The Summons (14 page)

“I’ve told you everything you have any right to know.”

“We’re not exchanging gossip,” he pressed her. “This is someone who was murdered.”

“I’ve nothing else to say on the matter. It’s over. You took the man before the courts and he was found guilty.”

Not, simply, Mountjoy murdered her. More like a refined way of saying you clobbered him and it’s your arse in a sling, mate.
What did she know?

“Should I speak to your husband? Maybe he’ll feel easier talking to me.”

“You’ll get nothing out of Winston.”

She gave too much away this time. Implicit in the force of the remark was her conviction that Winston knew something and hadn’t confided in her, in spite of her best efforts.

“He’s out at work, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“Does he come home for lunch by any chance?”

“No.”

“So what time do you expect him home today?”

“I can’t say. It varies.” Her mouth pursed and those pale eyes glared in defiance.

Diamond was plumbing the depths of his memory to get a mental impression of the man. Winston Billington’s testimony at the trial had been confined to describing how he had found the body. He had never been considered as a possible suspect because the holiday in Tenerife had given him an alibi. He’d appeared younger than his wife, perhaps under fifty, a slight, dapper figure in a striped suit. “What’s his job, then? I take it he has a job?”

“Sales rep.”

“Selling what?”

“Greeting cards.”

“For a local firm?”

“No.”

“So where are they based—in London?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s the area rep?”

“Yes.”

“Visits the shops, does he, trying to interest them in the new designs? Have you got any samples around the house?”

She turned away and started busying herself with dishes. “He doesn’t keep them here. We wouldn’t have room.”

“What does he have—an office?”

“Something like that. A place where the cards are stored.”

“But you don’t have any you can show me?”

She glared. “I already made that clear, I thought.”

His curiosity was mounting. “What sort of cards are they, Mrs. Billington?”

“What do you mean, what sort? Greeting cards.”

“The sort I might choose for my wife?”

“I’ve no idea.” But she had gone a shade more pink.

“Let’s give you an idea then. Her preference is for country scenes, or animals. Not over-sentimental. A basket of Persian kittens would be too sappy for my Stephanie. She wouldn’t mind a horse looking over a gate.”

“I said I have no idea because I don’t see the blessed cards,” she told him, overriding her blushes with acrimony. “If you’ve finished, I do have things to attend to. I don’t wish to discuss my husband’s business.”

“You’re right,” said Diamond generously. “I’d better go to the fountainhead. When can I be sure of finding him at home?”

Her entire body tensed. She said, “I thought the reason you called was to warn us about Mountjoy. Winston knows he escaped. I don’t see why you have to bother us anymore. We suffered enough at the time of the murder.”

“I’m still going to speak to him.”

“He’s got nothing to say.”

“What time do you suggest?”

“After eight, if you must.”

“Certainly must.” He picked his trilby off the table. There wasn’t anything to thank her for.

“Not so much as a cup of weak tea, Julie.” He voiced his disapproval of Mrs. Billington over a sandwich lunch in the Roman Bar at the Francis. “She treated me as if I was something the cat brought in.”

“Is there a cat?”

“Yes, and it ignored me. So it was
worse
than being something the cat brought in.”

“You’re not having much of a day so far. And you think Mrs. Billington was keeping something back?”

He picked up the sandwich plate. “Put some of these on your plate or I’ll swipe the lot. I’m like that. It isn’t gluttony, it’s concentration. Working lunches have that effect. Yes, I’d lay money that she was withholding information, and it concerns the husband. Of course it could be simply that he deals in raunchy greeting cards and she’s ashamed of him.”

“Does he?”

“Don’t know for sure. I got the impression that they’re not the sort you’d send to your aunt. Fair enough, the shops are full of them. Mrs. Billington may not want the world to know, but if it’s a living and within the law, I’m not condemning Winston.”

“Wicked Winnie.”

He chuckled. “I can remember a time when a sales rep was called a commercial traveler and the butt of thousands of dirty jokes. I’m curious to find out whether Winston fits the picture.”

“Meaning what?” said Julie.

“Meaning was he laying the lodger?”

Julie’s eyebrows arched.

“It’s not unknown,” he added reasonably. “Middle-aged man lusting after pretty girl upstairs. When I looked at Mrs. Billington this morning—”

“Come off it, Mr. Diamond,” Julie cut in sharply. “I’m not one of your beer-drinking cronies.”

He hesitated. Once he would have waded in. But he valued Julie’s support and wanted to keep it.

She repaired the conversation seamlessly. “If he had something going with Britt, it would be interesting to discover, but where would it lead us since we know he was in Tenerife at the time of the murder?”

“I’m talking off the top of my head,” Diamond said, “but it might provide a motive that we didn’t consider at the time. If Billington slept with Britt and someone else got to hear of it, we could be talking about a jealous lover as the killer.”

“Marcus Martin?”

“He claimed he’d broken up with Britt, but we only have his word for that.”

“He had an alibi for the night of the murder, didn’t he?”

“Didn’t they all?”

Julie was becoming inured to the big man’s cynicism. “He was at a party in Warminster until one in the morning.”

“Time of death isn’t certain.”

“Yes, but the woman he was with
is
certain. She said he spent the rest of the night at her flat in Walcot Street.”

“Was there corroboration, though?”

“No.”

Diamond took a long sip of bitter. “I wouldn’t place too much reliance on it, then. Let’s talk to Mr. Martin this afternoon if we can.”

She looked up, surprised. “You want me to come?”

He nodded. “Unless you need more time with the crusties. How did you get on?”

She gestured with her thumb that the morning had not been a success. “They’re too guarded to talk to anyone like me, except to give me abuse. There are nine or ten of them sitting around the Abbey Churchyard area with their dogs. To
get
on terms with them I’d need to shave off most of my hair and get some combat fatigues.”

“And a layer of dirt,” contributed Diamond.

“Tattoos.”

“Rings through your nose.”

Julie paused and looked at him with widening eyes as it dawned on her that what was being said might actually amount to an instruction.

“All right,” said Diamond. “We’ll leave out the nose rings.”

Chapter Twelve

Samantha Tott said, “It’s freezing.”

John Mountjoy told her, “It isn’t. You don’t get frost down here.”

“That really cheers me up! I thought the caravan was the coldest place I’d ever have to sleep in. How wrong I was!”

“This is only temporary.”

“How temporary? I can’t face another night here.”

Her voice, pitched higher, echoed off the limestone walls.

The hills to the east of Bath are riddled with stone workings. In the area of Box and Corsham Down the mining was abandoned half a century ago and the main entrances blocked up, but there are numerous ways in. From time to time rescue operations are mounted for the reckless and naive who have ventured in and lost themselves in the maze of tunnels. Mount-joy was neither reckless nor naive. In his case the risk of getting lost was massively outweighed by his need for a bolt-hole.

He had brought Samantha to Quarry Hill at night after abandoning the caravan. They had stumbled through the undergrowth looking for one of the entrances. By torchlight they had picked their way down some rough-hewn steps through a sloping shaft that linked with a tunnel where they could stand upright with ease. This was one of the main arteries. A short distance on, they had discovered a recess some two meters deep in the side of the tunnel. Presumably it was the beginning of a working that for some reason had proved unsatisfactory. To Mountjoy it had felt secure and smelled all right and was more congenial as a place to rest than the main tunnel. He had led Samantha into it with all the gusto of an estate agent showing a client around. As he pointed out, with the torch and some spare batteries and food and a blanket, it was perfectly habitable. And she had slept. They had both got some sleep.

Yet this morning she wouldn’t stop griping about the cold. Mountjoy’s tolerance of women who complained was limited in the best of situations. He was beginning to become unhappy with Samantha’s attitude. In his opinion the first two nights in the caravan had been colder than down here. She’d been too terrified that he was a rapist to speak of the cold—or possibly she thought he might interpret it as a come-on. Now that she’d survived several nights without being molested, the protests about creature comforts were mounting up.

To calm her down, he repeated a few words of consolation someone had once given him in Albany. “Sleeping rough would be a damned sight colder.”

“What do you call this, if it isn’t rough? Couldn’t we go back to the caravan park? They won’t be expecting us to go back.”

“The farmer will. He’ll be guarding his patch now.”

“Some other site, then.”

“I’ve got somewhere else in mind.”

She was elated. “Let’s go, then. It can’t be worse than this.”

“I have to check it first.”

“You mean
on your own?”

“Be sensible. What do you expect?”

“Don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me. I hate the dark.” The voice was on that dangerous rising note again.

“Maybe I can get something warmer for you to wear.”

“You don’t have the money.”

“I didn’t say I’d buy it.”

“Don’t leave me here.”

“I must.”

“Why? No one would recognize me. You said when you put that disgusting stuff on my hair that it would change my looks. No one’s going to spot me like this.” She flicked a strand petulantly away from her face. True, the brown dye they had used in the caravan had made a big difference and instead of standing out like a dandelion in seed, everything drooped. When she wasn’t griping about the cold, she gave him hell for messing up her hair.

“You’re not going out until it’s necessary,” he told her. “This is just a recce.”

“I wouldn’t scream, or anything.”

“No chance. I’m doing this alone.”

“Cruel bastard.”

“If you want to stay here forever, fine, I won’t go. We’ll sit here and rot.”

A pause, then, “How long would you be?”

“I’m not going immediately.”

“I mean is it far, this other place?”

“Not far.”

She said with heavy suspicion, “It isn’t another cave, is it?”

“This isn’t a cave. It’s a mine, or if you want to be strictly accurate, a quarry. No, where I’m going isn’t underground. Quite the reverse.”

“Couldn’t I come with you?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“I’ll die of fright.”

“If you don’t shut up about it, I’ll gag you again.”

Still she wouldn’t leave it. “What if you’re recaptured and I’m left down here?”

“I’d tell them, wouldn’t I?”

She scanned his features for the slightest betrayal of insincerity. “Have you heard any more from them?”

“No,” he said. “I’m giving them time.” Seeing how she stared at him aghast, he said, “They’ve got work to do, or one of them has. Did your father ever mention a detective called Diamond?”

“Daddy doesn’t discuss his work with me. In fact, he doesn’t discuss anything with me. He and I don’t have much in common.”

“He disapproves of your busking, I expect.”

“And much more. What were you going to tell me about this detective?”

He’d caught her interest. She’d been on the verge of panic at the prospect of being left here and his only practical way of dealing with it was to distract her. He could have ignored her and walked off. No one would have heard the screams. But he knew what it is to be reduced to despair by the brutal indifference of a jailer. Causing another hapless being to suffer was no pleasure for him and no solution. It would dehumanize them both. So he fed her tidbits of information as a way of reassurance. “Diamond is one of your father’s top detectives, which doesn’t say much for the others. Four years ago, he led an investigation, a murder investigation, and screwed it up. He put the wrong man away. You’re sure you haven’t heard about this?”

A shake of the head. It was a small triumph for Mountjoy that she’d stopped complaining.

“There are bent cops and there are cops like Diamond who believe they’re right,” he went on. “He isn’t bent—I think. He truly believed he’d cracked the case. He’s a typical pigheaded policeman, bossy and blinkered, but there’s something about the man. It can’t be his charm, which escapes me, or his style of interrogation, which just stops short of red-hot needles, or his leadership qualities, because the people who work with him hate his guts. He drives them too hard. What it comes down to, his one saving grace, is that he’s straight. Mistaken, but honest. And I’m giving him a chance to prove it.”

“You’re the man he sent to prison.”

Two days ago, careful not to alarm her, Mountjoy would have denied that he was an escaped con. Now, paradoxically, confirming it was a way of fostering confidence. He said with a fleeting smile, “A college education isn’t wasted on you.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

He hadn’t meant to be. “I’ve got a lot of time for students.” And he almost added that he’d been principal of his own college, but he didn’t want to tell too much, too soon Anyway, I was talking about Superintendent bloody Diamond. He got it wrong and I’ve told him to do something about it.”

“After all this time?”

“After all this time.”

“What can he do? Do you know who really did the murder? Did you tell him?”

“All I know is that Diamond got it wrong. I told him so. Whether he believes me is far from certain.”

“You must have some ideas of your own. You must have thought about it while you were locked away.”

“Constantly. I got nowhere because I didn’t have all the facts. No amount of thinking is going to solve a crime if you don t have the full picture.”

“Does this man Diamond?”

“Does he what?”

“Have the full picture?”

“Not up to now, but he’s the only one with the means to get at the truth. He has all the original statements and he knows—”

Samantha interrupted with a little gasp, followed by “What’s that?”

“What?”

“A sound, a scuffling.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

Together they listened. It occurred to Mountjoy that if a search party had entered the mine, footsteps and voices ought to be audible, but it would be difficult to know from which direction they were approaching because there were so many entrances to this labyrinth. Choosing an escape route would be a lottery.

“There it is again!” she told him.

It didn’t sound human in origin. It was a light sound, a rustle, not far away.

“And again!” said Samantha.

“That’s dust falling. I felt it on my neck.” He shone the torch upward and a dark shape fluttered across its beam. “A bat. That was only a bat.”

“Oh, my God!”

“They won’t come near you.”

“I’m terrified of bats.”

“They’re not interested in us. It’s their home. See that ledge up there.” He pointed the torch. “That’s where it flew from. It disturbed some tiny chips of limestone.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, folded her arms across her chest and started rocking her torso and producing a high-pitched moaning sound. He’d never heard anything like it. The fear had gripped her like an epileptic fit. Was she epileptic? he wondered. How would he deal with it? In all his planning he hadn’t anticipated anything like this.

Abandoning his self-imposed pledge not to touch her, he put a hand on her upper arm and shook her. “Stop it, will you? Don’t be so ridiculous.”

She opened her eyes. “Why don’t you kill me and get it over? Yes, kill me. I’d rather die. Kill me, murderer!”

He pushed her down and forced her hands behind her back and tied them.