Diamond Dust (27 page)

Finally, he knew.

The motive wasn't rage or passion or revenge or greed. It wasn't malice. It was more appalling than any of those: a decision made in cold blood and carried out impassively. Steph had died for no better reason than that she had made a phone call that - unknown to her - undermined a killer's alibi.

He understood enough about the tunnel vision of the murdering mind to know that her life, her individuality, the precious, warm, vital person she was, had not come into the reckoning. She was a risk, so she was eliminated.

Sheer, bloody-minded persistence had got him to the truth. No inspiration, no shaft of light, just his refusal to give in.

The saloon bar of the Forester was almost empty. Stormy was in there, seated at a table with his back to the door. Inconveniently, someone else was with him, a woman. Dark-haired, well made-up, probably around forty, she was in a backless peacock blue dress you wouldn't have expected to see outside a nightclub.

Diamond marched up to the table and said, 'Can we have words?'

Stormy turned in his seat. 'Peter?' He tried to make it sound like a greeting, and didn't convince. 'What brings you out here? You're drenched, man. Get that coat off and let's line up a drink for you.'

'Don't bother.'

A frown threatened Stormy's face momentarily, and then he recovered to say, 'This is Norma - as charming a lady as you'd meet anywhere. Norma, say hello one of my old workmates, Peter Diamond.'

Diamond said to the woman, 'Leave us alone, would you? We have things to discuss.'

She looked to Stormy - who leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. She picked up her coat and walked out of the bar, leaving her drink half-finished.

'What's up?' Stormy asked when Diamond was seated opposite him.

'You want to know what's up?' Diamond said in a hard, tight voice. 'Everything's up - for you. I came here not wanting to believe you murdered your wife.'

He stared back. 'You're not making sense, Peter.'

'Did you ever love her?'

'Patsy?'

'Trish. She liked to be known as Trish.'

Stormy gripped the tankard in front of him with both hands. 'Of course I loved her. Haven't I made that clear?'

'The story I got is that she wouldn't let you in the house.'

'I told you we had arguments sometimes. I made no secret of that.'

'You slept outside in a motor home.'

'Have you been talking to my neighbours?'

'Is it true, then?'

'Sometimes,' Stormy admitted. 'Model-making is my hobby. We spoke of this, didn't we? I keep my materials in the motor home. I can make a mess in there and nobody bothers, and if I want to work late I can.'

'So that's all it was?' Diamond said without irony, as if he was reassured. 'Your marriage was okay?'

'Absolutely.'

'And you got on all right with the in-laws?'

'I got on fine. I still do.'

'Visited them from time to time?'

'Often.'

'Strange,' Diamond said in a voice as dry as last week's bread, 'because when we were sitting in the car on Sion Hill in Bristol you told me you didn't know Bath at all -and it turns out Trish's people live in Brock Street.'

For a moment it seemed Stormy Weather hadn't taken in the point. He was still coming to terms with the realisation that his background had been investigated. 'In the car we were talking about the Brunei sites. All I said was I haven't seen them.'

'No. I asked if you'd been to Bath and you said not since you were a kid. That was a lie.'

Stormy didn't deny it.

For Diamond, these were pivotal admissions. The molten rage inside him threatened to erupt any second, yet he had to contain it to get the truth. 'What was the problem in your marriage? Was it the fact that you had no children?'

'Plenty of people don't have kids,' Stormy pointed out, rashly adding, 'You don't.'

Don't rise to it, Diamond told himself, don't rise to it. Keep the focus on him. 'You admitted to having affairs.

Had Trish given up on sex?'

'I don't see where this is leading.'

'This Norma I just met. How long have you known her?'

'Leave Norma out of it.'

'I can ask the barman or anyone else. I get the impression you're regulars here. Does she want to marry you?'

His silence was as good as a nod.

'But Trish wouldn't let you go, would she?' Diamond pressed on. 'She had things sorted as neat as a knitting pattern. The house to herself, all frills and pink wallpaper and nothing out of place. A good pension. A nice welcome any time she wanted to look up old friends at the nick. And this Mary Poppins image of a perfectly managed existence. No, she didn't want a divorce fouling up her tidy life.'

Stormy took a long sip of beer, transparently trying to appear calm.

'Your life was bleak, sleeping in the motor home and only allowed into your own house on sufferance. She wouldn't let go, and Norma wanted something more permanent. The pressure got to you.'

The calm was ebbing away.

'Like me, you knocked off a police weapon in those Fulham days when old Robbo was mismanaging the armoury. Piece of cake. No big deal. Like me, you tucked the shooter away and almost forgot about it, right?'

'Who told you this?'

'You planned it well. Some time between February the twelfth and the nineteenth you took out your gun and put two bullets into Trish's head.'

Now Stormy decided a show of outrage was wanted. 'I don't have to listen to this crap.'

'You do. You don't know who's waiting outside,' Diamond bluffed.

Stormy glanced at the door.

'The timing of the murder is absolutely crucial -because she wasn't killed a couple of weeks after Steph was shot, but
before.'

He swayed back, squeezing his eyes shut as if it were a physical blow. 'You can't say that.'

'I know it. Trish missed her appointment on the nineteenth.'

The eyes shot open and real panic flashed in them. 'What appointment?'

'The hairdo.'

He stared blankly back.

'The shampoo and blow-dry. You were so cut off from her life you didn't know she went to Streakers every Friday. I've been to the shop and seen the book. She missed the next appointment on the twenty-sixth as well, when she was still alive according to you. And the one after.' They were hammer blows and Stormy was reeling from them.

Like any good fighter sensing the end, Diamond didn't relent. 'You're a detective. You've seen plenty of killers fail because someone discovered the body. You thought of a very good place where nobody walked their dogs. After shooting her, you drove the body to Woking and dumped it on the railway embankment where it wouldn't be found for months, if not years. Went home with the idea of waiting a couple of weeks before you reported her missing. Devious, that was - to confuse everyone over the date she disappeared, just in case they investigated your movements on the day of the murder.'

Stormy grasped the arms of his chair to get up, but Diamond grabbed his shirt-front and held him where he was. 'Don't even think about it.'

'Free country,' he said in a rasp.

'Not any more it isn't - not for you. You thought you'd got it all sussed after you disposed of Trish. You were sitting at home - back in the house you owned - when the phone rang and it was Steph, my wife, expecting to speak to Trish. Awkward. You said she was out and offered to take a message and it soon became obvious they'd arranged to meet in Bath to discuss the surprise party Trish wanted to arrange for my fiftieth. Man, oh man, that threw you, didn't it? Your plan was in ruins. You'd meant to wait another two weeks before doing your worried husband act and reporting your wife missing. But Steph would kibosh that. She'd say it was you she spoke to on the phone, not Trish. She'd say Trish didn't turn up for their meeting. She was trouble.'

A strange thing was happening to Stormy's face. The red blotches were standing out like a leopard's spots, separated by patches of dead white skin. His lips, too, were drained of blood. They didn't move.

Diamond leaned closer, still holding him by the shirt, his voice cracking with emotion. 'You decided to kill my wife, you sick fuck, simply because she got in the way of your plan. You'd killed once and it was easy, so you'd do it again. Am I right?'

Not a flicker.

'This wasn't done in the heat of the moment. This was premeditated, cold-blooded murder. You thought it through. When you'd worked out what to say you phoned back and told her you'd spoken to Trish and she'd asked you to confirm the time and place of their meeting. It was to be the Crescent Gardens, opposite the old bandstand, at ten. You drove to Bath and waited in the park. When Steph arrived, expecting to meet Trish, you walked up to her and took out the gun and shot her twice in the head. Then you got in your car and drove home.'

The eyes confirmed it, even if the voice was silent.

'By killing her, you kept your trump card, the chance to mislead everyone about the date of your own wife's death. You waited another two weeks before reporting that Trish was missing. And ever since, you've been doing your damnedest to lay false trails, insisting on calling her Patsy, putting in the frame every villain we ever crossed, sending me every bloody way but here. I took you for a friend and you're a bloody Judas, the worst enemy I could have had.'

The man had nothing to say. His eyes were opaque. He seemed indifferent, passive. But it was a trick.

Abruptly his two hands reached up and smashed down on Diamond's wrist, wrenching it away from the shirt. He stood, wheeled around and made a dash for a door at the back.

Diamond's reaction was slower than it should have been, partly because of where he was seated. The table tipped over and the glasses crashed as he shoved them aside and stepped out. Unfortunately he blundered into a bar-stool and stumbled to his knees. The door had slammed before he was on his feet again.

He charged across and yanked it open. He was looking out at the car park, and Stormy Weather was already climbing into the passenger seat of a white motor home driven by the woman in the blue dress. He must have given her the order to wait with the engine running.

Diamond sprinted.

The vehicle had revved and powered away before he made a grab for the door. He grasped the handle and had his right arm tugged almost out of its socket. Acting on impulse and anger alone, he held on, taking huge strides beside the cab, and jerked the door fully open.

A mistake.

He was staring at imminent death, into the muzzle of a gun. Stormy Weather, eyes wild with panic, took aim.

The bullet hit Diamond like a sledgehammer and he fell backwards and knew no more.

35

'P
eter.'

'Mm?'

'How are you doing?'

'Steph?' He tried to rise and felt a searing pain in his chest.

'Stay still, love. Don't fight it.'

'Fight what?'

'You can relax. The job's done. You're a brave man.'

'Is it really you, Steph?'

No answer.

'Am I dead?'

'Not dead. You'll survive this time, lucky you.'

'Love you, too.'

'You, too . . . You, too . . . You, too . . .'

She was fading and another voice, not Steph's, was saying, 'He's coming round, I think.'

He succeeded in opening his eyes and was conscious of someone above him. Devastated, he saw she was not Steph, but a much younger woman in nurse's uniform. He asked, 'Where did she go?'

'Who do you mean?'

'Steph was here.'

'You must have heard Sister speaking.'

'Her sister went back to Liverpool. Where am I?'

'Kingston Hospital. Listen, you're a little woozy from the injection, and you will be for some time to come, but you're going to be all right, as Sister was trying to tell you.'

'Hospital?'

'You were shot in the shoulder. Don't try to move it. The back of your head hit the ground hard, but there doesn't seem to be any damage to the skull. You've got visitors, by the way.'

'Steph?'

'Who's this Steph you keep on about?' She spoke to someone else. 'He's still bosky, poor bloke. Maybe it's better if he rests for a while.'

When he came round again, he was clearer in the head, and sadder. The visitors were seated by the bed. They were a youngish man whose face he couldn't put a name to, and another he'd never seen in his life.

'Bowers. Billy Bowers,' the first man said when it was obvious Diamond was at a loss.' Woking CID, investigating the death of Patricia Weather. Remember?'

'Now I do.'

'And this is Sergeant Sims. He was on the search party, but I don't think you met him that day. How are you feeling?'

'Sore.'

'Clear-headed?'

'Better than I was. I expect you want to know who shot me.'

'Dave Weather. He's in custody.'

He flexed and gave himself a stab of pain. 'You nicked him? Brilliant!'

'Thanks to the tip-off we got from your friend DI Hargreaves.'

He was talking about Julie. What did Julie know about it? With an effort, Diamond recollected his last conversation with her. He'd told her on the phone he was going after Stormy.

'Pity we didn't collar him before he shot you. If only you'd told us—'

'If I'd told you, I wouldn't have been allowed within a mile of him.'

'You've got a point there,' Bowers admitted with a grin. 'We had the tactical firearms unit waiting outside the house. When the shot was fired in the pub car park, they got round fast. Those motor homes aren't built for easy getaways.'

'Was there a shoot-out?'

'No, they gave themselves up. We'll release the woman without charge later on, but Weather won't be joining her. He thinks we know the lot, and of course we don't - yet. What I need is your account of what happened.'

Later in the day, he was seen by a doctor who told him the bullet had ripped through the deltoid muscle and pierced the scapula. There was some splintering of the bone and he would be kept overnight for some more 'hoovering' under anaesthetic. Apart from the scar, there would be no permanent damage.

'You're lucky.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Or were you looking for early retirement?'

'A living death? No thanks.'

Keith Halliwell came to visit later in the day, a call Diamond appreciated. He brought with him a bottle of malt whisky and a Get Well card signed by everyone on the Bath murder squad.

'You should have been in the incident room when the news came through, guv. Mr McGarvie's face had to be seen to be believed. Not only did he screw up, but you got your man and Bill Bowers gets the collar. He's not a happy bunny.'

'If I could move my arm I'd wipe away a tear, Keith.'

'All I can say is it's lucky for Weather he isn't in our nick. What a weasel, cosying up to you when he'd murdered your wife. How could he do that?'

'It suited him nicely, Keith. When I first offered to work with him he back-pedalled a little, but after he thought about it, being with me he was beautifully placed to foul up the works. Any time another suspect was in the frame, whether it was Joe Florida or Wayne Beach or Dixon-Bligh, he said just enough to point the finger their way.'

'You must hate the man.'

'Hate is too good a word.'

'At least you got satisfaction.'

Later, after Halliwell was gone, he thought about that word 'satisfaction'. In earlier times a duellist was said to demand satisfaction for some offence. There had been none in catching Weather, nor would there be when he was sent down for life. It had mattered that he was caught. The law of the land would be upheld.

Satisfaction?

No.

Yet he felt less gloomy than he had at the lowest point. He would never admit to anyone that he believed in the supernatural. The words he'd attributed to Steph when he was lying in the hospital bed must have been spoken by one of the nursing staff. Must have. He'd been drowsy from some pain killer, hadn't he?

At the time, he'd believed every word.

Well, someone sounding very like Steph had said the job was done. He was comforted by that, whatever the explanation. In this savage world any comfort is worth holding onto.