‘You’d better not serve us with a writ, mister.’
‘We’re not bailiffs, my love. What you’ll get served is a plate of delicious cooked food. I bet you don’t get much of that where you are.’
When they’d left the crescent and were in Brock Street, he said, ‘The Green Bird is good. The table outside gives them a chance to look at us without feeling trapped. And if the other customers object to crusties, we’ll be in the fresh air.’
‘Why should anyone object?’
‘This isn’t Twerton. Unwashed people in striped woolly hats and dreadlocks may not be all that welcome.’
‘You have a mental picture already, do you?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘In the place they’re living they’ll have better showers and bathrooms than you and I do.’
‘But do they use them?’
‘We’ll find out,’ she said coolly.
‘Did I say something wrong?’
Ingeborg said, ‘If you really want to know, guv, you did.’
‘What was that?’
‘The only thing we know about these people is that they’re squatters. It doesn’t mean they stink. They’re probably forced into desperate measures.’
‘Okay. Point taken.’
‘And there’s another thing. I don’t wear beige. Beige is a turn-off.’
‘What colour’s your jacket, then?’
‘Tan.’
‘They’ll know what I mean.’
‘That’s beside the point. You tell anyone the woman with you is wearing beige and they’ll think boring.’
Chastened, he did his ham-fisted best to make up for being so crass. ‘Whatever you are — and you can be a pain — you’re never boring, Inge. In future I’ll say tan.’
The Green Bird café was only a short walk from the Royal Crescent, in a paved pedestrian-only street. The boards outside spoke of breakfast, lunch, cakes, tea and coffee. ‘Let’s get something on the table before they come,’ he said after a look in the window. ‘Fancy some cake?’
‘Is this on expenses?’
‘It’s work, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll have the polenta cake and a coffee, then. Should we have a Plan B?’
‘Why?’
‘In case they don’t like the look of us. It works both ways.’
She was right. He’d made crude assumptions about Tank and the Headmistress. The job sometimes drained him of humanity. More than most, he ought to have sympathy for the homeless, particularly the young unemployed. His own grandfather, once a prisoner-of-war forced to work on the Burma railway, had returned to civilian life in 1946, a pathetic shadow of the strong man he’d been. The bomb-damaged home his wife and children were in was due for demolition and they were forced to join the nationwide squatters’ movement. Tens of thousands of ex-servicemen and their families made desperate by the shortage of housing occupied army camps and any empty properties they could find. That generation of the Diamond family had moved into a block of so-called luxury flats in Kensington sharing rooms with others. Someone made the mistake of forcing the locks and all the occupiers were brought to court, but the judge took a lenient view and bound them over ‘to keep the peace’ — an irony that didn’t escape the ex-servicemen who had spent six years fighting to restore the peace. Eventually the family were given a prefab. The fact that it was constructed of asbestos-cement sheeting was another story. They had survived.
So Ingeborg was justified in reminding him that squatters were people driven to desperate measures. This lot had been turfed out of Twerton. It was immaterial that they’d ended up in the finest address in Bath. You went where you heard of a place that was empty and where there was a way in without forcing the locks.
Two coffees and two slices of cake later, Ingeborg asked him, ‘Could that be them, do you think?’
A couple with a black greyhound were staring into the window of an art gallery across the street. Both looked about forty and were dressed casually, but not scruffily. No dreadlocks and no striped woolly hat. The woman was about six inches taller than the man.
‘I doubt it,’ Diamond said.
‘They’re not looking at the artwork. They’re studying our reflection.’
‘Can’t see why anyone would call him Tank.’
‘For a joke. Like some big men get called Shorty. She doesn’t look to me like a headmistress. Anyway, they’re deciding whether to come over.’
The right decision was made.
‘Try not to show surprise at anything I say,’ Diamond said without moving his lips.
The couple arrived at the table and it was definitely the voice of Headmistress that said, ‘You must be Peter and Ingeborg.’
Diamond was on his feet, hand outstretched, but Tank didn’t offer his. He didn’t look friendly either. ‘You told her you knew me. I’ve never seen either of you before.’
‘Didn’t I make it clear?’ Diamond said. ‘I know of you. You lived in the place at Twerton that got demolished and now you’re at a much better address. Why don’t you join us and have something to eat? It’s a good menu.’
‘What do you want?’ Tank said. ‘We don’t have any spare rooms.’
He thought they were homeless.
Diamond managed to keep a straight face by not looking at Ingeborg. In her fashionable tan jacket this would test her social conscience. ‘We’re not asking for rooms. It’s not about the Royal Crescent. We’re interested in the Twerton gaff and what happened there. I’ll pay good money.’ Diamond felt in his back pocket and placed a twenty-pound note on the table.
Tank eyed the money as indifferently as if he was playing poker.
‘Buy the dog some food,’ Diamond said.
With nice timing, the greyhound sniffed at his leg and he offered the back of his hand to a warm, wet tongue. Deciding they were friendly, the dog rested its long jaw on Diamond’s thigh and eyed him beguilingly.
People and their pets. The squatters exchanged a look and sat down.
‘They do an all-day breakfast,’ Diamond said.
Headmistress said, ‘He’ll have one. A sandwich will do me. Coffee for both. I’ll go in and see what they have. Would you keep an eye on the dog? I don’t trust Tank.’ She handed Diamond the greyhound’s lead.
‘Order a breakfast for me, too,’ Diamond called after her. ‘We’re paying.’
She asked Ingeborg, ‘How about you?’
Ingeborg said she was okay with the cake she’d already got.
‘What do you want from us?’ Tank asked for the second time. He looked even smaller when seated, olive-skinned, probably of mixed race, with a smooth, neat-featured face that gave nothing away.
Diamond shrugged. ‘I told you already.’
‘What is it about Twerton?’
‘You must have heard about the skeleton.’
‘Nothing to do with us.’
‘You never looked in the loft all the time you were there?’
‘There was no way in. If there ever had been, someone must have sealed it and done a good job of rendering. You’re police, aren’t you?’
Diamond didn’t deny it. ‘Dealing with a bigger matter than your squat. I was hoping you might help us identify the guy.’
Tank stared back at Diamond with calculation. ‘He was dressed in old-fashioned clothes, wasn’t he?’
‘Not entirely. The underwear was modern.’
‘Has that been in the papers?’
A nod.
‘We don’t read them. You’re not seriously suggesting we knew him?’
‘I’ll take you at your word, you didn’t. How long were you occupying the house?’
‘Two years and a bit.’
‘How many of you?’
‘People came and went, maybe fifteen or twenty in all that time. They found somewhere they liked better and moved on.’
‘Were you there from the beginning?’