Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'Straight to Ireland. I have a cottage there.'

'Good man.'

'But I'll be back for the payout. A hundred grand, we agreed. I have to say this, Rhadi. Perish the thought, but if your friends should be so unwise as to change their minds about my share, I know enough to put you all away, and I can arrange it at no risk to myself.'

'Harry, that won't happen. These are men of honour. When they give their word, they keep to it.'

'They'd better.'

Georgina looked into Diamond's office on the Thursday, two days after the search of his house. 'Don't get up.'

Unusually he was at the computer, checking the Scotland Yard site for the latest on the missing wife of DCI Weather, the old colleague Julie had mentioned. There was nothing new.

'You look busy,' she told him.

'Raking through the embers, that's all.' He looked at her over the screen, fearing the worst. 'Have you heard from forensics?'

'About the gun? No. You know what they're like. It could take another week.' She remained standing, with her hands on the back of the chair in front of his desk. 'Peter, I'm sorry the search had to be done the way it was, without even telling you in advance. I sanctioned the application for the warrant after Curtis McGarvie convinced me you probably had the gun in your possession. It wasn't just a hunch. He looked at your service record, found you were an authorised shot'

'He told me.'

'The point is that the fatal bullets could have been fired from a police handgun. The calibre-'

'I know this, ma'am.'

'And when he learned there were problems over the firearms issued from Fulham in your time there, and asked to see the records and found you were the last to use that particular gun, it couldn't be shirked. You'd already denied owning a weapon. You weren't going to put your hand up unless we produced it.'

'Which you have.'

'We're not being po-faced about this. You wouldn't be the first officer, or the last, to acquire a gun for his own protection. Because you denied it, we don't automatically disbelieve everything else you said.'

He listened in silence, thinking this wasn't the heart-to-heart it was meant to appear. She was doing her best to soften him up. When this didn't work, McGarvie would put the boot in.

'There's tremendous sympathy for you in CID – as there is throughout the station,' Georgina went on. 'You're under huge stress even without the extra pressure of the investigation. I have to say that Curtis has risked a lot of unpopularity from the ranks.'

'My heart bleeds.'

'He knew what the job implied when he took it on. He'll get to the truth.'

'He's taking his time.'

'That isn't fair, Peter. He's working flat out, and so are the team. If you'd been frank about the gun, you'd have saved him many hours of work.'

That angered him. 'If you really want to know, I didn't own up to the gun because I knew it would distract them. Yes, I'm out of order to have kept the thing, but everyone's wasting their time on it. It's six weeks since the murder and the trail's gone cold.'

'We don't know that. Other lines of enquiry are being followed.'

'Give it another two weeks and you'll be standing people down. We both know the score.'

'We're giving this top priority.'

'Next you'll be telling me budgets don't exist, Headquarters aren't already breathing down your neck for a budget report.'

'Peter, people are working overtime for nothing because of their loyalty to you. They want this killer caught.'

He nodded. 'So why are you talking to me, ma'am? What's behind this?'

Sounding almost maternal in her concern to keep him sweet, she said, 'Is there anything else you haven't mentioned? Anything we should know?'

She was fishing for the motive. The confession that his marriage was in trouble.

The devil in him made him lead her on a bit. 'Off the record?'

'There are only the two of us here.'

He could almost feel the heat of her charm.

'I'll come clean, then.' Leaning forward, he said, 'I loved my wife. Still do. Long after McGarvie has folded his tent and crept away I'll be on the case. It may never come to court, but it'll be solved, I promise you.'

Georgina's voice altered. He'd touched a raw nerve. She told him, 'How do I get through to you, Peter? We can't allow you to get involved. It would sabotage everything. You know that.'

'But I am involved. I'm your number-one suspect.'

'Now, come on. That's a bit much.'

'So who's in the frame apart from me?'

She was unprepared for that one. She could only counter it with an impatient sigh.

He said, 'If I don't point you in the right direction, I'm hung, drawn and quartered.'

'Oh, be reasonable.'

'Be reasonable? My place was searched twice. You authorised a warrant. You've taken away my wife's private letters, interviewed me on tape, looked for dirt in my career record, accused me of forging the things in her diary. Is it any wonder I'm starting to sound paranoid?'

She said, 'I've told you I'm sorry about the way some of this has been handled. You and Curtis are totally opposite in most ways, but you share one thing. You don't believe in sugaring the pill. I should have seen there would be personality problems when I asked for him. He's still the best detective I could get. He has my confidence – I want to make that clear.'

'You have, ma'am.'

'And in case you're wondering whose idea this conversation was, it was mine. I haven't known you as long as most of the people in this place, but I share their respect for you, and their concern. I want to see you come through this.'

'I will,'he told her. 'I will.'

On Monday morning he attended the inquest. It was mercifully straightforward, since the salient facts of Steph's identity, and where, when and how she came to be dead were manifestly clear. As the coroner explained, apportioning blame was outside his jurisdiction. The jury might decide murder was done, but the process of identifying who was responsible would be up to the criminal court. Diamond listened to the two main witnesses, Warburton, passably sober this morning and wearing a suit, and Jim Middleton, the pathologist. The facts of the case were so firmly lodged in Diamond's own mind that he could listen impassively, even when the phrase 'an execution-style shooting' was used. His own testimony was limited to stating when he had last seen Steph alive and explaining that he couldn't account for her being found in the park.

The police were represented by McGarvie, who gave evidence about the recovery of the bullets and the finding of the handbag and the diary entry. He said nothing about the discovery of the handgun in Diamond's garden, merely informing the court that enquiries were continuing.

The coroner adjourned the inquest, pending further investigations.

Outside, Diamond declined to make any kind of comment when the press converged. They took their photos on the move, while he marched briskly to the car park.

And then stopped.

McGarvie was beside his car. 'I know you've been waiting on the ballistics tests, as we all have,' he said. 'I called them first thing this morning.'

'And…?'

'The results are inconclusive.'

'You mean the bullets weren't fired from the gun?'

'No. They can't say either way, so they're test-firing again.'

'At your request, I suppose.'

'Yours, also, I expect,' McGarvie said with a faint smirk. 'It's in everyone's interest to have the truth, I would have thought'

'Did they find any prints on the gun?'

'Wiped. It was wrapped in a cloth.'

Diamond got into his car and drove back to Bath.

'Inconclusive' meant that the rifling on the test round was not identical with the bullets they'd found, but close enough for suspicion. One bullet had been crushed by some emergency vehicle and was probably unsuitable for ballistic analysis. The other had passed through bone and possibly struck stone when hitting the ground, and the match was likely to be less than perfect. Like fingerprinting, ballistic proof depends on sufficient points of similarity.