Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'That's there. And the Brook Green shooting. Two or three others.'

'Great work, Louis.'

'What you've got here are photocopies of the main documents. I couldn't copy everything.'

'Understood.'

Louis eyed him speculatively. 'Does a le Carre character ever ask George Smiley what the hell he's up to?'

Diamond shook his head. 'They skirt around it. That's why the books are so long.'

'Would it have anything to do with the body found at Woking yesterday?'

'You read the papers, too.'

'Couldn't miss it. You want to be careful, Peter. There's a professional gunman out there. You may think you're on his tail, but he's on yours.'

'Thanks, Louis. I'll sleep better for knowing that.'

He left soon after with the files.

Julie was right. It took two whole days for anyone else to make the connection with DCI Weather's missing wife. Two days of inertia for Peter Diamond. True, he studied the case files Louis had photocopied. He combed them minutely, regardless that he'd extracted everything of substance inside an hour on his train ride back to Bath.

Top of the heap was the protection racketeer, Joe Florida, released from Wandsworth in 1995 after serving seven years of a twelve-stretch. Joe Florida's wish-list of slow tortures, emasculations and other cruel fates for police officers who had crossed him was well documented. He told Diamond in one of his interviews prior to being charged that he would 'blow you away, you pig' (though Diamond remembered some adjectives the transcription left out) and repeated the threat more graphically in court after sentencing. As he was being taken down he had shouted – and Diamond remembered this clearly -'I've put a notice on you, copper. I'll do the business on you when I come out. You'll wish you'd never heard of me.' Such taunts from the dock were not uncommon, and the police and judiciary treated them philosophically in the knowledge that several years behind bars dulled the memory and weakened the intent. But in view of what had happened, Joe Florida had to be taken seriously. The probation service had kept tabs on him for three more years after release. He'd returned to West London, to a flat in an upmarket street in Chelsea, so he was obviously not without funds. Under 'Current Employment' on his file someone had written Nothing known, a succinct summing up. He was a career crook, well capable of slipping back into crime without drawing attention to himself.

Tucked away in a section about the surveillance operation on Joe Florida was a name Diamond noted with interest. He circled it with a pen. One of the team assigned to watch the suspect's flat had been DC Weather. A minor role apparently, but it was not impossible Stormy had helped make the arrest and got himself on Florida's wish-list

The Assistant Chief Constable herself, Georgina Dallymore, brought the news late Monday afternoon when things had gone quiet, stepping unannounced into Diamond's cluttered office and exclaiming breathlessly, 'Peter, I think we have the breakthrough. Curtis has been talking to the Surrey Police at Woking, where the remains of that woman were found at the end of last week. They have an ID now, and she's confirmed as an ex-police officer, the wife of a CID officer you may well have worked with in the Met.'

'DCI Weather,' he said as if they were discussing nothing more enthralling than last night's television. 'Yes, I know the bloke.'

'You've heard already?' He'd just shot Georgina's fox, and she was not pleased.

He said in the same flat tone, 'Mrs Patricia Weather, aged thirty-eight, dark-haired, five-six, stocky, dressed in a dark green padded coat, black woollen skirt with an artificial leather belt, pink jumper, Marks and Spencer underwear, tights and low unfashionable black shoes, size seven with a narrow heel.'

'How do you know all this?'

This was not the time to mention his trip to Woking. 'Most of it is in the papers, apart from her name, ma'am. That's on the PNC under missing persons.'

Georgina eyed him warily, suspicious she was being gulled. Nobody associated computer science with Peter Diamond.

As an extra touch, he explained, 'And the Yard puts out these bulletins.'

'And you put two and two together?'

'It wasn't quite so obvious as that. I couldn't say for sure.'

'But you worked it out. Independently of our inquiry, you worked it out.'

'I do have an interest in the case, ma'am.'

Still huffy, she told him, 'I came to put you in the picture, and there's no need, apparently.'

'Ah, but it's nice to have it confirmed.'

She nodded and said with as much acid as she could convey, 'In the unlikely possibility that it hasn't reached your ears, I've called a case conference for tomorrow afternoon, and Surrey Police and the Met will be represented. I'd like you to be there as well. Any theories you have about this development will be of interest to us all.'

He thanked her, a necessary gesture. Even he recognised the need to kowtow on occasions.

Georgina unfroze a couple of degrees. 'Let's hope this brings a result. You're entitled to expect it. A fresh perspective ought to make a difference.' It was as near as she would come to saying McGarvie was all at sea.

Still she lingered, and Diamond waited. Eventually she said, 'I was never in the Met, so I can't speak from first hand about things that happened in the eighties. Everyone knows corruption was endemic then and the official inquiries didn't deal with the problem. Countryman should have made a difference and was wound up far too soon. What was that other inquiry run by Number Five Regional Crime Squad?'

'Operation Carter.'

'Yes, they collected some damning evidence and didn't deliver in the end, or were shut down. You were at Fulham in those days. You must have seen abuses.'

'They weren't the norm, ma'am.'

'Don't take this personally, Peter.'

Whenever he heard those words he knew something personal was about to be slung at him.

'You had to face a board of inquiry over that Missendale case. I know you took it to heart at the time.'

'I was angry.'

'You were exonerated.'

'With a rider about my overbearing manner.'

'Which everyone except you has forgotten. Will you hear me out? This changes everything, this identification. Both murders could well have roots in things that happened at the time I'm speaking of, things you'd rather forget. We need to know what they are, Peter. We've all had episodes in our past we gloss over. Speak frankly, and you have my word there will be no witch-hunt.'

'What about, ma'am?'

'Anything at all. The point is this. We have to stop this killer from murdering anyone else. That's paramount. Your iffy conduct fifteen years ago doesn't matter a jot compared to that.'

He was stung into a sharp riposte. 'No, ma'am,' he told her, feeling the blood rush to his face, 'this is the point. My wife had two bullets put through her brain. If you think I'd hold back on anything to shore up my dodgy career, you must have a low opinion of me.'

'That isn't so,' she said through tight lips. She turned and left the room.

He felt a twinge of guilt. Georgina had come in spontaneously, genuinely wanting to share her news with him. So often of late when she'd spoken to him, there had been a hidden agenda. This time she'd dredged up his past – or tried to – and said a couple of tacdess things and he'd reacted more tetchily than ever. He needn't have put her down.

Too late to mention it.

Another of the case files he'd acquired from Louis featured a white teenager, a crop-headed loner called Wayne Beach who had a liking for guns. As a juvenile, Beach had twice been caught in possession of firearms acquired by his criminal family. For a short time in the early eighties he had made a living robbing and shooting taxi drivers. His method was simple and effective. He'd hail a cab late at night when the driver had stacked up an evening's fares in the West End and ask to be driven to some street where he'd already parked a stolen car. He'd get out and instead of paving the fare he'd pull out a handgun and shoot the driver, usually in the leg, and demand his takings. The drivers always paid up. He would smash the two-way radio and put another bullet into one of the taxi tyres before walking calmly to the stolen car and escaping. One night in Edith Road an eagle-eyed constable spotted a parked car reported as stolen three hours before. On the off-chance that this was the taxi-bandit a team headed by Diamond was issued with arms and sent to lie in wait. Beach was ambushed and shot in the hip. It was not stated in the file whether Stormy Weather had been one of the DCs in support.