Diamond Dust (22 page)

'I had to. Dawkins thinks I'm living in Clapham.'

'What train do you get?'

'The seven-twenty. I check in at his office at ten-thirty.'

This was beginning to look like a solid alibi. 'I'll check with him myself.'

'You wouldn't let on?' Wayne said in horror.

'What - that you're living the life of Riley here in Bristol flogging guns to any lunatic with cash in hand? Of course I'm going to let on. I'm a copper, Wayne, not your favourite uncle.'

In the act of pouring the coffee, Beach spilt some over his immaculate work surface. 'Who said anything about guns?'

'Half the criminal fraternity of Bristol. You're well known. It's a change from shooting taxi drivers in the leg. Two sugars, please.'

'Do I look like a gun dealer?'

'In your skirt and lipstick? At the risk of being misunderstood, I'd say you've got a very good front. I suppose the weapons are shipped in, up the Channel.'

'You're talking through your arse.'

'Can we look in your basement?'

Beach sighed, and dropped the pretence. 'What exactly do you want?'

'I want you to look at that calendar and tell me who bought automatic handguns in the month of February.'

'I wasn't dealing then. Honest to God. I'd only just moved in. You can't start a business from nothing.'

Diamond reached for the calendar again. 'There are letters here I recognise. DC on the twelfth, and again on the fifteenth. Would that be Danny Carpenter?'

Wayne passed a hand nervously through the shingled hair. 'Listen, you don't move into someone else's manor without a by-your-leave. I had to square it with the local chiefs, or I wouldn't last five minutes. On the days you're talking about, I wasn't dealing. I was making arrangements.'

'Dressed like this?'

He glared. 'I might be different, but I'm not stupid.'

'What brought you to Bristol?'

'I have to make a living. London was too hot to start up again. This is the next best.'

'Was there talk of a hitman coming to Bristol or Bath towards the end of February?'

'I wouldn't know. People didn't talk to me then. I was the new kid on the block. What's all this about?'

'You didn't hear? Don't you read the papers?'

Beach shook his head. 'Boring.'

'Just your gun magazines, eh?'

'That's my job.'

Diamond didn't enlighten him about the shootings. He could see nothing of use emerging. The disappointing conclusion was that they'd wasted their time on Wayne Beach. 'We're leaving now,' he said abruptly. 'You've got about twenty minutes before Bristol Police come here with an armed protection unit and knock down the door.'

'Did you believe him?' Stormy asked.

'Did you?'

'I did, oddly enough.'

'Me, too. If he'd written something in against the day Steph was shot, I'd have been suspicious. He could have done it any time. The fact that it was left blank is more convincing. I'll still check with the probation officer.'

'And will you turn him in?'

'Will I? Dave, anyone who trades in guns in scum. Whoever shot my wife and yours acquired their weapon from some flake just like him.'

He drove Stormy back to Bath, not to visit the Brunei sites, but to show him the place where Steph was killed. They parked on Royal Avenue, the road that bisected the lawns below the Crescent. Already some of the foliage had a reddish tinge and the ground under the horse chestnuts was littered with husks split by small boys in the quest for the new season's conkers. They crossed the dew-damp grass to where the body was found. He picked an empty crisp packet off the grass and crushed it in his hand.

'What's the park called?' Stormy asked.

'The Victoria. The Royal Victoria to give it its full name. This part is the Crescent Gardens.' He pointed out the advantages to the killer, the screen of bushes hiding the car park, the bandstand, the large stone vases. 'He must have waited unseen while she walked along the path and then crossed the lawn. He may not even have spoken to her.'

'And then he fired the shots and left her?'

A nod from Diamond.

'Didn't try and move her?'

Stormy wasn't being ghoulish, asking these questions. He was airing theories, and Diamond was willing to discuss them.

'Too risky. I think it was in his plan to leave her to be found.'

'Yet that wasn't the m.o. in Patsy's case.'

'I know, Dave, and I have my view on that. It's all supposition, but I think it makes sense. He covered his tracks the second time. He chose an even more secluded place to meet your wife. It could have been that little park above the railway embankment or somewhere miles away. The crucial thing is he tricked her into going to the place, the same as he'd tricked Steph.'

'How?'

'Don't know. A phone call most likely. Something he knew would bring them out. The location was written in Steph's diary, so she knew where she was headed. She was easily swayed by any appeal to her good nature - some old friend in trouble. You name it.'

'Patsy, too,' Stormy said. 'She'd drop everything and go if anyone needed her. Well, you remember what she was like, always supporting some good cause.'

It was true. Diamond could recall her doing the rounds of the office, collecting for this and that. 'Mary', as he still remembered her, was always the one who bought the present when someone was leaving. 'Well, the killer arranged to meet Patsy on some pretext, and shot her. He'd picked his spot and he'd picked the spot where he would take her after the shooting. That's the added dimension. It's one step on from the murder of Steph.'

They walked the short distance back to the car park. It was still early and Diamond offered to show his old colleague his present place of work. 'We'll call that probation officer, Dawkins, and check Beach's alibi.'

'And the Bristol CID, to tip them off about the gun-dealing?'

'Specially them.'

Bath Police Station was unusually quiet. They learned that McGarvie had gone with other senior detectives to some location in West London after a tip-off from the Met that Joe Florida had been sighted at a pub.

'Our last shot,' Stormy said.

'His.' In his office, Diamond got on with the business of tipping off Bristol about Wayne Beach. He said truthfully that he'd got the information from one of his snouts. Then he called the probation service in Clapham and spoke to George Dawkins and had it confirmed that Beach had reported there on the morning of February the twenty-third.

'He's not our man,' he told Stormy.

'Wayne isn't anybody's man.'

He gave a half-smile. 'True.'

Stormy looked at his watch. 'I'd better get my train.'

'Why - have you got a cat to feed, dog to walk?'

'No, but we've finished for today, haven't we?'

'You're staying at my place tonight. Then we can start early tomorrow.'

'On what?'

'The real last shot.'

29

T
hey brought in fish and chips and a couple of six-packs and spent much of the evening talking over old times at Fulham nick. Stormy had a better recall of those days than Diamond. You never forget your first year of policing, your first arrest, your first raid.

'I had other postings before then,' Diamond said to excuse his hazy memory. 'I signed on before you, Dave. Turned fifty this year - and don't say you wouldn't know it.'

'What did you do?'

'Do?'

'To celebrate the big five-o.'

'Oh - nothing.'

'Pity.'

'Save it, pal. It was after Steph was killed. What's a bloody birthday after something like that?'

'How long were you married?'

'Nineteen years. Why?'

'The way you talk about her, I'd have thought it was less.'

'Why? I felt the same about her as the day we met.'

Stormy nodded. 'I guess you were the kind of couple who hold hands in the street.'

A sharp look was exchanged. So far as Diamond could tell no sarcasm was intended. 'If we felt like it, we may have done.'

'There's the difference. We kept our distance. Doesn't mean we didn't care about each other. Like I told you, it wasn't rosebuds all the way for Patsy and me. I played away a few times - call me weak-willed, or oversexed -and she usually found out. But we always patched things up. Try and explain that kind of marriage to a sleuthhound like Bowers.'

'Did you have to?'

'Not yet, but he'll be onto it soon. Friends of ours know we scrapped sometimes. They'll tell him.'

'I'm glad you told me.' Diamond appreciated the honesty. No doubt there would be suspicions that one more 'scrap' had resulted in violence and Patsy's death. The man was realistic enough to know the pattern any investigation followed. Bowers
would
dissect the relationship.

Some awkwardness remained between them. Stormy, talkative, with a tendency to blunder into trouble, wasn't the sort of man Diamond would normally strike up a friendship with, but then who was? He had almost no close companions in the police. It wasn't a job that encouraged confidences. But he was glad he'd made the gesture of welcoming him to his home. With their common cause they would make an effective team.

'Do you want vinegar with that?'

Stormy shook his head. 'What I'd really like is to find out if they nicked Joe Florida.'

Diamond said it was simple. He'd call the duty sergeant and find out.

A few minutes later he passed on the news that Florida was being questioned by McGarvie at Shepherd's Bush Police Station.

'Will he ask the right questions?'

'Who knows? They sound confident.'

'Aren't you?'

'That Florida is the killer?' Diamond looked away, at the photo of Steph he'd put in a frame on the wall-unit. 'He was never top of my list.'

'But he's a vicious bastard. You helped send him down.'

'Justly. He was bang to rights.'

'So what's the problem, Peter? He's well capable of murder.'

'I can't see the logic in it. If he hated my guts - and he probably did - then why not murder me? People like Florida live by a simple, brutal code, Dave. They demand, and they get. If they don't get, they give, and what they give is violence. We're not dealing with a chess grand master here. I don't see Joe Florida scheming and plotting in jail for years thinking when I get out I'll murder the
wives
of the coppers who banged me up, and that'll really make them suffer.'

'He'd rather kill us?'

'Of course - if he still bears a grievance. And I'm not convinced he had a reason to hate you when all you did was sit beside Blaize in the interviews.'

'I was alone with him a lot.'

'Doing what? You didn't get physical with him?'

Stormy grinned. 'Me - with Joe Florida?'

'I meant restrain him.'

'I know what you meant. He asked me things, how long I'd been on the force, if I was married, had kids. You know me by now. I can go on a bit.'

'He actually asked if you were married?'

'Yes.'

'And you told him?'

'I was trying to seem laid-back.'

'What was he after - a smoke?'

'I wouldn't have given him one. No, I thought at the time he was softening me up for something. It was scary, to be honest.'

'Softening you up for what?'

'He could see I was new in the job. He had this aura of evil. You must have sensed it, same as me.'

'What are you saying, Dave? That he psyched you out? That you did something out of order?'

Stormy was quiet for a time. Finally he sighed and said, 'I've never mentioned this to anyone.'

Diamond waited.

'He asked me to make a phone call for him, letting his girlfriend know he was nicked.'

'And did you?'

'Of course not.'

'But you promised Florida you'd do it?'

'Kind of.'

'Either you did or you didn't.'

He shrugged. 'I did, then.'

'And you think he remembers?' Diamond said in disbelief.

'I remember - and I wasn't sitting in the Scrubs staring at the walls. Things can get out of proportion, Peter.'

Diamond took a short swig of beer. 'Even if you're right, and he held a grudge as long as this, I still say he'd take it out on you, not your wife.'

About eleven, they made up an extra bed in the spare room. 'What's the agenda tomorrow?' Stormy asked.

'A trip to Guildford.'

'What for?'

'My wife's first husband, Dixon-Bligh, used to have a restaurant there. McGarvie says he's holed up somewhere, and I want to know why.'

'He's the one who could have been mentioned in the diary?'

'Right. "T" for Ted.'

'You think he's gone back to Guildford?'

'I wouldn't rule it out, but if he's covered his tracks, as the Met seem to think, we're not going to find him that easily. We've got to go at him by a different route. I want to trace his ex-partner in the business - if possible.'

'Who is he?'

'She, actually.'

'A woman.' Stormy twitched as a dire thought struck him. 'What if he killed her?'

Diamond had thought of this a long time before. He remarked as if recalling some ancient mystery, 'It would be helpful to know.'

Stormy was still grappling with the implications. 'But there's no link between Dixon-Bligh and my wife's murder.'

'None that we know of - yet.'

After some ninety miles of Diamond's ultra-cautious driving they reached Guildford well past coffee-time and had to go looking for a place that would serve them. 'To settle my shattered nerves,' he muttered. 'I don't like the motorways.'

'You should have told me,' Stormy said. 'I could have walked in front with a red flag. We'd still have got here in the same time.'

'Cheeky sod.'

The first place they looked into after the cafe was a secondhand bookship. Diamond, better for the intake of caffeine, explained his thinking. There was always a shelf near the door of out-of-date guides, yearbooks and catalogues. He picked off a 1998 restaurant guide and found the address of Dixon-Bligh's former establishment, the Top of the Town. 'See if this gets your juices going, Dave.
"'The welcome is warm, the cooking classy at this easy-to-miss
haven towards the top of the High Street. Edward Dixon-Bligh
recently took over after a career of catering for the top brass in
Royal Air Force establishments across the world. The menu reflects
his international pedigree, with chowders, cassoulets and pestos,
terrine of pork knuckle with foie gras, cinnamon-spiced quail
with cardomom rice and fine green beans and pan-fried salmon
with sarladaise potato and horseradish cappuccino sauce.
Desserts include Thai coconut with exotic fruit sorbets. A fine
cellar, mainly French and New World, is expertly managed by
Dixon-Bligh'spartner, Fiona Appleby, who is pleased to advise."'

'It's probably a McDonald's now,' Stormy said.

'Can't get more international than that.'

But it was no longer in business as a restaurant. They found a body-piercing studio where the Top of the Town had been. A window filled with tattoo-patterns and pieces of metal designed to be inserted into flesh. The shaven-headed, leather-clad receptionist almost fell off her stool when the two middle-aged detectives walked in. She thought their generation wasn't privy to the charms of pierced nipples and navels.

Diamond confirmed the impression. He explained he was only interested in the former owners.

'Them? They blew out of here ages ago. They split up, didn't they?'

'What do you do with the mail?'

'It stopped coming.'

'They must have left a forwarding address.'

'The woman has a cottage at Puttenham. We used to send stuff there.'

'Is that far?'

'Take the A31 on the Hog's Back. You'll see the sign.

It's about three miles.'

'Do you have a note of the address?'

'I remember it. Duckpond Cottage.'

'And you think she's still there?'

'Don't bank on it, mister. Are they in trouble, then?'

'It's just an enquiry. Why do you ask?'

"Cos you look like the police.'

'It's personal.'

Stormy said with a beam across his tomato-red face, 'You can't tell a book by its cover.'

Out at Puttenham they found Duckpond Cottage on its own at the end of a rutted track that Diamond refused to drive along. The place wasn't a picture-postcard cottage. It was built, probably in the nineteen-sixties, of reconstituted stone slabs that had acquired patches of green mould. But efforts had been made with the garden and the paintwork was recent. No one answered when they rang the doorbell. 'Par for the course,' Stormy said.

Through the letter box a few items of mail were visible inside.

Everyone in a village is supposed to know everyone else's business. At the nearest house a small, elderly man in a cap was standing in his doorway before they reached it.

'Who are you, then?' he piped up.

'Enquiring about your neighbour, Miss Appleby. Does she still live at Duckpond Cottage?'

'Why - has she gone missing?' He was more interested in asking questions than answering them.

It seemed she hadn't moved away.

'You're not from the council, about the drainage? Shocking, the state of that lane.'

'She doesn't appear to be at home.'

'Gone away, hasn't she?' Now there was a note of certainty in the voice, even if it ended as yet another question.

'Did she tell you?'

'I may be old, but my eyes are all right. I saw you prowling around, didn't I?'

'You did.'

'She hasn't been at home for the past three weeks.'

'As long as that?'

'Easily.'

Diamond was not entirely convinced. 'We looked through the letter box. I wouldn't say there's three weeks' junk mail on the carpet.'

'That's because someone comes in.'

'Really? Who's that - a cleaner?'

'In Puttenham? We don't have cleaners in Puttenham. Them's for fancy folk in Guildford.'

'Who could it be, then - Miss Appleby herself?'

'Nothing like her. This young lady is taller, with a good figure. She comes in a car once a week.'

'So it's a young woman we're talking about. Have you seen her yourself?'

'From a distance. I've watched her come and let herself in. Not Miss Appleby - she's different altogether. This one drives up in a fancy sports car, a red one, and leaves it where yours is, at the top of the lane. She doesn't stay long. Just goes inside for a couple of minutes and comes out carrying stuff.'

'What stuff? The post?'

'I reckon. I've seen her with a couple of bags, them plastic sacks. Pretty well filled up, they was.'

'Not just the mail, then?'

'Some of Miss Appleby's property, I expect. Clothes and things.'

'Didn't you ask her what was going on?'

The old man looked affronted. 'I'm not nosy.'

'But you don't even know who she is. Could be pinching the stuff.'

He shook his head. 'She don't act like a burglar. She lets herself in with a key in broad daylight. Must be family, wouldn't you say?'

'And always at the same time?'

'Once a week, round about two. What's today - Wednesday? If you're willing to wait you could see her for yourselves.'

Not much fell into Diamond's lap, so he was disbelieving when it did. 'You're expecting this woman to visit the house today?'

'It's her day, isn't it?'

They moved Diamond's car to the old man's driveway. There would be under an hour to wait. Flattered by all the attention, their host offered them some of the chicken soup he was cooking for lunch, but each of them declined when they saw the state of his kitchen. In matters of hygiene the fancy folk in Guildford had the edge.

'You'll get the best view of Duckpond Cottage from my bedroom window,' the old man informed them while he dipped chunks of bread into his soup and sucked on them noisily. 'Go on up if you want.'

His bedroom promised to be no more salubrious than the kitchen, and wasn't, but they were policemen, and their work had taken them into more squalid places. They opened the window that looked out along the lane, leaned out and gulped some fresh air.

'If this woman turns up,' Diamond said, 'I think we should play this cautiously. I don't know what's going on here, but my instinct is to watch and wait and see where she goes.'

'Agreed,' Stormy said, then, after an interval, 'No offence, Peter, but if she drives off, as she probably will, and we get in your car and follow, would you mind if I took the wheel?'

A sniff from Diamond. 'Think you can do better?'

'I'm thinking of your faultless driving. We could find ourselves having to ask which way she went.'

He shrugged. 'All right.' Then added, 'I'd better warn you. I'm a nervous passenger.'

They heard the car's approach a few minutes after two, just as the old man had predicted. It was an Alfa Romeo convertible with a fawn-coloured top, and it halted at the top of the track leading to Duckpond Cottage. The driver, a woman, youngish, with black hair teased into fine loose wisps, stepped out and touched the switch in her hand that locked the doors. She was in a turquoise sweater, black jeans and ankle-length boots.