Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'That's true. She's an innocent woman caught up in events outside her control.' She stopped speaking, as if reminded she was giving too much away.

Diamond tried gentle persuasion. If it worked for Stormy, why not for him? 'If you could see your way, there are things we'd dearly like to ask her.'

'No chance.'

'She has vital information.'

'Do it through official channels.'

'We're not official, Gina. We're very unofficial, as I just explained. But you want to stop Dixon-Bligh from harming anyone else and so do we. This is crying out for co-operation.'

'In your dreams.'

Diamond simply didn't have his companion's charm.

Stormy applied more of it. 'Gina, we have something to trade.'

The smile returned. 'Oh, yes?'

'Information no one else can give you. Think about it: this pain in the arse Dixon-Bligh was once married to Peter's wife. Peter can tell you all about his old haunts, the places he thinks of as safe, the contacts he has. Isn't that right, Peter?'

'Well-'

'Between us, we can find him, but we need to speak to Fiona.'

She looked tempted, then adamant. 'It can't be done.'

'It can, my dear, if she's only in the next room.'

'I don't have the authority.'

'You want an order from an officer of higher rank?'

She smiled faintly. 'Not you. Nor him.'

'Your guvnor.'

'How would you know who my guvnor is?' She was almost flirting with Stormy.

'Ways and means, darling, ways and means. What if your guvnor gets to hear that two old gits in a clapped-out Cortina followed you all the way from Puttenham to your safe house?'

A muscle flexed at the edge of her mouth.

Stormy said, 'You won't forget to report it, will you?'

She didn't answer.

'You don't have to, honey – so long as we keep our mouths shut. But if we boast about it to our friends, you can be sure the one person you don't want to hear the news will get it from the old bush telegraph.'

'You're not threatening me, I hope?'

'Far from it.' Diamond chipped in and raised the stakes still more. 'This is big-time for you. You caught us snooping and overpowered us. Under questioning we admitted we were senior police officers. Then you found we had significant information. Back of the net.'

Now the eyes were moving anxiously. 'You'd say that?'

'Sure – as a trade-off.' He turned to Stormy, who was nodding.

She thought in the silence. There seemed to be deeper impulses at work here, matters outside Diamond's power to persuade. Her voice shook a little as she said, 'All right. You can meet her if you wish, since you've gone to such lengths to find her.'

'Thanks.'

'Trussed up, as we are?' Stormy said, pushing the concessions as far as possible.

'I didn't say shake hands with her.'

'Gina, look at the state of us. We're a scary sight. Don't you think you should let us clean up first?'

A sigh. 'All right. There's a bathroom nearby. But don't get the idea I've caved in. I'm going to have to report all this.'

'We'll take our chances.'

'I'm the one who's taking chances.'

She had keys attached to her belt, and she unlocked the handcuffs and escorted them to the bathroom and watched them clean up.

'Straight through the hall.' Still far from comfortable with what they had talked her into, she made sure she didn't turn her back on them. She'd slipped the gun into a holster at her waist. She was well capable of dealing with any aggression. 'Last door.'

So it was Diamond who opened the door at the end and admitted them to a sitting room where a small woman in a black tracksuit was curled on a sofa watching TV. Fiona Appleby was in her forties probably, with hair streaked with silver. She picked up the remote and switched off the power.

'Everything's OK, Fiona,' Gina said at once, and then introduced them as police officers in a way suggesting they had just driven up and called at the front door. 'They're trying to trace your ex-partner, and they have a few questions for you.'

She had the worry-lines of a woman close to breakdown. She turned up her hands in appeal. 'But I already told you, I haven't seen him in months. I've no idea where he is.'

'Do you mind if we go over familiar ground?' Diamond gently asked. 'When did you first meet him?'

'That isn't familiar ground. Nobody's asked me yet.' She closed her eyes, remembering. 'It would have been ninety-five. December.'

'Where?'

'A Christmas party at one of the City Livery companies. Mercers' Hall, I think. I was in advertising at the time and hating it. Ted was doing the catering. He's a brilliant cook.' Launched into this, she spoke with intensity, recalling the details. 'The canapes were like nothing I'd seen before. Delicious and wonderful to look at. One little pastry concoction with duck pate and cranberry was such a gorgeous bite that I made up my mind to ask the caterer how it was done. I'm passionate about cooking. I went into the kitchen and of course Ted was charming and good-looking and promised to give me the recipe if I went out for a drink with him the next evening. I was flattered. I really hadn't thought it would lead to anything. And we clicked at once because I've always loved to cook and we spent the evening discussing all the television cooks we would shoot on sight and the cookbooks we'd throw into their coffins. He was terrific fun to be with. That was the start of our relationship.'

'You teamed up right away?'

'Not immediately. It was more gradual. We had this dream of starting our own restaurant. It was just lovers' talk at first, and yet we began to believe it. The green and white colour scheme and the two little bay trees in tubs outside the door. We talked about where it should be – somewhere just outside London in the southern commuter belt. And before the end of the year we were looking at shop premises. The place at Guildford came onto the market – to rent, that is. The flat upstairs went with it. I had some savings to equip the shop, and I can tell you we did it beautifully. The crockery, the table linen, candles – it was our dream realised. And we got in all the top restaurant guides.'

'We've seen one. They rated you.'

'So did the public. We were fully booked most evenings, and people came back. They drove in from miles around. It should have been a tremendous success.'

'So what went wrong?'

Fiona's expression switched suddenly to a penetrating frown. 'Well you know, don't you?'

'We'd rather hear it from you,' Diamond improvised.

'His habit.'

He gave a nod that was meant to be knowing, encouraging her to say more, while he reeled from the mental jolt she'd just given him.

'I didn't suspect anything when we first met,' she went on. 'He was nothing like my idea of an addict. Not that I knew the first thing about drugs. I was incredibly naive. Ted handled the accounts, banked the takings. I trusted him. I had no idea he'd run through my savings and was putting nothing back. The money was all going to drug-dealers. And all this time he looked perfectly healthy, cooked beautifully, treated me like a goddess.'

'What was he on?'

'H,' Gina murmured.

Diamond's face registered nothing of this bombshell. Inwardly he cursed his sluggish brain for failing to think of drugs. What else could have brought a successful, articulate man to the squalor of that terrace behind Paddington Station?

'But you know all about him,' Fiona said.

'Hearing it just as you tell it is so much more helpful,' he said with all the calm he could drag up from his plunging self-esteem. The case against Dixon-Bligh was red-hot now. He wanted to run through it in his head, item by item, but he had to listen. There could be more.

Fiona said, 'It came to the point where even I found out what was going on – that we had a huge overdraft and a mass of unpaid bills. It was heart-breaking. Such deceit. I found a syringe and needles hidden in a casserole dish high up in a cupboard in the kitchen. He was full of repentance. Drug-users are when they're found out. I was stupid enough to trust him and expect him to stop. We went on for a few weeks more and the bills just mounted up. He was still buying the stuff, still injecting. We closed the restaurant and I used the rest of my savings to clear some of our debts. Ted went off to live in London and I didn't want or expect to hear from him ever again.'