‘Jesus.’
‘He’ll make sure they talk. He’s very persuasive.’
Diamond shook his head. ‘I’ll feel a total wuss.’
‘It’s not about you, Peter. It’s about bringing a killer to justice.’
‘I know, but—’
‘It’s an order. I’ll tell you what. Do this for Avon and Somerset and I’ll guarantee you get your six bobbies with spades and sieves.’
Clobbered.
He said nothing in the CID room about the dressing up. He simply announced that the dig would get under way the same afternoon.
‘Anyone heard of a dude called Perry the Pyro?’ he asked.
Looks were exchanged.
‘Perry Morgan.’ Ingeborg said at once. ‘The man behind the fireworks.’
‘That’s him. Is he local?’
‘He’s been around sometime, staging events. Not long ago it was the balloon fest. And I think he was behind the pop festival in Prior Park. He’s only a young guy in his twenties and I believe he lives above the pet shop in Union Passage. They let him hang posters in the windows.’
‘I met him briefly this morning.’
‘He’s all over the social media.’
‘So he’s not really a fireworks expert?’
‘Not an expert on anything except working the crowds. Are we interested in him?’
‘Just checking. He seems to have got Georgina in a tizzy. She’s bothered about the fireworks moving to the Royal Crescent tonight. It’s too open, she thinks.’
‘The organisers must know about safety. They’ve done several evenings already.’
‘What really bothers her is the residents. They’re not people you mess with. They don’t take kindly to events like this. They have to move their cars from in front of the crescent.’
Leaman said, ‘My heart bleeds.’
‘And they’re picky about the use of the lawn. They have a society that looks after the upkeep. I assume Perry the Pyro has cleared it with them.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ Ingeborg said. ‘People like him take a lot for granted.’ She was working her iPhone. ‘Here’s one of his tweets.’ She handed him the phone.
The tweet said: ‘Must-see amazing free world fireworx finale Royal Crescent tonite. Be there.’
‘How does he make his money if it’s free?’
‘It’s been going on all week at the Rec. He’ll already have made a killing in gate money. Are you thinking of going?’
‘Paloma wants to see it, so we’ll go along.’
‘I might do the same.’
‘I’m going for sure,’ Paul Gilbert said.
‘There you are,’ Ingeborg said. ‘If we’re typical, most of Bath will be there.’
The dig that afternoon was started in hot sunshine. Five male constables and one female arrived at the site in a van and were met by Diamond. ‘It’s not a huge area, as you can see,’ he said. ‘That’s the good news.’
‘What’s the bad news?’ one of them asked.
‘I want to go down six feet.’
Something was said that he pretended not to hear. They got out the spades and made a start. After an hour most of the surface rubble had been removed and it looked more like the garden it had once been. You could even see the remains of some forget-me-nots. He handed out bottles of water.
Someone said, ‘I felt spots of rain.’
They all looked skywards. A bank of dark cloud was moving in. ‘Should cool you down,’ Diamond said.
‘Haven’t we done enough for today?’ someone asked.
One of the diggers said, ‘All the buried bodies I’ve ever read about were in shallow graves.’
Nobody else said anything, so the man made his point again. ‘Shallow, not six feet under.’
‘They’re the ones we hear about,’ Diamond said. ‘Think of the ones that never got discovered.’
By the end of the afternoon the sum of their finds was a horseshoe, a triangle of chalk, some crushed beer cans, half a rubber ball and nine inches of tape measure. The rain hadn’t stopped and the conditions had become impossible. The diggers were hip-deep in a trench that was fast filling with water.
In the minivan, the shallow grave man said, ‘Here’s the story so far. The people who lived in that house kept a horse, but there wasn’t much grass for it to eat, so it survived on chalk, beer and rubber balls. In the winter it needed to keep warm so they measured it up for a coat, but it was hungry and ate most of the tape measure.’
‘You’re nuts,’ one of the others said.
‘Tomorrow we’ll try and get the real story,’ Diamond said. ‘Why the long faces? The ground should be softer after the rain.’
16
Parking was a problem. Every space in the nearby roads had been taken and Charlotte Street car park was teeming. In the end Paloma had to leave the car at Green Park.
‘Worse than a football match,’ Diamond said.
‘These last few evenings of fireworks were all publicity,’ Paloma said. ‘It’s going to be crowded. I thought all that rain might have put people off, but it stopped before dark, like they said in the forecast.’
‘Shame. I was banking on staying indoors and watching from your bedroom.’
‘Less of that, please.’
It was dark by the time they reached Royal Victoria Park and got a sense of the size of the crowd, surely the biggest since the Three Tenors attracted more than thirty thousand in 2003. The difference was that this time no seating was provided. Those who wanted to be close to the action had arrived early and stood shoulder to shoulder below the ha-ha, the sunken six-foot barrier between the performance area and the crowd. A few yards back some brave souls had spread blankets for picnics at the risk of getting trampled. Vendors of drinks and snacks were doing good business where they could weave their way in.
As was the custom for big events, every light in the Royal Crescent was switched on — notably in the squatters’ house as well as all the others — making a memorable spectacle in itself. The residents’ lawn above the ha-ha was reserved for the fireworks teams and scaffolding was in place.
‘Should be starting soon,’ Diamond said when he and Paloma had chosen a place to stand in front of the trees in Royal Avenue. ‘The finalists are France and China, and Bath is putting on some kind of extra display at the end.’
‘I don’t know if I’ll last that long,’ Paloma said. ‘I should have brought ear plugs. I’ve got some at home.’
The public-address system was already pumping out high-decibel canned music. Presently it stopped and after some painful audio feedback a human voice was heard imploring the crowd to take some steps backwards for the safety of people at the front. The appeal seemed to be heeded.
‘Seen any police yet?’ Diamond asked Paloma. ‘Most of Bath Central is here.’
‘On duty?’
‘They’ll be in high-vis jackets.’
She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t want their job.’
A new voice welcomed everyone to the World Fireworks Championships and explained about the rules for competition and the earlier rounds at the Rec.
‘This’ll be Perry the Pyro,’ Diamond said. ‘Can you spot him? White hat, long dark hair.’
‘No chance from this distance. I wish they’d stop talking and get on with it.’
The national anthems of France and China blared from the amplifiers but no one at the back took much notice. A man to Diamond’s left offered him the use of binoculars. He was able to pick out Perry with a hand-held microphone strutting along the edge of the ha-ha like Mick Jagger. ‘And now, dudes,’ he was saying, ‘it’s over to the teams. First up is France. As you know, the French do three things better than anyone else: wine, cheese and sex. Now let’s see if they can make it four. Put your hands together for our cousins from across the Channel.’