The Summons

by Peter Lovesey

  Interrupting her had been a tactical error. It shocked her into silence. Worse, she got up and walked to the door, pausing only to retrieve the dog-end from the edge of the desk.

  Julie put a sisterly hand on her shoulder and said, “You’re going to want somewhere to sleep, love. You can’t go back to him.”

  “I’m not scared of him,” Shirl insisted for the second time, brushing Julie’s hand away. “He didn’t do nothing— well, nothing serious.”

  Some fast talking was required, so Diamond said with a firm statement of fact that rapidly gave way to an appeal and then practically a cry for help, “It’s obvious that G.B. sent you. Fair enough—he wants to know what we’re up to. Would you give him a message from me? Tell him I’d like to meet him and talk about Britt Strand. He could be a crucial witness. Tell him I’m only interested in what happened four years ago when he was squatting in Trim Street. I’m willing to go anywhere for a friendly chat. Anywhere he cares to name.” Before he had finished, Shirl was out of the door and on her way downstairs to the street. It was by no means certain that she had heard the offer of a meeting.

  “Shall I get the car?” Julie offered.

  “No point. She’d lose us easily in Bath. I’m going to organize a tail. On foot.”

  She looked doubtful. “You’ll have to be quick about it.”

  “Yes, it’s you.”

  Julie gave him a startled look. “But she knows me.”

  He nodded. “She’ll expect someone to come after her, so it might as well be you. Radio in when you can.” Man management had never been Diamond’s strong suit. As for woman management . . . pass.

  Julie got up and went through the door without letting her eyes meet Diamond’s.

  After she’d gone, he sat back and pondered the reason for Shirl’s visit. It seemed to have been dedicated to getting one point across. Having delivered the statement that Mountjoy was innocent, she couldn’t get away fast enough. Did G.B. seriously think he would get the police off his back by sending this tantalizing message? If the man really knew something that hadn’t been aired before, this could be a pivotal moment in the case. The most likely explanation was that Shirl had been sent solely to find out why there was police interest in G.B., who was probably involved in other, unrelated crimes. She hadn’t been instructed to say anything about Mountjoy. That had been a bonus.

  He ambled along the corridor to check on progress in the hunt for Mountjoy. Standing among the computer terminals where civilian staff tapped steadily at the keyboards, Commander Warrilow eyed him morosely.

  “Any progress?” Diamond enquired.

  “It’s all progress.”

  “That’s a positive attitude.”

  “We’ve just had a sighting.”

  “Nice work!”

  “Possibly. A man of his description was seen less than an hour ago in the Circus.”

  “Walking the tightrope?” Diamond asked, knowing perfectly well that the reference was to the circle of terraces that was one of Bath’s architectural glories.

  Warrilow ignored the remark and said, “The water people are working up there, inspecting the drains. Several inspection covers have been open all week.”

  Diamond widened his eyes. “And you suspect . . . ?”

  Warrilow gave a nod. “The original sewage culverts go right underneath the buildings. They’re large. You can stand upright in some of them. We think he could be hiding there. I’ve got a search party about to go in.”

  Peter Diamond started to whistle the theme from The Third Man.

  Warrilow clicked his tongue and turned his back.

  Diamond moved on to the radio room and told the sergeant supervisor that he wanted to be informed when Julie Hargreaves checked in. “Should be soon,” he said confidently. “Can I borrow a headset?”

  In a few minutes he heard Julie announce herself. She had followed Shirl to the railway station forecourt, where she had stopped to talk to a couple of crusty men, neither of whom fitted G.B.’s description. “Now she’s leaving them, heading for the tunnel under the railway where the taxis line up. I’m following.”

  Diamond turned to the sergeant. “Do we still have a unit to monitor the movements of travelers and crusties?” One summer there had been a much publicized incident on the M5 motorway when the crusties had halted their vehicles in line and blocked the traffic for over an hour as a protest against what they termed police harassment.

  “Only in the summer months, sir. They’re less of a problem now.”

  “Like house flies? So we ignore them in the winter?”

  “We don’t have the resources to monitor them all the year round.”

  Muttering, he replaced the headset. Julie didn’t make contact again for twenty minutes. Then she reported that she had just reached the A36, the Warminster Road, and Shirl was by the side of the road trying to hitchhike. “What are my orders if she gets a lift?” she asked.

  Diamond said ungraciously, “I suppose I’d better pick you up. Where exactly are you?”

  “I just gave you my position.” Julie’s indignation came forcibly over the two-way radio.

  He didn’t apologize. He wasn’t much good at street names and chasing about in cars wasn’t his favorite pastime. The sergeant in the radio room put a finger on the appropriate place on a street map displayed on the wall. With an air of martyrdom, Diamond went to collect the Escort.

  He drove it through central Bath and over Pulteney Bridge at the modest speed dictated by the traffic.

  Julie was still waiting by the government buildings opposite Minster Way. She waved vigorously.

  “Lost her, then?” he said.

  “Not if we get weaving,” she informed him as she got in. “She’s in one of those long builder’s lorries with a yellow cab. He picked her up about two minutes ago. We ought to be able to catch it.”

  “We can try,” he said without much conviction. “Not easy to overtake on this road. With this old heap, I mean.” He spoke as if all he needed were some extra horsepower. In driving away, he pulled out in the path of a BMW that was forced to brake abruptly. “What I could really do with,” he said above the blare of the BMW’s horn, “is one of those detachable flashing beacons that Kojak used to have. You put your arm out of the window, slam it on the roof and off you go. Everyone knows it’s an emergency.”

  The road widened and he succeeded in overtaking a small white van. “Did she know you were tailing her?” he asked Julie.

  “I don’t think so. There were a couple of hairy moments when she looked back, but I merged with other people on the street.”

  The road ahead dipped and gave them a longer view. “Any sign?” Diamond asked.

  “I don’t know . . . Hold on—yes! Just about to go out of sight. See?”

  While he was trying to see, the white van—the only thing he had overtaken so far—trundled past him again. For the next couple of miles the oncoming traffic prevented him from making any progress. Some traffic lights at the Viaduct pub hindered him further, but Julie pointed out that there was a steep hill ahead that was obliging everyone to move at the speed of the slowest.

  Soon after they reached the top, they were rewarded with the sight of the yellow lorry at the side of the road and Shirl in the act of climbing down from the cab. The stretch of road here was fringed by trees on either side.

  “Watch where she goes,” ordered Diamond, the man of authority once more. “I’m going past.”

  He slowed to a crawl—to the incandescent fury of the driver of the BMW behind him—until he found a place to pull in on some even turf about a hundred yards on. In his mirror he saw the lorry flashing its direction light to move off again.

  “She stayed this side of the road,” said Julie as they got out.

  Shirl wasn’t in sight, however. She must have headed straight into the wood, a dense, dark strip that funneled outward to cover a substantial area. After trekking back along the road, they found a bridle path, the only route she could have
taken.

  They started in pursuit. A brisk walk over frost-hard leaves brought them to a clearing occupied by up to a dozen vehicles in various states of dilapidation. A smoldering fire and a pair of barking dogs gave promise that the place was inhabited.

  A woman—not Shirl—stepped out of an ancient double-decker bus and Diamond asked if G.B. was about.

  She must have been about thirty, with a weathered, intelligent face and cropped hair. She said as her gaze moved from one to the other, assessing their potential for trouble, “Who wants him?”

  “I’m Peter Diamond. This is Julie Hargreaves. Friends of Shirl.” Which was overstating it, but worth trying.

  “Shirl?”

  “Shirl. You must know Shirl. Only we’d like to meet G.B.”

  The exchange was interrupted by a sudden shout of, “No! Don’t touch me, you bastard! Get away!” from the interior of a large black van close by. A piercing scream followed. A door in the side of the van was flung open and a young woman in just a T-shirt and knickers fell out, picked herself up and ran sobbing across the clearing to a caravan. In the doorway of the van she had left stood a man holding a broad leather belt. He slammed the door shut.

  “Was that him?” Diamond enquired.

  “G.B.?” Their informant looked more surprised by the question than the incident. “No. Follow me.” She took them around the side of the bus and back into the wood again, or so it appeared until a short path brought them to another clearing where a large, sleek camper van was parked in isolation, a stately home on wheels, not more than two years old according to its number plate. It had a TV dish attached to the side.

  “Wait.” The woman rapped on the door with her knuckles.

  It was Shirl who opened it. She looked beyond the woman, sighted Diamond and Julie and put her hand to her throat. She turned and said something inaudible inside the van. A few words were spoken and then she stepped down and said with a resentful note, “You’re to go in.” She, it seemed, had been ordered to leave.

  G.B. civilly got up to greet his visitors when they entered. He wasn’t built for life in a van; he had to dip his head, although Diamond, no midget, could stand upright with ease. Neither did the accent sound right for the traveling life. It was more Radley than Romany. “Do find yourselves somewhere to sit down. You want some background on that Swedish woman who was murdered in Bath, I gather.”

  This was the assurance G.B. needed, apparently. No mention of other matters. He’d wanted to agree on the agenda first.

  Diamond gave a nod. “Shirl did a fine job for you. She could have a future in the CID if she wanted.”

  “Not if she steps out of line. I didn’t send her to you.”

  “She acted independently?”

  “Women,” said G.B.

  No question: he had altered. Whereas his head had been shaven in the photo Diamond possessed, he now sported a crisp haircut that would not have looked out of place in a Martini commercial. His black sweater, jeans and designer trainers were straight out of GQ: the new-look G.B. was a dapper figure with a disarming smile. All the menace of dress and demeanor had been discarded, except the one feature he could not alter, the “lazy” left eye that Prue Shorter’s camera had caught. Recalling the photograph, and Marcus Martin’s account of the greatcoated crusty who had created a sideshow at the window of the Canary cafe, this was a transformation to rank with the emergence of a butterfly.

  The van, too, was luxuriously fitted, the curtains, cushions and seat coverings in a matching fabric that could have come from Liberty’s. G.B. had gone upmarket, but why? Diamond’s quick assessment was that this was probably a drug pusher in the process of distancing himself from the mugs who used the stuff. It was a familiar scenario. The pusher first identifies his market by mingling with the potential buyers, dressing as they do. In time he gets rich and gives up that pretense. The crusties depended on G.B. now. If he’d come dressed in a bowler hat and pinstripes they’d still buy from him.

  “G.B.—are those your initials?” Diamond asked when he had lowered himself onto a bench with as much dignity as a fat man could. He was civil in his manner to G.B. The drugs connection, if any, was someone else’s concern.

  G.B. answered, “No, it’s just a nickname for a patriotic fellow who used to keep a bulldog with a Union Jack coat. Tea or coffee?”

  They hadn’t expected the offer, but it seemed to go with the new image. “Tea for me.”

  “Me, too,” said Julie.

  “So what’s your real name?”

  “G.B. I answer to G.B.,” he said smoothly. “I’ve been called worse things in my time, so I settled for that.”

  Diamond moved on to more urgent business. “We didn’t meet at the time of the Britt Strand murder.”

  “No reason to,” G.B. said with his back turned, attending to the kettle.

  “Except that you apparently met Miss Strand in the weeks leading up to her death and we tried to interview everyone.”

  “Yes, I met her,” G.B. admitted, turning to face them, “but so did hundreds of other people, I reckon. When you think about all the contacts Britt must have made in the course of a week—”

  “It was our job to trace them,” Diamond said to cut him off. “We missed you the first time around.”

  G.B. gave a smile of sympathy. “It must be deeply frustrating. You’ll never trace everyone, particularly after so long.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “Memories go slack.”

  “We’ll prod them, then.”

  “The best of luck.”

  Diamond thought as he listened that G.B. was trying a mite too hard to present himself as the genial, laid-back host. It was more than likely that drugs were hidden somewhere in the caravan, which could account for his behavior, but there was always the chance it was prompted by something more relevant to the present investigation. “Would you care to tell us how you came to meet Britt Strand?”

  He said without hesitation, “She came looking for me. This was the summer before she died. I heard that this blond woman was chatting up the crusties outside the pump room, asking about me. I was damned sure it was some spy from the social security office, so I kept a low profile. But eventually she nailed me. I was living in a squat in Trim Street at the time and she waited on the corner and stepped out as I was going past. I remember being extremely abusive, but she wouldn’t back off.”

  “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “Right off. She told me she was a journalist researching a story about Trim Street. Flashed her press card. It didn’t open doors with me, I can tell you. I didn’t want to be written up in the tabloids.”

  “But she wasn’t from the tabloids.”

  “Would you believe anything a press reporter told you?” G.B. said as he tossed teabags into three mugs. “She insisted it wasn’t me personally, it was the squat that interested her and that made me even more suspicious. When you’re living in a squat, you need publicity like Custer needed more Indians. I told her exactly that and she offered me fifty quid for an exclusive, with pictures of the squat and no names to be published. She said the story wouldn’t appear for six months and then only in upmarket magazines selling abroad. I was mystified, I can tell you. Why the hell should someone in France or America want to read about a bunch of crusties squatting in Bath?”

  Diamond dearly wanted to know. “Did you ask?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You didn’t want to talk yourself out of fifty pounds?”

  G.B. grinned. “It was enough to keep me sweet. This lady was loaded. Smart clothes, much too snazzy for the social worker I’d first thought was on to me. When she handed me a tenner just to set up another meeting, I didn’t give it back.”

  “You got into negotiations?”

  “I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. We met a couple of times in Victoria Park.”

  “But by arrangement?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Why in the park? Why not in Abbey Ch
urchyard where you people congregate?”

  He said with a sly grin, “The park was more private, wasn’t it?”

  “You didn’t want your fellow squatters to know you were doing a deal?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you meant it.”

  The kettle had suddenly become altogether more interesting to G.B. than his visitors.

  Diamond kept the momentum up. “This was during the summer of 1990?”

  “September or thereabouts,” G.B. answered without looking up. “The weather was still okay. We sat on the grass and talked.”

  “Britt sat down with you? Did she fancy a bit of rough?”

  A blank stare. Even Diamond decided on consideration that it was a tactless remark.

  Partly to soften it, he turned to Julie and said, “I hope you’re not a feminist.” Then he told G.B., “Let’s face it, she was extremely attractive and she wanted a favor from you. You’re telling me that all you two did was sit down together in Victoria Park and talked? You just said the park was private.”

  “Compared to the Abbey Churchyard it is. Are you trying to pin something on me, Mr. Diamond? Britt and I were not lovers. Okay, we got into a clinch once or twice and yes, I fancied her, but Victoria Park isn’t that private.”

  “I didn’t know you were bashful.”

  “It takes two.”

  “She was bashful?”

  “She was class.”

  Diamond said after a pause, “So the upshot was that Britt had her way, but you didn’t?”

  He laughed. “You mean she screwed me? Yes, that sums it up. She got the deal she wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t say she screwed you if you got the fifty pounds.”

  “I earned every penny. I had to talk my Trim Street mates into posing for poncy photographs. That wasn’t easy. They all had a share of the fee,” G.B. was quick to add.

  “So what happened?”

  “She turned up one evening with her fat photographer and took masses of pictures.”

  “We’ve seen some of them,” said Diamond.

  “That’s more than I have. She dropped me like a stone after the photo session. Black or white?”

  After the tea was poured and handed out, Diamond picked up the thread again. “Did I get the impression that you wished you’d seen her again?”