Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'Dave.'

'Dave. Right. A lot of guys came and went,' Diamond said to excuse his defective memory.

'And I was just a DC in those days,' Dave Weather said.

'I'm Peter.'

'You said.'

'I'd like to meet up if possible. You're going to be under all sorts of pressure. It may help to talk to someone who knows what it's like.'

'I don't feel like talking.'

'I know. I didn't. But you want to find the dickhead who killed your wife, right? And the high-ups are telling you to keep away. They don't want the likes of you and me getting involved.'

'They've got their reasons.'

'Like leave it to us, it's in good hands?'

'Something like that. And as the husband I'm personally involved.'

'I heard it all seven months ago. I'm still waiting for some progress, let alone an arrest' Diamond was trying his damnedest, and at the same time sensing he should have waited a couple of days. The man was shell-shocked, just as he had been.

He still refused to give up. 'You know they're treating the two killings as connected? There was a case conference here in Bath today. I was called in to give the dope on operations you and I were both involved in. Hard task, all these years later. When you feel up to it we really should compare notes.'

'Is that what they suggested?'

'No. This is my idea.'

The response remained lukewarm. 'If you think it will make a difference.'

'I'm certain,' Diamond said, elated at the small concession he'd winkled out. 'I'll come to you. You're in Raynes Park, aren't you?'

Dave Weather backtracked. 'My place is a tip. I've done sod all to keep it straight in the last six months and now I've had the CID all over it.'

Which Diamond treated as an R.S.V.P.

'Likewise. I'm still in chaos here. Dave, I don't give a toss what your place looks like. What's the address?'

The moment Stormy Weather opened the door of his mock-Tudor semi in Raynes Park, Diamond remembered him. How could he have forgotten a skin like that, the colour of freshly sliced corned beef? A man could spend his life shovelling coal into a furnace and not end up with so many ruptured blood vessels. You never knew when he was blushing because it was his natural appearance. Happily for Stormy, it wasn't off-putting for long. If anything, it endeared him to people. With a few exceptions, none of us likes our own face much, and it's a relief to be with someone who has more to put up with than we do.

Today the poor bloke was understandably careworn as well as florid. A faded black Adidas T-shirt and dark blue corduroy trousers hung loosely from his tall frame. He took a moment to register who his visitor was (Diamond put this down to his own hair-loss) and then invited him inside, through a hallway littered with newspapers still folded as they'd been pushed through the door. 'You'll have to make allowances,' he said, kicking some aside. 'Patsy would go spare if she saw the place in this state. She kept a tidy house.'

The sitting room was misnamed now, because there wasn't a seat available. The chairs and sofa were all piled high with drawers, books and CDs. It looked like the aftermath of a burglary. 'They went through the place a couple of days ago,' Stormy explained. 'I can't pretend it was tidy before, but they didn't help matters.'

'They' must have been a police search squad.

'It happened to me.' Diamond stooped and picked a framed photo off the floor, a black and white shot of a young woman at the wheel of a police Panda car. 'Is this your wife?'

Stormy reached for the photo and practically snatched it from him. 'I've been looking all over for that. I thought they must have taken it away.' He held it in both hands. 'Yes, this is Patsy about the time we met. Well, you must remember her. She was on the relief at Fulham when you were CID.'

'So I was told. Can I have another look?' Diamond stood beside Stormy, then drew back to get a clearer view. Soon he'd want glasses. More than once Steph had told him to see an optician. 'Of course I knew her. Didn't we call her Mary Poppins?' Instantly regretting he'd come out with anything so crass, he added, 'But her real surname – what was that?'

'Jessel.'

'Yes. Pat Jessel.' Clumsily, he tried to make up for his boorishness. 'I can't for the life of me remember how she got that nickname.'

Stormy sighed and told the story, and the canteen humour of twenty years ago jarred on the ear like an old LP. 'She was the fresh-faced rookie with very good manners who tried too hard to please. She had a perpetual smile and this amazing posh accent like Julie Andrews. One day Jacob Blaize sent down for a coffee and Patsy wanted to know if he liked it black or white and someone said "White, with just a spoonful of sugar" and the whole room started whistling the tune. She was stuck with it then. No one called her anything but Mary after that.'

'Right.' Diamond gave an apologetic smile. He now remembered Mary vividly. 'We were a cruel bunch.'

'It was a bit OTT. She got tired of the whistling and singing. And of course every time an umbrella was handed in it was hung on her peg. Though I have to say she fitted the role in some ways. She was a born organiser.'

'So when did you marry her?'

'November, eighty-six,' Stormy said, and for a moment his face creased, but he controlled the emotion and stood the photo on the empty wall unit.

Diamond, too, was thoughtful, marvelling that a young woman as pretty as 'Mary' Jessel had fallen for the Bardolph of Fulham nick.

'She was younger than you?'

'Fifteen years.'

'And she got to be sergeant.'

'At Shepherd's Bush. Served all her time at two stations just down the road from each other. She would have made inspector if she'd stuck with it. She was a fine copper.'

'She jacked it in?'

'Only about a year ago. She set up her own secretarial agency from home. It was just starting to build when 'Was she ever with CID?'

He shook his head. 'Uniform for the whole of her career, and pleased to do it. Very good with the public, anyone from juveniles to junkies.'

'And no one looked better in a white shirt,' Diamond reminisced. 'So she wouldn't have been on any of the cases you and I got roped into?'

'Not as CID. Do you want tea? Or there's a pub only five minutes away.'

'Sounds good to me.'

From the way they were greeted by the landlord of the Forester, Diamond guessed Stormy – or Dave, as he was trying hard to think of him – had spent plenty of time here lately. The urge to get out of the house where every picture, every chair, every cup has the potential to strike at the heart is hard to resist, as he well knew.

Over a glass of bitter at a. corner table in the saloon bar, his old colleague was more at ease. They had never been close companions, or even said much, but the shared experience drew them together. Diamond found himself speaking more frankly about the impact of Steph's murder than at any time up to now. 'There are days… The worst part is when you've been relaxing without knowing it – let's face it, forgetting what happened – and then something touches you like a finger, forces you back to reality, and… and… there's no other way to put it – she dies all over again.'

This drew a nod of recognition from Stormy.

Diamond added, 'What keeps me going is the promise I made to find the scumbag who did it. And I will. They keep telling me to stand aside and leave it to the murder squad. How can I? You feel the same, don't you?'

So much intensity from someone he'd known as a senior officer must have been daunting, but Stormy nodded at once.

Diamond was well launched. 'The murder inquiry is going nowhere. I've found out more through bloody-minded obstinacy than McGarvie and his television appeals and scores of men on overtime. It's incentive, Dave. You can't sit back. Even if they were right on the heels of the killer – which they're not – I'd still be going it alone. I owe it to Steph.'