Peter Lovesey - Diamond Dust

Sheer, bloody-minded persistence had got him to the truth. No inspiration, no shaft of light, just his refusal to give in.

The saloon bar of the Forester was almost empty. Stormy was in there, seated at a table with his back to the door. Inconveniently, someone else was with him, a woman. Dark-haired, well made-up, probably around forty, she was in a backless peacock blue dress you wouldn't have expected to see outside a nightclub.

Diamond marched up to the table and said, 'Can we have words?'

Stormy turned in his seat. 'Peter?' He tried to make it sound like a greeting, and didn't convince. 'What brings you out here? You're drenched, man. Get that coat off and let's line up a drink for you.'

'Don't bother.'

A frown threatened Stormy's face momentarily, and then he recovered to say, 'This is Norma – as charming a lady as you'd meet anywhere. Norma, say hello one of my old workmates, Peter Diamond.'

Diamond said to the woman, 'Leave us alone, would you? We have things to discuss.'

She looked to Stormy – who leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. She picked up her coat and walked out of the bar, leaving her drink half-finished.

'What's up?' Stormy asked when Diamond was seated opposite him.

'You want to know what's up?' Diamond said in a hard, tight voice. 'Everything's up – for you. I came here not wanting to believe you murdered your wife.'

He stared back. 'You're not making sense, Peter.'

'Did you ever love her?'

'Patsy?'

'Trish. She liked to be known as Trish.'

Stormy gripped the tankard in front of him with both hands. 'Of course I loved her. Haven't I made that clear?'

'The story I got is that she wouldn't let you in the house.'

'I told you we had arguments sometimes. I made no secret of that.'

'You slept outside in a motor home.'

'Have you been talking to my neighbours?'

'Is it true, then?'

'Sometimes,' Stormy admitted. 'Model-making is my hobby. We spoke of this, didn't we? I keep my materials in the motor home. I can make a mess in there and nobody bothers, and if I want to work late I can.'

'So that's all it was?' Diamond said without irony, as if he was reassured. 'Your marriage was okay?'

'Absolutely.'

'And you got on all right with the in-laws?'

'I got on fine. I still do.'

'Visited them from time to time?'

'Often.'

'Strange,' Diamond said in a voice as dry as last week's bread, 'because when we were sitting in the car on Sion Hill in Bristol you told me you didn't know Bath at all -and it turns out Trish's people live in Brock Street.'

For a moment it seemed Stormy Weather hadn't taken in the point. He was still coming to terms with the realisation that his background had been investigated. 'In the car we were talking about the Brunei sites. All I said was I haven't seen them.'

'No. I asked if you'd been to Bath and you said not since you were a kid. That was a lie.'

Stormy didn't deny it.

For Diamond, these were pivotal admissions. The molten rage inside him threatened to erupt any second, yet he had to contain it to get the truth. 'What was the problem in your marriage? Was it the fact that you had no children?'

'Plenty of people don't have kids,' Stormy pointed out, rashly adding, 'You don't.'

Don't rise to it, Diamond told himself, don't rise to it. Keep the focus on him. 'You admitted to having affairs.

Had Trish given up on sex?'

'I don't see where this is leading.'

'This Norma I just met. How long have you known her?'

'Leave Norma out of it.'

'I can ask the barman or anyone else. I get the impression you're regulars here. Does she want to marry you?'

His silence was as good as a nod.

'But Trish wouldn't let you go, would she?' Diamond pressed on. 'She had things sorted as neat as a knitting pattern. The house to herself, all frills and pink wallpaper and nothing out of place. A good pension. A nice welcome any time she wanted to look up old friends at the nick. And this Mary Poppins image of a perfectly managed existence. No, she didn't want a divorce fouling up her tidy life.'

Stormy took a long sip of beer, transparently trying to appear calm.

'Your life was bleak, sleeping in the motor home and only allowed into your own house on sufferance. She wouldn't let go, and Norma wanted something more permanent. The pressure got to you.'

The calm was ebbing away.

'Like me, you knocked off a police weapon in those Fulham days when old Robbo was mismanaging the armoury. Piece of cake. No big deal. Like me, you tucked the shooter away and almost forgot about it, right?'

'Who told you this?'

'You planned it well. Some time between February the twelfth and the nineteenth you took out your gun and put two bullets into Trish's head.'

Now Stormy decided a show of outrage was wanted. 'I don't have to listen to this crap.'

'You do. You don't know who's waiting outside,' Diamond bluffed.

Stormy glanced at the door.

'The timing of the murder is absolutely crucial -because she wasn't killed a couple of weeks after Steph was shot, but before.'

He swayed back, squeezing his eyes shut as if it were a physical blow. 'You can't say that.'

'I know it. Trish missed her appointment on the nineteenth.'

The eyes shot open and real panic flashed in them. 'What appointment?'

'The hairdo.'

He stared blankly back.

'The shampoo and blow-dry. You were so cut off from her life you didn't know she went to Streakers every Friday. I've been to the shop and seen the book. She missed the next appointment on the twenty-sixth as well, when she was still alive according to you. And the one after.' They were hammer blows and Stormy was reeling from them.

Like any good fighter sensing the end, Diamond didn't relent. 'You're a detective. You've seen plenty of killers fail because someone discovered the body. You thought of a very good place where nobody walked their dogs. After shooting her, you drove the body to Woking and dumped it on the railway embankment where it wouldn't be found for months, if not years. Went home with the idea of waiting a couple of weeks before you reported her missing. Devious, that was – to confuse everyone over the date she disappeared, just in case they investigated your movements on the day of the murder.'

Stormy grasped the arms of his chair to get up, but Diamond grabbed his shirt-front and held him where he was. 'Don't even think about it.'

'Free country,' he said in a rasp.

'Not any more it isn't – not for you. You thought you'd got it all sussed after you disposed of Trish. You were sitting at home – back in the house you owned – when the phone rang and it was Steph, my wife, expecting to speak to Trish. Awkward. You said she was out and offered to take a message and it soon became obvious they'd arranged to meet in Bath to discuss the surprise party Trish wanted to arrange for my fiftieth. Man, oh man, that threw you, didn't it? Your plan was in ruins. You'd meant to wait another two weeks before doing your worried husband act and reporting your wife missing. But Steph would kibosh that. She'd say it was you she spoke to on the phone, not Trish. She'd say Trish didn't turn up for their meeting. She was trouble.'

A strange thing was happening to Stormy's face. The red blotches were standing out like a leopard's spots, separated by patches of dead white skin. His lips, too, were drained of blood. They didn't move.

Diamond leaned closer, still holding him by the shirt, his voice cracking with emotion. 'You decided to kill my wife, you sick fuck, simply because she got in the way of your plan. You'd killed once and it was easy, so you'd do it again. Am I right?'

Not a flicker.

'This wasn't done in the heat of the moment. This was premeditated, cold-blooded murder. You thought it through. When you'd worked out what to say you phoned back and told her you'd spoken to Trish and she'd asked you to confirm the time and place of their meeting. It was to be the Crescent Gardens, opposite the old bandstand, at ten. You drove to Bath and waited in the park. When Steph arrived, expecting to meet Trish, you walked up to her and took out the gun and shot her twice in the head. Then you got in your car and drove home.'