Diamond Dust

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘We’ve wasted our time again,’ Stormy said.

  ‘No, look. Coming round the corner.’

  The woman in the floppy hat and red leather had started up the hill towards the terrace, this time carrying a folded magazine.

  Diamond watched, and something made him sure he’d seen her before. He couldn’t tell the colour of her hair under the hat, but the face was one he knew. She wasn’t Janie Forsyth, the she-cat who had attacked him, and she wasn’t Danny Carpenter’s wife, Celia. He needed a closer look.

  Without a word to Stormy, he opened the door of the car and stepped across the street and stood outside the house.

  Ten yards from him, the woman hesitated. Diamond stared, frowned and stared harder. It required a great leap of the imagination to tell that this lady in red leather was not, after all, a lady.

  ‘Wayne?’

  Wayne, if it was he, turned and started running back down the hill. Diamond pursued. His overweight, lumbering movement was about as ineffectual as his quarry’s, hampered by high heels. But he kept running and managed to reach out and get a hand on a leather sleeve at the street corner and bring the chase to a skidding halt. He swung the person around and when they were face to face it was obvious he was right. This was not, after all, a woman. This was a skilfully made-up, smartly groomed, cross-dressed Wayne Beach. Prison life generally leaves its mark on an ex-con, but the result, in this case, had been unusual.

  ‘How long have you been out, Wayne?’

  The face tautened, making a mockery of the lipstick and foundation. ‘What do you want? Who are you? I know you, don’t I?’ The voice also was at odds with the get-up, all too guttural.

  Diamond showed his warrant card and reminded Beach who he was and how they’d met.

  ‘You look different. You’ve changed,’ Beach said.

  ‘That’s rich. What’s all this nonsense, flouncing about in skirts?’

  ‘It’s a free country. I can dress how I want.’

  ‘Is it a disguise, or what?’

  ‘These are the clothes I choose to wear now. I don’t need to justify them to you or anyone else.’

  ‘Have you had the operation?’

  ‘No, but I might.’

  ‘What are you doing here in Bristol?’

  ‘Visiting.’

  ‘Come off it, Wayne. You live here. The house with the yellow door. Are you going to invite us in?’

  ‘Us?’ Beach looked across the street and saw Stormy Weather close the car door and step towards them. ‘Beetroot face, as well? I know him. Once seen, never forgotten. What’s going on?’

  ‘Questions, that’s all, if you play it right.’

  ‘I did my time. You’ve got no right to persecute me.’

  Stormy came over and took stock with a hyperthyroid stare. He shook his head and said, ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Diamond said. ‘However, Wayne is going to invite us into his house for a coffee and answer our questions.’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ Wayne said.

  ‘I don’t have to go to a magistrate for a warrant, but I will if I’m pressed.’

  The bluff worked. Wayne felt in his shoulder-bag for a key and in so doing gave Diamond enough of a glimpse of the magazine he was holding to show it was the Shooting Times. They entered a hall with a crimson carpet and striped Regency wallpaper.

  ‘Nice pad.’

  ‘Nicer than Latchmere Road,’ Stormy said.

  Wayne turned. ‘Listen, I only pick up the social to keep my probation officer happy.’

  ‘Rest easy, Wayne. We’re not here about your fraudulent claims.’

  Beach removed the hat and hung it on a peg. He wasn’t wearing a wig. He’d grown his own brown hair to a thickness any woman would have envied and had it clipped sheer at the back, twenties-style. In the kitchen – a gleaming place of natural wood and silvery appliances -he filled the kettle. They all sat on stools.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You were released from the Scrubs when?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘Christmas. Just before.’

  ‘So when did you move down here?’

  ‘Not long after.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ Stormy said. ‘We’re talking dates, Wayne. You know the day you moved in.’

  Beach gave a sigh and a toss of the head, playing the harassed female to perfection. He unhooked a spiral diary from the wall and flicked through the months. ‘February the fifth.’

  ‘Let’s see that.’ Diamond was reviewing his mental picture of that February morning in Royal Victoria Park. What if Steph had been approached by someone she supposed was a woman? Might that have been why her killer got so close before firing the shots? And why Wayne Beach got away without being noticed?

  He handed the diary across. Diamond studied it. Each day was a narrow strip where appointments could be written in. February the fifth had the pencilled entry ‘Bristol. Keys from Homefinders 11.30.’ Various other appointments were filled in throughout the month, some indicated by initial letters. He looked at Tuesday the twenty-third, the day of the murder, and it was blank.

  ‘What about this day here?’

  Beach came over to look and treated Diamond to a whiff of some perfume heavy with musk. ‘It’s blank.’

  ‘Does that mean you had a free day, or what?’

  ‘No. If you look, you’ll see each Tuesday is blank. I keep Tuesdays clear.’

  Diamond checked the rest of the diary and saw that this was so. ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re not really clear. Every Tuesday is spoken for. That’s when I go to London to see Mr Dawkins.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘My probation officer.’

  ‘Ah.’ The sound came from Diamond as if he’d taken a low punch, and that was how he felt. ‘And you definitely went to London on the twenty-third?’

  ‘I had to. Dawkins thinks I’m living in Clapham.’

  ‘What train do you get?’

  ‘The seven-twenty. I check in at his office at ten-thirty.’

  This was beginning to look like a solid alibi. ‘I’ll check with him myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t let on?’ Wayne said in horror.

  ‘What – that you’re living the life of Riley here in Bristol flogging guns to any lunatic with cash in hand? Of course I’m going to let on. I’m a copper, Wayne, not your favourite uncle.’

  In the act of pouring the coffee, Beach spilt some over his immaculate work surface. ‘Who said anything about guns?’

  ‘Half the criminal fraternity of Bristol. You’re well known. It’s a change from shooting taxi drivers in the leg. Two sugars, please.’

  ‘Do I look like a gun dealer?’

  ‘In your skirt and lipstick? At the risk of being misunderstood, I’d say you’ve got a very good front. I suppose the weapons are shipped in, up the Channel.’

  ‘You’re talking through your arse.’

  ‘Can we look in your basement?’

  Beach sighed, and dropped the pretence. ‘What exactly do you want?’

  ‘I want you to look at that calendar and tell me who bought automatic handguns in the month of February.’

  ‘I wasn’t dealing then. Honest to God. I’d only just moved in. You can’t start a business from nothing.’

  Diamond reached for the calendar again. ‘There are letters here I recognise. DC on the twelfth, and again on the fifteenth. Would that be Danny Carpenter?’

  Wayne passed a hand nervously through the shingled hair. ‘Listen, you don’t move into someone else’s manor without a by-your-leave. I had to square it with the local chiefs, or I wouldn’t last five minutes. On the days you’re talking about, I wasn’t dealing. I was making arrangements.’

  ‘Dressed like this?’

  He glared. ‘I might be different, but I’m not stupid.’

  ‘What brought you to Bristol?’

  ‘I have to make a living. London was too hot to start up again. This is the next best.’<
br />
  ‘Was there talk of a hitman coming to Bristol or Bath towards the end of February?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. People didn’t talk to me then. I was the new kid on the block. What’s all this about?’

  ‘You didn’t hear? Don’t you read the papers?’

  Beach shook his head. ‘Boring.’

  ‘Just your gun magazines, eh?’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  Diamond didn’t enlighten him about the shootings. He could see nothing of use emerging. The disappointing conclusion was that they’d wasted their time on Wayne Beach. ‘We’re leaving now,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’ve got about twenty minutes before Bristol Police come here with an armed protection unit and knock down the door.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’ Stormy asked.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I did, oddly enough.’

  ‘Me, too. If he’d written something in against the day Steph was shot, I’d have been suspicious. He could have done it any time. The fact that it was left blank is more convincing. I’ll still check with the probation officer.’

  ‘And will you turn him in?’

  ‘Will I? Dave, anyone who trades in guns in scum. Whoever shot my wife and yours acquired their weapon from some flake just like him.’

  He drove Stormy back to Bath, not to visit the Brunei sites, but to show him the place where Steph was killed. They parked on Royal Avenue, the road that bisected the lawns below the Crescent. Already some of the foliage had a reddish tinge and the ground under the horse chestnuts was littered with husks split by small boys in the quest for the new season’s conkers. They crossed the dew-damp grass to where the body was found. He picked an empty crisp packet off the grass and crushed it in his hand.

  ‘What’s the park called?’ Stormy asked.

  ‘The Victoria. The Royal Victoria to give it its full name. This part is the Crescent Gardens.’ He pointed out the advantages to the killer, the screen of bushes hiding the car park, the bandstand, the large stone vases. ‘He must have waited unseen while she walked along the path and then crossed the lawn. He may not even have spoken to her.’

  ‘And then he fired the shots and left her?’

  A nod from Diamond.

  ‘Didn’t try and move her?’

  Stormy wasn’t being ghoulish, asking these questions. He was airing theories, and Diamond was willing to discuss them.

  ‘Too risky. I think it was in his plan to leave her to be found.’

  ‘Yet that wasn’t the m.o. in Patsy’s case.’

  ‘I know, Dave, and I have my view on that. It’s all supposition, but I think it makes sense. He covered his tracks the second time. He chose an even more secluded place to meet your wife. It could have been that little park above the railway embankment or somewhere miles away. The crucial thing is he tricked her into going to the place, the same as he’d tricked Steph.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Don’t know. A phone call most likely. Something he knew would bring them out. The location was written in Steph’s diary, so she knew where she was headed. She was easily swayed by any appeal to her good nature – some old friend in trouble. You name it.’

  ‘Patsy, too,’ Stormy said. ‘She’d drop everything and go if anyone needed her. Well, you remember what she was like, always supporting some good cause.’

  It was true. Diamond could recall her doing the rounds of the office, collecting for this and that. ‘Mary’, as he still remembered her, was always the one who bought the present when someone was leaving. ‘Well, the killer arranged to meet Patsy on some pretext, and shot her. He’d picked his spot and he’d picked the spot where he would take her after the shooting. That’s the added dimension. It’s one step on from the murder of Steph.’

  They walked the short distance back to the car park. It was still early and Diamond offered to show his old colleague his present place of work. ‘We’ll call that probation officer, Dawkins, and check Beach’s alibi.’

  ‘And the Bristol CID, to tip them off about the gun-dealing?’

  ‘Specially them.’

  Bath Police Station was unusually quiet. They learned that McGarvie had gone with other senior detectives to some location in West London after a tip-off from the Met that Joe Florida had been sighted at a pub.

  ‘Our last shot,’ Stormy said.

  ‘His.’ In his office, Diamond got on with the business of tipping off Bristol about Wayne Beach. He said truthfully that he’d got the information from one of his snouts. Then he called the probation service in Clapham and spoke to George Dawkins and had it confirmed that Beach had reported there on the morning of February the twenty-third.

  ‘He’s not our man,’ he told Stormy.

  ‘Wayne isn’t anybody’s man.’

  He gave a half-smile. ‘True.’

  Stormy looked at his watch. ‘I’d better get my train.’

  ‘Why – have you got a cat to feed, dog to walk?’

  ‘No, but we’ve finished for today, haven’t we?’

  ‘You’re staying at my place tonight. Then we can start early tomorrow.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘The real last shot.’

  29

  They brought in fish and chips and a couple of six-packs and spent much of the evening talking over old times at Fulham nick. Stormy had a better recall of those days than Diamond. You never forget your first year of policing, your first arrest, your first raid.

  ‘I had other postings before then,’ Diamond said to excuse his hazy memory. ‘I signed on before you, Dave. Turned fifty this year – and don’t say you wouldn’t know it.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘To celebrate the big five-o.’

  ‘Oh – nothing.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Save it, pal. It was after Steph was killed. What’s a bloody birthday after something like that?’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Nineteen years. Why?’

  ‘The way you talk about her, I’d have thought it was less.’

  ‘Why? I felt the same about her as the day we met.’

  Stormy nodded. ‘I guess you were the kind of couple who hold hands in the street.’

  A sharp look was exchanged. So far as Diamond could tell no sarcasm was intended. ‘If we felt like it, we may have done.’

  ‘There’s the difference. We kept our distance. Doesn’t mean we didn’t care about each other. Like I told you, it wasn’t rosebuds all the way for Patsy and me. I played away a few times – call me weak-willed, or oversexed -and she usually found out. But we always patched things up. Try and explain that kind of marriage to a sleuthhound like Bowers.’

  ‘Did you have to?’

  ‘Not yet, but he’ll be onto it soon. Friends of ours know we scrapped sometimes. They’ll tell him.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me.’ Diamond appreciated the honesty. No doubt there would be suspicions that one more ‘scrap’ had resulted in violence and Patsy’s death. The man was realistic enough to know the pattern any investigation followed. Bowers would dissect the relationship.

  Some awkwardness remained between them. Stormy, talkative, with a tendency to blunder into trouble, wasn’t the sort of man Diamond would normally strike up a friendship with, but then who was? He had almost no close companions in the police. It wasn’t a job that encouraged confidences. But he was glad he’d made the gesture of welcoming him to his home. With their common cause they would make an effective team.

  ‘Do you want vinegar with that?’

  Stormy shook his head. ‘What I’d really like is to find out if they nicked Joe Florida.’

  Diamond said it was simple. He’d call the duty sergeant and find out.

  A few minutes later he passed on the news that Florida was being questioned by McGarvie at Shepherd’s Bush Police Station.

  ‘Will he ask the right questions?’

  ‘Who knows? They sound confident.’

  ‘Aren’t y
ou?’

  ‘That Florida is the killer?’ Diamond looked away, at the photo of Steph he’d put in a frame on the wall-unit. ‘He was never top of my list.’

  ‘But he’s a vicious bastard. You helped send him down.’

  ‘Justly. He was bang to rights.’

  ‘So what’s the problem, Peter? He’s well capable of murder.’

  ‘I can’t see the logic in it. If he hated my guts – and he probably did – then why not murder me? People like Florida live by a simple, brutal code, Dave. They demand, and they get. If they don’t get, they give, and what they give is violence. We’re not dealing with a chess grand master here. I don’t see Joe Florida scheming and plotting in jail for years thinking when I get out I’ll murder the wives of the coppers who banged me up, and that’ll really make them suffer.’

  ‘He’d rather kill us?’

  ‘Of course – if he still bears a grievance. And I’m not convinced he had a reason to hate you when all you did was sit beside Blaize in the interviews.’

  ‘I was alone with him a lot.’

  ‘Doing what? You didn’t get physical with him?’

  Stormy grinned. ‘Me – with Joe Florida?’

  ‘I meant restrain him.’

  ‘I know what you meant. He asked me things, how long I’d been on the force, if I was married, had kids. You know me by now. I can go on a bit.’

  ‘He actually asked if you were married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you told him?’

  ‘I was trying to seem laid-back.’

  ‘What was he after – a smoke?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have given him one. No, I thought at the time he was softening me up for something. It was scary, to be honest.’

  ‘Softening you up for what?’

  ‘He could see I was new in the job. He had this aura of evil. You must have sensed it, same as me.’

  ‘What are you saying, Dave? That he psyched you out? That you did something out of order?’

  Stormy was quiet for a time. Finally he sighed and said, ‘I’ve never mentioned this to anyone.’

  Diamond waited.

  ‘He asked me to make a phone call for him, letting his girlfriend know he was nicked.’