Diamond Dust

by Peter Lovesey

  The first days after, he’d stayed out of sight, fearing Special Branch or one of the security services would come in pursuit. He hadn’t gone to Ireland, as planned, in case that part of the operation had been blabbed. He’d stayed with a friend in Tunbridge Wells. As the weeks passed, he’d returned to London, deciding he was safe from the authorities. The real threat was from his fellow-conspirators. He’d heard disturbing stories of Arab retribution: thieves having their hands severed and adulterers being stoned. He didn’t care to discover what happened to informers.

  The call eventually came one Monday evening.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re in,’ his friend Rhadi said, as if he was selling insurance. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Only you and me?’ Harry said, more in hope than expectation.

  ‘No. All of us. The team.’ And it was obvious from Rhadi’s voice that he wasn’t alone. ‘We wish to compare notes on our, em, disappointment. A de-brief, as they say.’

  ‘A de-brief,’ Harry repeated, thinking it sounded like the prelude to castration.

  ‘We’ll come to you. Be with you inside an hour. Don’t go to any trouble.’

  It was under the half-hour when the knock came. Little Zahir strode in first without even a nod of recognition, followed by Ibrahim and Rhadi. They were in black suits, like a funeral party.

  Rhadi said, ‘Sorry about this, but we need to frisk you.’

  So much for team spirit. He submitted to Ibrahim’s large hands.

  ‘Isn’t the other fellow coming?’ Harry asked while this was going on. He’d given thought to the way he would handle the workover.

  Zahir didn’t answer for some time, and the others seemed to feel any response should come from him. He was sitting in Harry’s favourite armchair, well forward so that the tips of his shoes kept contact with the carpet. ‘Which other fellow?’

  ‘The man from the Dorchester.’

  ‘No, he can’t make it.’

  ‘We could be wasting our time, then, trying to work out what went wrong.’

  ‘Why? Do you have a theory?’ Zahir said, baring the big teeth.

  Harry backtracked. ‘Not as such. I simply thought we should all be in on the discussion.’

  Zahir gave a shrug. ‘Our colleague at the Dorchester can’t be here tonight. Now, Mr Tattersall, sit down and let’s discuss the fiasco. The first we heard from you, on your mobile from the hotel, was a positive message. You called me with the name of the suite.’

  ‘Exactly as arranged,’ Harry stressed, taking a seat as far from his interrogator as possible.

  ‘You didn’t say anything was amiss.’

  ‘Nothing was at that stage.’

  ‘A few minutes after, you called again and told me to pull the plug, or some such phrase.’

  ‘Correct’

  ‘So something must have happened between the two calls.’

  In an effort to react positively, Harry slapped a hand down on the arm of the chair. ‘Indeed it had. First, a woman who said she was the housekeeper knocked on the door wanting to change the flowers. That made me suspicious.’

  ‘So how did you react?’

  ‘I let her in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was trying to act like a normal guest. You don’t send the housekeeper away without good reason. It would have drawn attention to us.’

  ‘So she came into the room. What then?’

  ‘She put fresh lilies in a vase. As I mentioned, my suspicion was aroused. After she’d left the room, I went to the window and looked out at the roof garden and spotted a movement. I was horrified. There was this fellow hiding behind a bush and holding a submachine-gun. And there was another marksman as well. It was obvious we’d been rumbled.’

  ‘Rumbled?

  Rhadi gave an interpretation in Arabic.

  ‘I immediately checked the flowers, and found they contained a bugging device,’ Harry continued, underlining his efficiency. ‘I put them – flowers, vase, the lot -in a wardrobe to mask the sound and then called you on the mobile.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a ‘yes’ pregnant with reservations.

  ‘That’s it.’ Harry waited.

  Zahir brought his hands together and cracked the knuckles. ‘The operation was called off at your suggestion, yet you remained in the room. Why didn’t you get out while you had the chance?’

  His worst scenario. They suspected he was in collusion with the police. ‘If you remember,’ he said, feeling the blood drain from his face, ‘I asked you to let Rhadi know the problem, and you said you couldn’t because he didn’t have a phone. It was clear to me he was going to get arrested if I didn’t help. He’d walk straight into the trap. He’s an old friend.’ He glanced towards Rhadi, who was clearly uncomfortable and avoiding eye contact. ‘There’s such a thing as loyalty. So I waited until he came to let him know the whole thing had gone pear-shaped.’

  ‘Pear-shaped?’

  Rhadi interpreted, and there followed an earnest dialogue in Arabic between Zahir and Rhadi.

  Finally Zahir said, ‘Your old friend confirms that you sent him away. He believes you.’

  Harry gave his old friend a look of gratitude. ‘He would have done the same for me.’

  Then the sting. ‘Yet you remained in the room with the men we now know to have been detectives.’

  ‘For a time, yes.’

  Zahir’s tiny feet curled upwards. ‘Why, Mr Tattersall? Why?’

  He tried to make it sound the most obvious thing in the world. ‘That was my best chance – to bluff my way out, and that’s what I did by letting them think there was a bomb in the suitcase. I told them I was CIA.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘But they believed you?’

  Rhadi said in support, ‘He does a very good American accent.’

  ‘It got me out and away. The alarm system went off, there was a hotel evacuation and I stepped out to the street along with everyone else.’

  ‘That’s all?’ The dissatisfaction was all too evident in Zahir’s voice.

  ‘What else can I say except I’d like to know who stitched us up, and why? It certainly wasn’t me. I was going to get a hundred K.’

  ‘We were all looking forward to a share,’ Zahir pointed out. ‘None of us had any obvious reason to play traitor, yet someone did.’

  The right moment, Harry decided, to point the finger elsewhere. ‘We were sold down the river before the scam got under way. Those gunmen were in place when I was shown into the room. The police knew where to lie in wait. They must have been tipped off well ahead.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Zahir said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If they’d known in advance they’d have bugged the room already. They wouldn’t have needed to send a woman in with flowers.’

  Clever. This was a point Harry hadn’t considered. He frowned in the silence, grasping desperately for an explanation. Finally one came to him. ‘Well, maybe the police suspected some of the hotel staff were in on the scam. They couldn’t risk taking them into their confidence. They played along with the plot and waited to see which suite we were sent to. They knew it must be on the same floor as the Prince’s suite, so they posted their firearms team on the roof garden.’

  Zahir’s large, shrewd eyes studied Harry. After an interval he conceded, ‘You could be speaking sense now. So if you are not the informer, who is?’

  ‘How would I know?’ Harry said. ‘I didn’t even meet everyone.’

  ‘You met us all except one.’

  ‘Yes, the inside man, the ex-RAF type on the staff of the hotel.’ The injustice fired Harry to say more than he’d intended. ‘I can’t think why he gets special treatment. If he’s on the team he should be here, ready to face the music like the rest of us.’

  ‘Music?’

  The phrase had to be explained. Then, as if such details were beneath him, Zahir gestured to Rhadi to enlighten his friend.

  ‘The man at the Dorchester went missing the da
y after we were there. No one knows where he is. He’s lost his job, moved out of his old address and gone.’

  “Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Dixon-Bligh.’

  Harry had never heard of him. ‘The police must be onto him if he quit the next day.’

  ‘They’re trying to find him, yes, but it’s complicated. He’s also wanted for questioning in connection with the killing of his former wife.’

  ‘He’s a killer?’ Harry piped up. ‘How did we get into bed with this monster?’

  ‘I only said they want to interview him.’

  ‘We all know what that means.’

  ‘It isn’t certain.’

  Harry digested the information. He still felt he hadn’t been given all the facts. ‘He’s done a runner, you said? Isn’t it obvious he’s the one who grassed us up? I don’t know why you give me the third degree as if I’m the snitch when you could be looking for this bastard.’

  No one answered.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Harry said, as an ugly thought surfaced. ‘You haven’t already topped him, have you?’

  28

  The photocopier at Fulham nick must have been red-hot over the weekend. McGarvie was now in possession of a thick stack of paper: Diamond’s entire record of cases with the Met. Three of the most experienced officers in the incident room had combed each page for the crucial mentions of DC Weather’s name among the detectives involved.

  ‘One stands out,’ McGarvie informed Diamond when he turned up on Monday. ‘This Florida. Protection racketeer. A hard man.’

  ‘Can’t disagree with that’

  ‘Jacob Blaize headed, right?’

  Diamond nodded.

  ‘With you as second in command?’

  ‘Sidekick.’

  ‘And Weather was a junior officer on the team, mainly on surveillance duties, but I discovered he also sat in on several interviews Blaize did with Florida.’

  Tell me something new, Diamond thought.

  McGarvie was showing signs of excitement. ‘And we can assume Weather spent time alone with Florida when Blaize left the room, as he must have.’

  ‘Frequently,’ Diamond confirmed.

  ‘You know that for sure?’

  ‘Blaizy was always being caught short.’

  The eyes widened, revealing more than anyone would wish to see of the engorged blood vessels. ‘Was he, by God? That’s something I didn’t get from the files.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘It meant interruptions, did it?’ He was getting as hyper as when he had dug up the gun in the garden.

  ‘Every ten to fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Sounds like prostate trouble.’

  ‘He was on a waiting list.’

  Diamond was amused to see McGarvie bring his palms together and rub them as if he was using the drying machine in the gents: the association of ideas. ‘You see what this means? This was before we had videotaping. An old hand like Florida would have made use of those breaks. He’d get to work on the young officer sitting across the table. He’d try intimidation.’

  ‘For what? A smoke?’ It was hardly enough to justify the killing of Patsy Weather, Diamond was implying, and McGarvie needed to do better.

  But he was way ahead, compounding the plot. ‘No, he’d twist the facts of the case to make it seem he was being set up by you and Blaize. He’d shake the young man’s confidence, doing his damnedest to turn him, you see. He’d think he’d got him as an ally, someone who could testify later that the interview had been improper. When he didn’t do it by persuasion, he’d use threats -threats he really meant to carry out. He saw enough of Weather to remember him long after. When a man like Florida has festered in jail for twelve years-‘

  ‘Seven,’ Diamond said. ‘He was out after seven.’

  ‘More than enough to turn his brain.’

  ‘His brain didn’t need turning. He hated the police. I can see -just about – that he might have wanted revenge on Blaizy and me. We nailed him. But Stormy Weather? I don’t think so. He was small beer.’

  McGarvie was unshakeable. ‘You and I don’t know what passed between them. Maybe Weather was induced to make a promise he never kept. Maybe Florida thought he could rely on Weather to save his skin.’

  Maybe… Maybe… This was futile speculation, and both knew it. Nothing would be certain unless Stormy admitted he’d played along, or Florida was induced to tell all. No matter; for the present it suited Diamond if Florida was the prime suspect, leaving him free to pursue Wayne Beach. Just to get a measure of McGarvie’s resolve, he asked, ‘Have you given up on Dixon-Bligh, then?’

  ‘No trace. He’s holed up somewhere. Arrears of rent. The Met are working on it.’ He made it sound like their problem.

  Joe Florida was firmly in the frame.

  Stormy Weather arrived at Bristol Temple Meads just after eleven, and Diamond met him on the platform and remembered to call him Dave. They drove directly to Sion Hill, an elegant, curving street of eighteenth-century houses built on an incline above the Gorge.

  ‘Bit of a change from Latchmere Road,’ Stormy remarked when they were parked opposite a gracious four-storey terrace with ironwork balconies, tall shutters and striped awnings.

  ‘Envious?’

  He eyed the building approvingly. ‘It isn’t bad for a second home. Does he own all of it?’

  ‘That’s what I heard from my snout.’

  ‘He must have salted some money away between his prison terms.’

  ‘More than you and I ever earned, Dave.’

  They lapsed into silence, brooding on a theme familiar to policemen: the inequity between the law-enforcers and the law-breakers. ‘Personally,’ Stormy said after some time, ‘I wouldn’t choose to live in Bristol. The traffic is a pain. Always was.’

  ‘Sounds like the voice of experience.’

  ‘Does it? I’m only an occasional visitor.’

  ‘Best way.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Stormy said, ‘I’m interested in Brunei.’

  Diamond had to think before cottoning on that Stormy was speaking of the Victorian engineer. ‘Top hat and big cigar?’

  A nod. ‘One of my heroes. I do some model-making as a hobby, and his constructions are quite an inspiration. I made an SS Great Britain and a Suspension Bridge.’

  ‘From kits, you mean?’

  ‘God, no. That’s schoolboy stuff. I go there and take photos and draw up plans and build the things from my own materials.’

  Weird, the things some policemen do with their spare time, Diamond thought. Keith Halliwell bred pigeons for racing and John Wigfull had a telescope and was supposed to use it to study the stars.

  Stormy went on, ‘So I’ve made quite a number of research trips, you could say. Getting here is the hardest part.’

  ‘Ah, the one-way system is our secret weapon in the war against crime. You’d find it easier escaping from a Dunkirk beach than Bristol. If you want to visit the Brunei sites you’re better off using the railway he built and walking the rest.’

  Stormy agreed with that. He glanced at the house again.

  ‘What do we do now? Go in?’

  ‘Let’s watch for the time being,’ Diamond said. ‘The place is probably stiff with shooters.’

  ‘Catch him off the premises? We’ve tried that once.’

  ‘This time I expect a result. So you’re an admirer of old Issy Brunei?’ he said, pleased to have found a topic unconnected with the tragedies in their lives. ‘Have you been to Bath?’

  ‘Not since I was a kid.’

  ‘You ought to come. He changed the look of the city when the railway came through. The old GWR station is one of his buildings and so is the viaduct behind, but he also cut through Sydney Gardens, one of those parks the Victorians liked to strut around in their finery, and it was a neat job.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to see that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  Stormy blinked and frowned. He may also have blushed, but
on his blotchy skin it was impossible to tell. ‘What do you mean? I know what I like.’

  ‘You wouldn’t see it – that’s what I mean – unless you went right up to it. The point is that the railway is hidden from view. Really clever.’

  The first person to emerge from the house, after about ten minutes, was in a red leather jacket and skirt with matching boots and a hat with a large rim that flopped. She set off down the hill with a slinky walk as if she knew her movement was being appreciated.

  ‘Now I am envious,’ Stormy said.

  Diamond gave him a look. The remark was lightly made, the automatic reaction to a pretty woman, but to his still wounded mind it didn’t come well from a recently bereaved man. He let it pass.

  ‘I wonder if she comes with the house,’ Stormy added, oblivious of Diamond’s thinking.

  ‘Visitor, I expect.’

  ‘That’s not the vibes I got.’

  ‘You could be right. Maybe he sent her to do the shopping.’

  ‘She doesn’t look to me as if she’s on her way to Tesco’s.’

  They waited ten minutes more.

  ‘I reckon she’s his bird,’ Stormy insisted.

  ‘Daughter, more like,’ Diamond said.

  ‘He’s not that old, surely?’

  ‘You’ve got to remember Fulham was fifteen years ago, Dave. Hello, we’ve got action.’

  A dark green Range Rover had pulled up outside the house and a man in combat trousers and a khaki vest got out. He had the look of a body-builder, with heavily tattooed arms.

  ‘That isn’t Beach, is it?’ Stormy said.

  ‘Not the way I remember him,’ Diamond said. ‘I remember a puny guy.’

  The muscleman pressed the doorbell.

  ‘Just a caller, then.’

  ‘Or a customer.’

  ‘What – come to buy a gun?’

  ‘Keep your eyes on the door, Dave. Let’s see who opens it.’

  Unfortunately, nobody did. The caller tried the bell twice more, looked at his watch, stood back and looked up to the balcony, and then gave up, returned to his car and drove off.