Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'One stands out,' McGarvie informed Diamond when he turned up on Monday. 'This Florida. Protection racketeer. A hard man.'

'Can't disagree with that'

'Jacob Blaize headed, right?'

Diamond nodded.

'With you as second in command?'

'Sidekick.'

'And Weather was a junior officer on the team, mainly on surveillance duties, but I discovered he also sat in on several interviews Blaize did with Florida.'

Tell me something new, Diamond thought.

McGarvie was showing signs of excitement. 'And we can assume Weather spent time alone with Florida when Blaize left the room, as he must have.'

'Frequently,' Diamond confirmed.

'You know that for sure?'

'Blaizy was always being caught short.'

The eyes widened, revealing more than anyone would wish to see of the engorged blood vessels. 'Was he, by God? That's something I didn't get from the files.'

'Well, you wouldn't.'

'It meant interruptions, did it?' He was getting as hyper as when he had dug up the gun in the garden.

'Every ten to fifteen minutes.'

'Sounds like prostate trouble.'

'He was on a waiting list.'

Diamond was amused to see McGarvie bring his palms together and rub them as if he was using the drying machine in the gents: the association of ideas. 'You see what this means? This was before we had videotaping. An old hand like Florida would have made use of those breaks. He'd get to work on the young officer sitting across the table. He'd try intimidation.'

'For what? A smoke?' It was hardly enough to justify the killing of Patsy Weather, Diamond was implying, and McGarvie needed to do better.

But he was way ahead, compounding the plot. 'No, he'd twist the facts of the case to make it seem he was being set up by you and Blaize. He'd shake the young man's confidence, doing his damnedest to turn him, you see. He'd think he'd got him as an ally, someone who could testify later that the interview had been improper. When he didn't do it by persuasion, he'd use threats -threats he really meant to carry out. He saw enough of Weather to remember him long after. When a man like Florida has festered in jail for twelve years-'

'Seven,' Diamond said. 'He was out after seven.'

'More than enough to turn his brain.'

'His brain didn't need turning. He hated the police. I can see -just about – that he might have wanted revenge on Blaizy and me. We nailed him. But Stormy Weather? I don't think so. He was small beer.'

McGarvie was unshakeable. 'You and I don't know what passed between them. Maybe Weather was induced to make a promise he never kept. Maybe Florida thought he could rely on Weather to save his skin.'

Maybe… Maybe… This was futile speculation, and both knew it. Nothing would be certain unless Stormy admitted he'd played along, or Florida was induced to tell all. No matter; for the present it suited Diamond if Florida was the prime suspect, leaving him free to pursue Wayne Beach. Just to get a measure of McGarvie's resolve, he asked, 'Have you given up on Dixon-Bligh, then?'

'No trace. He's holed up somewhere. Arrears of rent. The Met are working on it.' He made it sound like their problem.

Joe Florida was firmly in the frame.

Stormy Weather arrived at Bristol Temple Meads just after eleven, and Diamond met him on the platform and remembered to call him Dave. They drove directly to Sion Hill, an elegant, curving street of eighteenth-century houses built on an incline above the Gorge.

'Bit of a change from Latchmere Road,' Stormy remarked when they were parked opposite a gracious four-storey terrace with ironwork balconies, tall shutters and striped awnings.

'Envious?'

He eyed the building approvingly. 'It isn't bad for a second home. Does he own all of it?'

'That's what I heard from my snout.'

'He must have salted some money away between his prison terms.'

'More than you and I ever earned, Dave.'

They lapsed into silence, brooding on a theme familiar to policemen: the inequity between the law-enforcers and the law-breakers. 'Personally,' Stormy said after some time, 'I wouldn't choose to live in Bristol. The traffic is a pain. Always was.'

'Sounds like the voice of experience.'

'Does it? I'm only an occasional visitor.'

'Best way.'

'As a matter of fact,' Stormy said, 'I'm interested in Brunei.'

Diamond had to think before cottoning on that Stormy was speaking of the Victorian engineer. 'Top hat and big cigar?'

A nod. 'One of my heroes. I do some model-making as a hobby, and his constructions are quite an inspiration. I made an SS Great Britain and a Suspension Bridge.'

'From kits, you mean?'

'God, no. That's schoolboy stuff. I go there and take photos and draw up plans and build the things from my own materials.'

Weird, the things some policemen do with their spare time, Diamond thought. Keith Halliwell bred pigeons for racing and John Wigfull had a telescope and was supposed to use it to study the stars.

Stormy went on, 'So I've made quite a number of research trips, you could say. Getting here is the hardest part.'

'Ah, the one-way system is our secret weapon in the war against crime. You'd find it easier escaping from a Dunkirk beach than Bristol. If you want to visit the Brunei sites you're better off using the railway he built and walking the rest.'

Stormy agreed with that. He glanced at the house again.

'What do we do now? Go in?'

'Let's watch for the time being,' Diamond said. 'The place is probably stiff with shooters.'

'Catch him off the premises? We've tried that once.'

'This time I expect a result. So you're an admirer of old Issy Brunei?' he said, pleased to have found a topic unconnected with the tragedies in their lives. 'Have you been to Bath?'

'Not since I was a kid.'

'You ought to come. He changed the look of the city when the railway came through. The old GWR station is one of his buildings and so is the viaduct behind, but he also cut through Sydney Gardens, one of those parks the Victorians liked to strut around in their finery, and it was a neat job.'

'Yes, I'd like to see that.'

'You wouldn't.'

Stormy blinked and frowned. He may also have blushed, but on his blotchy skin it was impossible to tell. 'What do you mean? I know what I like.'

'You wouldn't see it – that's what I mean – unless you went right up to it. The point is that the railway is hidden from view. Really clever.'

The first person to emerge from the house, after about ten minutes, was in a red leather jacket and skirt with matching boots and a hat with a large rim that flopped. She set off down the hill with a slinky walk as if she knew her movement was being appreciated.

'Now I am envious,' Stormy said.

Diamond gave him a look. The remark was lightly made, the automatic reaction to a pretty woman, but to his still wounded mind it didn't come well from a recently bereaved man. He let it pass.

'I wonder if she comes with the house,' Stormy added, oblivious of Diamond's thinking.

'Visitor, I expect.'

'That's not the vibes I got.'

'You could be right. Maybe he sent her to do the shopping.'

'She doesn't look to me as if she's on her way to Tesco's.'

They waited ten minutes more.

'I reckon she's his bird,' Stormy insisted.

'Daughter, more like,' Diamond said.

'He's not that old, surely?'

'You've got to remember Fulham was fifteen years ago, Dave. Hello, we've got action.'

A dark green Range Rover had pulled up outside the house and a man in combat trousers and a khaki vest got out. He had the look of a body-builder, with heavily tattooed arms.

'That isn't Beach, is it?' Stormy said.

'Not the way I remember him,' Diamond said. 'I remember a puny guy.'

The muscleman pressed the doorbell.