The Summons

by Peter Lovesey

  “How was she?” asked Wigfull.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Mrs. Billington. I’m asking how she was.”

  He shrugged and spread his hands. “All right.”

  Wigfull said, “Because we’ve got her downstairs. She’s battered her husband senseless. Any idea why?”

  Diamond shook his head, lost for words.

  Wigfull went on to explain that less than an hour ago an emergency call had come in from the house in Larkhall. The student lodger had returned from college to discover her landlord, Winston Billington, lying unconscious in the hall bleeding from head wounds. Assuming that someone had broken in, the student had rushed through to the kitchen to see whether Mrs. Billington had also been attacked. She had not. She had been sitting at the table drinking vodka. She had admitted to the student that she was responsible for the assault and had agreed that as her husband still appeared to be breathing they had better call an ambulance.

  “Where is he?” Diamond asked.

  “In intensive care at the RUH. We’ve got a man at the bedside in case he recovers.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “They say the injuries are severe. She used a plastic bag filled with copper coins. They kept it by the door and put their excess change in it to dole out to people collecting for charity. Two poundsworth of coppers can make quite a dent in someone’s skull.”

  “And is she talking?”

  “At this minute, no. She’s in the toilet, throwing up. Too much vodka. Don’t worry. WPC Blinston is with her.”

  Diamond turned to Julie. “You’d better get down to the hospital.”

  Wigfull said, “Didn’t you hear? There’s a man at the bedside already.”

  “I want Julie there.” Momentarily it threatened to become a clash of wills. In a rare act of conciliation, Diamond confided, “We’ve got new information on his possible involvement in the Britt Strand murder. We were all set to interview him. If he should come round, anything he says could be vital.”

  Julie left for the hospital.

  Diamond joined Wigfull in an interview room, across a table from Mrs. Violet Billington, the self-confessed husband-beater. Dressed in a faded green and white cardigan that made Diamond think of overcooked cabbage, she was almost as pale as the box of tissues in front of her, yet the blue eyes conveyed the same contempt she had shown earlier in the day.

  However, she was prepared to talk.

  Having recited the formal preliminaries of a taped interview, Wigfull asked the tense little woman whether she was willing to describe what had happened to her husband.

  She summed it up in a sentence. “He came home and I hit him.”

  “There must have been a reason.”

  After a pause: “He’s a monster—that’s the reason.”

  “You’d better explain what you mean by that, Mrs. Billington.”

  Wigfull received the full force of the withering stare. “Why ask me? You know perfectly well that he murdered our lodger.”

  Considering the explosiveness of this statement, Diamond exercised commendable restraint as he took over the questioning. “You’re speaking of Britt Strand? We must have it confirmed for the record.”

  “Who do you think I mean—the Queen of Sheba?”

  “Britt Strand?”

  “Oh, come on—of course!”

  “Has he told you this himself?”

  “No. But he didn’t have to,” said Mrs. Billington. “I know. And you know, too. You were coming for him this evening.”

  “Coming to interview him,” Diamond made clear, at pains to conduct this scrupulously while the tape was running. “If he hasn’t actually confessed to you, what are your grounds for saying he murdered Britt?”

  She said vehemently, “You don’t know him like I do. He’s got sex on the brain—at his age. You’d think an old man would grow out of it. Not him. He’s always been out for the main chance, flirting with girls young enough to be his daughter. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve caught him out. He’s not even subtle about it. I’ve had them phoning the house asking to speak to him. I’ve found their cigarette ends in the car. I’ve seen the hotel bills.”

  “That may be so, but loose living is one thing and murder another.”

  “He killed this one because she wasn’t having him. She didn’t succumb to his blandishments. He kept trying and she kept giving him the frost. His pride couldn’t take it.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I saw the evidence. He tried all his usual overtures, boxes of chocolates and bunches of flowers, but she wasn’t interested.”

  “He gave her presents while you were there?” Wigfull said in disbelief.

  “He wasn’t that obvious with it.”

  “How do you know about the presents? You looked into her flat?”

  “No need. She threw them out with the rubbish. Flowers from our garden and whole boxes of Milk Tray, unopened. He always gives Milk Tray. Pathetic, isn’t it? That TV advert must have sunk into his brain. Anyway, they ended up in the bin, still in their wrapper. That’s how much that one thought of him. She wasn’t some pathetic creature in one of the shops he visits desperate for attention. She had better fish to fry.”

  If Mrs. Billington had any sympathy for the fate of her former lodger, she wasn’t exhibiting it. The reference to “that one” depersonalized Britt unpleasantly. She was given no credit for resisting the wayward husband. The bitterness was all-consuming.

  Diamond said, “I don’t think you understood my question. How do you know that your husband murdered Miss Strand, as you allege?”

  This time he drew an answer of stunning candor.

  “Because he asked me to lie to you to cover up for him. He wasn’t really with me in Tenerife on the night she was killed. He was already back in England. He cut short our holiday after getting a phone call. He said he had to attend a crisis meeting. It was a crisis for someone all right.”

  “When was this?”

  “The call?”

  “The flight home.”

  “The day she was killed. He doesn’t realize how repulsive he’s become. He still thinks he’s God’s gift to women. The young things round the pool weren’t interested, so he made up his mind to come home and try his luck with the lodger.”

  “Is this what you believed at the time?”

  She lowered her eyelids. “No. I swallowed the lie. I really believed he had an emergency at work.”

  “And when you got back?”

  “He met me at Bristol Airport and drove me home.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Twitchy. I put it down to the problems at work. When we got home, the first thing I noticed was the milk bottles on the doorstep. Britt hadn’t taken in her milk for two days. It didn’t seem that important. She might have gone away in a hurry to interview someone. But I couldn’t understand why Winston had left two pints going sour. He blustered about it, said he’d stayed in London for another meeting. He isn’t much of a liar. I knew he was making it up.”

  “Did you query it?”

  “I was too tired to bother. We went to bed and I was dog tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt uneasy about the lodger upstairs. She really preyed on my mind, so I asked him to check, and you know the rest.”

  “We don’t,” said Diamond. “We don’t know what induced you to make a false statement when the police arrived.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Diamond.

  She turned her eyes upward and pursed her lips. “Winston told me he didn’t want you people bothering his bosses by checking whether he was telling the truth. He was worried about his job and he thought he might lose it if the police came asking about his movements. It was simpler all round if we both said we’d traveled back together the same day. I said I refused to tell any lies, but if he wanted to speak for both of us, that was up to him, and that’s what happened, if you check your statements. In mine, I stated when
I returned to Bristol and I made no mention of Winston.” For a moment, Mrs. Billington’s eyes had a gleam of triumph.

  “So he behaved as if someone else had killed Britt Strand?” said Diamond.

  “That’s what he wanted me to think.”

  “And did you?”

  “At the time, yes. I knew he was an incurable skirt-chaser, but I’d never dreamed he was dangerous.”

  “When did that occur to you?”

  “When you came to see me this morning. It’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t think Mountjoy killed her. You’re on to Winston at last, asking about the sexy cards he sells and whether we grow roses in the garden. I can put two and two together.”

  Ten minutes ago, Diamond had been cockahoop at putting Winston Billington into the frame. Now his elation drained. His worst apprehensions were confirmed. Whatever the rights or wrongs of it, his interview must have triggered the attack. “But you said yourself that the roses couldn’t have come from your garden,” he said limply.

  “He’d given her roses in the past.”

  “These were from a florist.”

  “I know. What does it matter anyway,” she said. “He killed her. I did some checking after you went. I went through his credit card statements for four years ago. He keeps everything for five years, silly mutt. The day he returned from Tenerife, the day of the murder, he spent the equivalent of ten pounds sixty-five at the florist’s at Los Rodeos Airport.”

  “That’s why we couldn’t trace the shop,” Diamond said, more to himself than anyone else.

  Mrs. Billington hadn’t finished. “And just to be sure I phoned his head office and asked the managing director’s secretary to check whether there really had been an emergency meeting on October the eighteenth, 1990, that Winston had to attend. There wasn’t. The boss himself was away on business in Scotland for the whole of that week. Now do you understand why I clobbered the rat when he stepped inside the door tonight?”

  Diamond understood. He also felt marginally more comfortable in his mind that he wasn’t solely responsible for unleashing the avenging wife.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “No change, I’m afraid, dear,” the charge nurse said when Julie Hargreaves enquired about Winston Billington. The “dear” was kindly meant; the nurse had taken her for a relative, mishearing “DI” as “Di,” a common error. Julie went over to the uniformed embodiment of the police, a youthful constable who was sitting bored in the corner drumming with his fingertips on an upturned plastic coffee cup.

  “Any signs of life?” she asked him.

  “He groans sometimes.”

  “Is that good?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Why don’t you get some air for an hour? I’ll take over. Bring me some tea when you come back. Milk and no sugar.”

  He nodded his thanks and left.

  She ventured as close as she could to the bed. The little she could see of the patient’s face was gray, the eyes closed, one forcibly, turned purple and heavily swollen. His head was bandaged and he had a ventilator over his nose and mouth. There was another tube giving him a transfusion and leads connected to his chest were monitoring his heart rate. In all, it wasn’t the ideal way to meet the principal suspect. She marveled at the ferocity of the diminutive Mrs. Billington and the power of money when it takes the form of a bunch of coins swung in a plastic bag.

  She sat down to begin her vigil. For a time, at least, she’d got a break from Diamond. He wasn’t easy to work with just now. She’d heard him called curmudgeonly, and she wouldn’t argue with that at this stage of their working relationship. She understood the sense of personal failure that was oppressing him over what had happened four years ago. In a way though, she preferred Diamond’s abrasiveness to the emollient manner of John Wigfull, her real boss. For all Diamond’s bluster and boorishness, she felt secure with him. He was open in his emotions. When he smiled (which was rarely just now) it was genuine. When he was gloomy, he shared it. He consulted her and appeared to listen. Mind, he didn’t confide much in anyone else. He seemed to regard the rest of the Bath CID as turnipheads. He obviously felt deep resentment that she didn’t fully understand over his resignation a couple of years ago. She’d gathered that he had always been out of sympathy with the high-ups. For all that, his reputation as a dynamic head of the Murder Squad was still spoken of with awe in Manvers Street. He’d led a strong, loyal team, now dispersed.

  About his personal life she had gleaned little so far. She now knew he’d once played rugby for the Met. She’d heard from others that he had been spotted on occasions in the stand at the Recreation Ground, where Bath RFC, the best club side in the country, played their home matches. She’d also been told that he had a natural rapport with kids, in spite of having none himself. The Christmas after he’d quit the police, he’d taken a job as Father Christmas in the Colonnades shopping precinct—and proved to be a popular Santa. He wouldn’t have needed padding.

  She was intrigued to know what his wife was like. The woman who coped with Peter Diamond’s grouchy temperament and stayed wedded to him would be fascinating to meet. Mrs. D (Julie had learned) was small and independent-minded, and put a lot of energy into community work. Once she had been Brown Owl to a troop of brownies and more recently she had worked in charity shops. Some people joked that Diamond was dressed by Oxfam.

  A moan from Billington interrupted her musing about the Diamonds and reminded her why she was there. She got up and looked at him. There wasn’t a flicker, so she returned to the chair.

  This was the first case of serious assault by a wife against her husband that Julie had come across, though the press periodically reported on battered husbands as if it was a logical consequence of the feminist revolution. She’d watched a television program once and been amazed and skeptical that men— big fellows, some of them—allowed themselves to be hit with heavy objects. Of course, such incidents were statistically negligible compared to the domestic violence suffered by women. Julie knew: she was the automatic choice to investigate attacks on women and she’d seen some sickening injuries. More than once she’d had to defend herself from the aggressors, so she wasn’t too appalled that once in a while a woman beat up a man.

  Having recently looked at the police photos of Britt Strand’s corpse, she couldn’t raise much sympathy for Winston Billington. It wasn’t compassion that made her hope he would recover entirely and be capable of answering questions. If the bastard died, it would be difficult to procure enough evidence of his guilt to satisfy an appeal court and prove that the judgment against Mountjoy had been in error. It would be so much more positive if the appeal were backed by a signed confession.

  Another sound. This time the patient moved his head. Anxiously Julie looked through the glass door to see if a nurse was about. Suppose Billington recovered consciousness only for a short time. What a responsibility she would have to shoulder! She tried to think what she ought to ask him. To accuse him of murder might be enough to kill the man. Yet if she didn’t ask the obvious, she’d be in breach of her duty. Imagine telling Peter Diamond, “Well, he did recover consciousness briefly and I asked him how he was feeling. He said,‘Not too good,’ and died.”

  Damn Violet Billington for doing this.

  Another disturbing scenario took shape in Julie’s thoughts. If Billington did die, his wife’s evidence became indispensable. Julie hadn’t been present when Mrs. Billington had shopped her husband to Diamond, so it was impossible to tell how convincing she had sounded. Was she reliable? Was it conceivable that she had invented the story to justify her vicious attack on her husband?

  No. There was corroboration from an independent source. G.B. the crusty had seen a man of Billington’s appearance enter the house in Larkhall after Mount joy had left.

  That was the clincher. But for that, you could well imagine the vindictive wife inventing the story of her rampant husband. After all, Violet Billington didn’t know everything that had happened that fatal night four yea
rs ago. Couldn’t. She’d been in Tenerife when Britt Strand had been murdered. And according to her account (relayed by Diamond) Winston had admitted nothing. She’d hit him before he gave his version of the story.

  The charge nurse returned and checked that the blood was still moving evenly along the transparent tubes. “Your dad?” she asked.

  “No,” said Julie with forbearance. “I’m not related.”

  “Just a friend?” The nurse said it sympathetically, but with a gleam of interest in her eye.

  “Actually I’m on duty. I’m a detective inspector.”

  “Really?” She took a longer look at Julie. “Shouldn’t you be with the wife? I thought she was the assailant.”

  * * *

  Around 10 P.M., Diamond phoned Julie at the hospital.

  “Has he said anything yet?”

  “Just a lot of groaning.”

  “He’s conscious, then?”

  “Not really. In fact they’ve given him something to ease the pain, and he seems to be sleeping now.”

  “Is the brain damaged?”

  “They don’t know. The doctor was talking about a scan, but they wouldn’t do it tonight.”

  “Not much point in you staying, by the sound of it. Let’s both clock off. See you in the morning, early.”

  “How early is early?”

  “Why don’t you join me for breakfast at the Francis, say about eight-thirty?”

  “A working breakfast?”

  “No. Just breakfast. Well, not just breakfast. You’ll get a chance to sample the Heritage Platter. So will I. Had to miss it this morning. Don’t quote me, Julie, but there have got to be some perks in this.”

  He put down the phone. Across the room, Commander Warrilow was facing the wall, pressing his finger against a map of the city. Diamond in this uncharacteristically benign mood went over and perched on the desk assigned to Warrilow. “Did you have any joy in the sewer?”