Free Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey Page A

I’ve lost half a morning’s trade through him. I’m taking him to court.’
    ‘Where do you live?’ Sullivan asked the man.
    The copper bracelet woman said, getting another fit of the giggles, ‘Toyland.’
    Sullivan told her to shut up. Then he turned back to the man. ‘I’m waiting for an answer.’
    ‘I’m living up here for the present.’
    ‘But where exactly?’
    ‘Anywhere that’s dry on a wet night.’
    ‘So you’re homeless?’
    The man nodded.
    This touched the heart of the copper bracelet woman. ‘Did you hear that? He’s homeless. You can’t take a homeless man to court.’
    ‘I can and I will,’ the pie woman said. ‘He may sound like a smoothie, but he’s a thief. You can’t argue with the evidence.’ She held up the pie. But such was the force of her feelings that her thumb and finger met in the middle and the evidence collapsed and fell in bits on the ground. ‘Oh, buggery!’
    ‘I was going to say “crumbs”,’ the copper bracelet woman said, in giggles again. ‘Case dismissed, I reckon.’
    This was all too much for the pie woman. ‘You bitch!’ Angry and defeated, she made a grab, caught hold of the other woman’s scarf and wrestled her to the ground. They rolled over and over, screaming, in a flurry of bare legs and black underwear, all dignity gone.
    ‘Get them apart,’ Andy Sullivan said to Denise.
    It took half a minute and some grappling, but at least Denise was in trousers. She’d had recent training in detaining a suspect resisting arrest and she succeeded in getting the pie woman’s arm behind her back and forcing it upwards so that the other woman could squirm free.
    ‘Okay,’ Sullivan said to the pie woman, still on the ground. ‘Are you going to be sensible and calm down?’
    She said, ‘Let go of me.’
    The copper bracelet woman had retreated to the other side of her table and was brushing down her clothes. She said, ‘I could do her for assault. She almost strangled me.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Sullivan said. He nodded to Denise. ‘You can let go of her now.’
    The pie woman got up, mouthing obscenities, but not giving voice to them.
    Andy Sullivan was in control. ‘And now I think you ladies should go back to doing what you paid your fee for, selling your wares.’ ‘Where’s he gone?’ the pie woman said. ‘What happened to the thief?’
    In all the distraction, the man known as Noddy had gone.
    Late the same Sunday evening, Diamond took a call at home. It was Ingeborg, apologising for troubling him, and saying she’d made contact with her friend Perry, the link to the Lansdown Society. Two of the committee, Perry had told her, had a regular Monday morning round of golf and it might be an opportunity to see them. They met at ten.
    ‘Who are these two?’ he asked.
    ‘A Major Swithin and Sir Colin Tipping.’
    Thinking his own thoughts about ranks and titles, he wrote down the names. ‘Tipping? I’ve heard of him. He sponsored a horse race I watched the other evening.’
    ‘I didn’t know you followed the horses, guv.’
    ‘I was being sociable. Horse racing or golf, I take it all in my stride. Is that the course up at Lansdown? I don’t really need to ask, do I? Thanks for that, Inge. I’ll make it a threesome and ruin their morning.’

8
    E arly on Monday, Diamond looked in at Manvers Street and told Keith Halliwell about the press conference fixed for the afternoon. ‘Basically we’re going public about the skeleton in the hope it will jog someone’s memory. John Wigfull is setting it up, but you may get enquiries during the morning. I’ll be at the golf course, so you’re in charge.’
    He was amused by Halliwell’s wide-eyed look, a mixture of mystification and umbrage, but nothing was said.
    ‘Ingeborg will fill you in,’ he added, not wanting to cause real hurt.
    On the drive out of town he saw the morning traffic inching down Lansdown Road and for a short while felt what it was like to be on a