The Summons

by Peter Lovesey

  “I don’t know about that,” said Martin. “Our relationship was short and to the point. Weeks, rather than months.”

  “You don’t mind talking about it?”

  “Not in the least. But I don’t see what bearing it has.”

  In the house, before a flickering log fire in a recessed stone fireplace almost as large as the office Diamond and Julie shared at the nick, Marcus Martin expanded on this. “I respected Britt. She was a class act. Extremely pretty and considerably brighter than I am. She was a damned fine horsewoman, too.” There was genuine admiration in his tone. “She rode regularly. They take their riding seriously in Sweden. Anyway, Britt was keen to do some jumping and someone at the stables offered to bring her out here. I have a show-jumping layout— not the one you saw, but a full course—the best for miles around. Perhaps you noticed it when you drove in. That’s how we met. After she had exercised my best stallion, and cooled off with a Perrier—she was TT, you know—she said she’d like to ring for a taxi. She didn’t possess a car. Naturally I offered to drive her home, and I did.” He paused and gave Julie a wink. “The next morning.”

  “This was when—in September?”

  “Around then. Maybe August. As I said, it was ages ago. The whole thing didn’t last more than three wild and steamy weeks. It was over at least a week before she was killed.”

  “You told me at the time that you drifted apart,” recalled Diamond. “It’s hard to reconcile that with three wild and steamy weeks.”

  “Did I? Then I suppose it was true. Yes, I’d been through my repertoire, so to speak. I wouldn’t say we were getting bored with each other by Week Three, but we only had one thing in common.”

  “You mean the riding?”

  He grinned. “She was about to start college, and I had a weekend trip to Belgium as reserve to the British show-jumping team and we didn’t fix another date. Simple as that. There was no argument, thank God, or I might have felt guilty later. After I got back from Brussels I started up with someone else.”

  “The young lady who supplied your alibi.”

  “Yes, indeed. She died, you know. Meningitis.”

  “Your girlfriends don’t have much luck. You met this one at a party, if I remember, and went home with her.”

  “To Walcot Street, yes. A frightful slum, but I scarcely had a chance to notice. She practically dragged me to her lair and ravished me. Repeatedly.”

  Diamond took a sip of the sherry the young man had provided. He suspected that the sexual bragging was targeted at Julie. He didn’t remember it being so explicit four years ago. All this passion was something of a mystery to Diamond considering that Marcus Martin was a short, unprepossessing man with carroty hair trained in wisps across his balding scalp, but he’d never understood how the female libido worked. Maybe the riding had something to do with it. Or the big house in the country.

  “Can we go back to Britt Strand? The affair was conducted here for the most part, was it?”

  “Entirely. Her place was very unsuitable. The people downstairs—I’ve forgotten their name—”

  “Billington.”

  “Right. They wouldn’t have approved. Very straight-laced. Chapel, I believe. The old lady watched from downstairs like a Paris concierge.”

  “You met them, then?”

  “Several times. I used to call for Britt and drive her back in my Land Rover.”

  “But you didn’t, em . . . ?”

  “Not there. It was far more relaxed here at the manor.”

  “The Billingtons went away for three weeks to Tenerife. Didn’t you visit there when the house was empty?”

  He frowned, and tapped the arm of the chair thoughtfully with one finger. “Now that you mention it, there were a couple of occasions when I wasn’t given the beady eye from downstairs. I just assumed they were out for a short time. Britt didn’t mention their holiday. Presumably she preferred to come here.”

  “Did she talk to you about the Billingtons at all?”

  “Not much. She didn’t like them particularly, but the place was convenient. She was quite sure that they let themselves into her flat when she went out sometimes. Just to nose around. That isn’t unusual in lodgings, I understand. She also told me that the man fancied her a bit. She laughed it off. Most men fancied her a bit, if you ask me.”

  Julie said, “How did he show it?”

  “Gave her little presents when his wife was occupied elsewhere, on the phone, or in the bath. Chocolates, flowers from the garden, things women appreciate. Britt said he always made an excuse, said he didn’t care for chocolates, or he was trimming back the roses, or something.”

  Diamond’s attention snapped into sharper focus. “Roses?”

  “Or daffodils or sweet peas. I don’t know.”

  “But you said roses.”

  “It was the first flower that came to mind.”

  “You know why I’m interested?”

  “Of course I do, and that’s probably what made me mention roses. I wouldn’t attach any importance to it.”

  “Can’t you remember what she told you?”

  “After all this time? No.”

  Diamond knew from experience the frustration of dealing with people whose memories were imprecise. At this distance in time the chance of learning anything new was depressingly slight. “Did you ever actually speak to Mr. Billington?”

  “Only to pass the time of day.”

  “Did Britt tell you anything else about him?”

  “She reckoned he was glad to get out of the house. He was a sales rep, you know, greeting cards, rather vulgar, I believe, and I think he enjoyed a good laugh with some of the shop ladies he visited. Why are you so interested in old Billington?”

  Diamond ignored that. “How do you know about the cards?”

  “I saw him once doing his stuff in Frome. One of those newsagents in the pedestrian bit. The woman was practically wetting herself giggling at the cards he was trying to persuade her to take.”

  “Let’s get back to Britt. Did she talk to you about her work at all?”

  “The journalism? Very little. I was completely in the dark about all that stuff that came out at the trial. The Iraqi connection. She told me she was enrolling at the college when the term started and that was all. I didn’t even ask which course.”

  “Did she mention Mountjoy in any connection?”

  “None at all.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Never, so far as I know.”

  The same brick wall.

  “During your visits to the house at Larkhall, the murder house, did you go up to her room?”

  “Of course.”

  “And did you ever take her flowers?”

  Martin put up his hands in denial. “Hey, what are you suggesting? Oh, no.”

  “Did you send any after the friendship cooled, perhaps as a goodwill gesture?”

  “A what?”

  “Did you notice any in her flat?”

  “Roses? No.”

  “Did you send some to the funeral?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Martin made a point of looking at his watch.

  It was Julie, unbidden, who picked up the questioning. “We believe she may have been preparing some kind of article about the crusties in Bath. Did she mention it to you at any stage?”

  He frowned, looked into the fire and snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact, she did. One afternoon we had tea in the Canary, that rather genteel cafe in Queen Street where they play taped classical music as you sip your Earl Grey. They insist on escorting you to your seat. We were favored. We were given a window seat downstairs. You can watch the people walking past. I was doing my best to amuse Britt by making up stories about them as if I knew them all. This one posed for Picasso and this one is a train-spotter, or an escaped nun, and so on. Very silly when I describe it now, but it seemed amusing at the time. Then this enormous man strolled by in an army greatcoat, obviously a crusty, and to my amazement Britt
waved to him and tapped on the window. He stopped and stared. For a moment I thought she was going to invite him in and so did the manageress. I mean this guy wasn’t exactly teashop material. Dreadlocks, tattoos, earrings, hobnail boots. But Britt got up and went out to him, incidentally taking him half her toasted teacake. They were out there chatting for some time. The Canary clientele were absolutely riveted. He was an awesome sight.”

  “Has to be G.B.,” Julie remarked to Diamond.

  “Eventually he went on his way and she came back full of apologies. He was just a contact, she said, and I remember wondering how intimate a contact. I as good as asked her. You want to know the risks you’re taking, if you understand me. But Britt insisted that it was purely professional. She was collecting material for a story about the crusties, something that could turn out really sensational. She was keeping the big fellow sweet until she had all the facts.”

  Diamond turned to Julie. “The Canary—that’s just around the corner from Trim Street, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Did she tell you anything else?” Diamond asked Martin.

  “About the crusties? No.”

  “She wasn’t scared of this man?”

  “She certainly didn’t give that impression.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “No, I think he must have left the area.”

  * * *

  Summing up in the car as Julie drove back toward Bath, Diamond said, “Not bad. We started with two men in the frame, Jake Pinkerton and Marcus Martin, and now we have two more: Wicked Winnie, as you called him, and G.B., whoever he is.”

  “Winston Billington had an alibi, surely?” said Julie. “He was in Tenerife at the time of the murder.”

  “I wonder if anyone checked it.”

  “We must have.”

  “You say ‘we,’ but you weren’t part of it then. If there was any carelessness, it was my fault. Billington didn’t loom very large in the inquiry, I can tell you that.” He let her negotiate a crossing and then resumed, “He appears to have fancied his chances with her. The presents. The roses.”

  “Or sweet peas,” she reminded him.

  “All right, but he gave her flowers. And being the landlord, he had a key to her flat. If there’s the slightest doubt about that alibi, Winston Billington has some questions to answer.”

  “Surely we can check that holiday in Tenerife with the travel agent?”

  “Four years on? I doubt if they keep their records that long. It’s all on computer, isn’t it? Dead easy to wipe.”

  Julie smiled. Diamond never missed the chance of a sideswipe at computers.

  “The same applies to the airlines,” he added. “At one time we might have stood a chance of tracing a passenger list. It was all on paper. The stewardess had a clipboard with all the names. Not now.”

  “Was that when Lindbergh was chief pilot?” Julie asked without taking her eyes off the road.

  He gave her a quick look. “On further consideration,” he said, “a couple of rings through your nose might make all the difference.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Back in Manvers Street, the same constable was still on duty behind the protective glass. He called out Diamond’s name.

  “What is it this time?”

  “You have a visitor upstairs, sir.”

  “One of your bumblebees?”

  The constable was uncertain whether he was meant to smile. “No, sir. A crusty.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the way upstairs Julie Hargreaves asked Diamond whether he wanted her to be present.

  He told her brusquely, “Of course I do. He’s only here thanks to you.”

  “I didn’t arrange it.”

  “You scattered the seed corn.” But it wasn’t said as a compliment. He had been assembling his thoughts for the interview to come, and she had disrupted them.

  That was soon forgotten. In their makeshift office, a truly distracting spectacle was waiting. The crusty was asleep, feet up on the desk, head back and mouth open. Neither Julie nor Diamond had mentioned the fact, but each had expected to find someone fitting G.B.’s description. This crusty was emphatically female.

  Stirring at the sound of the door being closed, she yawned and said, “Who are you?”

  “We work here,” Diamond answered.

  The statement was received with a slit-eyed, disbelieving look. Clearly they didn’t look like the sort of police she was used to seeing. She would have been received downstairs by one of the uniformed officers and escorted here by another.

  Diamond added, “Plain clothes. And who are you?”

  “I just looked in.”

  One evasion for another. He decided to give his surname and Julie’s rank and name.

  The crusty responded with, “Shirl.”

  Shirl was in what looked like a wartime flying jacket of faded brown leather with a fleece collar. She had a black T-shirt and fringed leather miniskirt, fishnet tights and badly scuffed ankle boots that she showed no inclination to remove from the desk. Her black hair was cut shorter even than Julie’s and a Union Jack shape was shaved on each side of her head. Large silver rings adorned her ears, but she had no nose decorations and no visible tattoos. Quite a conservative crusty.

  “What can we get for you, Shirl? A coffee?”

  She mimed the action of holding a cigarette to her lips.

  Diamond exchanged a look with Julie and she went out to waylay someone who smoked.

  “What brings you here?”

  Shirl eyed him warily, still with her legs propped on his desk. Since the legs were so much on display, it was impossible not to notice that they were stumpy. Neither the boots, nor the stockings, nor the miniskirt, could make them look anything else. Probably when she was standing no one noticed her legs, for she was generously proportioned above the waist. Deciding finally that some kind of explanation for her presence in the office had to be conceded, she told him, “Some of the fuzz was down in Stall Street this morning asking about G.B.”

  “You know him?”

  “Course I know him, or I wouldn’t be here, would I? What do you want him for?”

  “Only to help us with our inquiries.” The familiar form of words escaped Diamond’s mouth before he was fully aware how sinister it would sound. Swiftly he rephrased it. “I want to talk to him about someone he met a long time ago.”

  “In Bath?”

  He grinned, trying to be agreeable. “Trim Street, actually.”

  “Don’t know it.”

  “You know the bottom of Milsom Street, where the phones are, and that shop with the coffee machine—Carwardine’s?”

  Shirl said, “It’s gone.”

  He frowned. “Not Carwardine’s?”

  “Closed.”

  “God help us.”

  Shirl said helpfully, “But I know where you mean.”

  “Tucked away behind there, then. G.B. was living in a squat in Trim Street at one time four years ago. This woman was a journalist. She arranged with him to visit the house and take some pictures for a magazine.”

  “This is that Swedish reporter who was killed, right?”

  “Right.” Encouraged that she knew, he still tried to keep the same amiable tone. “So you remember her?”

  “I wasn’t here then. I was still at school.”

  “But you know about the murder?”

  “Only what I was told.”

  “And you can take me to G.B.?”

  This caused her to gasp in alarm. “No way! I didn’t say that.”

  “Then why are you here? Did he send you?”

  She answered the first question, not the second. “He’s my bloke.”

  Julie returned with three cigarettes and some matches. Shirl grabbed them all and lit one, slipping the others into a top pocket. Diamond told Julie what he had learned so far, cueing her to take up the questioning.

  “Where are you living, love?” Julie asked.

  “All over. I�
�m a traveler, aren’t I?”

  “In a van?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Close to Bath?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “We can give you a lift home.”

  “Piss off.”

  Diamond manfully took this as the end of the exchange with Julie and his turn to try. “We’d like to meet G.B., just to get his memories of four years ago. Do you think he’d agree to meet us?”

  “Why ask me?”

  “We’d ask him if he was here, but you’re the next best.”

  She transferred her interest to the cigarette, as if she’d won that point, too.

  “He’s your bloke, you said. Does he know you came? We can keep you out of it if you like.”

  “I’m not scared of him,” said Shirl, but it sounded more like bravado than the truth.

  “Did he send you?”

  Silence.

  This time Diamond let her stew for a while. She’d given no sign of wishing to leave and there had to be some reason why she had come. Crusties aren’t in the habit of walking into police stations to fraternize with the fuzz.

  Julie knew the tactics. She gazed steadily at the stack of stationery opposite as if her true vocation were counting envelopes.

  Shirl endured the indifference for a minute or so and then became fidgety, inhaling on the cigarette several times and puffing out smoke. Finally she pinched out the lighted end and positioned it to cool on the edge of the desk. She lowered her legs to the floor and leaned forward in the chair.

  “You think G.B. stiffed her, don’t you?” Her black-lined eyes bore into Diamond. “Don’t you?”

  Trying not to react at all, he stared over her head at an out-of-date notice about Colorado beetles.

  Shirl blurted it all out. “You’ve had the wrong bloke banged up, and now he’s escaped. That teacher. Mountjoy, or something. He didn’t kill the woman. G.B. says so.”

  “He told you that?” Diamond reacted eagerly, breaking his vow of silence. “What else did he tell you?”