Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

Before he got out, the security lights came on. A dog barked. A large bark. No need, really, to touch the bell push, but he did, and was rewarded with the first bars of Danny Boy.

The door opened a fraction and a snarling muzzle was thrust through.

Diamond took a step back. Someone swore, and hauled the dog inside. A man's face appeared, without doubt the face of a minder. 'Yeah?'

'Danny at home?'

'Yeah.'

'I'd like to see him, then.'

'Yeah?'

'The name's Diamond. He's heard of it.'

'Yeah?'

This might have continued for some time if a woman's voice had not said from the inner depths, 'Who is it, Gary?'

Silence. Gary had forgotten already.

Diamond called out his own name and presently Gary's ravaged head was replaced by one easier on the eye, one Diamond knew, red-blond and green-eyed. She had been in court for much of the Jake Carpenter trial.

'Evening, Celia.'

She said, 'You've got a bloody nerve.'

'I'm here to see Danny.'

'Not by invitation, you're not.'

'About the murder of my wife.'

'We don't know nothing about that. He spoke to your people and he's in the clear.'

'Then he hasn't got a problem. He can see me.'

'Aren't you forgetting you banged up his brother for a life term? Why don't you go forth and multiply, Mr Diamond? Danny's busy.' She turned her head and shouted, 'Gary, we may need that dog again. The visitor is leaving.'

'I've got some questions for you,' Diamond said.

'Me? What have I got to do with it?'

'Do you want to come down to Bath, or shall we talk inside?'

'Hang about,' Celia said. 'What's this about?'

'I don't conduct interviews on doorsteps, Celia.'

'I've done nothing wrong.'

'So it's a trip to the nick, is it?'

She opened the door wider. 'You'd better come in, you sly bastard.'

The entrance hall was virtually a foyer, circular, with doors off, a grand staircase and a marble fountain. A life-size statue of a nude woman held up a shallow bowl from which the water cascaded.

Celia showed him into a reception room that seemed to have been removed from a safari lodge, with zebra skin hangings, Zulu shields, crossed spears and huge wooden carvings of animals.

She told him, 'I'm not saying a word without Danny here.'

That suited Diamond. 'Good thinking. You'd better fetch him right away.'

She was so flustered at being fingered as a possible suspect that she didn't realise Diamond had got his way.

He stood at the window taking in the view and musing on these villains' overview of all the little mortgaged houses like his own.

He heard someone behind him say, 'You've been upsetting my wife.'

'Someone murdered mine.'

He turned. Danny Carpenter, the best-looking of the brothers, still dark-haired at forty-five or so, stood in a red polo shirt and black jeans in front of a mural of a stalking lion. Celia wasn't even in the room. No matter, now Danny had been flushed out. His short, bare arms had the muscle tone of a regular weight-lifter.

Diamond added, 'I'm trying to find the reason.'

'What reason?'

'Why she was murdered.'

'Not here, you won't,' Danny said. 'We're clean. Your people spoke to me already.'

'You've got nothing to hide, then.'

'I was at the gym.'

'And afterwards with your solicitor. I heard. A five-star alibi.'

Danny displayed his gold fillings in a slow, wide grin.

This stung Diamond into commenting, 'It's almost as if you knew something was going to happen.'

'Watch it.'

'Your brother Des is watertight, too.'

'This is going nowhere, squire,' Danny said.

'Don't tell me the Carpenter family draw the line at killing women. You could have used one of your heavies. Or hired someone.'

'You've got to be joking,' Danny said. 'Who do you think we are – Fred Karno's Army? Listen, if we wanted to get at you, we wouldn't top your wife.'

Put like that, it chimed with Diamond's own assessment, the main objection to the Carpenters as the killers: their uncomplicated notion of revenge would have resulted in his own death, not Steph's.

'If you want us off your back,' he said as if he was speaking for the entire police operation, 'you could tell me what the latest whisper is. Have you heard anything?'

'About the shooting?' Danny shook his head. 'What sort of piece was used?'

'Point three-eight revolver.'

'Doesn't say much.'

'It will when we find the weapon.'

'He'll have got rid of it, won't he?'

'Not necessarily,' Diamond said. 'This was a professional job, and professionals get attached to their pieces – don't they, Danny?'

'Let's leave it there before you say something that really gets up my nose.'

Not yet, he thought. Up to now, he'd got no signal that Danny knew more about Steph's murder than he wanted to admit. The purpose of this call was to assess the man, tease out the guilt if possible.

He tried another approach. 'You think your brother Jake's conviction was down to me, don't you?'

'You were on the case, sunshine.'

'He wasn't fitted up, you know. The girl's blood was on his shoes, in his car. This was no contract job. He flipped when she tried to sling her hook. You didn't see what he did to her face. I did. Seventeen, she was.'

Danny stared out of the window, unmoved.

Diamond said, 'There was never any doubt. The jury took under an hour.'

Still the brother was silent.

'PC Plod could have handled the case,' Diamond pressed on recklessly. 'Okay, Celia and the other women stood outside the court giving me lip, and one of them clawed my face, but they know it wasn't down to me. Your brother Jake is a stupid, sadistic killer.'

'Still family,' Danny said in a low voice, without challenging the statement.

'What's happening to Janie, then?'

'Who?'

'His girlfriend. The woman who marked me.'

Danny shrugged. He appeared to have no interest in Janie. Or what she had done to Diamond.

Diamond reminded him, 'She was wanting to visit Jake. She said you and Des monopolised all the visits.'

'She'd better piss off back to London,' Danny said. 'She's nothing to Jake.'

'You haven't spoken to her since the trial?'

Danny shook his head.

'Is it possible Janie felt so strongly about the case that she fired the shots?'

'Don't ask me.'

'I'm trying to get your opinion, Danny. You said if the family was out for revenge you wouldn't target my wife. You'd go for me. Well, Janie isn't family. Is this a woman's way of setding the score? Does she have a gun?'

Danny turned to face him. 'You're boring me. Why don't you leave?'

'Maybe I should.'

He'd got as much or as little from this member of the Carpenter family as he was likely to. The trick in making home visits to known criminals is judging when to leave.

Ten days went by.

Ten more days in the process of grieving, this grudging acceptance of the stark reality. One day he decided he would take all Steph's clothes to a charity shop because that was what she would have wished (so long as it was not the one where she worked). He carried the dresses downstairs and draped them across the back seat of the car so as not to crease them. If the helpers in the shop decided to throw them in a corner in the back room or stuff them into plastic sacks, so be it. He wouldn't do it himself. Then, in a fit of sentiment he picked out one of her favourites, the fuchsia-coloured silk one she'd worn to the theatre last time they'd gone, carried it upstairs again and returned it to the wardrobe. It should have gone with the rest. There was no logical reason to keep it. He simply couldn't part with it yet. And when he looked at the other clothes, he couldn't be separated from them either. He drove around with those dresses on the back seat for days, reaching back to touch them at moments when he felt really down. You're a pathetic old idiot, he told himself when he finally removed them from the car and put them back on their hangers.