Peter Lovesey: The Summons

Prue Shorter slammed her hand on the table. “You make it sound like an act of sympathy. She did it to salve her bloody conscience, the bitch. On the anniversary of Georgina’s death these revolting roses appeared on her grave, my child’s grave, defiling it. They weren’t placed there for my baby’s sake, or mine, oh, no. She left them to convince herself, herself, her bloody self that she wasn’t callous and cold-hearted. But she was, or she’d never have left my child dying in the street. She didn’t care. Her life went on untroubled, the high-powered job, the glamor, the traveling, the lovers. Buying a dozen red roses once a year was no sacrifice at all. I gave them back to her. Stuffed them into her lying mouth after I’d stabbed her. They ended up on her bleeding corpse instead of my daughter’s grave.” She glared red-eyed around the table. “Don’t look at me with your pious faces. None of you knows what I went through. You can’t know what it was like to bring up a child alone, trying to make up for the father who abandoned her and struggling to earn enough to keep us at the same time. You didn’t nurse her through attacks of asthma and bronchitis. You didn’t comfort her when she had nightmares about starting school. And you weren’t taken to a mortuary and asked to identify her pathetic little corpse.” She covered her eyes and sobbed.

Farr-Jones glanced toward Julie, who went to Prue Shorter and placed an arm around her shoulders.

Presently she looked up and said, “My dears, I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. Who would like more coffee?”

Diamond phoned Stephanie at lunchtime and told her he would be home that evening. “In time for a celebration supper,” he said. “I’ll pick up something we’d both enjoy. And a bottle.”

“What’s the celebration?” she asked. “Did you recapture that convict?”

“Yes-but there’s more to it than that, Steph. I’ll tell you tonight.”

“What’s happened? You sound quite like your old self- disgustingly chipper.”

“My old self? There’s nothing old about me, as you’ll discover.”

The line went quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Are you sure you’re all right? That bee sting hasn’t affected you in some way?”

“I’d forgotten all about the bee sting.”

She asked warily, “What did you take for it?”

“I’m perfectly okay, I promise you. Just happy at the outcome.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “I thought you’d be totally knackered by now.”

“Not at all,” he told her. “It was a challenge, and I was equal to it. In the end, it was a piece of cake.” He laughed. “A piece of cake, my love.”

When Diamond looked into the makeshift office, Julie was still typing statements.

“How many more?” he asked.

She looked up and sighed. “Two sheets of this one, and then I’ve got to start my own.”

“Paperwork,” he said. “Don’t you hate it?” He riffled through a sheaf of papers of his own that he had just collected from estate agents: details of properties for sale in and around Bath. He would be doing his paperwork on the train to London.

She typed another sentence, then said, “At least she admits everything.”

“Four years too late.”

“I felt quite sorry for her, and she’s a murderer.”

He was unmoved. “She didn’t show much sympathy for Mount joy, stuck in Albany for the past four years.”

“He’ll get a quick release, won’t he?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “The wheels grind slowly. The CC promises a report will go straight to the Home Office.”

“After I’d taken the statement, I asked her about Mount-joy,” Julie said. “If he was on her conscience, I mean. She said when she read about him in the papers, the violence he used on women, she reckoned he deserved every day he spent in prison.”

“That misses the point, Julie. Prue Shorter isn’t the law.”

“I didn’t say I agree with her.”

She went back to her typing.

“We ought to have a drink,” he suggested.

She said, “If it doesn’t seem too ungrateful, I’d like to get this out of the way. I don’t want to hold you up.”

“Can I fetch you a coffee before I go?”

“No, thanks.”

“Cheer up. The news isn’t all bad,” he said.

“What do you mean-the prospect of you getting your job back?” Oddly she didn’t sound cheered up.

He left to catch the next train.