At the top of the hill, he transferred to his own car and drove the short distance, and somehow his soreness was less disabling now. Wigfull followed in the Mercedes and they parked both cars in front of the Didrikson house.
The door stood open as they had left it. Sensing that a second escape bid was unlikely, Diamond allowed Mrs Didrikson to go in first. She called out a name.
'If that's your son you're calling,' said Diamond, 'he went out through the front as we came in.'
She said, 'He had no reason to run off.' More loudly, she called, 'Mat, are you there?'
Wigfull explained, 'He attempted to stop us from entering, ma'am. We could do him for obstruction and assault. He caught Mr Diamond well and truly.'
She said with contempt, 'He's just a schoolboy.'
Diamond signalled to Wigfull not to pursue the matter, a fine instance of altruism in the line of duty. 'We'll be wanting to interview you at some length, Mrs Didrikson.'
'Here?'
'Down at Manvers Street. It's late already. You might wish to put a few things in an overnight bag.'
'You want me to come to the police station? Can't you talk to me here?'
'That won't be possible.'
'What about Mat? I can't leave him alone all night. He's only twelve, you know.'
Diamond assured her that the boy would be taken care of in her absence. The Abbey Choir School had a house for boarders in Lansdown Road. While Mrs Didrikson, accompanied by Diamond, went upstairs to pack her bag, Wigfull spent some time on the phone arranging for a patrol to find the boy and drive him to the school to spend the night there.
Dana Didrikson's bedroom revealed little about the character of its owner, unless it was that she was tidy-minded and self-effacing. Emulsioned walls in the magnolia shade so popular with decorators. Fitted shelves, wardrobes and a double bed. Free-standing dressing table. A wall-to-wall carpet in a neutral stone colour. And matching curtains. No pictures, photos, books, stuffed animals or discarded clothes. Perhaps the reason why it so resembled a hotel room was that Mrs Didrikson's work as a chauffeur allowed her little time for anything but sleeping there.
She took a bag from the top shelf of the wardrobe and put in a few things. 'Now may I pack a bag for Matthew?'
Diamond gave his consent. He could hear Wigfull still on the phone downstairs.
They had to go up another flight to the boy's room, which had a more lived-in look. Cardboard birds and bats, made from modelling kits, were strung from the ceiling. Pop posters adorned the walls and socks and record-sleeves were scattered about the floor. An unfinished chess game stood on the top of a desk. Decidedly more lived-in, not least because its occupant was lying on the bed behind the door.
'Mat – I thought you were out,' his mother said. 'I called out and you didn't answer.'
He was on his stomach leafing through a comic, only his dark hair visible. He didn't look up. dark hair visible. He didn't 'Mat – do you hear me?'
Still without turning to look at her, the boy said, 'They're the fuzz. They knocked me over and forced their way in. I asked them for a warrant, but they took no notice.'
'Knockedyoa over?'
Diamond explained, 'I pushed him aside when he aimed a kick at me.'
'Against the wall,' Matthew stated vehemently. 'You bashed my head against the wall and knocked me over.
What do you want, anyway?'
'Your mother is going to give us some help with a matter we're investigating,' Diamond said, expressing it more sensitively than he thought the kid's attitude deserved. This looked a prime example of a boy in want of a father's authority and playing hell with his hapless mother. He went out to the landing and called downstairs, 'John, the kid's up here. He was here all the time.'
Back in the boy's bedroom, Mrs Didrikson was explaining to her son why it would be necessary for him to spend a night at school. Matthew made an unsuccessful appeal to be allowed to remain alone in the house, then turned his back on everyone and went back to his comic. His mother packed a bag for him, watched indulgently by Diamond, who felt a stirring of pity for the kid, in spite of everything. One night as a boarder was likely to be an underestimate.
PART FOUR
Dana
Chapter One
THIS IS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED to Geraldine Jackman, isn't it? You want to know how I got involved with the Jackmans. I'm willing to talk about it now, if you'll let me tell it in my own way, but this is going to be quite an effort for me. I'm not one of those twittering women who broadcast their life stories to everyone in the supermarket queue. By nature I'm a private person, which sounds like a way of keeping people at a distance and often is, but I wouldn't describe myself as shy, which always makes me think of a five-year-old covering her face at a birthday party. It's more true to say that it doesn't come naturally to me to confide in anyone else. As a result, I'm sometimes accused of being unfriendly, or stand-offish. I constantly struggle to break out of it because, believe me, when you're a single parent, you have to speak up for yourself and your child.
After Sverre, my former husband, left me three years ago, I drove taxis, and you might think that was a peculiar way for a social misfit to earn a living. Actually it was my salvation. I learned to put up a front and shelter behind it. I could hear myself playing the part of the taxi driver and saying these mundane things about the traffic and the tourists and what I'd just heard on the radio, knowing all the time that the real me was a million miles back from the action. None of it touched me personally. But this situation is another thing altogether. Blood from a stone.
All right, let's plunge in. At the time I met the Jackmans I'd given up the taxi-driving. I had a job as chauffeur with Mr Stanley Buckle, the managing director of Realbrew Ales. That's how I got to drive the Mercedes. It doesn't belong to me.
I was offered the job by Mr Buckle himself one evening when he used my cab for a trip from Bath to his home in Bristol. On a few previous occasions he had been my passenger and I'd got into conversation and found him pleasant enough, with just a suggestion of the mild flirting a woman cabbie gets from middle-aged males. Nothing I could take exception to. At that time I didn't know he was the Realbrew boss. I had a vague idea he had stakes in several businesses in Bath and Bristol, and of course I'd seen his beautiful house overlooking Clifton College, so I was pretty certain he wasn't stringing me along when he offered me the job. At the end of the run home, he simply asked me how much I took in fares in a good week and offered to match it with a regular salary in return for a six-day week and no nights. I would be allowed to use the company car whenever I wished, as long as I kept an accurate log of mileage.
I didn't hesitate. The taxi-driving had been a living, but it was a treadmill. Until that evening I'd seen no possibility of escape.
Of course you know about my son's fortunate rescue from drowning last July. You'll have heard about it from Greg – Professor Jackman. That was one of the most horrible days in my life, and not just because of what happened to Mat. I was in trouble with the police before I even heard about Mat. Not here in Bath, or you'd have known about it, wouldn't you?
I'm sorry. This doesn't sound very coherent, does it? I'd better tell you exactly how that day turned out, because it all links up with what happened later on.
Early in the morning, Mr Buckle rang me. He needed the car, so would I drive over to his house at Clifton by 9 a.m.?
This usually meant that he was making a business trip to London, and wanted to be ferried to Bristol Parkway in time to catch the train; the InterCity service was a full hour quicker than a belt along the motorway. But when I arrived at the Buckle residence that morning I had to revise my ideas. It was building up to be a really hot day, by the way. Not a cloud in the sky. The Filipino maid escorted me to the rear of the house, where my boss, flaunting a straw hat, powder-blue shorts and mirror sunglasses, was stretched out on a lounger beside the swimming pool. The only concession to business was a cellphone within arm's reach on the paving. He waved me towards a metal chair.