand years ago, is heated more than a mile below ground level, and is the source of the city’s existence.
Mind, the project had a series of embarrassing false starts. Part-funded by a millennium grant, the building was envisaged as a spectacular way of marking the year 2000, and six years later it still wasn’t open. Delays and spiralling costs made it into a battleground between the designers and the contractors while horrified ratepayers looked on. The farcical high point was the visit of the Three Tenors in 2003. Perfect timing, it was thought, for a grand opening. Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras were duly filmed beside the rooftop pool (but not in it) holding glasses of the spa water, but the champagne had to be put on ice because the wrong paint had been used and a legal injunction meant new contractors had to be brought in to do the work. Fully three more years passed before the doors were opened to the public.
Gerry Onslow, the most feared man in the West Country, wasn’t bothered about the forty-five million the building was said to have cost. He reckoned he was paying off the overspend himself. He had exclusive use of the place several evenings a week after the public had left and the doors were officially closed. How much this cost him was a secret known only to the management and Gerry, but it must have been substantial.
He always came with a team of heavies who made sure he was not interrupted. They guarded the main entrance, the changing rooms and the pool area. No one was so foolish as to enquire if they were armed.
This evening Gerry was in the Minerva pool on the lower ground floor. Although the visually exciting rooftop pool has the best views and the water temperature is the same as downstairs, the Minerva has more appeal on a chilly April evening. Another factor in Gerry’s thinking was that any evil-minded person with a long-range rifle could take a shot from the roof of the Abbey tower.
He wasn’t there to swim. This was all about easing away the stresses of a complicated week of trafficking, laundering money, making offers people couldn’t refuse and watching his own back.
He floated.
In the buoyant water, he could have been lying in bed, he was so relaxed. He filled his lungs with the warm air and treated the water like a mattress. He wasn’t built like an athlete, but fat is less dense than muscle and more helpful for floating. Gerry didn’t think of himself as fat and didn’t want anyone else to think it either, so let’s say discreetly that here in the water the laws of physics were in his favour.
Out in the middle, he felt safe. The massive trumpet-shaped white pillars rising from the turquoise pool and bearing the weight of the entire building gave a feeling of stability. He liked staring up at them and thinking about the business he supported.
So he was totally unaware of the manatee-like shape gliding underwater towards him. The first he knew of it was when something brushed against his foot.
Startled, he drew his legs up to his chest and tipped like a barrel, glimpsing the creature’s shadow below him. But he couldn’t stop himself from swallowing a pint of water before he got control of his body and managed to stand upright, with his feet on the bottom. The pool’s depth was the same throughout, only four feet six.
A smooth, oval head broke the surface within touching distance and water cascaded from it.
The manatee spoke.
“Easy, Gerry.”
“What the fuck…?”
The creature was human, but not reassuringly human. To Gerry’s eye it was uglier than any sea monster.
Yet there was just a chance this might be someone who had been allowed in by mistake.
“You shouldn’t be here. The bath is closed.”
“Not to me.”
Spoken with menace. No mistake.
A manatee would be preferable to this.
Gerry looked round for his minders. Nowhere in sight. They’d cocked up, the toerags. They would be burnt toast in the morning.
Forced to humour the invader, he said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Peter Diamond, Bath CID.”
“Police?” Gerry shrilled. Panic set in. They must have found out about Charlie Gaskin, his so-called “oppo,” who had taken a bullet to the head last month and was now part of the foundations of a new high-rise building in East Twerton.
Peter Diamond said, “I’d have brought my warrant if it was waterproof.”
“Get outta here.”
“No thanks. I went to some trouble to get in.”
“How the hell…?”
“Hiding in a towel room for over an hour. I need a quiet chat with you and this is the ideal situation.”
“What d’you mean-‘ideal’?”
“I know you’re clean, don’t I?”