‘So when did you marry her?’
‘November, eighty-six,’ Stormy said, and for a moment his face creased, but he controlled the emotion and stood the photo on the empty wall unit.
Diamond, too, was thoughtful, marvelling that a young woman as pretty as ‘Mary’ Jessel had fallen for the Bardolph of Fulham nick.
‘She was younger than you?’
‘Fifteen years.’
‘And she got to be sergeant.’
‘At Shepherd’s Bush. Served all her time at two stations just down the road from each other. She would have made inspector if she’d stuck with it. She was a fine copper.’
‘She jacked it in?’
‘Only about a year ago. She set up her own secretarial agency from home. It was just starting to build when ‘Was she ever with CID?’
He shook his head. ‘Uniform for the whole of her career, and pleased to do it. Very good with the public, anyone from juveniles to junkies.’
‘And no one looked better in a white shirt,’ Diamond reminisced. ‘So she wouldn’t have been on any of the cases you and I got roped into?’
‘Not as CID. Do you want tea? Or there’s a pub only five minutes away.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
From the way they were greeted by the landlord of the Forester, Diamond guessed Stormy – or Dave, as he was trying hard to think of him – had spent plenty of time here lately. The urge to get out of the house where every picture, every chair, every cup has the potential to strike at the heart is hard to resist, as he well knew.
Over a glass of bitter at a. corner table in the saloon bar, his old colleague was more at ease. They had never been close companions, or even said much, but the shared experience drew them together. Diamond found himself speaking more frankly about the impact of Steph’s murder than at any time up to now. ‘There are days… The worst part is when you’ve been relaxing without knowing it – let’s face it, forgetting what happened – and then something touches you like a finger, forces you back to reality, and… and… there’s no other way to put it – she dies all over again.’
This drew a nod of recognition from Stormy.
Diamond added, ‘What keeps me going is the promise I made to find the scumbag who did it. And I will. They keep telling me to stand aside and leave it to the murder squad. How can I? You feel the same, don’t you?’
So much intensity from someone he’d known as a senior officer must have been daunting, but Stormy nodded at once.
Diamond was well launched. ‘The murder inquiry is going nowhere. I’ve found out more through bloody-minded obstinacy than McGarvie and his television appeals and scores of men on overtime. It’s incentive, Dave. You can’t sit back. Even if they were right on the heels of the killer – which they’re not – I’d still be going it alone. I owe it to Steph.’
‘I know how you feel.’
Diamond took a long sip of beer, willing Stormy to open up a little, and he did.
‘They kept saying she’d come back, hinting all the time that we’d had a run-in – as if it was something unusual. We were always having dust-ups. We were one of those couples who scrap all the time and feel better for it. Doesn’t mean we didn’t love each other.’ He looked down into his drink. ‘When a grown woman goes missing, nobody takes it seriously, not for weeks. She’s just another name on a list.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Her leaving? Nothing happened. Everyone was hinting there must have been some great punch-up. There wasn’t. I came home from work one evening and she wasn’t there.’
‘When was this?’
‘A Monday in March. The twelfth.’
‘Two weeks and a bit after Steph was killed.’
‘Right. I actually read about your wife being shot, and I remembered you from the old days, and was really sorry. I didn’t send a card or anything because I didn’t think you’d remember me, and it’s difficult to know what to write.’
Diamond gave a nod. ‘What about when your wife went missing? Did it cross your mind what had happened to Steph?’
‘No, I didn’t connect them. I didn’t think Patsy was dead. You don’t. I hoped she’d walk through the door any minute. And I guess I didn’t want to face up to the worst possible explanation. You think of everything else, loss of memory, an accident, a coma. Anything that lets you hope.’
There are different degrees of torture, Diamond thought. Steph’s sudden violent death had seemed like the ultimate. Stormy’s months of not knowing was another refinement, and he wasn’t sure how he would have coped with it. ‘It’s very isolating. No one knows what to say to you. They shun you if they can.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘And of course they don’t want us to investigate. I don’t know if you’ve been told this, but the argument goes that a smart defence lawyer would cry foul if you or I helped to arrest our wives’ murderers.’
‘So get lost. Yes,’ Stormy said, ‘I was told that.’
Encouraged, Diamond moved a stage on. ‘Yet if you and I put our heads together we’d be more likely to get to the truth than anyone else. We know who we crossed swords with. They don’t.’
Stormy’s brown eyes met Diamond’s, slipped away and then came back. ‘You’re right,’ he said with sudden fervour. ‘Together we could nail this jerk.’
Warming to the man, Diamond took him into his confidence, telling him about the case files Louis Voss had copied.
Stormy heard all this with awe. He’d only just grasped that unofficial action was possible. Diamond’s bull-necked attitude must have come as a shock. But as soon as the Joe Florida inquiry was mentioned Stormy recalled being on the surveillance team. ‘He was given a long term.’
‘Twelve. He was out after seven.’
‘Out?’ Stormy was appalled. ‘That beats everything. That toerag. Most professional crooks have something to be said for them. Florida was evil.’
‘You met him personally?’
‘Twice. I sat in on interviews.’
‘Questioned him?’
‘No, I was only a DC at the time. Blaizy was in charge. You do remember Jacob Blaize?’
Too well, Diamond thought bitterly. ‘Retired to Spain, the last I heard.’
‘For some reason, he wanted me as the back-up in those sessions. I didn’t mind. Saw myself as the up-and-coming detective, hand-picked by the guvnor. I didn’t know Blaizy couldn’t stay in an interview room for more than ten minutes at a time.’
Diamond frowned, then grinned as the explanation surfaced. ‘His prostate problem? I’d forgotten about that.’
‘It meant I spent more time alone with Joe Florida than anyone would wish to.’
‘Did he talk?’
‘Did he hell. He was after cigarettes. He could see I was a smoker. I may have been wet behind the ears, but I knew you don’t dish out fags for nothing. So I took a fair amount of flak from Joe Florida.’
‘Did he threaten you?’
‘Let’s say I wouldn’t have needed a vasectomy if he’d got to me first.’
‘He made his living out of threats,’ Diamond recalled. ‘I took a few. And in the protection racket you’re not a serious player unless you mean what you say.’
‘Joe did. Two shops torched, was it?’
‘And a child almost died. She was in the cot upstairs. They got her out in the nick of time.’
‘I remember.’
‘So you spent time alone with him?’ Diamond said eagerly. ‘I didn’t know that. Was there anything more serious from him than bumming a fag?’
‘Such as?’
‘He didn’t try and make a deal? What I’m driving at, Dave, is something big enough for him to hold a grudge all the time he was in jail.’
‘And then murder my wife, just to get back at me? No, there was nothing that extreme. I can’t think of anyone who would behave like that. Even a shitbag like Florida.’
Diamond nodded. ‘I keep saying the same. It’s not just evil. It’s twisted.
Insane.’ He paused. ‘Do you think prison blew his mind?’
‘He wouldn’t be the first.’
‘I mean to find out. I’m going to find him. If he murdered Steph, I’ll have him.’
‘I’m with you all the way.’
The hackneyed phrase had never meant so much to Diamond.
‘Another beer?’
When he returned to the table, he said to Stormy, ‘I was telling you about those files.’
‘Files?’
‘From Louis Voss at Fulham.’
‘Right. I’m with you.’
‘One was the Brook Green shooting.’
‘I remember that.’
‘You do?’
‘Only I wasn’t on the team.’
Diamond blew gently at the froth on his beer. ‘Okay. There are others. Let’s shuffle the pack again. How about a teenager by the name of Wayne Beach?’
The name brought a glimmer to Stormy’s eye. ‘Remind me, will you?’
‘A loner. Armed robbery. Taxi drivers.’
‘Ah – that little prick. We ambushed him one night in Edith Road.’
This was better than Diamond had hoped. ‘We? You were there? Tell me you were there.’
‘I was. It was all very sudden. You were in charge, weren’t you? You needed licensed shots and I was roped in, along with anyone else who happened to be there. I was behind a hedge in the garden opposite.’
‘You didn’t fire the shot?’
‘No. That was another guy across the street. A sergeant. The name’s gone now. But after Beach threw down his weapon I was one of the first to pin him. And I escorted him to the nick.’
‘So he knows you?’
‘I wouldn’t think he remembers now.’
Privately, Diamond thought the opposite. Stormy’s geranium-coloured skin had instantly triggered his own memory when he called at the house.
‘He’d remember you better,’ Stormy added.
‘Maybe. I did the interviews and gave evidence. The thing about Wayne Beach is that he’s a gun freak. He’s done several stretches.’
‘He’d be in his thirties now.’
‘Thirty-four. Released from the Scrubs last December.’
‘December? Shordy before…?’
‘Right.’
‘So we have an address?’
‘Thanks to the Probation Service, yes. Some high-rise in Clapham. Are you game?’
Stormy raised both thumbs.
‘He’ll be armed,’ Diamond cautioned. ‘Do you have a shooter?’
‘Sorry. Do you?’
‘Not any more.’ Diamond leaned back and rested his hands on his paunch as if that concealed a secret weapon. ‘Just have to outsmart him.’
‘We can do that,’ Stormy said with confidence, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to us. Whatever it takes.’
‘Whatever.’ Diamond clinked his glass and drank deeply. He had an ally now.
The outsmarting of Wayne Beach needed neutral ground and the surprise element, they decided. It would court disaster to visit his flat. They sat in a CID Vauxhall opposite the graffiti-scarred building in Latchmere Road, Clapham, watching the residents come and go. Their man would emerge at some point to buy cigarettes or food, or place a bet, or pick up his social security. It went without saying that he hadn’t gone into honest employment.
After a couple of hours with no result they were thinking about food themselves. They’d seen a number of dodgy-looking people enter or leave the building, but that was not remarkable. It was a rundown, fifties-built tower block, a place of last resort that probably housed more lowlife than Wayne Beach.
Towards four, when the butcher up the street started clearing his window, Diamond left Stormy in the car and went over to see if there was a pork pie left. He was lucky.
‘You know, I’m thinking of Plan B,’ he told Stormy while they ate.
‘What’s that?’
‘Ask the neighbours.’
‘Risky. He could hear.’
‘He could be somewhere else.’
It was decided Diamond would go alone. After ten flights of stairs breathing heavily and not enjoying what he breathed, he emerged on Beach’s landing. He’d passed no one.
According to their information, Wayne Beach occupied the sixth flat along, number fifty-six. There was a reggae beat coming from fifty-five.
‘Hain’t seen him, man,’ the tenant said when Diamond asked after his neighbour.
‘It’s okay, I’m a friend.’
‘Still hain’t seen him in ages. Nobody in there. If you asking me, him Scapa Flow.’
Diamond risked a look through the window of fifty-six. The place certainly looked unlived-in. A free paper had been crammed in the letter box. He pulled it out, held the flap open and peered through. A heap of junk mail was inside.
‘Man, he won’t be back,’ was the opinion of Diamond’s informant, and in the circumstances he was probably right.
‘Was he ever here?’
‘Place is empty since Christmas. One time I hear someone unlocking, walk in, walk out. Picking up his letters, I guess.’
Stormy insisted on driving Diamond across London to Paddington Station. ‘We won’t let it get to us, Peter,’ he said. ‘We’re still ahead of the game.’
‘Not for long,’ Diamond said. ‘McGarvie’s no fool, and neither is Bowers. You can bet they spent today going through those old files, reaching the same conclusions we have. My worry is that they’ll go in like the tank corps and the killer will see them coming a mile off.’
‘Looks as if Wayne Beach already has.’
‘He’s using the place as a cover. As far as the social services are concerned, he’s trapped in that slum, living from hand to mouth. No doubt he’s got a nice pad somewhere else.’
‘And a nice income as a hitman.’
‘Could be.’
‘So we wasted our bloody time.’
Briefly it seemed Stormy might be going cool on cooperation, but this proved false.
‘There was something you said earlier, about us putting our heads together and finding the truth before anyone else. I was impressed.’
‘You want to keep trying?’
‘Definitely.’
If Diamond had believed in fate, he might have been awed by what happened to him that evening. Exhausted after so much waiting with no result, he fell asleep on the seven-thirty from Paddington and was out to the world when it stopped at Bath Spa. He ended up at Bristol Temple Meads Station some time after nine-thirty. Not for the first time. Only now there was no one at home to phone any more. Rather than cross the bridge and wait for a train, he made the best of his situation and took a taxi to the Rummer.
Bernie Hescott, his well-paid, worse than useless snout, was not in the public bar. ‘Haven’t seen him all week, squire,’ the barman told Diamond.
‘Doesn’t surprise me. I’ll have a pint, just the same.’
‘Bitter?’
A fair expression of his state of mind. He settled down with the drink and let ten minutes go by. The place was warm and the music just about bearable.
Then fate gave an emphatic pull on the strings, for in walked the informer he should have used in preference to Bernie. John Seville caught Diamond’s startled eye, turned and left the bar at once. He went after him.
‘Can’t help you,’ Seville said while Diamond tried to keep pace with him, striding through one of the paved alleyways behind the Exchange.
‘You don’t even know what I want.’
‘Jesus Christ, the whole world heard what happened, and I know sweet fuck all about it.’
Diamond grabbed his arm and shoved him against a shuttered shop front. ‘John, if this is your way of raising the stakes, save your breath. I’ll pay top dollar.’
‘I’m not haggling, Mr Diamond. I got nothing for you. Nothing.’
‘What are you scared of? The Carpenters? Forget them. They’re in the clear for once. This wasn’t local. This has a London connection. You do know
what I’m talking about?’
‘Your wife. What can I say? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I know nothing.’
‘Someone, some hitman, gunned her down in a public park in broad daylight. He’d done his homework, John. Picked his spot. Got away fast. Did you hear of anyone – a Londoner, maybe, a professional, who was holed up here six, seven months ago?’
‘In Bristol?’
‘Bristol or Bath, but he’s more likely to have used here as his base. Bristol is bigger, easier to get lost in. What have you got for me, John?’
‘I keep telling you-‘
Diamond jammed a thumb under Seville’s chin, forcing his jaws together with a crunch. ‘I’m not messing. I want a result. I can pay fifty, or I can beat it out of you, or I can tell my chums at Bristol Central to make your life impossible. Which is it to be?’
‘You just cut my tongue.’
‘Too bad.’ He relaxed his hold.
Seville wiped blood from the edge of his mouth and stared at his fingers. He darted looks to either side. No one was about. ‘You said fifty?’
‘This had better be kosher.’
‘Take it or leave it, this is all I have. There’s an ex-con living in clover in a smart house on Sion Hill, near the Suspension Bridge. Been around most of this year. Makes trips to London sometimes. The word is that if you want to buy a shooter, that’s where you go. But don’t bring me into it, for Christ’s sake.’
‘A local?’
‘No, not from round here.’
‘I’ll need his name.’
‘Beach. The name is Beach.’
John Seville got his fifty pounds.
27
Ever since the diamond heist went wrong, Harry Tattersall had dreaded hearing from his old friend Rhadi. He expected a witch-hunt. The deviser of the plot, that sinister little man Zahir, wasn’t going to let the whole thing rest. Much as Harry hoped that the Arab philosophy might be to offer a thousand blessings to Allah for a lucky escape, he knew in his gut that it was not to be. Zahir would want to know who had shafted them.
Never mind that Harry was blameless, having acted like a hero and saved everyone from arrest. His Houdini stunt at the Dorchester wasn’t going to work in his favour. With their devious minds the Arabs would think he’d been allowed to walk away. It wasn’t true, of course. He’d been as horrified as anyone when things came to grief. He hadn’t grassed, and he didn’t know who had.
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