Diamond Dust

by Peter Lovesey

  Danny displayed his gold fillings in a slow, wide grin.

  This stung Diamond into commenting, ‘It’s almost as if you knew something was going to happen.’

  ‘Watch it.’

  ‘Your brother Des is watertight, too.’

  ‘This is going nowhere, squire,’ Danny said.

  ‘Don’t tell me the Carpenter family draw the line at killing women. You could have used one of your heavies. Or hired someone.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Danny said. ‘Who do you think we are – Fred Karno’s Army? Listen, if we wanted to get at you, we wouldn’t top your wife.’

  Put like that, it chimed with Diamond’s own assessment, the main objection to the Carpenters as the killers: their uncomplicated notion of revenge would have resulted in his own death, not Steph’s.

  ‘If you want us off your back,’ he said as if he was speaking for the entire police operation, ‘you could tell me what the latest whisper is. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘About the shooting?’ Danny shook his head. ‘What sort of piece was used?’

  ‘Point three-eight revolver.’

  ‘Doesn’t say much.’

  ‘It will when we find the weapon.’

  ‘He’ll have got rid of it, won’t he?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Diamond said. ‘This was a professional job, and professionals get attached to their pieces – don’t they, Danny?’

  ‘Let’s leave it there before you say something that really gets up my nose.’

  Not yet, he thought. Up to now, he’d got no signal that Danny knew more about Steph’s murder than he wanted to admit. The purpose of this call was to assess the man, tease out the guilt if possible.

  He tried another approach. ‘You think your brother Jake’s conviction was down to me, don’t you?’

  ‘You were on the case, sunshine.’

  ‘He wasn’t fitted up, you know. The girl’s blood was on his shoes, in his car. This was no contract job. He flipped when she tried to sling her hook. You didn’t see what he did to her face. I did. Seventeen, she was.’

  Danny stared out of the window, unmoved.

  Diamond said, ‘There was never any doubt. The jury took under an hour.’

  Still the brother was silent.

  ‘PC Plod could have handled the case,’ Diamond pressed on recklessly. ‘Okay, Celia and the other women stood outside the court giving me lip, and one of them clawed my face, but they know it wasn’t down to me. Your brother Jake is a stupid, sadistic killer.’

  ‘Still family,’ Danny said in a low voice, without challenging the statement.

  ‘What’s happening to Janie, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His girlfriend. The woman who marked me.’

  Danny shrugged. He appeared to have no interest in Janie. Or what she had done to Diamond.

  Diamond reminded him, ‘She was wanting to visit Jake. She said you and Des monopolised all the visits.’

  ‘She’d better piss off back to London,’ Danny said. ‘She’s nothing to Jake.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to her since the trial?’

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘Is it possible Janie felt so strongly about the case that she fired the shots?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘I’m trying to get your opinion, Danny. You said if the family was out for revenge you wouldn’t target my wife. You’d go for me. Well, Janie isn’t family. Is this a woman’s way of setding the score? Does she have a gun?’

  Danny turned to face him. ‘You’re boring me. Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘Maybe I should.’

  He’d got as much or as little from this member of the Carpenter family as he was likely to. The trick in making home visits to known criminals is judging when to leave.

  13

  Ten days went by.

  Ten more days in the process of grieving, this grudging acceptance of the stark reality. One day he decided he would take all Steph’s clothes to a charity shop because that was what she would have wished (so long as it was not the one where she worked). He carried the dresses downstairs and draped them across the back seat of the car so as not to crease them. If the helpers in the shop decided to throw them in a corner in the back room or stuff them into plastic sacks, so be it. He wouldn’t do it himself. Then, in a fit of sentiment he picked out one of her favourites, the fuchsia-coloured silk one she’d worn to the theatre last time they’d gone, carried it upstairs again and returned it to the wardrobe. It should have gone with the rest. There was no logical reason to keep it. He simply couldn’t part with it yet. And when he looked at the other clothes, he couldn’t be separated from them either. He drove around with those dresses on the back seat for days, reaching back to touch them at moments when he felt really down. You’re a pathetic old idiot, he told himself when he finally removed them from the car and put them back on their hangers.

  Of course he tried immersing himself in work, but that was fraught with problems he hadn’t experienced before. The danger of working in isolation, he learned the hard way, is that you are forced to rely on hunches and theories. In a CID team, you have information coming in all the time, ninety-five per cent of it useless, but at least your brain is occupied reading reports and statements and checking the records. In the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry they had so many statements on file that the floor of the incident room started to cave in. The storage problem is less in this computer age, more a matter of pressing the right keys. McGarvie could cross-reference all known cases of murder using.38 revolvers; shootings in public parks; suspicious deaths of police and their families. He could analyse statements, classify the long list of objects found in Victoria Park and Charlotte Street Car Park, go through years of Peter Diamond’s case notes looking for people with grudges. Bloody McGarvie had plenty to occupy him.

  This parallel investigation of Diamond’s had to be run on a wing and a prayer. A certain amount leaked out of the incident room, of course, through old colleagues, and he barged in there repeatedly on the flimsiest of pretexts, but it was obvious the team were under instructions not to tell him things.

  One afternoon, in a quiet corner of the canteen, Keith Halliwell confided to him, ‘The lads are on your side, guv, even if it doesn’t look like it. There’s a lot of anger about the way you’re being treated.’

  ‘I’m not looking for sympathy, Keith. A result is all I want.’

  ‘It isn’t sympathy. Well, you know what I mean. We do feel for you. Of course we do. This is something else. Personality.’

  ‘The Big Mac?’

  ‘He doesn’t speak for the rest of us. We want you to know that.’

  ‘He’s doing the same as I would. I’m a hard-nosed git when I’m on a case, as you well know.’

  In truth, he wasn’t impervious to sympathy, or support from his colleagues. However, he would trade it for hard facts on where the investigation was leading – if anywhere. Too many theories are a pain. They keep you awake at night. They’re difficult to disprove without the back-up of the murder squad.

  His only back-up was the snout, Bernie Hescott, and he hadn’t anything to offer when Diamond drove to Bristol for the fourth time and looked him up in the Rummer. ‘I’m working on it, Mr D. Got more feelers out than a family of bugs. I’m not sleeping at nights.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘Give me another week and I might have something for you.’

  ‘This isn’t what I came to hear, Bernie.’

  ‘It’s all the people I have to see.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be stringing me along?’

  ‘No way. Wednesday, then. And Mr D…’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘I’ve run through my expenses.’

  He got twenty more.

  Next morning, appallingly early, Peter Diamond’s lie-in after a night of little sleep was disturbed by a heavy vehicle drawing up outside the house, followed by a voice issuing orders. He would have sworn and turned over in bed i
f the voice had not been pitched so low that it was obvious something underhand was going on. He groaned, sat up, shuffled to the bedroom window, and was amazed to see men in police-issue Kevlar body armour scrambling out of the back of a van. Two of them carried an enforcer, the ‘fifty-pound key’ used by rapid entry teams as a battering ram. Curtis McGarvie got out of a separate car and marched up the short path to the front door.

  Diamond belted downstairs in the T-shirt and shorts he slept in and flung open the door. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  McGarvie raised his palms in a pacifying way. ‘Stay cool, Peter. We need to make a further search.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Can we speak inside?’

  ‘You’re out of your mind.’

  ‘I’d rather not have this conversation on your doorstep.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The firearm used in the murder of your wife.’

  ‘For crying out loud.’

  ‘So I’m formally requesting permission to search your house and garden.’

  ‘You can piss off, McGarvie.’

  ‘I thought that would be your response.’ He handed over a sheet of paper. ‘This is your copy of a warrant issued by a magistrate last night.’

  ‘A search warrant} This isn’t happening.’

  But it was. And you don’t argue with a warrant unless you want your door smashed in. Diamond stepped aside, and three of the ninjas moved in. ‘Why wasn’t I told? You can pick up a phone.’

  ‘Do you want it straight? I had reason to think you might dispose of the evidence.’

  He was speechless.

  McGarvie admitted more men, and every one avoided eye contact with Diamond. They obviously had their orders. They must have been briefed before dawn. Some went straight upstairs, others through to the kitchen.

  Diamond slumped into a chair in the front room.

  McGarvie told him, ‘You know you have the right to ask a friend or neighbour to witness the search?’

  ‘I don’t need lecturing on my rights.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see what’s going on?’

  ‘No. This whole charade is a waste of time.’

  ‘In that case why don’t you get dressed? I’m going to take you in, whether we find anything or not.’

  ‘You’ll find sod all. You’re out of order. I’ll hang you out to dry for this.’

  ‘It’s all according to the book.’

  ‘I opened the place to you before. You’ve been through here already.’

  ‘That wasn’t a full search.’

  ‘God help us.’ Diamond trudged upstairs and saw what he meant. Three men in the bedroom were ripping the fitted carpet from its stays. His entire wardrobe had been emptied and the clothes were on the bed. All the drawers had been removed from the chests and sideboard.

  He looked out of the window. Two officers with metal detectors were at work in the garden.

  He grabbed a pair of trousers and got into them.

  At the nick – his own nick – they offered to call his solicitor. He said he’d done nothing wrong, so he didn’t need one.

  They kept him waiting over three hours.

  His anger hadn’t subsided. In the interview room with the tapes running he stared McGarvie out like a boxer at the weigh-in. A sergeant he’d never seen before was in the other chair. He was damned sure Georgina and most of the senior detectives were watching on video monitors.

  McGarvie said in that voice like a rusty lawn mower, ‘At the previous interview, you stated that you didn’t possess a gun. Is that still your position?’

  His thoughts flew to the empty shoebox in the loft. They couldn’t have found anything. He’d gone through the place. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘When you served in the Met, you were an authorised shot – right?’

  ‘We’ve been over this.’

  ‘For the tape, would you confirm it?’

  ‘I was trained to use firearms, yes.’

  ‘Were there occasions when you were issued with a handgun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A Smith & Wesson revolver?’

  He said with mounting unease, ‘That was the standard sidearm before they switched to automatics.’

  ‘Point three-eight?’

  ‘You know as well as I do.’

  ‘At Fulham, where you served, guns were issued and returned according to procedure, were they?’

  ‘To my knowledge, yes.’

  ‘You always returned the guns you carried?’

  ‘Of course.’ This could only be leading one way, he thought with disaster bearing down on him. How could McGarvie have learned that he acquired that gun back in the nineteen-eighties? It had been signed out and signed in again.

  ‘Before we go on,’ McGarvie said with obvious relish in prolonging this, ‘I’d better give you some background. We’ve been in contact with the Met.’

  ‘The Met – what for?’

  ‘A certain Smith & Wesson revolver at Fulham – where you served – went missing in nineteen eighty-six, about the time the change to automatics took place. It hasn’t been traced since.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You were the last to be issued with it.’

  ‘And I bet I returned it. Always did.’

  ‘Yes, the paperwork was in order. But after that, there’s no record of the gun with that serial number.’

  ‘Not my fault. You can’t stick that on me.’

  McGarvie smiled with the confidence of a player with trumps in hand. ‘Procedures at Fulham in the eighties were somewhat relaxed – shall we say? It’s not impossible the issuing officer made a mistake.’

  ‘Not in my case, he didn’t. You just agreed it was returned and signed in.’

  ‘The officer in question later appeared before a disciplinary board charged with negligence. A number of weapons couldn’t be accounted for. Clearly the rules were breached in some way.’

  ‘Am I missing something here? What has this got to do with my wife’s murder?’

  ‘She was shot with a point three-eight revolver. When I questioned you before, you denied owning one. You just repeated that denial.’ McGarvie’s brown eyes glittered. Reaching under the desk he took out a sealed evidence bag and passed it across. ‘For the purposes of the tape, I am now showing the witness exhibit D03, a police-issue point three-eight Smith & Wesson revolver recovered this morning from the garden of his house in Lower Weston.’

  Diamond’s voice shrilled in disbelief. ‘What are you saying? You found this in my garden?’

  ‘With some ammunition. Wrapped in a cloth in a biscuit tin buried in the vegetable patch.’

  Vegetable patch? This had to mean the little plot where Steph grew tomatoes last summer. He was silent while his brain raced, trying to make sense of it.

  McGarvie added, ‘The serial number confirms this gun as one missing from Fulham since nineteen eighty-six. You were issued with it and apparently returned it. Do you have any explanation?’

  He was up to his eyeballs now. A horrible hissing started in his ears – the old blood pressure problem threatening. After a long pause he said, ‘I wasn’t strictly straight with you just now. This gun has been in my possession ever since I was in the Met.’

  McGarvie gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘So you lied.’

  ‘Well-‘

  ‘You lied.’

  ‘They were dangerous times. We had some hard men on our patch.’

  ‘Face it, Peter.’

  ‘You asked if I owned a gun. I don’t. It’s still police property.’

  ‘Now you’re playing with words.’

  ‘Okay. I should have come clean when you asked me.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘Didn’t want to draw you up a blind alley. All this horseshit about the gun has nothing to do with my wife’s murder.’

  ‘Ho.’ McGarvie turned to exchange a look with the sergeant beside him. ‘And if it turns out to be the murder weapon�
��?’

  ‘No chance. It was in the loft of my house, in a shoebox.’

  ‘Until when?’

  Another crushing uncertainty hit him.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he was forced to admit. ‘After you interviewed me last time, I went up to the loft to look for it, and the box was empty.’

  ‘Is this another half-truth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you need the gun?’

  ‘For protection. If you want it straight, I was losing confidence in your investigation. I thought I might need to open up some fresh lines of inquiry.’

  ‘With a gun in your hand? Going it alone, eh – contrary to the ACC’s instructions?’

  Diamond shrugged. There were more important issues now than defying Georgina.

  ‘If the gun wasn’t in the loft, who could have moved it except you or your wife?’

  ‘I’ve tried to think ever since I noticed it was gone. I don’t have an answer.’

  ‘You don’t have answers to much. Sure you didn’t panic after we visited the house? Sure you didn’t take the gun from the loft and bury it in the garden?’

  ‘I didn’t bury it’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  He sighed heavily.

  ‘Then who did? Someone trying to fit you up, I suppose?’ McGarvie said with sarcasm.

  ‘I’ve no idea. This is a total shock to me. Listen, if I wanted to get rid of the thing, why would I bury it in my own garden?’

  ‘No one suggested you wanted to get rid of it. Far from it. You thought you might need it again.’

  ‘This is unreal.’

  ‘It isn’t looking good, Peter. There’s a time period on the morning of the murder when you have no alibi. You say you came into work, but no one here saw you before eleven.’

  ‘I was in my office.’

  ‘Keeping your head down – to quote you. Then, ten days ago, you brought in your wife’s handbag.’

  Incensed at the way things were being twisted, he blurted out, ‘That was a responsible act.’

  ‘In the bag was her diary with certain entries suggesting she’d been in contact with someone referred to as “T”, and who – apparently – she’d arranged to meet in Victoria Park on the morning of her death.’

  ‘Well?’