Peter Lovesey: Diamond Dust

Peter Diamond observed this with detachment. He'd long since lost any confidence in the murder team. He, too, was becalmed, but he promised himself it was temporary. He would never give up. He still lay awake for long stretches of the night wrestling with the big questions: why had Steph never mentioned her appointment in the park? Who was 'T'? What was the link – if any – with the shooting of Patsy Weather?

One rainy afternoon he phoned Louis Voss at Fulham. This wasn't in any way inspired, or clever. He just felt the need to talk to someone he trusted.

After they'd got through the small talk he said, 'You saw the stuff in the papers about Dixon-Bligh, I'm sure.'

'Poor sod, yes,' Louis said. 'He wasn't your man after all, then?'

'Someone else's. It gives fresh meaning to that old phrase about guarding your tongue.'

'Ho-ho. So where are you now on this investigation?'

'Nowhere.'

'I can't believe that, Peter.'

'None of the suspects measured up.'

'Square one, then?'

'Square one – which has to be Fulham nick when you and I and Stormy and Patsy were keeping crime off the streets of West London, or trying to.'

'Patsy?'

'Mary Poppins if you prefer – though I thought we'd all moved on since then.'

'You're speaking of Stormy's wife?' Louis said.

'Or wife-to-be, in those days. I'm still wondering why those two got hitched.'

'She was a good-looking woman, a knockout when she was young.'

'That's what I mean. He's a likeable guy, but let's be frank, his looks are against him.'

Louis laughed. 'Who told you that? Stormy pulled the girls like a tug-of-war team.'

Unlikely, he thought. He'd heard Stormy admit to playing away, but hadn't pictured him as quite so active. 'I can't say I noticed at the time.'

'You were a boss man. The guys at the workface knew the score, and Stormy scored more than most. Don't ask me his secret.'

Louis had no reason to exaggerate, Diamond reflected. He heard himself say something rather profound. 'Maybe women feel more confident with an ugly man. Or more confident of keeping him.'

Profound, yet hard to prove. Still, he'd watched a trained protection officer, Gina, mellowing under Stormy's charm offensive, even though it had all the subdety of a Sherman tank. 'So did he change his ways after she married him?'

'Did he hell!'

'She put up with it?'

'At a price, no doubt.' Now it was Louis who ventured an opinion on the ways of women. 'A smart wife has her terms. Read the tabloids. There are plenty of examples.'

'Of big divorce settlements?'

'No, of wives who stay married and appear to put up with all the philandering – at a price. They come out the winners.'

'So you think she had Stormy's number?'

'Oh, yes,' Louis said. 'I watched it happen over the years. He had flings, but none of them lasted. She always reined him in.'

'Did she play around herself?'

'You're joking. She was more interested in nannying than nooky. She put her energies into chivvying us into being nice to each other – which isn't easy in our job. Well, you know what she was like. A cheery word for everyone.'

'I remember.'

'No one was better at organising a leaving party. She put on a terrific do for me when I retired. It was such a send-off I felt embarrassed coming back to the civilian job a couple of years later.'

'Yes,' Diamond said. 'She laid on a good party when I left Fulham.'

'I remember. And even after her retirement she was always coming back reminding us to organise some do or other that couldn't be ignored. We thought the world of Trish – which made it all the harder to understand why she was murdered.'

'Did you just call her Trish?' Diamond asked.

'For Patricia.'

'Is that what she was known as?'

'After the Mary Poppins joke was played out, yes.'

'Stormy calls her Patsy.'

'His privilege. She was Trish to the rest of us. Is this important?'

'I don't know,' Diamond said, but he could hear blood pumping through his head like a swan in flight. 'I'd better go, Louis. I'll talk to you again.'

He put down the phone.

The monstrous thought bombarded his brain. Could T' have been Trish – a woman? In the weeks immediately after the shooting he'd done his utmost to keep an open mind about the sex of Steph's murderer. But as the main suspects had lined up, all of them male, he'd drifted into thinking only a man could be the killer.

It needed a huge leap of the imagination to cast Patricia Weather as a killer. Nobody ever spoke badly of her. He remembered her as a warm, outgoing personality. She and Steph had probably met once or twice at social events, but they were never close friends. He could think of no reason for them to fix a meeting so many years after he and Steph had left Fulham and gone to live in Bath. And he knew of nothing that could have driven her to murder.

Besides, someone had murdered her, for God's sake.

Out of the question, then?

Not when he came at it from another direction. All along, he'd been at a loss to explain why Steph had gone to the park that morning to meet her killer. But if 'T' were Trish, sweet, caring Trish, the woman everyone regarded as Mary Poppins, and she suddenly made contact and suggested a meeting, it was possible Steph would have gone along.

Trish, being so efficient, would almost certainly have done the weapons training course in the underground range at Holborn nick. It was on offer in the eighties, and she would have wanted to prove herself as good as the men.

But that was a world away from murdering Steph.

For the millionth time, he came up against this barrier. Why should anyone have wanted to kill his gende, trusting, unthreatening wife?

He reached for a pen and paper and forced himself to jot down her possible motives.

1. She had a grudge against me.

2. She had a grudge against Steph.

3. She feared Steph knew some secret about her.

4. She was out of her mind.

None of them stood out. Number 1 seemed unlikely; she was one of the few colleagues he'd never had a spat with. 2 and 3 were doubtful, considering Steph had never actually worked with the woman and scarcely knew her. And he'd heard nothing about a mental illness.

Maybe I'm wrong, he thought. Maybe they did know each other, and I didn't get to hear of it because Steph didn't think it important.

He picked up the phone and pressed redial.

'Louis? Me again. This is a long shot, but do you know anything about Trish Weather's life before she arrived at Fulham?'

'Can't say I do.'

'Could you find out?'

'That's personal data, Peter.'

'Yes, family, education, previous employment, all that stuff. Should be on her application to join the police, if that's still on file.'

'You're not listening,' Louis said. 'I can't access people's personal files.'

'But she's dead, Louis.'

The line went silent for a time.

Then Louis said, 'Couldn't you get this from Stormy?'

'I'd rather leave him out of it at this stage.'

Louis sighed.

He heard nothing back the next day. No bad thing to mark time, he told himself. He'd leapt at the possibility that Trish might be the "I" in Steph's diary. Now he needed to ponder it calmly.

And the more he pondered, the more he feared it was another blind alley.

He'd almost abandoned the idea when Louis phoned back.

'There isn't much, Peter. She applied for the police straight after leaving school. Did her basic at Peel Centre – Hendon, to you and me – and spent a year at West End Central before she started at Fulham. It's a clean record.'

'Any fireams experience?'

'She was an AFO from nineteen eighty-seven.'

'Was she, indeed!'