The Summons (16 page)

Diamond turned to Julie. “The Canary—that’s just around the corner from Trim Street, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Did she tell you anything else?” Diamond asked Martin.

“About the crusties? No.”

“She wasn’t scared of this man?”

“She certainly didn’t give that impression.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“No, I think he must have left the area.”

* * *

Summing up in the car as Julie drove back toward Bath, Diamond said, “Not bad. We started with two men in the frame, Jake Pinkerton and Marcus Martin, and now we have two more: Wicked Winnie, as you called him, and G.B., whoever he is.”

“Winston Billington had an alibi, surely?” said Julie. “He was in Tenerife at the time of the murder.”

“I wonder if anyone checked it.”

“We must have.”

“You say ‘we,’ but you weren’t part of it then. If there was any carelessness, it was my fault. Billington didn’t loom very large in the inquiry, I can tell you that.” He let her negotiate a crossing and then resumed, “He appears to have fancied his chances with her. The presents. The roses.”

“Or sweet peas,” she reminded him.

“All right, but he gave her flowers. And being the landlord, he had a key to her flat. If there’s the slightest doubt about that alibi, Winston Billington has some questions to answer.”

“Surely we can check that holiday in Tenerife with the travel agent?”

“Four years on? I doubt if they keep their records that long. It’s all on computer, isn’t it? Dead easy to wipe.”

Julie smiled. Diamond never missed the chance of a sideswipe at computers.

“The same applies to the airlines,” he added. “At one time we might have stood a chance of tracing a passenger list. It was all on paper. The stewardess had a clipboard with all the names. Not now.”

“Was that when Lindbergh was chief pilot?” Julie asked without taking her eyes off the road.

He gave her a quick look. “On further consideration,” he said, “a couple of rings through your nose might make all the difference.”

She didn’t answer.

Back in Manvers Street, the same constable was still on duty behind the protective glass. He called out Diamond’s name.

“What is it this time?”

“You have a visitor upstairs, sir.”

“One of your bumblebees?”

The constable was uncertain whether he was meant to smile. “No, sir. A crusty.”

Chapter Fourteen

On the way upstairs Julie Hargreaves asked Diamond whether he wanted her to be present.

He told her brusquely, “Of course I do. He’s only here thanks to you.”

“I didn’t arrange it.”

“You scattered the seed corn.” But it wasn’t said as a compliment. He had been assembling his thoughts for the interview to come, and she had disrupted them.

That was soon forgotten. In their makeshift office, a truly distracting spectacle was waiting. The crusty was asleep, feet up on the desk, head back and mouth open. Neither Julie nor Diamond had mentioned the fact, but each had expected to find someone fitting G.B.’s description. This crusty was emphatically female.

Stirring at the sound of the door being closed, she yawned and said, “Who are you?”

“We work here,” Diamond answered.

The statement was received with a slit-eyed, disbelieving look. Clearly they didn’t look like the sort of police she was used to seeing. She would have been received downstairs by one of the uniformed officers and escorted here by another.

Diamond added, “Plain clothes. And who are you?”

“I just looked in.”

One evasion for another. He decided to give his surname and Julie’s rank and name.

The crusty responded with, “Shirl.”

Shirl was in what looked like a wartime flying jacket of faded brown leather with a fleece collar. She had a black T-shirt and fringed leather miniskirt, fishnet tights and badly scuffed ankle boots that she showed no inclination to remove from the desk. Her black hair was cut shorter even than Julie’s and a Union Jack shape was shaved on each side of her head. Large silver rings adorned her ears, but she had no nose decorations and no visible tattoos. Quite a conservative crusty.

“What can we get for you, Shirl? A coffee?”

She mimed the action of holding a cigarette to her lips.

Diamond exchanged a look with Julie and she went out to waylay someone who smoked.

“What brings you here?”

Shirl eyed him warily, still with her legs propped on his desk. Since the legs were so much on display, it was impossible not to notice that they were stumpy. Neither the boots, nor the stockings, nor the miniskirt, could make them look anything else. Probably when she was standing no one noticed her legs, for she was generously proportioned above the waist. Deciding finally that some kind of explanation for her presence in the office had to be conceded, she told him, “Some of the fuzz was down in Stall Street this morning asking about G.B.”

“You know him?”

“Course I know him, or I wouldn’t be here, would I? What do you want him for?”

“Only to help us with our inquiries.” The familiar form of words escaped Diamond’s mouth before he was fully aware how sinister it would sound. Swiftly he rephrased it. “I want to talk to him about someone he met a long time ago.”

“In Bath?”

He grinned, trying to be agreeable. “Trim Street, actually.”

“Don’t know it.”

“You know the bottom of Milsom Street, where the phones are, and that shop with the coffee machine—Carwardine’s?”

Shirl said, “It’s gone.”

He frowned. “Not Carwardine’s?”

“Closed.”

“God help us.”

Shirl said helpfully, “But I know where you mean.”

“Tucked away behind there, then. G.B. was living in a squat in Trim Street at one time four years ago. This woman was a journalist. She arranged with him to visit the house and take some pictures for a magazine.”

“This is that Swedish reporter who was killed, right?”

“Right.” Encouraged that she knew, he still tried to keep the same amiable tone. “So you remember her?”

“I wasn’t here then. I was still at school.”

“But you know about the murder?”

“Only what I was told.”

“And you can take me to G.B.?”

This caused her to gasp in alarm. “No way! I didn’t say that.”

“Then why are you here? Did he send you?”

She answered the first question, not the second. “He’s my bloke.”

Julie returned with three cigarettes and some matches. Shirl grabbed them all and lit one, slipping the others into a top pocket. Diamond told Julie what he had learned so far, cueing her to take up the questioning.

“Where are you living, love?” Julie asked.

“All over. I’m a traveler, aren’t I?”

“In a van?”

“Something like that.”

“Close to Bath?”

“What’s it to you?”

“We can give you a lift home.”

“Piss off.”

Diamond manfully took this as the end of the exchange with Julie and his turn to try. “We’d like to meet G.B., just to
get
his memories of four years ago. Do you think he’d agree to meet us?”

“Why ask me?”

“We’d ask him if he was here, but you’re the next best.”

She transferred her interest to the cigarette, as if she’d won that point, too.

“He’s your bloke, you said. Does he know you came? We can keep you out of it if you like.”

“I’m not scared of him,” said Shirl, but it sounded more like bravado than the truth.

“Did he send you?”

Silence.

This time Diamond let her stew for a while. She’d given no sign of wishing to leave and there had to be some reason why she had come. Crusties aren’t in the habit of walking into police stations to fraternize with the fuzz.

Julie knew the tactics. She gazed steadily at the stack of stationery opposite as if her true vocation were counting envelopes.

Shirl endured the indifference for a minute or so and then became fidgety, inhaling on the cigarette several times and puffing out smoke. Finally she pinched out the lighted end and positioned it to cool on the edge of the desk. She lowered her legs to the floor and leaned forward in the chair.

“You think G.B. stiffed her, don’t you?” Her black-lined eyes bore into Diamond. “Don’t you?”

Trying not to react at all, he stared over her head at an out-of-date notice about Colorado beetles.

Shirl blurted it all out. “You’ve had the wrong bloke banged up, and now he’s escaped. That teacher. Mountjoy, or something. He didn’t kill the woman. G.B. says so.”

“He told you that?” Diamond reacted eagerly, breaking his vow of silence. “What else did he tell you?”

Interrupting her had been a tactical error. It shocked her into silence. Worse, she got up and walked to the door, pausing only to retrieve the dog-end from the edge of the desk.

Julie put a sisterly hand on her shoulder and said, “You’re going to want somewhere to sleep, love. You can’t go back to him.”

“I’m not scared of him,” Shirl insisted for the second time, brushing Julie’s hand away. “He didn’t do nothing— well, nothing serious.”

Some fast talking was required, so Diamond said with a firm statement of fact that rapidly gave way to an appeal and then practically a cry for help, “It’s obvious that G.B. sent you. Fair enough—he wants to know what we’re up to. Would you give him a message from me? Tell him I’d like to meet him and talk about Britt Strand. He could be a crucial witness. Tell him I’m only interested in what happened four years ago when he was squatting in Trim Street. I’m willing to go anywhere for a friendly chat. Anywhere he cares to name.” Before he had finished, Shirl was out of the door and on her way downstairs to the street. It was by no means certain that she had heard the offer of a meeting.

“Shall I get the car?” Julie offered.

“No point. She’d lose us easily in Bath. I’m going to organize a tail. On foot.”

She looked doubtful. “You’ll have to be quick about it.”

“Yes, it’s you.”

Julie gave him a startled look. “But she knows me.”

He nodded. “She’ll expect someone to come after her, so it might as well be you. Radio in when you can.” Man management had never been Diamond’s strong suit. As for woman management . . . pass.

Julie got up and went through the door without letting her eyes meet Diamond’s.

After she’d gone, he sat back and pondered the reason for Shirl’s visit. It seemed to have been dedicated to getting one point across. Having delivered the statement that Mountjoy was innocent, she couldn’t get away fast enough. Did G.B. seriously think he would get the police off his back by sending this tantalizing message? If the man
really
knew something that hadn’t been aired before, this could be a pivotal moment in the case. The most likely explanation was that Shirl had been sent solely to find out why there was police interest in G.B., who was probably involved in other, unrelated crimes. She hadn’t been instructed to say anything about Mountjoy. That had been a bonus.

He ambled along the corridor to check on progress in the hunt for Mountjoy. Standing among the computer terminals where civilian staff tapped steadily at the keyboards, Commander Warrilow eyed him morosely.

“Any progress?” Diamond enquired.

“It’s all progress.”

“That’s a positive attitude.”

“We’ve just had a sighting.”

“Nice work!”

“Possibly. A man of his description was seen less than an hour ago in the Circus.”

“Walking the tightrope?” Diamond asked, knowing perfectly well that the reference was to the circle of terraces that was one of Bath’s architectural glories.

Warrilow ignored the remark and said, “The water people are working up there, inspecting the drains. Several inspection covers have been open all week.”

Diamond widened his eyes. “And you suspect . . . ?”

Warrilow gave a nod. “The original sewage culverts go right underneath the buildings. They’re large. You can stand upright in some of them. We think he could be hiding there. I’ve got a search party about to go in.”

Peter Diamond started to whistle the theme from
The
Third Man.

Warrilow clicked his tongue and turned his back.

Diamond moved on to the radio room and told the sergeant supervisor that he wanted to be informed when Julie Hargreaves checked in. “Should be soon,” he said confidently. “Can I borrow a headset?”

In a few minutes he heard Julie announce herself. She had followed Shirl to the railway station forecourt, where she had stopped to talk to a couple of crusty men, neither of whom fitted G.B.’s description. “Now she’s leaving them, heading for the tunnel under the railway where the taxis line up. I’m following.”

Diamond turned to the sergeant. “Do we still have a unit to monitor the movements of travelers and crusties?” One summer there had been a much publicized incident on the M5 motorway when the crusties had halted their vehicles in line and blocked the traffic for over an hour as a protest against what they termed police harassment.

“Only in the summer months, sir. They’re less of a problem now.”

“Like house flies? So we ignore them in the winter?”

“We don’t have the resources to monitor them all the year round.”

Muttering, he replaced the headset. Julie didn’t make contact again for twenty minutes. Then she reported that she had just reached the A36, the Warminster Road, and Shirl was by the side of the road trying to hitchhike. “What are my orders if she gets a lift?” she asked.

Diamond said ungraciously, “I suppose I’d better pick you up. Where exactly are you?”

“I just gave you my position.” Julie’s indignation came forcibly over the two-way radio.

He didn’t apologize. He wasn’t much good at street names and chasing about in cars wasn’t his favorite pastime. The sergeant in the radio room put a finger on the appropriate place on a street map displayed on the wall. With an air of martyrdom, Diamond went to collect the Escort.

He drove it through central Bath and over Pulteney Bridge at the modest speed dictated by the traffic.

Julie was still waiting by the government buildings opposite Minster Way. She waved vigorously.

“Lost her, then?” he said.

“Not if we get weaving,” she informed him as she got in. “She’s in one of those long builder’s lorries with a yellow cab. He picked her up about two minutes ago. We ought to be able to catch it.”

“We can try,” he said without much conviction. “Not easy to overtake on this road. With this old heap, I mean.” He spoke as if all he needed were some extra horsepower. In driving away, he pulled out in the path of a BMW that was forced to brake abruptly. “What I could really do with,” he said above the blare of the BMW’s horn, “is one of those detachable flashing beacons that Kojak used to have. You put your arm out of the window, slam it on the roof and off you go. Everyone knows it’s an emergency.”

The road widened and he succeeded in overtaking a small white van. “Did she know you were tailing her?” he asked Julie.

“I don’t think so. There were a couple of hairy moments when she looked back, but I merged with other people on the street.”

The road ahead dipped and gave them a longer view. “Any sign?” Diamond asked.

“I don’t know . . . Hold on—yes! Just about to go out of sight. See?”

While he was trying to see, the white van—the only thing he had overtaken so far—trundled past him again. For the next couple of miles the oncoming traffic prevented him from making any progress. Some traffic lights at the Viaduct pub hindered him further, but Julie pointed out that there was a steep hill ahead that was obliging everyone to move at the speed of the slowest.

Soon after they reached the top, they were rewarded with the sight of the yellow lorry at the side of the road and Shirl in the act of climbing down from the cab. The stretch of road here was fringed by trees on either side.

“Watch where she goes,” ordered Diamond, the man of authority once more. “I’m going past.”

He slowed to a crawl—to the incandescent fury of the driver of the BMW behind him—until he found a place to pull in on some even turf about a hundred yards on. In his mirror he saw the lorry flashing its direction light to move off again.

“She stayed this side of the road,” said Julie as they got out.

Shirl wasn’t in sight, however. She must have headed straight into the wood, a dense, dark strip that funneled outward to cover a substantial area. After trekking back along the road, they found a bridle path, the only route she could have taken.

They started in pursuit. A brisk walk over frost-hard leaves brought them to a clearing occupied by up to a dozen vehicles in various states of dilapidation. A smoldering fire and a pair of barking dogs gave promise that the place was inhabited.