Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

Beach had been given five years on that occasion and had served several terms since for malicious wounding. The significant feature in his case was the way he felt about guns. He was a trigger-happy hard man with no scruples about inflicting pain on innocent victims. It wasn't enough to use the gun as a threat. He always fired. The case notes said he had an image of himself as a holdup man in the old American West. He put bullets into people without any compunction whatever. Killing hadn't featured among his crimes, it was true, though one of the drivers had almost bled to death. But he had to be taken seriously as a possible killer now.

He'd been released from Wormwood Scrubs last Christmas, in plenty of time to have shot Steph and Patricia Weather.

Georgina said to the room in general, 'This is Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond,' and added on a softer, apologetic note, as if suddenly realising she was in the holy of holies, the Chief Constable's suite, 'the husband.'

'Widower,' Diamond corrected her.

'We already met,' DCI Bobby Bowers said without elaborating, and nobody picked up on it.

The case conference was around the oval table where officers' careers were blessed or blown away. Coffee was served in porcelain cups and saucers instead of mugs and there were Jaffa Cakes instead of chocolate digestives. There was little else to report. It was a fact-finding exercise for all concerned, and no facts were found that were new to Diamond.

At one stage someone made the ill-considered remark, 'Patsy Weather was a copper, one of our own. This time we'll get this guy, whatever it takes.'

Diamond demolished him with a look.

Afterwards he offered to show Bowers the way down to the car park.

'Nothing else at the scene, then?' he asked the young DCI.

'Only bits of bone.'

'No bag? No rings?'

'I'd have mentioned it just now, wouldn't I?'

'When's the post mortem?'

'Tomorrow.' Bowers glanced at his watch. 'Would you have time to show me your crime scene?'

They drove out to Royal Victoria Park in Bowers' white Volvo. This late in the afternoon they found a space easily on Royal Avenue below the Crescent and walked across the turf to the place near the stone bandstand where Steph had fallen. The sympathetic tributes of flowers and wreaths had long since disappeared. No one would have known this was a murder scene. A couple of schoolkids locked in a passionate embrace behind the bandstand had not been put off. The proximity of strangers didn't put them off either.

Bowers stared across the lawns, velvety in low-angled sunlight, to the glittering row of parked cars along the avenue and above them the curve of the most-photographed terraced building in Europe. He took in the great trees to the left and the conifers away to the right. Turning, he noted how close were the tall bushes screening them from Charlotte Street Car Park.

'Hard to equate with my railway embankment.'

'You've got a park nearby.'

'Yeah, but this is so open.' He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Diamond, who shook his head. 'And she was just gunned down and left here?'

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without emotion.

'There was no attempt to move her?'

'Too risky.'

'You mean he would have been seen dragging her to his car?' Bowers cupped his hand over his lighter to get a cigarette going and exhaled a long sigh of smoke that seemed to express the difficulty he was having with this crime scene. 'Why wasn't he seen shooting her?'

'He?'

A pause. Bowers raised an eyebrow. 'You don't really suspect this killer is female?'

'I'm keeping an open mind – or trying to. But you asked about the risk of being seen. I've given thought to that,' Diamond said, more comfortable talking practicalities. 'You'd think a public park in broad daylight would be a stupid place to murder someone, but this was a cold morning in February at a time of day when most people were already at work – and I've checked more than once. It is deserted here around that time.'

'Do you think he – or she – worked that out?'

'Probably.'

'So he could have moved the body if he'd wanted to.'

'To a car, you mean?'

'The car park is right here behind us.'

Diamond was dismissive. 'No chance. Its use is totally different. By that time of the morning it's busy, three-quarters full and with cars coming in all the time. The people aren't coming this way. They're going down into town for shopping and looking at the tourist sites. You couldn't carry a body to a car without being seen. Besides, there are cameras, and, yes, every tape has been checked.'

Bobby Bowers raked a hand through his crop of dark curls. 'I seriously wonder if we're right to link these two shootings.'

'Tell me why.'

'Your wife was certain to be found in a short time. It was a bold, professional hit, as if they didn't care who heard the shots. But my shooting has all the signs of being covert. The killer took pains to move her to a clever hiding place. The body might never have been discovered. If he's so brazen about murder A, why go to all the trouble of concealing murder B?'

Diamond had no explanation. 'Have you spoken to DCI Weather?'

'Only to confirm identification. That was enough for starters. He was in shreds, as you must have been.'

'God only knows how I would have coped with chewed-up bones. I suppose he identified her from the clothes?'

'Yes. The bones were no help. Her dental records were sent for. They match.'

'When will you interview him?'

'It's being done as we speak, by the two DIs you met at the scene. I'll know more after I've heard the tape.'

'Will you see him yourself?' Diamond asked.

'Sure to.' A feral glint invaded Bowers' eyes for an instant.

Diamond's sympathy went out to Weather. 'He'll get the third degree like I did, the husband being the first suspect.'

Bowers declined to confirm this. He said, 'I don't know about the treatment you were given.'

Diamond enlightened him, and at the end of it said, 'I was saying Stormy Weather can expect the same.'

'Depends.'

'But you don't rule it out.'

'Would you, in my position?'

The chill of evening was in the air and the first lights were visible in the Crescent. Without either man suggesting enough had been said, they returned silently across the turf to the car, leaving the scene to darkness and the snogging schoolkids.

At home with a mug of tomato soup in his fist and a chunk of bread on his lap he watched the nine o'clock news on TV. Nothing. Maybe they had run the Woking story the previous night. He didn't watch much these days. The news seemed as remote from real life as the soaps.

He'd delayed for as long as he could manage. He reached for the phone and pressed out the number he'd obtained that morning from the incident room.

'DCI Weather?'

'Who is this?' The voice was defensive.

All too vividly he remembered being under siege by the press. 'Peter Diamond. I don't know if you remember me. We have a couple of things in common. I'm deeply sorry to hear about your wife.'

There was no response at all. But what do you say in the circumstances? 'So am /'? 'No problem'} 'Thanks'?

Diamond waited, then said, 'We served together, you and I, at Fulham, back in the eighties.'

'That's right,' the voice became a touch less combative, yet still drained of animation. 'And your wife has been shot like mine. They told me.'

'So I know how you feel. It's hell.'

'Worse.'

'Look,' Diamond said, 'may I call you by your first name? It's so long ago I only remember-'

'The nickname.' The way Stormy Weather closed him down made the tired old joke seem one more infliction.

'And your real name is…?'