Diamond Dust (12 page)

Nothing except . . .

He sat forward and his hand went to his face. There
was
a part of her life they scarcely ever mentioned. Her first marriage, a time of such unhappiness that it never lost the power to hurt.

Her dipstick ex-husband, who hadn't bothered to turn up to the funeral, nor even leave a message that he regretted her cruel death, had been called Edward. That was the name she'd used on the rare occasions she spoke of him. Edward. The formality distanced him from her.

Edward Dixon-Bligh.

What a mouthful.

Surely when she lived with him she would have called him Ted.

His eyes travelled up the Abbey front. One of those angels had just moved.

16

T
hat evening he repeatedly tried the London number he believed was Dixon-Bligh's and kept getting the same answerphone message: a plummy voice asking the caller to leave a name and number and 'I'll get back to you toot-sweet' It grated after the third or fourth try, especially as the message didn't supply a name. Never having met the man, he couldn't tell for certain if the voice belonged to Steph's ex.

He left a message saying it was extremely important that they spoke, however late.

But in this case, 'toot-sweet' meant 'not tonight'.

Lying awake waiting for the call that didn't come, he tried to think of a reason why that pig of a husband might have resurfaced in Steph's life. The most plausible was that he'd run through his money and appealed to her for funds. She'd always been a soft touch, helping scatty friends who couldn't pay the phone bill and were threatened with disconnection. She sometimes bought the same
Big Issue
three times over to help homeless people. It wouldn't have required much of a sob story from Dixon-Bligh to have her reaching for her chequebook. She hadn't forgotten the misery of life with him, but she'd still fork out.

Even Steph, generous as she was, must have sensed that it wasn't a good idea to meet her ex-husband. She would have preferred dealing with him by phone and post. Most likely he concocted some reason for meeting her in the park. It had been written in her diary, so it was fixed ahead of time. Maybe he'd offered to hand over something that belonged to her.

Surely he wasn't blackmailing her?

Blackmail?

At night, a tired brain can dredge up dark thoughts, and Diamond's years in the police had given him plenty of practice. Was it possible Dixon-Bligh had evidence -letters, photos, press clippings - touching on some part of Steph's early life she had wanted to forget? Some youthful indiscretion? A drugs episode? Drunk-driving? A relationship with some notorious character? No, it wasn't about covering up old scars. It had to be more damaging. Could she have committed some criminal act that had gone undetected?

Come off it, he told himself. This isn't Steph you're thinking about. She was no more of a saint than any other spirited woman, but she wasn't into crime.

He turned over and looked at the clock. One-fifteen.

Then he sat up and switched on the light. This had to be thought through. If he was dealing with anyone else but Steph, he'd put blackmail top of the list. It was a classic set-up: the no-good ex-husband worming back into her life and threatening to tell all. He'd offer to hand over the evidence in return for cash. She'd agree to meet him on neutral ground. The diary appeared to confirm it.

Then what?

My God, he thought, as the scenario flashed up in his brain. She had armed herself. She must have gone up to the loft one ill-starred day and found that sodding gun. When Dixon-Bligh resurfaced in her life making threats and demanding money she'd taken it with her to meet him in the park. Most likely she had no thought of killing him. She'd meant to produce the gun and demand the return of whatever he was using as the basis of blackmail. That much was consistent with Steph's character. She had a streak of defiance and was as fearless as a tigress.

She had taken the gun with her, but she had no experience of handling it. Dixon-Bligh had grabbed it and shot her. If charged, he would offer that well-tried defence: there was a struggle and the gun went off.

But right now, he'd be thinking he'd got away with it. He'd have judged, correctly, that Steph wouldn't have mentioned the blackmail to anyone else. He wouldn't know about the diary entries.

Certain he wouldn't get to sleep for hours now, Diamond got up and pulled on the clothes he'd dropped in a heap in the corner a couple of hours before. He needed physical activity. Fresh air.

Fresh it was. A sharp east wind was blowing up Weston High Street, shifting the discarded packs and paper cups outside the takeaway. He pulled up the collar of his overcoat and jammed his old trilby more tightly over his bald patch. The occasional car passed him, but no one else was desperate enough to be walking the streets.

It was painful, this process of speculating on the bits of Steph's life she may have wanted to keep from him. It was alien to their relationship. She had known the worst about him and taken him on with all his faults, and he'd always told her everything. No, he thought, that isn't true. Who am I kidding? I kept things back. I didn't tell her I kept the gun all those years, mainly because I knew she'd hate to have such a thing in the house. And if I wasn't open with Steph, and she found out, she was entided to feel let down. Was it any wonder she kept quiet about what happened after she found it?

Those diary entries hurt him, just as she must have been hurt when she found the gun. You work at your marriage, trusting, believing, and the more honest the relationship is, the more devastating is any deceit. The people we love the most are capable of inflicting the greatest pain.

Still, if there were ugly things in her past, he couldn't ignore them. He might feel guilty probing, but he'd sworn over her dead body he would find her killer. That outweighed everything.

His thoughts were interrupted. A car had crept up and was cruising beside him at walking pace. He'd got to the top of the High Street and was approaching the Crown. They came so close that he heard the nearside window slide down. Someone who'd lost his way, he thought, and turned to see.

It was a police car with two young officers inside.

'Do you mind telling us where you're going?'

'Home, eventually,' he answered.

'And where's that?'

'Just up there, off Trafalgar Road.'

'Out for a walk, are you?'

'That's the idea.'

'At this time of night?'

'There's no law against it.'

'Most lawful people are in bed and asleep. Don't I know you, chummy?'

'You should . . . constable.'

There was a murmured consultation inside the car, followed by, 'Christ!' Then a pause, and, 'Sorry to have troubled you, sir. There was a break-in higher up, on Lansdown Lane, and we—'

The voice of the driver said, 'Leave it, Jock.'

'Night, sir.' The car drew off at speed.

He shook his head and walked on.

In the morning he called the nick and told the switchboard he'd be late in. These days nobody objected. They were relieved when he was out of the place. He was an unwelcome presence, reminding everyone of the poor progress so far. He had the files of unsolved crimes to keep him occupied, supposedly, but he was forever finding reasons to look into the incident room.

He took an early train to London and was in Kensington by ten. The last address he had for Dixon-Bligh was in Blyth Road, behind the exhibition halls at Olympia, not far from his old patch. He wasn't in a nostalgic mood.

The tall Victorian terraced house was split into flats and the modey collection of name cards stuffed into slots beside the doorbells didn't include a Dixon-Bligh. He stepped back to check the house number again. Definitely the one he had.

He rang the ground-floor bell. This was not the kind of establishment that operated with internal phones. After several tries no one came, so he pressed the next bell up, and got a response. Above him, a sash window was pulled up and a spiky hairdo appeared. Male, he thought.

'Yeah?'

He said he was looking for Dixon-Bligh and didn't know which flat he was in.

'Dick who?' the punk said.

'No, Edward. Edward Dixon-Bligh. Man in his forties. Ex-Air Force. Used to own a restaurant in Guildford. May be sharing with a younger woman.'

'Never heard of him.' The head disappeared and the window slammed shut.

It wasn't unusual for people in London flats to know nothing of their neighbours. Diamond studied the names beside the remaining doorbells, and wasn't encouraged. Both looked foreign.

He pressed the first and got no response. The second was answered eventually by a woman in a sari who came down two flights of stairs with a baby in her arms.

He stated his question again.

She shook her head.

'You don't know, or you think he's moved?'

She took a step back and smiled and shrugged. She didn't understand a word he was saying.

But at least he got inside the building. Picked up weeks of junk mail heaped on the floor to his right and -eureka! - found a seed catalogue addressed to E. Dixon-Bligh. Without a date stamp, unfortunately. Showed it to the woman, pointing to the name, but she didn't understand.

He moved past her to the door of the ground-floor flat. There was a note pinned to it:
Sally and Mandy are
at the shop all day.
Didn't sound like Dixon-Bligh. He went upstairs, past the punk's door, to the second floor. The woman in the sari followed. No one answered when he knocked at the door of the second-floor flat. According to the bells downstairs the occupier was a V. Kazantsev. He was probably at work, spying on the Foreign Office.

The woman joined him on the second-floor landing. The child was asleep.

He tried once more. 'Edward Dixon-Bligh?' Used his fingers to mime an RAF moustache, though he had no idea if Dixon-Bligh had one. This was desperation time.

She shook her head.

He returned downstairs, frustrated, and sorted through the junk mail and found a couple more addressed to Dixon-Bligh. No clue as to how long they'd been there. It was unhelpful that the Post Office didn't frank mass mailings.

What next?

He wouldn't leave this building without a result. Up he went to the punk's level. The door was vibrating to enormous decibels from inside. Pity the people upstairs and down. He hammered on it with both fists. At the third attempt he was heard. The punk looked out and said, 'Piss off, mate. You're wasting my time.'

Diamond's foot was against the door and he grabbed the man by his T-shirt. 'Who's the landlord?'

'Get off, will you?'

'The landlord.'

'How would I know? I pay my rent to the agent.'

'Which one?'

'Pickett. North End Road.'

The woman in Pickett's was guarded. 'We never give information about clients.'

'This one seems to be an ex-client.'

Her eyes widened. 'Who's that?'

'A Mr Dixon-Bligh.'

Client confidentiality no longer applied. 'Certainly we know a Mr Dixon-Bligh. He was a tenant in one of our Blyth Road properties for three years, but he moved out at the end of February.'

'Where to? Do you know?'

She gave a bittersweet smile. 'I was hoping you would tell me. He left no forwarding address. We'd like to trace him ourselves. He owes two months' rent.'

'You didn't give him notice?'

'He did a flit. The first we knew of it was when Mr Kazantsev came in and said he'd heard there was an empty flat.'

'Kazantsev? So Dixon-Bligh had the second-floor flat?'

She checked the card index. 'Second floor. Yes.'

'Do you think Kazantsev knew him?'

'No. He heard from one of the other tenants. Blyth Road is a desirable address. Places there are snapped up fast.'

'Do you know what line of work Dixon-Bligh was in?'

'We never ask.'

'References?'

'Not these days. If they can put down the deposit - and he did - we take them on.'

In case the agency traced their runaway tenant, he left his phone number, but he rated the chance no better than a meeting with Lord Lucan.

He sat in a North End Road cafe eating a double egg and chips and pondering the significance of what he had learned. Dixon-Bligh had upped sticks at the end of February, just about the time of the shooting. He may well have returned from the murder scene in a panic, determined to vanish without trace. He was top of the list of suspects now.

But the trail stopped here.

He had no idea where to go looking for Dixon-Bligh. He doubted if it could be done without help.

Well, he'd served in the Met. That was the obvious place to start. He'd look up his old nick in Fulham. See if any of the team had survived into the new century.

The sight of the tarted-up new building was not encouraging and neither was the face across the desk. They were getting younger all the time. This one probably had to shave once a week.

'Afternoon, sir.'

'Is it already?' Diamond said. He introduced himself and asked if anyone was there who had served in the mid-eighties, and almost added, 'Before you were born.'

'I doubt it, sir. Do you know about tenure?'

He'd heard of it, and very unpopular it was in the Met, the system of moving officers between squads and stations. Nobody was allowed to dig in for ever. 'Maybe somebody I knew - somebody really ancient like me - has done the rounds and returned to base. Is there anyone fitting that description?'

He was invited to the canteen to find out, and there he was recognised at once by the manageress, a big Trinidadian called Jessie. Her smile made his day. She wanted to feed him - even though he insisted he'd just eaten — so he settled for rhubarb crumble, Jessie's speciality.

'Have you seen Mr Voss yet?'

'Louis?' he said, his spirits rising. 'Louis Voss is still here?'

'He come back January. Civilian now. They make him computer king. On first floor with all the pretty chicks in tight skirts.'

That rhubarb crumble disappeared in a dangerously short time.

Louis (spoken the French way) had been a detective sergeant, a good ally through some hair-raising jobs at a stage when each of them had more hair to raise. They'd lost touch when Diamond had moved to Bath.

He'd altered little. The slow smile was still there, and the irreverent gleam in the eyes. He'd kept slim, too. 'Amazing,' he said, and Diamond guessed it was a comment on his own disintegration.

Louis must have read in the papers about Steph's murder, because he spoke of it at once, probably to save Diamond from bringing it up. He didn't ladle out the sympathy, but just said he was more stunned by the news than words could express. He remembered Steph from before they were married. 'Let's get out of this place and have a drink,' he suggested. 'If there's a problem, they can call me on the mobile.'