Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

But rollercoasters have their upsides, and the police had needed him back. He returned to his old job as murder man in Bath CID. Since then, life had been kinder – their own house in Weston, a playful cat called Raffles, good neighbours and a Chinese takeaway at the end of the street.

Upstairs, he poured two glasses of Rioja before getting into bed. Steph had been to Spain twenty-five years ago as a student and always remembered the wine. She would cheerfully have migrated to Spain or France. No chance hitched to a man like Diamond, with GB plates welded to his soul.

'When did you get this?' she asked. The Diamonds didn't have wine in store. When they bought a bottle, it was for immediate consumption.

'On the way back from Bristol.'

'Nice surprise.'

'Mm.'

'There's the difference between you and me,' she said. 'I don't mind surprises.'

'You're saying I do?'

'You hate them. That's why you're such a good detective. You take out the surprise element by thinking ahead, every angle.'

'I wish it were true.'

'Of course it's true.'

'Yeah? How many times have I needed your help to second-guess a suspect? More than I can count.' He held up his glass.

'Is this to anything special? Another villain off the streets?'

'No, this is to my pretty, wise and understanding wife. Cheers, Steph.'

Accepting a compliment is one of the hardest things to handle. She could have made some flippant response, but she didn't. Coming from her Peter, the awkward little speech was as near as he got to a love poem. She felt for his hand and held it, and they sipped their wine.

'Speaking of surprises,' she said presently, 'certain of your old colleagues know you're reaching a landmark this year.'

'My fiftieth?' He stared at her in alarm. 'How the hell did they find out?'

'You had your picture in the papers last summer when there was all the hoo-ha about the body in the vault.'

'Oh, and the bloody press always give your age. "Peter Diamond, forty-nine." It doesn't take a genius to work out I'll be half a hundred this year.' His eyes read her face. 'They're not planning anything?'

'It was being whispered about. They asked me, and I did my best to cool it. I said you wouldn't appreciate a surprise party one bit.'

'Dead right. Who was this?'

'I'm not at liberty to say.'

'They've dropped the idea, I hope.'

'I think so, but we may need to think of something ourselves.'

'Like being away for the week?'

'Good thinking. I like it' Steph smiled. 'You're way ahead of me. What do you have in mind – a cruise?'

He vibrated his lips. 'I can't think of anything worse.'

'A surprise party is worse.'

'Christ, yes.'

'Oh, come on. They only thought of it because they're fond of you, in spite of the hard times you gave them. They want to show you some affection.'

'Who are these misguided people?'

'I promised not to say.'

'They should know I get all the affection I want from you.'

'Hint, hint?' She put aside her wineglass and turned to kiss him.

Still troubled by the thought of opening a door on a roomful of smiling faces, he curled his arm around her and returned the kiss in a perfunctory way. She wriggled closer and the second kiss was warmer and they got horizontal in the same movement.

'Well, now,' Steph said as he pressed against her. 'You're quite a surprise party yourself.'

By morning the scratches on his face had darkened and were more obvious. He checked them in the car mirror on the way to work, in a line of traffic on the Upper Bristol Road. No sense in kidding himself people wouldn't notice. Nobody at the nick would be bold enough to ask how they'd got there, but he was damned sure the place would hum with gossip. His team would have noticed he hadn't turned up at the pub, of course. 'I had to go to another scene,' he'd tell them without saying that the other scene was his home.

He had this bullish reputation that shielded him from comments on his appearance, but inwardly he was more self-conscious than anyone realised. So he entered the nick by the back door, went straight upstairs to his office and closed the door. No one came in.

Just after eleven he was summoned upstairs to Georgina's lair. Georgina Dallymore, the Assistant Chief Constable, gave the scratches a look and may even have winced a little, but made no reference to them when she gestured to him to sit down. 'So one of the Carpenters is off the streets now. Nice work, Peter.'

'Don't know how long for.'

'Yes, he's going to appeal. His solicitor said so on TV.'

'Did he? I didn't watch the box last night.'

'His friends outside the court made a lot of noise.'

'Rentamob, ma'am.'

Georgina picked up a pen and scrutinised it as if the writing on the side held some important message. 'They're a dangerous family, Peter. I wish we had something major on the other two.'

'Des and Danny? No chance,' Diamond said. 'They don't soil their hands.'

'It's all contracted out, you mean?'

He nodded. 'The only reason we got Jake was that he let this girl become a personal issue.'

'He's not the smartest of the brothers, then?'

'Smart enough to live in a swish pad in its own grounds in Clifton – until yesterday.'

She examined the pen again. 'What will they do now? Regroup?'

'I expect so. Vice, or Drugs, have better tabs on the empire than I do.' He sensed, as he spoke, that he was walking into something, and Georgina's eyes confirmed it.

'Right on,' she said. 'It's organised crime.' She leaned forward a little and her eyes had a missionary gleam. 'You'd be good at that – detecting it, I mean.'

He reminded her guardedly, 'I'm your murder man, ma'am.'

'And a very effective one. But there are times, like now, when all we have on the books are the tough cases from years back that nobody ever got near to solving.'

'Doesn't mean we give up on them.' He didn't like the drift of this one bit.

'I'm thinking your skills might be better employed elsewhere, particularly as you know a lot more about the Carpenter family now.'

Elsewhere? He looked away, out of the window, across the grey tiled roofs towards Lansdown. There was an awkward silence.

'You might need to work out of Bristol Central, but it's not like moving house. What is it – under an hour's drive from where you live?'

He waited a long time before saying, 'Is this an order, ma'am?'

'It's about being flexible.'

"Well, you're talking to the wrong man. I'm not flexible. Never have been. I'm focused.'

Georgina's voice took on a harder note. 'Focus on the Carpenters, then. Yes, it is an order – while nothing new comes up on the murder front. Liaise with Mike Solly and George Eldon. Get an oversight of the entire operation – drugs, prostitution, protection. Put a surveillance team together if you want. This is the time to strike, Peter. They've lost Jake, so they have to put their heads above ground.'

'Have you finished?'

'Careful what you say,' Georgina warned him.

'That's someone else's empire. Not mine.'

'I've issued an order.'

'You want me out of Bath – is that it?' The old demons raged in his head, savaging any good intentions that might have lingered there. He hadn't felt so angry since the day he'd faced another Assistant Chief Constable in this room and resigned from the Force.

'It's not personal. It's about effective management.'

'Effective?' He threw the word back at her.

'I think you'd better get out.'

'Piss off.'

'How dare you!'

'I'm just summing up what you said to me. You've got no use for me here, so you want me to piss off to Bristol.' He turned and walked.

Down in his own office, he stood shaking his head, getting a grip on his emotions. Organised crime had nothing to do with this, he believed. Georgina wanted him out. While he'd been tied up with the court case she'd been plotting his removal. Wrongly, she thought he couldn't take orders from a woman. She didn't understand that he didn't let anybody push him around. No doubt she planned to put some pussycat in his place. John Wigfull was out of hospital and supposed to be returning to work any time. Bloody Wigfull would fit in beautifully: the Open University graduate who did everything by the book, never raised his voice and kept his desk as tidy as a church altar. Yes, she'd love to upgrade Wigfull to head of the murder squad.