Питер Ловси - The Stone Wife

Tim’s attempts to stay aloof from the narrative were losing all conviction. He was trying to stare at the ceiling.

‘What’s more,’ Diamond pressed on, ‘just after I had the twinge in my back and cried out with the pain, Wayne said, “Nobody move” — the same words he used at the auction. Denis Doggart, the auctioneer, tells me he’s certain it was the voice he’d heard before. If Wayne was the spokesman for you three — and he seems to have been — I have to ask myself who fired the fatal shot, and why?’

The solicitor put a restraining hand over Tim’s arm. The intricacies of the case must have been difficult to follow, but when a fatal shot is mentioned, you don’t want your client uttering a single syllable.

Diamond played his ace. ‘It could make all the difference to the charge, the question of intent. Did you go to that auction with the clear intention of murdering Gildersleeve?’

‘No!’ Tim shouted. ‘Definitely not. It was never in the plan.’

The solicitor said to Diamond. ‘That’s enough. I’m stopping this now.’

But Tim saw this as his chance to head off the murder charge and he wasn’t letting it go by. ‘I only ever planned to get the stone back, to stop Gildersleeve from owning it. I knew he’d bid really high and he did. I couldn’t stomach the thought of it going to him.’ He swung around to the solicitor who had stood up and spread his arms as if he was herding geese. ‘Let me have my say, for God’s sake. The bastard had messed up my life already, big time. This was more than I could bear. I persuaded my brothers to help me take the stone back. We didn’t plan to kill him. We’d have hidden the stone where no one would ever find it. Wayne and Roger wouldn’t have agreed to murder anyone. They were carrying plastic guns. I only loaded mine in case I needed to fire a warning shot. He was shot because he went berserk in there. He was trying to grab the stone. I hadn’t expected that. He was always this cold, unfeeling guy. I panicked and pulled the trigger. That’s the truth of it. One shot and it killed him. How unlucky was that?’

‘Thank you,’ Diamond said. ‘We’ve got the picture now.’

While Diamond had been interviewing Tim, Keith Halliwell, with a Taunton detective for company, had taken statements from the other two brothers. Nothing said by Wayne or Roger conflicted with Tim’s account.

‘What happens next?’ Halliwell asked Diamond over beer and a sandwich with Ingeborg before they took to the road.

‘We transfer them to Bath and go over it all again.’

‘Is it a murder charge, or what?’

‘It’s homicide, for sure, and in the course of an attempted robbery.’

‘Tim on a murder rap and the others as accessories?’

‘Plus the driver. There must have been someone waiting in the van. We’ll talk to the CPS. My guess is that they’ll do Tim for murder and leave the court to decide on any leniency. A nice little earner for the lawyers.’ Diamond looked across the table at Ingeborg. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Great,’ she said, frowning. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘I was thinking about the arrest in the field. I wasn’t there, but it sounded quite physical and you were covered in mud.’

‘It was nothing, guv.’

He smiled. Ingeborg was never going to admit to frailty, even if she was covered in bruises. ‘That’s all right, then.’

‘And you?’ she said.

‘Me?’

‘You gave quite a shout when you were lifting the Wife of Bath off the trailer. Were you faking, to distract us all while you looked at the back of Wayne’s head?’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ Diamond said. ‘Actually, I did feel something go in my lower back. I don’t mind admitting, it’s pretty sore.’

Halliwell winked at Ingeborg. ‘That’ll be the sting in the tail.’