Diamond Dust (25 page)

'Where would they have taken him?'

'Casualty, I expect. Chichester has the nearest A & E Department.'

'If my client were to make a voluntary statement about his movements on the day in question,'Joe Florida's solicitor said, 'and if he proved to your satisfaction that he had no part in the matter under investigation, would you be willing to set aside any possible prosecution on matters of a lower tariff?'

'No deals,' McGarvie told him.

'In that case, he has nothing else to say.'

Keith Halliwell leaned towards his SIO and whispered something.

McGarvie gave a petulant click of the tongue and sat back in his chair, raking both hands through his hair. Finally he said, 'If you were talking about something that happened outside our jurisdiction - we're from another force, Avon and Somerset, you understand - my colleague and I wouldn't' - he sighed, hating this - 'wouldn't necessarily be under an obligation to investigate.'

'He needs a stronger assurance than that.'

'Are you saying that after all this he remembers what he was doing on February the twenty-third?'

Joe Florida pointed to the tape recorder mounted on the wall. 'Turn that fucker off, and I'll tell you.'

'Typical breakdown in communications,' Diamond grumbled on the drive to Chichester. 'If someone is brought into hospital with blood all over him and no explanation, it's a police matter. The local CID must have been out at that beach looking for evidence. Why didn't we hear about it?'

'Because we were with Gina's lot,' Stormy pointed out. 'They're not exactly the local plod.'

Thanks to Stormy's driving they reached St Richard's Hospital inside half an hour. The doctor in Accident &Emergency took them into an office at once. A stethoscope hung from his neck and he fingered the sound-receiver as he spoke. 'Yes, I was on duty yesterday when the man was brought in from West Wittering. From the contents of his pocket he was called Edward Dixon-Bligh, but he hasn't been formally identified yet'

'So he's dead?'

'On arrival.'

'Do you know the cause?'

'Loss of blood.'

'But where from?'

'His mouth. This is hard to believe, but someone cut out his tongue.'

32

T
he next afternoon Diamond, back in Bath, was summoned to the top-floor suite known as the Eagle's Nest. Curtis McGarvie was there already, seated in the armchair closest to Georgina's desk. He had a half-empty mug of coffee in his fist, revealing he'd been there some time. And he was sitting at an uncomfortable angle with his knees pointing at Diamond, presumably to line himself up with the inquisition.

Georgina cleared her throat. 'Thank you for coming, Peter.' The greeting had a faintiy pejorative edge, and the follow-up confirmed it. 'If you were expecting a pat on the back, think again. Just because the Yard are treating you like some footballer who scored the winning goal, it doesn't excuse your conduct here. You defied my explicit instruction to stay out of the investigation into your wife's death.'

'I did stay out, ma'am.'

"What?'

'Ask DCI McGarvie. I haven't troubled him at all. When did we last speak?'

McGarvie glared and said, 'That isn't the point.'

'You ran what amounted to a parallel investigation,' Georgina steamed on. 'You visited the crime scenes and interviewed witnesses. What's that, if it isn't interference?'

'Am I prohibited from visiting the place where my wife was murdered? No one made that clear to me.'

McGarvie said, 'You also turned up at the scene of the Patricia Weather murder - even before I did.'

'Nobody barred me from other cases.'

'Come off it, Peter. We all know it was a carbon copy of your wife's shooting.'

'We didn't know at the time. Stormy Weather is an old colleague. I was with him at Fulham. I'm allowed to have some sympathy for an old mate who goes through a similar experience, aren't I?'

Georgina said, 'This is evasion. You teamed up with DCI Weather and drove all over the south of England like . . .' She turned to McGarvie for help, and got none. '. . . like a re-run of
Starsky and Hutch.'

'If you knew my driving, ma'am, you wouldn't make that comparison.'

'Don't mess with me. You go off on your own without any consultation, riding roughshod over sensitive lines of enquiry, blundering into this safe house where the witness was being kept.'

'That was to enquire about Ted Dixon-Bligh, ma'am.'

'And you're going to justify it on the grounds that he was the killer.'

'No, ma'am. He was family.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'My wife's ex-husband. I wanted to see him on a family matter.'

Georgina made a puffing sound of irritation.

Diamond explained, unfazed, 'DCI McGarvie told me he was holed up somewhere, and the Met couldn't find him. You'll confirm those were your words, Curtis?'

McGarvie wasn't willing to confirm anything. He stared straight ahead.

'You don't seem to remember. You'd lost all interest in Dixon-Bligh, or so it appeared to me at the time. You were getting very interested in Joe Florida. What happened about Florida?'

'Released without charge,' McGarvie said after a pained pause. 'After eleven hours, he finally decided to tell us he had an alibi.'

'What was that?'

'He was having his car tyres replaced at a garage in Hammersmith.'

'True?'

'Confirmed, yes.'

'It took eleven hours to get that out of him?'

'The old tyres left a set of prints outside a betting shop that was torched the previous evening.'

'Back on the protection game?'

'Apparently.'

Diamond gave a sigh that was almost sympathetic. 'We can't win 'em all, can we? I helped trace Dixon-Bligh, as you know, but it was too late.'

Now McGarvie waded in. 'You knew he was wanted for questioning. If you'd informed me about this beach hut at West Wittering, I would have collared him.'

'I honestly didn't think about the beach hut until I was at the safe house.'

'You're trickier than a cage of monkeys.'

Georgina continued with the tongue-lashing. 'The whole point is that your actions would have undermined a prosecution against this man. It's lucky for you he's dead.'

This time he was silent. He'd made all the points he wanted.

Georgina banged on for a few minutes more, saying she'd considered formally disciplining him and it was only because of the tragedy of Steph's murder that she chose to be compassionate.

He didn't thank her.

He was on the point of leaving when she seemed to relent a little, maybe deciding she'd taken too strong a line. 'It's brought closure, anyway, Peter.'

'What do you mean?'

'The man is dead.'

'That's closure?' he said in a flat voice.

'In the sense that we can draw a line under the investigation. I realise it doesn't put an end to your personal grief.'

He was silent.

Georgina asked, 'Did you have any suspicion Dixon-Bligh was involved with this Arab group?'

'Not till I was told, ma'am.'

'The manner of his death - removing his tongue -seems particularly brutal. I'm told it's considered a just punishment for an informer. In their society a thief has his hand cut off.'

'I've heard.'

'There's no question that it was an act of revenge by the diamond robbers?'

'That's the strong assumption.'

'They'll be out of the country by now.'

'I expect so.'

'Difficult, bringing international criminals to justice. Still, it's the Yard's problem, not ours. We're left with some tidying up of our own. It's time for some co-operation between you two. Curtis will need chapter and verse from you, every bit of evidence that seals Dixon-Bligh's guilt. It has to be written up before we can close the file. I rely on you, Peter, to pass on your findings. It will be hard for you, I appreciate, but a necessary duty.'

'Bit of a turnaround,' he commented.

'What?'

'You warn me off, tell me not to show my face in the incident room, and now you want me to tell him how it was done. Cool.'

Not merely cool. In that atmosphere you could have preserved a mammoth for a million years.

'Well, I've got good news for you, Curtis,' Diamond filled the silence. 'You won't have to put up with those findings of mine, because they don't exist.'

'Just what do you mean by that?' Georgina asked.

'Dixon-Bligh didn't murder my wife.'

'For God's sake, Peter.'

'Will you hear me out?'

She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

Diamond said, 'I almost convinced myself he was the killer when I heard he was a junkie. It provided the selfish, blinkered, crazed motive I was looking for. But something didn't fit. I also learned yesterday that he was a chef at the Dorchester.'

Georgina took a deep, audible breath. 'We know about that.'

He nodded. 'But you didn't follow it up.'

'What do you mean - "follow it up"?'

'I did. This morning I phoned the Dorchester and asked if they happened to know if he reported for duty on February the twenty-third, the morning Steph was murdered. Yes, they said, he was in the kitchen, cooking.'

'This I refuse to believe,' McGarvie said to Georgina as if Diamond had finally flipped. 'How would anyone remember one day in February?'

'Because it was Shrove Tuesday - Pancake Day.'

'So?'

'People in the catering business remember Pancake Day. The Dorchester put on a big charity lunch hosted by the Variety Club of Great Britain. All the catering staff were there from early in the morning. It was one of the biggest lunches of the year.'

'Is this certain?'

'Dixon-Bligh was in the kitchen at the Dorchester cooking three hundred pancakes.'

'So he was definitely innocent?'

'Of murdering Steph? Yes. And almost certainly of murdering Patsy Weather. But there's no question he was involved in the diamond heist that went wrong. His fatal mistake was blabbing to his girlfriend.'

For some minutes after Diamond left Georgina's office, nothing was said. McGarvie sat in the armchair shaking his head at intervals.

Eventually, Georgina said, 'He's a loose cannon with a habit of hitting the target. A good detective. The best. I only said the things I did because I thought he'd cracked this, gone off and cracked it, and hung you out to dry.'

'I know, ma'am.'

'But he failed. We all failed. This was one of those wretched cases that beat everyone.'

33

O
n the first day of November, Curtis McGarvie's overtime budget was cancelled by Headquarters. Inevitably, the Stephanie Diamond inquiry was scaled down drastically, and the decision came almost as a relief to the team. They'd run through their options. Nothing new had come up. McGarvie remained in charge, with Halliwell as his deputy, assisted by three CID officers and two civilian computer operators. These days they rarely stepped outside the incident room.

Peter Diamond observed this with detachment. He'd long since lost any confidence in the murder team. He, too, was becalmed, but he promised himself it was temporary. He would never give up. He still lay awake for long stretches of the night wrestling with the big questions: why had Steph never mentioned her appointment in the park? Who was 'T'? What was the link - if any - with the shooting of Patsy Weather?

One rainy afternoon he phoned Louis Voss at Fulham. This wasn't in any way inspired, or clever. He just felt the need to talk to someone he trusted.

After they'd got through the small talk he said, 'You saw the stuff in the papers about Dixon-Bligh, I'm sure.'

'Poor sod, yes,' Louis said. 'He wasn't your man after all, then?'

'Someone else's. It gives fresh meaning to that old phrase about guarding your tongue.'

'Ho-ho. So where are you now on this investigation?'

'Nowhere.'

'I can't believe that, Peter.'

'None of the suspects measured up.'

'Square one, then?'

'Square one - which has to be Fulham nick when you and I and Stormy and Patsy were keeping crime off the streets of West London, or trying to.'

'Patsy?'

'Mary Poppins if you prefer - though I thought we'd all moved on since then.'

'You're speaking of Stormy's wife?' Louis said.

'Or wife-to-be, in those days. I'm still wondering why those two got hitched.'

'She was a good-looking woman, a knockout when she was young.'

'That's what I mean. He's a likeable guy, but let's be frank, his looks are against him.'

Louis laughed. 'Who told you that? Stormy pulled the girls like a tug-of-war team.'

Unlikely, he thought. He'd heard Stormy admit to playing away, but hadn't pictured him as quite so active. 'I can't say I noticed at the time.'

'You were a boss man. The guys at the workface knew the score, and Stormy scored more than most. Don't ask me his secret.'

Louis had no reason to exaggerate, Diamond reflected. He heard himself say something rather profound. 'Maybe women feel more confident with an ugly man. Or more confident of keeping him.'

Profound, yet hard to prove. Still, he'd watched a trained protection officer, Gina, mellowing under Stormy's charm offensive, even though it had all the subdety of a Sherman tank. 'So did he change his ways after she married him?'

'Did he hell!'

'She put up with it?'

'At a price, no doubt.' Now it was Louis who ventured an opinion on the ways of women. 'A smart wife has her terms. Read the tabloids. There are plenty of examples.'

'Of big divorce settlements?'

'No, of wives who stay married and appear to put up with all the philandering - at a price. They come out the winners.'

'So you think she had Stormy's number?'

'Oh, yes,' Louis said. 'I watched it happen over the years. He had flings, but none of them lasted. She always reined him in.'

'Did she play around herself?'

'You're joking. She was more interested in nannying than nooky. She put her energies into chivvying us into being nice to each other - which isn't easy in our job. Well, you know what she was like. A cheery word for everyone.'

'I remember.'

'No one was better at organising a leaving party. She put on a terrific do for me when I retired. It was such a send-off I felt embarrassed coming back to the civilian job a couple of years later.'

'Yes,' Diamond said. 'She laid on a good party when I left Fulham.'

'I remember. And even after her retirement she was always coming back reminding us to organise some do or other that couldn't be ignored. We thought the world of Trish - which made it all the harder to understand why she was murdered.'

'Did you just call her Trish?' Diamond asked.

'For Patricia.'

'Is that what she was known as?'

'After the Mary Poppins joke was played out, yes.'

'Stormy calls her Patsy.'

'His privilege. She was Trish to the rest of us. Is this important?'

'I don't know,' Diamond said, but he could hear blood pumping through his head like a swan in flight. 'I'd better go, Louis. I'll talk to you again.'

He put down the phone.

The monstrous thought bombarded his brain. Could T' have been Trish - a woman? In the weeks immediately after the shooting he'd done his utmost to keep an open mind about the sex of Steph's murderer. But as the main suspects had lined up, all of them male, he'd drifted into thinking only a man could be the killer.

It needed a huge leap of the imagination to cast Patricia Weather as a killer. Nobody ever spoke badly of her. He remembered her as a warm, outgoing personality. She and Steph had probably met once or twice at social events, but they were never close friends. He could think of no reason for them to fix a meeting so many years after he and Steph had left Fulham and gone to live in Bath. And he knew of nothing that could have driven her to murder.

Besides, someone had murdered
her,
for God's sake.

Out of the question, then?

Not when he came at it from another direction. All along, he'd been at a loss to explain why Steph had gone to the park that morning to meet her killer. But if 'T' were Trish, sweet, caring Trish, the woman everyone regarded as Mary Poppins, and she suddenly made contact and suggested a meeting, it was possible Steph would have gone along.

Trish, being so efficient, would almost certainly have done the weapons training course in the underground range at Holborn nick. It was on offer in the eighties, and she would have wanted to prove herself as good as the men.

But that was a world away from murdering Steph.

For the millionth time, he came up against this barrier. Why should
anyone
have wanted to kill his gende, trusting, unthreatening wife?

He reached for a pen and paper and forced himself to jot down her possible motives.

1. She had a grudge against me.

2. She had a grudge against Steph.

3. She feared Steph knew some secret about her.

4. She was out of her mind.

None of them stood out. Number 1 seemed unlikely; she was one of the few colleagues he'd never had a spat with. 2 and 3 were doubtful, considering Steph had never actually worked with the woman and scarcely knew her. And he'd heard nothing about a mental illness.

Maybe I'm wrong, he thought. Maybe they
did
know each other, and I didn't get to hear of it because Steph didn't think it important.

He picked up the phone and pressed
redial.

'Louis? Me again. This is a long shot, but do you know anything about Trish Weather's life before she arrived at Fulham?'

'Can't say I do.'

'Could you find out?'

'That's personal data, Peter.'

'Yes, family, education, previous employment, all that stuff. Should be on her application to join the police, if that's still on file.'

'You're not listening,' Louis said. 'I can't access people's personal files.'

'But she's dead, Louis.'

The line went silent for a time.

Then Louis said, 'Couldn't you get this from Stormy?'

'I'd rather leave him out of it at this stage.'

Louis sighed.

He heard nothing back the next day. No bad thing to mark time, he told himself. He'd leapt at the possibility that Trish might be the "I" in Steph's diary. Now he needed to ponder it calmly.

And the more he pondered, the more he feared it was another blind alley.

He'd almost abandoned the idea when Louis phoned back.

'There isn't much, Peter. She applied for the police straight after leaving school. Did her basic at Peel Centre - Hendon, to you and me - and spent a year at West End Central before she started at Fulham. It's a clean record.'

'Any fireams experience?'

'She was an AFO from nineteen eighty-seven.'

'Was she, indeed!'

'Also did courses on juveniles, driving, race relations and drugs.'

'Is there anything on her early life?'

'Not a lot, but this might interest you. She was born and brought up in Bath. She did her schooling at the Royal High School. The family lived in Brock Street.'

Brock Street led to the Royal Crescent and Royal Victoria Park. He gave a whistle that must have been painful to hear down a phone-line. 'Spot on, Louis.'

'Does that help?'

'It's not what I was rooting for, exactly, but it may answer one question I've sweated blood over - why they met where they did. You see, the park where Steph was murdered wasn't a place she would have chosen. She had her favourite parks, but the Victoria wasn't one of them. I've always believed her murderer suggested meeting there.'

After a pause, Louis said, 'Peter, you're not seriously putting Irish in the frame for your wife's murder?'

'Things are falling into place.'

'But she's dead. She was the second victim.'

Diamond didn't answer. His thoughts were galloping ahead.

Louis waited. 'Peter?'

'Yes?'

'I can see problems here. You want to be careful.'

'Why?'

'You know what McGarvie and Billy Bowers will think if they get wind of this theory? They'll think you went out and shot Trish Weather yourself.' After another long pause he said, 'God, I hope you didn't.'