The Summons (13 page)

“About as much as I needed to know, my dear, and that was all. She was a shrewd operator.”

“She must have admired your work.”

“I was reasonably competent,” she said. “No—why be modest?—I’m bloody brilliant with a camera. When I showed her my book, she hired me.”

“That’s how you met?”

“In that business, you have to hustle for the work, darling. I heard about this top journalist living in Bath, so I turned up on her doorstep one morning and showed her what I did. Getting photographers down from London each time she had a story to cover was a real drag, and as I was on the spot she gave me a dry run with the Longleat story. I got some nifty pics and—bingo! It sold all over the world.”

“Coming back to Mountjoy ...”

“You wanted to know how much Britt let me in on the story, right? I knew she enrolled there as a student to dig some dirt, but I hadn’t the faintest idea it was about Iraqi spies. She just wanted pics of the exterior, which I took, and she said when the time was right she’d want some of the principal. My best guess was that the old goat was having it away with some princess from a tinpot European state who had come to learn English. Improper verbs, you might say.” She popped most of a slice of fruit cake into her mouth.

“Were you in close touch with Britt in the last days of her life?”

After some rapid work on the cake, she said, “Not unless you count a phone call as close touch. We spoke the day before she died, updating on the projects I was doing with her. She said the college investigation was coming along nicely and I had better stand by to
get
some pics of the principal as soon as she gave me the word.”

“Did she sound the same as usual?”

“Absolutely. Very calm, with that precise way the Swedes have of speaking English. Always made me sound a blethering idiot by comparison.”

“Did she mention anyone she was planning to see?”

“No.”

“The dinner with Mountjoy wasn’t mentioned?”

“No. She wasn’t one for chatting. It was all strictly business with Britt.”

“Do I sense that you didn’t like her?”

Prue Shorter weighed the question.

“Didn’t like her much?” Diamond pressed.

“I liked the money she paid. We respected each other professionally. As for friendship, she was the ice maiden. Maybe she was only interested in men. She could put it on with them, for sure. I watched her in action.”

There was disapproval in the tone she used. It crossed Diamond’s mind that some sort of jealousy was at work. If he hadn’t heard about the daughter who had died, he might have assumed that Prue Shorter was a lesbian, frustrated in her overtures to Britt. Of course, it wasn’t impossible that she was or had become one.

“Would you go so far as to say that she used her looks to further her career?”

She mocked this with a huge laugh. “What is this pussyfooting ‘would you go so far as to say?” Is this what they call political correctness? Load of horseshit. Of course she maximized her assets, and good luck to her.” She turned to Julie and said, “Don’t you agree?”

Julie reddened and said ineffectually, “Well ...”

Diamond was tempted to point out that “maximized her assets” was pussyfooting, too, but he wasn’t there for an argument. He moved on. “I’d like to ask about the Trim Street job that you did for her. The squat.”

“What about it?”

“How did she persuade them to let you inside with your camera?”

Prue Shorter opened her hands to stress how obvious the answer was. “Like I said, my dear, she exercised her charm. They had a leader. He was called G.B. Don’t ask me why. The crusties all had made-up names like Boots and Tank, even the girls. G.B. used to hang around the Abbey Churchyard— you know, in front of the abbey, right in the center of Bath, and that’s where Britt linked up with him. I don’t know how she could. These people pong like a stable, you know. He had a dog on a piece of rope, a vicious-looking thing, and she would buy meat for it. Just getting G.B.’s confidence. She knew if she could get in with him, he’d square it with the rest of them in Trim Street.”

“But why? What was the object?”

“To get into the house and get some pics.”

“I know that,” said Diamond. “What I mean is that it’s no big deal, some derelict people in a derelict house. As a piece of journalism it doesn’t compare with the story she was doing on Mount joy.”

She nodded. “There must have been something about it that she wasn’t telling. She guarded her secrets, did Britt. I remember wondering at the time if it was worth risking head lice and fleabites for, but she was very insistent. She got us in and I took five rolls of film.”

“Anything of interest?”

“You can see the prints if you want. As pics, they’re bloody good, but I wouldn’t know where to sell them now. Young people with rings through their noses and tattoos and punk hairstyles lying around a gracious Georgian fireplace drinking beer and cider. Rather boring.”

“Were there any objections?”

“From the crusties, you mean? A couple of the girls told me to piss off, I think, but G.B. gave them a mouthful back and they fell into line. No, we had the freedom of the house.”

“This G.B. Is he still about?”

“In Bath? I’ve seen him from time to time in various states of inebriation. They moved out of Trim Street quite soon after we were there.”

“Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Since you mentioned it, I’d like to see your pictures of the crusties.”

“All right. Give me a hand, will you?”

She literally wanted a hand to help haul her up from the sofa. He supplied it and got a sense of the weight her legs had to support. He’d been about to take another bite of cake, but he left a piece on his plate.

Their hostess had to go upstairs for the photos. Diamond returned the cups to the tray and carried it to the kitchen. Julie offered, but he shook his head. He wanted to see that kitchen. It was orderly and well equipped, with a solid, square table, a German oven and a set of French saucepans. A cork notice board over one of the work surfaces was covered with the sort of ephemera that people often feel obliged to keep for a time out of sentiment or necessity: a faded drawing that a young child must have done of a stick figure apparently female with a bush of hair and hands like toasting forks; postcards from Spain and Florida; a Gary Larson cartoon; two newspaper cuttings of local weddings; and a couple of business cards. There was also an engagement diary with every Saturday in the month marked as a wedding.

He was back in the living room when Prue Shorter came downstairs carrying a manila folder. She took out the photos and spread them across the coffee table. “Help yourself, folks. I’d better check that cake.”

They were eight-by-ten prints in black and white, mostly of groups of the crusties lounging in rooms, some in embraces, their dreadlocked hair inseparable and suggestive of sheep after a hard winter in the hills; others lolling in armchairs or lying full-length across the floor. There were also some striking portraits of individuals staring at the camera, their pinched faces and joyless expressions testifying to the hardship of life on the streets.

“Which one is G.B. ?” Diamond asked when Prue Shorter came back into the room.

She picked one off the table. “How would you like to share an ice cream with that? Britt did. I wish I’d had my camera with me at the time.”

G.B. had a shaven head and a drooping eyelid. His teeth looked as if he had just eaten black currants. It was impossible to estimate his age. He was in an army greatcoat and he had a leather necklace with pointed metal studs, the kind people used to give guard dogs to wear. In the photo he was holding a beer can in each hand.

“How big is he?”

“Six-three, must be. Terrific shoulders. He must have done some bodybuilding.”

“Did you find out anything about him, his background, I mean?”

“Britt may have done. I’d say he was a Londoner by his accent. Actually he had quite an educated voice.”

“Bright?”

“Brighter than most of that boozy lot. Their brains rot with the stuff they put away.”

“You said Britt worked her charm on him. Was that as far as it went?”

“You mean did she do it with him? What a revolting thought!”

“Did you ask her?”

“I wouldn’t have insulted her.”

“Did they kiss, embrace, or touch at all? You see what I’m getting at? I want to know whether G.B. could have regarded her as his girl.”

“Sweetie, I’ve no idea what was in his mind, but I’d be very surprised if Britt let him get up to anything. She had any amount of dishy men to choose from.”

Diamond wasn’t to be distracted. “When you were in the house in Trim Street, how did they seem with each other?”

“You mean did they go upstairs for some how’s-your-father? If they had, I’d have gone with them. I was feeling very uptight among all those weird people. No, thank God, Britt was supervising me. She asked G.B. each time we wanted to move to another room or have some furniture shifted for a better shot, and he was very obliging, very eager to please. It was all done in less than an hour.”

“Did any money change hands?”

“Not while I was looking.”

“Might I keep this photo of G.B.?”

“Help yourself. I’ve still got the negs if I really want to remind myself of his ugly mug. How about some more cake?”

They got away without more cake.

In the car, Julie put the key in the ignition and said, “Dare I ask?”

“What?”

“Who gets the job of finding G.B.?”

He said, “It never ceases to amaze me.”

“What’s that?”

“A woman’s intuition.”

Chapter Eleven

He swung the door open. Then he stopped.

He had just come back to the storeroom they had given him as an office. On his desk was a bee the size of a walnut.

Anyone could see it was not a live bee.

He felt an idiot to have reacted as he did on first sight, furious at the gooseflesh that covered his arms. Grinding his teeth, he picked up the thing.

Made of black and yellow wool, with wire antennae, gauze wings and Perspex eyes with black pupils that moved, it was basically a soft toy. A ridiculous object. Someone’s feeble idea of a joke. Would Julie Hargreaves have planted it there? Not Julie, he decided, his investigative skills at work on something tangible at last. She hadn’t had the opportunity. She had been with him ever since she’d heard about the bee sting in his thumb and now she was—or should be—in the Abbey Churchyard, inquiring about G.B. the crusty.

Who would have thought it amusing? Any of the bunch he’d worked with in the old days. On arriving that morning, he’d mentioned his misfortune to the desk sergeant—a cardinal error. The story must have been passed around the entire station.

Footsteps were approaching, so he opened the top drawer, slid the bee inside, sat back and faced the door, fascinated to see if anyone came in. It is well-known that the first person on the scene after a crime will often turn out to have been the perpetrator.

John Wigfull walked in.

Surely not Wigfull! He was too po-faced to stoop to something so childish.

“How’s it going?” he asked Diamond innocently enough.

“Depends what you mean by going. There isn’t much activity.”

“Good thing.”

“Maybe.”

“I mean that the case is cast iron. Everyone says you sent the right man down.”

“Thanks.”

“So this is just a trip down memory lane for you.”

“A double-check,” said Diamond.

There was something faintly comical about John Wigfull foraging, like some small rodent with whiskers twitching. “Has anything fresh come up?”

“We’ve seen a couple of people I didn’t have time to interview the first time round.”

“With any result?”

“Nothing to get excited over.”

If Wigfull wasn’t there to assess the result of the bee tease, there had to be something else he wanted to know. He wouldn’t linger to indulge in casual conversation. He reached for Julie’s chair and then couldn’t summon the nerve to sit down, so he gripped the back and leaned over it. “It must be boring for you, all this inactivity. It shouldn’t be long before we catch up with Mountjoy.”

Diamond agreed that it shouldn’t be long, privately thinking it was down to the efficiency of the searchers.

“We got damned close last night,” said Wigfull.

“I was there.”

“We’ve stepped up the hunt. It will help us enormously if Mountjoy gets in touch again. He said he’d want another meeting to see what progress you’d made. Is that right?”

Diamond gave a wary nod.

“You
would
let us know if he contacted you directly?”

So that was what he had been leading up to. Far from being hot on the trail, they were desperate. “You know me, John.”

“Yes.” Wigfull looked at the shelves of blank stationery as if they would supply information as good as any Diamond gave, which was probably the case. “If you’re bored out of your skull, you might like to try some offender profiling.”

“Oh, yes?”

The voice took on a self-congratulatory note. “Do you know about offender profiling? It was being pioneered before you, em, moved to London. It’s a way of using statistics to build up the profile of an offender.”

“With a computer?”

Wigfull’s face lit up. “Yes. It’s a program called CATCH-EM.”

“Called what?”

“CATCHEM. That’s an acronym for the Central Analytical Team Collating Homicide Expertise and Management. The initial letters spell CATCHEM.”

Diamond’s eyes narrowed. His face reddened. The woolly bee may not have achieved the desired reaction, but Wigfull had touched a raw nerve this time. In a tone thick with contempt came the words, “Who do they think we are?”

Wigfull blinked nervously.

“I said who do they think we are—ruddy seven-year-olds? Who are the people who dream up these names? They seem to think dimwits like you and me will learn to love computers if they give them names. We’re grown-ups, John. We’re in a police force, not a play school.”

“I don’t have any problem with it,” said Wigfull.

Diamond shot him a look that told him it was not an acceptable comment. “They think up these cutesy names and then bust a gut trying to fit rational words to justify them. There’s a police computer called HOLMES.”

“Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. What’s wrong with that?”

With difficulty Diamond resisted grabbing Wigfull by the tie and hauling him across the desk. “Doesn’t it strike you as puerile? Why use the words
Large
and
Major
together when they mean the same thing? I’ll tell you why. Because some genius rubbed his hands and said ‘We’ll call it Holmes—just the thing for the plod.’ Well, if you don’t find it patronizing, I do.”

Wigfull gave a slight, embarrassed shrug.

“Do you or don’t you?” demanded Diamond.

“I said it doesn’t bother me. I only mentioned CATCH-EM in case you wanted to see how the Strand case measured up.”

“CATCHEM!”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it.” Wigfull let go of the chair and took a step backward. “I’d better get back to the center of operations.”

“COMA,” said Diamond.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Center of Operations, My Arse. Never mind, John. You get back to it. I’m sure it’s all action there.”

Alone again, he spread more ointment over his itchy thumb. Wigfull had made him restless. The files wanted studying, yet he was going to find concentration difficult now. He reached for a folder and opened it, turned a couple of pages and stopped. He lifted the phone and pressed out a number on the keys. “Is that Mrs. Violet Billington? Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m speaking from Bath Central Police Station. My name is Diamond. Is your husband home? . . . No? Well, I wonder if I could trouble you? There are some questions relating to the late Miss Britt Strand. Won’t take long, if I could call on you in, say, twenty minutes? How very kind.”

In the corridor, he fell in behind Commander Warrilow in earnest conversation with a slim young woman with her hair in a thick, dark plait that scarcely moved as she walked, her gait was so smooth. He might have taken her for a ballet dancer were it not for the army greatcoat and boots she was wearing. The back view intrigued him so much that he followed them into the main computer room hopeful for a sight of her full face.

Luckily for Diamond, one of the computer operators had something to report and Warrilow cut across the room to look at the screen, leaving the young woman gazing uncertainly after him. She was pale, with the dark marks of tiredness around the eyes in a face that was not conventionally good-looking, but watchable—thin in structure, with a small, thin mouth and long jaw.

“Any idea who that is?” he asked Charlie Stiles, an old chum who for some arcane reason had joined the keyboard tappers.

“The lance corporal? Isn’t she the one who reported Mr. Tott’s daughter as missing? They live in some kind of squat in Widcombe.”

“That’ll be Una Moon, then. What’s she doing here, I wonder?”

“Keeping Warrilow up to the mark, I reckon. She’s a one-woman pressure group.”

“In that case, I won’t ask to be introduced.”

It was one of those narrow, one-way streets in Larkhall with cars parked on one side from end to end. Diamond left the Escort on a yellow line outside the post office and walked back.

There was a FOR SALE board by the front gate. Houses where murders have occurred are too commonplace these days to justify demolition or the renaming of the entire street, as was sometimes the case in times past. But it is interesting to discover what happens to them subsequently. The market value may decline somewhat, yet for every fifty potential buyers who are put off by the history of the address (if it is revealed to them before contracts are exchanged) there is usually one who has no qualms. Unfortunately for the Billingtons, that one had not yet materialized, so they were still in occupation.

Mrs. Billington, who admitted Diamond, seemed still to be affected by the tragic event. At any rate, her manner was nervous. Short and plump, with softly permed silver hair and eyes of the palest blue conceivable in a creature not a cat, she had the door open before Diamond touched the bell, and summoned him inside in an urgent whisper. “Come into the back. We’ll talk there.”

The last time he had visited this place, the hallway had been decorated in some darker shade. It was emulsioned in pale pink now, the stairs painted white. Previous visits had taken him upstairs, to the top floor, where Britt Strand had lodged and been stabbed. This morning he was ushered swiftly to the Billingtons’ kitchen/diner on the ground floor, a cozy room with a wood-burning stove, oatmeal-colored walls and a dark brown carpet. A white cat was asleep in front of the stove. A collection of small dolls dressed in national costumes was ranged along the shelves of a teak dresser.

“Forgive me for hurrying you in like that,” Mrs. Billington said in a normal voice after the door was closed. “My new lodger is upstairs, a student. I’d prefer it if she wasn’t told the history of the house.”

“Is she local?” Diamond asked.

“From Nottingham. Studying chemistry at the university. In her first year. Is it dishonest not to tell her or is it considerate?”

“Students are pretty tough-minded, I find,” said he, “particularly if the rent is reasonable. I don’t need to go upstairs. I called to let you know that Mountjoy is at large, unfortunately.” She gave him a look that showed no gratitude. “I know that.”

“Frankly this is the last place he’s likely to come back to,” he told her, “but we’re notifying everyone connected with the case. Do you have a safety chain? Better use it until he’s back behind bars, which shouldn’t be long. Did you ever meet him?”

“No. The only time he visited the house I was away in Tenerife.”

“I remember. Horrible shock for you on your return.”

“Ghastly.”

“It was your husband who found the body, right?”

“Yes. Winston still has nightmares over it. He’s been on tranquilizers ever since.”

“Remind me what it was that made you suspicious.”

“When we got back from Tenerife, you mean?” Mrs. Billington drew her arms across the front of her lilac-colored blouse and rubbed them as if she were cold. She was playing the silver-haired old lady even though she was scarcely ten years older than Diamond. “She had an order for milk, and there were two bottles on the step. And she hadn’t collected the mail from downstairs. First of all we didn’t think it justified looking into her flat. We tapped on her door and there was no answer. She could have gone off for a few days on some reporting job to do with her work. She wrote for magazines.”

“I know.”

“We put the milk in our own fridge the first evening. Then during the night I found myself wondering if perhaps she was ill upstairs and hadn’t been able to get to the door. How dreadful if we did nothing to help. So I asked Winston to take a look, and he came out looking as pale as a sheet and told me to ring the police and tell them Britt was dead. We didn’t get any more sleep that night.”

“Nor did I. How long had she been living here?”

“Quite some time. Three years, at least. She was an excellent tenant. Very reliable with the rent. We were quite fond of her.” Put like that, it said as much about the Billingtons as Britt Strand.

“She had her own key?”

“Oh, yes. To the front door and a separate one for her flat. As you know, the access was through our part of the house and if she was ever late she would creep upstairs like a mouse.”

“I must have asked you this before. Did anyone else possess a key to the house?”

“Apart from ourselves and Britt? No.”

“Did she have visitors?”

“From time to time. That large woman who took the photographs for her came sometimes.”

“Any men? I’m sure we’ve been over this, Mrs. Billington, but my memory is hazy.”

“She gave us no cause for complaint. I don’t recollect anyone staying the night. I’m not old-fashioned about morals, but as a landlord you always have a dread of a partner moving in when the place is let to a single person.”

Diamond explained that he wasn’t asking just about overnight visitors.

“Oh, there were callers from time to time. I’d have been surprised if there weren’t. She was an extremely good-looking girl.”

“Try and remember them, particularly any toward the end of her life.”

Four years on, this taxed Mrs. Billington to the limit. She managed to dredge up a memory of a caller Diamond took to be Marcus Martin, the horseman. He had called two or three times. And she was positive—because she had been asked it before—that John Mountjoy had never called while she was there.

“Was she ever sent flowers?”

A frown. “I can’t remember any arriving.”

“Did she like roses specially?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“I see you have rose bushes in the garden.”

She reddened and slipped out of her old lady role to deliver a rebuke. “Obviously you’re no gardener. You wouldn’t find a dozen roses in bud in my garden or any other in October. The ones found in the room obviously came from a florist.”

He asked whether Britt had ever discussed her journalistic work and got the answer he expected: she had not.

Diamond, better than most, always knew when he had outstayed his welcome. Suddenly he was getting the message that Violet Billington wanted him out as quickly as possible and not just for the sake of the new tenant upstairs. The question about the roses had unsettled her. This made him all the more interested in prolonging the interview.

“You must have got to know a certain amount about Miss Strand’s relationships with men.”

“Nothing.” Curt and uncompromising.

“Come now, Mrs. Billington,” he coaxed her. “No one is going to accuse you of prying into her life. She was your tenant for three years. In that time you’re bound to have seen the comings and goings and I’d have thought you’re bound to have speculated about her love life. It’s only human.”