Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

His thoughts were interrupted. A car had crept up and was cruising beside him at walking pace. He'd got to the top of the High Street and was approaching the Crown. They came so close that he heard the nearside window slide down. Someone who'd lost his way, he thought, and turned to see.

It was a police car with two young officers inside.

'Do you mind telling us where you're going?'

'Home, eventually,' he answered.

'And where's that?'

'Just up there, off Trafalgar Road.'

'Out for a walk, are you?'

'That's the idea.'

'At this time of night?'

'There's no law against it.'

'Most lawful people are in bed and asleep. Don't I know you, chummy?'

'You should… constable.'

There was a murmured consultation inside the car, followed by, 'Christ!' Then a pause, and, 'Sorry to have troubled you, sir. There was a break-in higher up, on Lansdown Lane, and we-'

The voice of the driver said, 'Leave it, Jock.'

'Night, sir.' The car drew off at speed.

He shook his head and walked on.

In the morning he called the nick and told the switchboard he'd be late in. These days nobody objected. They were relieved when he was out of the place. He was an unwelcome presence, reminding everyone of the poor progress so far. He had the files of unsolved crimes to keep him occupied, supposedly, but he was forever finding reasons to look into the incident room.

He took an early train to London and was in Kensington by ten. The last address he had for Dixon-Bligh was in Blyth Road, behind the exhibition halls at Olympia, not far from his old patch. He wasn't in a nostalgic mood.

The tall Victorian terraced house was split into flats and the modey collection of name cards stuffed into slots beside the doorbells didn't include a Dixon-Bligh. He stepped back to check the house number again. Definitely the one he had.

He rang the ground-floor bell. This was not the kind of establishment that operated with internal phones. After several tries no one came, so he pressed the next bell up, and got a response. Above him, a sash window was pulled up and a spiky hairdo appeared. Male, he thought.

'Yeah?'

He said he was looking for Dixon-Bligh and didn't know which flat he was in.

'Dick who?' the punk said.

'No, Edward. Edward Dixon-Bligh. Man in his forties. Ex-Air Force. Used to own a restaurant in Guildford. May be sharing with a younger woman.'

'Never heard of him.' The head disappeared and the window slammed shut.

It wasn't unusual for people in London flats to know nothing of their neighbours. Diamond studied the names beside the remaining doorbells, and wasn't encouraged. Both looked foreign.

He pressed the first and got no response. The second was answered eventually by a woman in a sari who came down two flights of stairs with a baby in her arms.

He stated his question again.

She shook her head.

'You don't know, or you think he's moved?'

She took a step back and smiled and shrugged. She didn't understand a word he was saying.

But at least he got inside the building. Picked up weeks of junk mail heaped on the floor to his right and -eureka! – found a seed catalogue addressed to E. Dixon-Bligh. Without a date stamp, unfortunately. Showed it to the woman, pointing to the name, but she didn't understand.

He moved past her to the door of the ground-floor flat. There was a note pinned to it: Sally and Mandy are at the shop all day. Didn't sound like Dixon-Bligh. He went upstairs, past the punk's door, to the second floor. The woman in the sari followed. No one answered when he knocked at the door of the second-floor flat. According to the bells downstairs the occupier was a V. Kazantsev. He was probably at work, spying on the Foreign Office.

The woman joined him on the second-floor landing. The child was asleep.

He tried once more. 'Edward Dixon-Bligh?' Used his fingers to mime an RAF moustache, though he had no idea if Dixon-Bligh had one. This was desperation time.

She shook her head.

He returned downstairs, frustrated, and sorted through the junk mail and found a couple more addressed to Dixon-Bligh. No clue as to how long they'd been there. It was unhelpful that the Post Office didn't frank mass mailings.

What next?

He wouldn't leave this building without a result. Up he went to the punk's level. The door was vibrating to enormous decibels from inside. Pity the people upstairs and down. He hammered on it with both fists. At the third attempt he was heard. The punk looked out and said, 'Piss off, mate. You're wasting my time.'

Diamond's foot was against the door and he grabbed the man by his T-shirt. 'Who's the landlord?'

'Get off, will you?'

'The landlord.'

'How would I know? I pay my rent to the agent.'

'Which one?'

'Pickett. North End Road.'

The woman in Pickett's was guarded. 'We never give information about clients.'

'This one seems to be an ex-client.'

Her eyes widened. 'Who's that?'

'A Mr Dixon-Bligh.'

Client confidentiality no longer applied. 'Certainly we know a Mr Dixon-Bligh. He was a tenant in one of our Blyth Road properties for three years, but he moved out at the end of February.'

'Where to? Do you know?'

She gave a bittersweet smile. 'I was hoping you would tell me. He left no forwarding address. We'd like to trace him ourselves. He owes two months' rent.'

'You didn't give him notice?'

'He did a flit. The first we knew of it was when Mr Kazantsev came in and said he'd heard there was an empty flat.'

'Kazantsev? So Dixon-Bligh had the second-floor flat?'

She checked the card index. 'Second floor. Yes.'

'Do you think Kazantsev knew him?'

'No. He heard from one of the other tenants. Blyth Road is a desirable address. Places there are snapped up fast.'

'Do you know what line of work Dixon-Bligh was in?'

'We never ask.'

'References?'

'Not these days. If they can put down the deposit – and he did – we take them on.'

In case the agency traced their runaway tenant, he left his phone number, but he rated the chance no better than a meeting with Lord Lucan.

He sat in a North End Road cafe eating a double egg and chips and pondering the significance of what he had learned. Dixon-Bligh had upped sticks at the end of February, just about the time of the shooting. He may well have returned from the murder scene in a panic, determined to vanish without trace. He was top of the list of suspects now.

But the trail stopped here.

He had no idea where to go looking for Dixon-Bligh. He doubted if it could be done without help.

Well, he'd served in the Met. That was the obvious place to start. He'd look up his old nick in Fulham. See if any of the team had survived into the new century.

The sight of the tarted-up new building was not encouraging and neither was the face across the desk. They were getting younger all the time. This one probably had to shave once a week.

'Afternoon, sir.'

'Is it already?' Diamond said. He introduced himself and asked if anyone was there who had served in the mid-eighties, and almost added, 'Before you were born.'

'I doubt it, sir. Do you know about tenure?'

He'd heard of it, and very unpopular it was in the Met, the system of moving officers between squads and stations. Nobody was allowed to dig in for ever. 'Maybe somebody I knew – somebody really ancient like me – has done the rounds and returned to base. Is there anyone fitting that description?'

He was invited to the canteen to find out, and there he was recognised at once by the manageress, a big Trinidadian called Jessie. Her smile made his day. She wanted to feed him – even though he insisted he'd just eaten – so he settled for rhubarb crumble, Jessie's speciality.