Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

'But you did?'

'Earlier this year. He knocked on my door one afternoon. I suppose it wasn't difficult to track me down. Everyone knows I live in Puttenham. Can you believe he was asking for money again? Addicts have no shame at all. He wanted a thousand pounds. Said it would be a loan and he'd pay me back at ten per cent interest. I told him in no uncertain terms that I was disgusted he had the gall to come back to me wanting more of my money. He went on arguing, saying he now had a very good job at the Dorchester Hotel.'

'The Dorchester}'

'Assistant chef, or something. I didn't believe him, and then he fished in his pocket for some letter on headed notepaper confirming the appointment. I still said it made no difference and I didn't have money to lend him. But he's so crafty, nosing around the cottage, spotting nice bits of furniture he'd never seen before. He soon cottoned on to the fact that my father had died the December before last and I was the main beneficiary. Once he'd got the scent of the money, he said he'd take me into his confidence because he was on the verge of making so much that he'd soon be in a position to pay me back at twenty per cent if I wanted, and he'd still have so much left he'd never bother me again. I thought he was talking about the lottery or something and I treated it all with contempt, and I suppose that just fired him up. Next thing he was telling me about these Arabs he'd met.'

Gina said quickly, 'I think you should stop there, Fiona.'

'Why?'

'They've heard enough.'

'But we haven't We need to hear it all,' Diamond said at once. 'We know what Dixon-Bligh is like, and we're keen to stop him ruining more people's lives.' He ignored the foul look he got from Gina and said, 'Together, we'll do it'

Fiona turned to Gina. 'You told me they were the police.'

'We are,' Stormy said.

'I can trust them, can't I? I'd like to tell it.'

Gina, outgunned, sighed and said nothing.

Fiona took up her thread again. 'Ted told me these Arabs made a deal with him. They'd offered him twenty thousand in return for inside information from the Dorchester. All he had to do was find out in advance when some prince from Kuwait was due to stay. Apparently it's all done secretly for security reasons. Nobody is supposed to know until they arrive, but of course certain people have to be told, and Ted knew who to ask. As simple as that, he said.'

'And he'd tip off the Arabs?'

'And get paid. He was ready to write me an IOU on the strength of it. He needed money now for his drugs.

He couldn't wait for this payday, as he called it.'

'Did you give him any?'

'No. I wouldn't be so daft. You know that old saying? He that deceives me once, shame fall him; if he deceives me twice, shame fall me.' Fiona Appleby obviously didn't think she'd put her life at risk to preserve her self-respect.

'However, I've got to say this in Ted's favour. He wasn't lying this time. There really was some underhand arrangement going on. Whether these mysterious Arabs would pay him all that money I had no idea, but he believed it.

He was going through with it, I'm positive.'

'How did you get rid of him?'

'By holding out.'

'Didn't he get violent?'

Diamond had struck a wrong note. Fiona stared at him with her large brown eyes. 'No. He's never laid a hand on me. He wouldn't.'

'Don't count on it,' he warned.

Gina murmured, 'We don't. Which is why she's here.'

'So there's more to this?'

'You can tell them,' Gina said. She was now resigned to everything being in the open.

Fiona had her hands across her stomach inside the tracksuit top. She curled her legs more tightly. 'After he'd gone, I thought about what he'd told me. All that money he was counting on. There had to be something criminal going on, and something very big. People don't pay vast sums without due cause. It troubled me. That night I couldn't sleep. All kinds of horrible ideas crept into my head. I thought of the Gulf War. It was never really resolved, was it? Suppose these Arabs he'd met were Iraqi agents planing to assassinate one of the Kuwaiti royal family? If that happened, and I knew in advance and did nothing about it, I'd have to live with the knowledge that I could have prevented a tragedy. Ted was hopelessly dependent. He wouldn't have a conscience. He didn't think past his next fix. It was up to me to do something about it. So I phoned the Foreign Office. And they took it seriously. They sent someone to see me the same day.'

Gina cut in. 'Fiona's information prevented a serious crime. Not an assassination attempt as it turned out, but a huge scam involving diamonds. Our people laid on a stake-out at very short notice and stopped the handover, but through a combination of problems the perpetrators got away.'

'Not much of a stake-out,' Stormy commented.

'These are international terrorists. They're highly organised.'

'Unlike you and me, Stormy,' Diamond said to take the heat out of the exchange. 'So who do they work for?'

'That's secure information.'

'In short, then, Fiona needs protection now, not just from Dixon-Bligh, but these Arab bandits as well. Do you know their names?'

'It's under investigation.'

'Meaning "no",' Stormy said.

'Do you know where Dixon-Bligh is?'

'He's in the process of being traced.'

'Another "no",' Stormy said, all too ready with the slick comment.

Diamond gave him a murderous glare. They didn't want to provoke Gina at this stage. 'Leave it out,' he said more for Gina's ears than Stormy's. 'We're as much in the dark as anyone else.'

'Sorry. I'm always shooting off at the mouth,' Stormy said, sounding genuine, and it was a pity his face wouldn't register a blush, because one was probably lurking there.

Diamond hesitated, uncertain if there was anything more of importance to be learned.

There was, and it came from the least likely source -Stormy.

'Peter, I can't clam up now. I've been listening to all this and getting more and more steamed up. My wife, my Patsy, worked with the District Drugs Unit for two or three years before she retired. It was part of her job to visit the drop-in centres in Hammersmith Road and Earls Court Road. She knew all the heroin-users in West London. That's the link, Peter. Dixon-Bligh was on her patch. She must have known him when he was living in Blyth Road, and I didn't think of it.'

All this came like a wake-up call to Diamond. He now remembered Stormy mentioning how Patsy Weather worked with junkies at some stage. Like much else, it had been squirreled away in his memory, unlikely to have been recovered but for this.

Gina was just as fired up as the two detectives. 'Can you be certain she knew Dixon-Bligh?'

'If he was on her patch using drugs, you can almost bank on it,' Stormy told her, eyes dilated enough to have you believe he, too, was high on something.

'Why would he want to murder her? She'd retired from the police, you said.'

'He wasn't to know that, was he? I don't know how they met again. Pure chance, I guess. Patsy was always ready to talk to someone she knew. He'd assume she was still on the strength.'

'So he put a gun to her head and shot her?' she said in a rising tone of disbelief. 'What for?'

'Fear of arrest. He thought he was nicked.'

'For petty thieving to fund his habit?'

'No, no, no,' Stormy cut in. 'He was on the run. He faced a murder rap. He'd already shot Peter's wife.'

'Ah.' She raised her hand like a tennis player who has just been served an ace. Then turned to Diamond. 'I'm not thinking straight today. When was your wife murdered?'

'February the twenty-third.'

'And your wife?' she asked Stormy.

'Disappeared on March the twelfth.'

'Two weeks after.'

'Just over.'