Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'Was there talk of a hitman coming to Bristol or Bath towards the end of February?'

'I wouldn't know. People didn't talk to me then. I was the new kid on the block. What's all this about?'

'You didn't hear? Don't you read the papers?'

Beach shook his head. 'Boring.'

'Just your gun magazines, eh?'

'That's my job.'

Diamond didn't enlighten him about the shootings. He could see nothing of use emerging. The disappointing conclusion was that they'd wasted their time on Wayne Beach. 'We're leaving now,' he said abruptly. 'You've got about twenty minutes before Bristol Police come here with an armed protection unit and knock down the door.'

'Did you believe him?' Stormy asked.

'Did you?'

'I did, oddly enough.'

'Me, too. If he'd written something in against the day Steph was shot, I'd have been suspicious. He could have done it any time. The fact that it was left blank is more convincing. I'll still check with the probation officer.'

'And will you turn him in?'

'Will I? Dave, anyone who trades in guns in scum. Whoever shot my wife and yours acquired their weapon from some flake just like him.'

He drove Stormy back to Bath, not to visit the Brunei sites, but to show him the place where Steph was killed. They parked on Royal Avenue, the road that bisected the lawns below the Crescent. Already some of the foliage had a reddish tinge and the ground under the horse chestnuts was littered with husks split by small boys in the quest for the new season's conkers. They crossed the dew-damp grass to where the body was found. He picked an empty crisp packet off the grass and crushed it in his hand.

'What's the park called?' Stormy asked.

'The Victoria. The Royal Victoria to give it its full name. This part is the Crescent Gardens.' He pointed out the advantages to the killer, the screen of bushes hiding the car park, the bandstand, the large stone vases. 'He must have waited unseen while she walked along the path and then crossed the lawn. He may not even have spoken to her.'

'And then he fired the shots and left her?'

A nod from Diamond.

'Didn't try and move her?'

Stormy wasn't being ghoulish, asking these questions. He was airing theories, and Diamond was willing to discuss them.

'Too risky. I think it was in his plan to leave her to be found.'

'Yet that wasn't the m.o. in Patsy's case.'

'I know, Dave, and I have my view on that. It's all supposition, but I think it makes sense. He covered his tracks the second time. He chose an even more secluded place to meet your wife. It could have been that little park above the railway embankment or somewhere miles away. The crucial thing is he tricked her into going to the place, the same as he'd tricked Steph.'

'How?'

'Don't know. A phone call most likely. Something he knew would bring them out. The location was written in Steph's diary, so she knew where she was headed. She was easily swayed by any appeal to her good nature – some old friend in trouble. You name it.'

'Patsy, too,' Stormy said. 'She'd drop everything and go if anyone needed her. Well, you remember what she was like, always supporting some good cause.'

It was true. Diamond could recall her doing the rounds of the office, collecting for this and that. 'Mary', as he still remembered her, was always the one who bought the present when someone was leaving. 'Well, the killer arranged to meet Patsy on some pretext, and shot her. He'd picked his spot and he'd picked the spot where he would take her after the shooting. That's the added dimension. It's one step on from the murder of Steph.'

They walked the short distance back to the car park. It was still early and Diamond offered to show his old colleague his present place of work. 'We'll call that probation officer, Dawkins, and check Beach's alibi.'

'And the Bristol CID, to tip them off about the gun-dealing?'

'Specially them.'

Bath Police Station was unusually quiet. They learned that McGarvie had gone with other senior detectives to some location in West London after a tip-off from the Met that Joe Florida had been sighted at a pub.

'Our last shot,' Stormy said.

'His.' In his office, Diamond got on with the business of tipping off Bristol about Wayne Beach. He said truthfully that he'd got the information from one of his snouts. Then he called the probation service in Clapham and spoke to George Dawkins and had it confirmed that Beach had reported there on the morning of February the twenty-third.

'He's not our man,' he told Stormy.

'Wayne isn't anybody's man.'

He gave a half-smile. 'True.'

Stormy looked at his watch. 'I'd better get my train.'

'Why – have you got a cat to feed, dog to walk?'

'No, but we've finished for today, haven't we?'

'You're staying at my place tonight. Then we can start early tomorrow.'

'On what?'

'The real last shot.'

They brought in fish and chips and a couple of six-packs and spent much of the evening talking over old times at Fulham nick. Stormy had a better recall of those days than Diamond. You never forget your first year of policing, your first arrest, your first raid.

'I had other postings before then,' Diamond said to excuse his hazy memory. 'I signed on before you, Dave. Turned fifty this year – and don't say you wouldn't know it.'

'What did you do?'

'Do?'

'To celebrate the big five-o.'

'Oh – nothing.'

'Pity.'

'Save it, pal. It was after Steph was killed. What's a bloody birthday after something like that?'

'How long were you married?'

'Nineteen years. Why?'

'The way you talk about her, I'd have thought it was less.'

'Why? I felt the same about her as the day we met.'

Stormy nodded. 'I guess you were the kind of couple who hold hands in the street.'

A sharp look was exchanged. So far as Diamond could tell no sarcasm was intended. 'If we felt like it, we may have done.'

'There's the difference. We kept our distance. Doesn't mean we didn't care about each other. Like I told you, it wasn't rosebuds all the way for Patsy and me. I played away a few times – call me weak-willed, or oversexed -and she usually found out. But we always patched things up. Try and explain that kind of marriage to a sleuthhound like Bowers.'

'Did you have to?'

'Not yet, but he'll be onto it soon. Friends of ours know we scrapped sometimes. They'll tell him.'

'I'm glad you told me.' Diamond appreciated the honesty. No doubt there would be suspicions that one more 'scrap' had resulted in violence and Patsy's death. The man was realistic enough to know the pattern any investigation followed. Bowers would dissect the relationship.

Some awkwardness remained between them. Stormy, talkative, with a tendency to blunder into trouble, wasn't the sort of man Diamond would normally strike up a friendship with, but then who was? He had almost no close companions in the police. It wasn't a job that encouraged confidences. But he was glad he'd made the gesture of welcoming him to his home. With their common cause they would make an effective team.

'Do you want vinegar with that?'

Stormy shook his head. 'What I'd really like is to find out if they nicked Joe Florida.'

Diamond said it was simple. He'd call the duty sergeant and find out.

A few minutes later he passed on the news that Florida was being questioned by McGarvie at Shepherd's Bush Police Station.

'Will he ask the right questions?'

'Who knows? They sound confident.'

'Aren't you?'

'That Florida is the killer?' Diamond looked away, at the photo of Steph he'd put in a frame on the wall-unit. 'He was never top of my list.'

'But he's a vicious bastard. You helped send him down.'

'Justly. He was bang to rights.'