Julie answered for her. “We checked. Everything seems to be there.”
“Speaking of money,” Diamond said to Trish as if she had brought up the subject herself, “we’ll need to look at the bank account and your credit card statements. You do have a credit card? How are you placed financially? I’m not being nosy. We need to know.” He knew, but he wanted to question her on the details.
“We’re solvent,” she answered without looking up.
He hadn’t Julie’s talent for easing out the information. “Your husband must have been given a lump sum when he was made redundant.”
She only nodded, so he talked on.
“It seems generous at the time, but it soon goes, I dare say. Where do you keep the statements?”
“They should still be in the front room if your people haven’t taken them away.”
“Would you mind?” he asked her.
In the short interval when Trish was out of the room, Diamond asked Julie what she had learned of importance.
“Glenn was up to something that she didn’t care for,” said Julie. “I think we touched a raw nerve asking if he had been two-timing her with some other woman.”
“You touched the nerve,” he said. “That was your contribution.”
Julie flushed slightly. She wasn’t used to credit from Peter Diamond. “Anyway, she’s suspicious, but she isn’t sure.”
“She wouldn’t have stuck a knife in his back unless she was damned sure.”
Trish returned and handed across the statements. He studied them. “High standard of living. Shopping at the best boutiques. Meals out at Clos du Roy and the Priory. A holiday in the south of France.”
“That’s the way we chose to spend our money.”
“But it doesn’t seem to have hit your bank balance.”
“Glenn had his redundancy cheque.”
“What’s this restaurant in Exeter that you visited twice in August?”
“The Lemon Tree? We often eat there after visiting his brother. Alec’s home is a working paper mill, a lovely old place in the country near Torquay, but he forgets that people need to eat.”
“I can take a hint. We’ll get you back to your sister’s,” said Diamond.
Seated in the front, whilst Julie drove, he tried drawing out Trish by talking about the pressures that nurses had to work under. “My own health is pretty good, thank God, but in this line of work you get to see the insides of hospitals all too often. The RUH is one of the better ones. I still wouldn’t care to be a nurse.”
She didn’t comment. Perhaps she found it hard to imagine the big policeman nursing anyone.
“How long have you worked there, Mrs Noble?”
“Three years.”
“And before that?”
“Frenchay.”
Another local hospital, in Bristol.
“It’s a vocation, isn’t it?” Diamond rambled on. “Nursing isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. So is doctoring. Better paid, but still a vocation. I’m less sure about some of the others who work in hospitals. The administrators. It’s out of proportion. All those managers.”
She didn’t take his pause as an invitation to join in.
“They tell me the Health Service managers are the only lot who are on the increase,” he said. “Oh, and counsellors. Counselling is the biggest growth industry of all. We need it for everything these days. Child care, education, careers, marriage, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism, bereavement. I don’t know how we managed before. If there’s a major disaster—a train crash or a flood—the first thing they announce after the number of deaths is that counsellors are with the families. We even have counsellors for the police. Some-thing ugly comes our way, like a serial murder case, or child abuse, and half the murder squad are reckoned to need counselling. Watch out for the counsellors, Mrs Noble. If they haven’t found you yet, you may be sure they’re about to make a case study of you.”
She didn’t respond. She was looking out of the window.
“Me, too, probably,” said Diamond.
“Give me the dope on the Porterfields,” Diamond asked as Julie steered the car out of the police station yard and headed for Widcombe Hill. On his instruction, she’d spent the last hour checking.
“They’ve lived in Bath for the last five years. Moved out of a terraced house in Bear Flat at the end of 1993 and into this mansion by the golf course. There must be good profits in car parts.”
He grunted his assent. “You’re talking to a man who just had to buy a set of new tyres.”
“She drives a Porsche and he has a Mercedes.”
“And people like me paid for them.”
“Oh, and her name isn’t really Serena. It’s plain Ann.”
“What’s wrong with Ann?” he demanded. “I once had a girl-friend called Ann. The last word in sophistication. Stilettos and hot pants. Don’t suppose you know what hot pants are.”
“Were,” murmured Julie.
“Well, we can’t arrest her for changing her name.” Diamond wrenched his thoughts back from his steamy past.
“Who’s your money on, Julie? Do you still think Glenn Noble had a mistress?”
“Yes—and Trish believes it, too.”
“So who’s the killer—an angry husband?”
“Or boyfriend.”
He didn’t mention Jack Merlin’s bombshell—that Trish might, after all, have struck the fatal blow. “Any idea who? Basil Porterfield?”
She said, “I’ll have a better idea when I meet him.”
“You can spot a skirt-chaser at fifty paces, can you?”
“If you don’t mind me saying,” Julie commented, “that’s a rather outdated expression.”
“Un-hip?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he went on, unabashed, “I have to agree with you that it was some visitor to the house.”
“But who?”
He spread his hands. “Could be anyone. Could be the Bishop of Bath and Wells for all we know.”
“The Porterfields were friends, close friends,” Julie pointed out.
“How many of your women friends would you hoist on your back for a photo?”
“All at once?”
She said on a note of exasperation, “Mr Diamond, sir, I’m trying to make a serious point. We know that Glenn was often out until the small hours. If we could confirm that he was sleeping with Serena . . .”
“Hold on, Julie. That’s a large assumption, isn’t it? Trish Noble doesn’t seem to think he needed to go elsewhere for sex.”
“She had her suspicions, believe me. You have to understand a woman’s thinking. She may have said the opposite, but he was getting
home so late that something was obviously going on. She’s too proud or too puritanical to admit it to you and me.”
“He could have been up to something entirely different.”
“Such as?”
“A poker school. He wouldn’t tell her if he was playing cards into the small hours. God and gambling don’t mix.”
Julie wasn’t impressed by that suggestion. “She said he was tired when he got in.”
“Well, it was late.”
“Too tired for anything.”
After a pause, he said, “Was that what she meant? This God-fearing woman who keeps a Bible by her bed?”
“That doesn’t mean she’s under-sexed.”
“Fair point,” said Diamond after a moment’s reflection. “There’s more bonking in the Bible than there is in Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins together. So she interprets his reduced libido as evidence of infidelity? It’s speculation, Julie, whether it’s her speculation or yours.”
She was resolute. “Maybe it is, but if she’s right, Serena Porterfield is in real danger—if she isn’t already murdered. We can’t ignore the possibility, speculation or not.”
The Porterfields’ mock-Tudor mansion was on the slopes of Bathampton Down, with all of the city as a gleaming backdrop of pale cream stone and blue slate roofs. The hous
e stood among lawns as well trimmed as the greens of the Bath Golf Club nearby. A gardener was on a ladder pruning the Albertine rose that covered much of one side of the house. A white Mercedes was on the drive. The chances of anyone from here being involved in a stabbing in a small terraced house in Twerton seemed remote.
Basil Porterfield opened the front door before they knocked. There was no question that he was the man in the Minehead photo —a sturdy, smiling, sandy-haired embodiment of confidence, even after Diamond told him they were police officers.
“Perhaps you heard that Glenn Noble is dead, sir?”
“Saw it in the paper. Devastating.” Porterfield didn’t look devastated, but out of respect he shook his head. “It’s a long time since I saw Glenn.”
“But you were friends?”
“He was the sort you couldn’t help liking. Look, why don’t you come in?”
The welcome was unstinting. In a room big enough for the golf club AGM, they were shown to leather armchairs and offered sherry. Diamond glanced at the teak wall units laden with pottery and art books. “This is a far cry from Bear Flat.”
“We worked hard to move up in the world,” said Porterfield evenly.
“You’re in the motor trade, I understand.”
“Curiously enough, we prospered in the recession. I don’t sell new cars, I sell parts, and people were doing up their old vehicles rather than replacing them. The business really took off. We have outlets in France and Spain now.”
“You visit these countries?”
“Regularly.”
“And your business is based in Bath?”
“You must have passed it often enough, down the hill on the Warminster Road.”
“Glenn Noble—was he a business contact?”
“Purely social. Through my wife, actually. She took a school project to the printers he worked for. Serena teaches art, print-making, that sort of thing. You can see her influence all around you.”
“Is Mrs Porterfield at home today?”
“No. She’s, em, out of the country.”
Julie’s eyes sought Diamond’s and held them for a moment.
He remarked to Porterfield, “She must be devastated, too.”
“She doesn’t know anything about it.”
Diamond played a wild card. “You said you haven’t seen the Nobles for a long time. Perhaps your wife saw them more recently.”
Porterfield asked smoothly, “Why do you say that?”
Julie, equally smoothly, invented an answer. “Someone answering your wife’s description was seen recently in the company of Glenn Noble.”
“Is that so? Funny she didn’t mention it.” He was unfazed.
“Just for the record,” said Diamond, “would you mind telling me where you were on Monday afternoon between three and five?”
“Monday between three and five.” Porterfield frowned, as if he hadn’t remotely considered that he might be asked. “I would have been at the office. I’m sure my staff will confirm that, if you care to ask them.”
“And your wife?”
“She’s in France, like I said, on a school trip.” He smiled. “She left last week. Last Friday.”
“Where did you say she teaches?”
Cavendish College was a girls’ public school on Lyncombe Hill. The Head informed Diamond that Mrs Porterfield was indeed on a sixth form trip to the south of France. She frequently led school parties to places of artistic interest in Europe. She was a loyal, talented teacher, and an asset to the school.
Diamond used a mobile phone to get this information. He and Julie were parked in North Road, with a good view of the Porterfield residence.
“Are you relieved?” he asked Julie. “Serena survives, apparently.”
“I still say he murdered Glenn Noble.”
“And I say you’re right.”
Her eyes widened. “Am I?”
“But he had the decency to do it while his wife was away. We’ll arrest her when she returns.”
“Whatever for?”
“Hold on a little and I’ll show you, if my theory is right. Serena’s talent may be an asset to the school, but it’s a bigger asset to Basil Porterfield. What time is it?”
“Ten past six.”
“After our visit he’s not stopping here much longer.”
Twenty minutes, as it turned out. The Mercedes glided into North Road and down the hill with Julie and Diamond in discreet pursuit. Porterfield turned right at the junction with the busy Warminster Road. Three-quarters of a mile on, he slowed and pulled in to the forecourt of a building with Porterfield Car Spares in large letters across the front.
“Drive past and park as near as you can.”
Julie found a layby a short walk away.
When they approached on foot the only cover available was the side wall of Porterfield’s building. From it they had a view of the empty Mercedes parked on the forecourt. “I should have called for some back-up, but we can handle this, can’t we?” said Diamond.
Julie lifted one eyebrow and said nothing.
Diamond issued an order. “When he comes out, you go across and nick him.”
She lifted the other eyebrow.
He told her, “I’m the back-up.”
Five minutes passed. The traffic on the Warminster Road zoomed by steadily.
“He’s coming.”
Julie tensed.
Porterfield emerged from the building trundling a hand trolley stacked with white cartons. He set the trolley upright, took some keys from his pocket, opened the boot of the car and leaned in.
Diamond pressed a hand against the small of Julie’s back. She started forward.
Sending in Julie first may have looked like cowardice, but it was not. While her sudden arrival on the scene caught Porterfield’s attention, Diamond ducked around the other side of the Mercedes.
Just in time, because Porterfield produced a knife from the car boot and swung it at Julie.
She swayed out of range and narrowly escaped another lunge.
Then Diamond charged in and grabbed Porterfield from behind and thrust him sideways against the car, pinioning his arms. Julie prised the knife from his fist. Diamond produced a set of handcuffs and between them they forced him over the boot and manacled him.
“Want to see what’s in the cartons?” Diamond suggested to Julie over the groaning prisoner. “Why don’t you use the knife?”
She cut along the adhesive seal of the top carton and parted the flaps. Neatly stacked inside were wads of French one-hundred franc banknotes.
“Money?”
“Funny money,” said Diamond. “We’ll find the offset litho machine and the plates hidden deep inside the building. What with Serena’s artwork, Glenn Noble’s printing expertise and these premises to work in, making counterfeit notes was a profitable scam. But just like you said, Trish got suspicious of all the late nights. Glenn hadn’t dared tell her what he was up to, even though it helped their bank balance no end. She was too high principled to be in on the secret.”
“Why French money?” Julie asked.
“Easier to make. No metal strip. I don’t know how good these forgeries are, but Glenn would have got his brother in Devon to make the paper with a passable watermark.” He picked one up and held it to the light. “Not bad. A portrait of Glenn’s favourite painter, Eugene Delacroix. This has a nice feel to it. They coat the printed notes with glycerine. He’ll have handpressed the serial numbers.”
“And why was he killed?”
“Because of Trish. Unwisely he told Porterfield that she was asking about the late nights. She would have seen it as her moral duty to shop them all, and Porterfield couldn’t risk her wheedling the truth out of Glenn.” He hauled Porterfield upright. “You thought you could get rid of Glenn and do the printing yourself, didn’t you, ratbag?
Last Monday afternoon you called unexpectedly at the house. Glenn let you in, offered you a drink, and when his back was turned you drove a knife into him. You escaped
through the back garden just as Trish was coming in through the front. Right?”
“How the hell did you get on to me?” Porterfield asked.
“Through something Glenn Noble wrote on a photograph.
Someone took a picture of your day out in Minehead in 1993. Glenn wrote ‘wayzgoose’ on the back.”
“What’s that?”
“A word for a printers’ outing. When I looked at it first, I couldn’t understand why he called it that, since he was the only printer in the picture. Then it dawned that you and possibly your wife were involved in some printing activity. When I saw how well you were doing, and how large his bank balance was, I reckoned you were printing money. Julie, would you call headquarters and ask them to send a car?”
Porterfield asked, “What was that word?”
“‘Wayzgoose’,” said Diamond. “Funny old word. Worth remembering. It’ll get you a large score in Scrabble. Where you’re going, you may get the odd chance to play. You’ll certainly have the time.”
MYSTERY NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES BY PETER LOVESEY:
I. NOVELS (In the following list, the publisher of the first British edition is followed by the publisher of the first United States edition.)
Wobble to Death. Macmillan, 1970; Dodd, Mead, 1970. Sergeant Cribb series.
The Detective Wore Silk Drawers. Macmillan, 1971; Dodd, Mead, 1971. Sergeant Cribb series.
Abracadaver. Macmillan, 1972; Dodd, Mead, 1972. Sergeant Cribb series.
Mad Hatter’s Holiday: A Novel of Mystery in Victorian Brighton. Macmillan, 1973; Dodd, Mead, 1973. Sergeant Cribb series.
Invitation to a Dynamite Party. Macmillan, 1974; as The Tick of Death Dodd, Mead, 1974. Sergeant Cribb series.
A Case of Spirits. Macmillan, 1975; Dodd, Mead, 1975. Sergeant Cribb series.
Swing, Swing Together. Macmillan, 1976; Dodd, Mead, 1976. Sergeant Cribb series.
Waxwork. Macmillan, 1978; Pantheon, 1978. Sergeant Cribb series.
The False Inspector Dew: A Murder Mystery Aboard the SS Mauretania. Macmillan, 1982; Pantheon, 1982.
Keystone. Macmillan, 1983; Pantheon, 1983.
Rough Cider. Bodley Head, 1986; Mysterious Press, 1987.
Bertie and the Tinman: From the Detective Memoirs of King Edward VII. Bodley Head, 1987; Mysterious Press, 1988. Bertie series.
Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose Page 22