Diamond Dust

by Peter Lovesey

  Those diary entries hurt him, just as she must have been hurt when she found the gun. You work at your marriage, trusting, believing, and the more honest the relationship is, the more devastating is any deceit. The people we love the most are capable of inflicting the greatest pain.

  Still, if there were ugly things in her past, he couldn’t ignore them. He might feel guilty probing, but he’d sworn over her dead body he would find her killer. That outweighed everything.

  His thoughts were interrupted. A car had crept up and was cruising beside him at walking pace. He’d got to the top of the High Street and was approaching the Crown. They came so close that he heard the nearside window slide down. Someone who’d lost his way, he thought, and turned to see.

  It was a police car with two young officers inside.

  ‘Do you mind telling us where you’re going?’

  ‘Home, eventually,’ he answered.

  ‘And where’s that?’

  ‘Just up there, off Trafalgar Road.’

  ‘Out for a walk, are you?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘There’s no law against it.’

  ‘Most lawful people are in bed and asleep. Don’t I know you, chummy?’

  ‘You should… constable.’

  There was a murmured consultation inside the car, followed by, ‘Christ!’ Then a pause, and, ‘Sorry to have troubled you, sir. There was a breakin higher up, on Lansdown Lane, and we-‘

  The voice of the driver said, ‘Leave it, Jock.’

  ‘Night, sir.’ The car drew off at speed.

  He shook his head and walked on.

  In the morning he called the nick and told the switchboard he’d be late in. These days nobody objected. They were relieved when he was out of the place. He was an unwelcome presence, reminding everyone of the poor progress so far. He had the files of unsolved crimes to keep him occupied, supposedly, but he was forever finding reasons to look into the incident room.

  He took an early train to London and was in Kensington by ten. The last address he had for Dixon-Bligh was in Blyth Road, behind the exhibition halls at Olympia, not far from his old patch. He wasn’t in a nostalgic mood.

  The tall Victorian terraced house was split into flats and the modey collection of name cards stuffed into slots beside the doorbells didn’t include a Dixon-Bligh. He stepped back to check the house number again. Definitely the one he had.

  He rang the ground-floor bell. This was not the kind of establishment that operated with internal phones. After several tries no one came, so he pressed the next bell up, and got a response. Above him, a sash window was pulled up and a spiky hairdo appeared. Male, he thought.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He said he was looking for Dixon-Bligh and didn’t know which flat he was in.

  ‘Dick who?’ the punk said.

  ‘No, Edward. Edward Dixon-Bligh. Man in his forties. Ex-Air Force. Used to own a restaurant in Guildford. May be sharing with a younger woman.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ The head disappeared and the window slammed shut.

  It wasn’t unusual for people in London flats to know nothing of their neighbours. Diamond studied the names beside the remaining doorbells, and wasn’t encouraged. Both looked foreign.

  He pressed the first and got no response. The second was answered eventually by a woman in a sari who came down two flights of stairs with a baby in her arms.

  He stated his question again.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t know, or you think he’s moved?’

  She took a step back and smiled and shrugged. She didn’t understand a word he was saying.

  But at least he got inside the building. Picked up weeks of junk mail heaped on the floor to his right and -eureka! – found a seed catalogue addressed to E. Dixon-Bligh. Without a date stamp, unfortunately. Showed it to the woman, pointing to the name, but she didn’t understand.

  He moved past her to the door of the ground-floor flat. There was a note pinned to it: Sally and Mandy are at the shop all day. Didn’t sound like Dixon-Bligh. He went upstairs, past the punk’s door, to the second floor. The woman in the sari followed. No one answered when he knocked at the door of the second-floor flat. According to the bells downstairs the occupier was a V. Kazantsev. He was probably at work, spying on the Foreign Office.

  The woman joined him on the second-floor landing. The child was asleep.

  He tried once more. ‘Edward Dixon-Bligh?’ Used his fingers to mime an RAF moustache, though he had no idea if Dixon-Bligh had one. This was desperation time.

  She shook her head.

  He returned downstairs, frustrated, and sorted through the junk mail and found a couple more addressed to Dixon-Bligh. No clue as to how long they’d been there. It was unhelpful that the Post Office didn’t frank mass mailings.

  What next?

  He wouldn’t leave this building without a result. Up he went to the punk’s level. The door was vibrating to enormous decibels from inside. Pity the people upstairs and down. He hammered on it with both fists. At the third attempt he was heard. The punk looked out and said, ‘Piss off, mate. You’re wasting my time.’

  Diamond’s foot was against the door and he grabbed the man by his T-shirt. ‘Who’s the landlord?’

  ‘Get off, will you?’

  ‘The landlord.’

  ‘How would I know? I pay my rent to the agent.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Pickett. North End Road.’

  The woman in Pickett’s was guarded. ‘We never give information about clients.’

  ‘This one seems to be an ex-client.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A Mr Dixon-Bligh.’

  Client confidentiality no longer applied. ‘Certainly we know a Mr Dixon-Bligh. He was a tenant in one of our Blyth Road properties for three years, but he moved out at the end of February.’

  ‘Where to? Do you know?’

  She gave a bittersweet smile. ‘I was hoping you would tell me. He left no forwarding address. We’d like to trace him ourselves. He owes two months’ rent.’

  ‘You didn’t give him notice?’

  ‘He did a flit. The first we knew of it was when Mr Kazantsev came in and said he’d heard there was an empty flat.’

  ‘Kazantsev? So Dixon-Bligh had the second-floor flat?’

  She checked the card index. ‘Second floor. Yes.’

  ‘Do you think Kazantsev knew him?’

  ‘No. He heard from one of the other tenants. Blyth Road is a desirable address. Places there are snapped up fast.’

  ‘Do you know what line of work Dixon-Bligh was in?’

  ‘We never ask.’

  ‘References?’

  ‘Not these days. If they can put down the deposit – and he did – we take them on.’

  In case the agency traced their runaway tenant, he left his phone number, but he rated the chance no better than a meeting with Lord Lucan.

  He sat in a North End Road cafe eating a double egg and chips and pondering the significance of what he had learned. Dixon-Bligh had upped sticks at the end of February, just about the time of the shooting. He may well have returned from the murder scene in a panic, determined to vanish without trace. He was top of the list of suspects now.

  But the trail stopped here.

  He had no idea where to go looking for Dixon-Bligh. He doubted if it could be done without help.

  Well, he’d served in the Met. That was the obvious place to start. He’d look up his old nick in Fulham. See if any of the team had survived into the new century.

  The sight of the tarted-up new building was not encouraging and neither was the face across the desk. They were getting younger all the time. This one probably had to shave once a week.

  ‘Afternoon, sir.’

  ‘Is it already?’ Diamond said. He introduced himself and asked if anyone was there who had served in the mid-eighties, and almost
added, ‘Before you were born.’

  ‘I doubt it, sir. Do you know about tenure?’

  He’d heard of it, and very unpopular it was in the Met, the system of moving officers between squads and stations. Nobody was allowed to dig in for ever. ‘Maybe somebody I knew – somebody really ancient like me – has done the rounds and returned to base. Is there anyone fitting that description?’

  He was invited to the canteen to find out, and there he was recognised at once by the manageress, a big Trinidadian called Jessie. Her smile made his day. She wanted to feed him – even though he insisted he’d just eaten – so he settled for rhubarb crumble, Jessie’s speciality.

  ‘Have you seen Mr Voss yet?’

  ‘Louis?’ he said, his spirits rising. ‘Louis Voss is still here?’

  ‘He come back January. Civilian now. They make him computer king. On first floor with all the pretty chicks in tight skirts.’

  That rhubarb crumble disappeared in a dangerously short time.

  Louis (spoken the French way) had been a detective sergeant, a good ally through some hair-raising jobs at a stage when each of them had more hair to raise. They’d lost touch when Diamond had moved to Bath.

  He’d altered little. The slow smile was still there, and the irreverent gleam in the eyes. He’d kept slim, too. ‘Amazing,’ he said, and Diamond guessed it was a comment on his own disintegration.

  Louis must have read in the papers about Steph’s murder, because he spoke of it at once, probably to save Diamond from bringing it up. He didn’t ladle out the sympathy, but just said he was more stunned by the news than words could express. He remembered Steph from before they were married. ‘Let’s get out of this place and have a drink,’ he suggested. ‘If there’s a problem, they can call me on the mobile.’

  In the saloon at the Fox and Pheasant, a Victorian pub just off the Fulham Road, Diamond gave his version of the past five weeks, the full account, including the finding of the handgun.

  Louis listened philosophically. He wasn’t surprised that the Met had passed on information to the Bath police about the lax firearms procedure back in the eighties. ‘There’s been such a stink over corruption in the past few years that this is small beer, the odd gun going astray. Old Robbo faced a disciplinary board and was retired early, as you know, but he still got his pension.’

  ‘Is he still about?’

  ‘Died some years ago. I’m surprised you kept the gun.’

  ‘Forgot about it for years. It was up in my loft – or was until someone decided to bury it. You don’t expect to have your own house searched.’

  ‘Did Steph know you had it?’

  He smiled and shook his head.

  ‘She wouldn’t have approved?’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly. I ought to have had more sense. But it’s a side issue, this gun.’

  ‘Unless they prove it was the murder weapon. You say they’ve done tests?’

  ‘Inconclusive so far. The killer used a point three-eight revolver, same as mine, but there are thousands in circulation.’

  ‘Looking on the black side, what if they prove it was your gun that was used?’

  Louis had always been a dogged interviewer. Diamond took a long sip of beer and outlined his theory about Dixon-Bligh attempting blackmail, and Steph taking the gun to the park to demand the evidence.

  ‘Wouldn’t she have talked to you before doing something as drastic as that?’

  ‘Normally, yes.’

  ‘But blackmail isn’t normal?’

  ‘Right. And I guess she felt she could deal with Dixon-Bligh herself. I can’t think what he had on her. I suppose we all have things in our lives we’re not particularly proud of.’

  ‘How long was he married to her?’

  ‘Just a few years. Four or five.’

  ‘And she didn’t stay in touch with him?’

  ‘No, it ended in bitterness.’

  ‘Enough for murder?’

  ‘I never thought so. He was the problem, not Steph.’

  ‘If he did fire the shots, how would the gun have ended up buried in your garden?’

  ‘Big question, Louis.’

  ‘You must have thought about it. Wouldn’t he have got rid of the thing some other way?’

  ‘I can only guess he wanted to incriminate me.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have known it was a police-issue weapon. It’s a big risk, when he knows he’s killed her, visiting your place.’ Louis glanced at his watch. ‘Would you like another?’

  ‘Just a half, then.’

  Louis had made a sound point. Reflecting on it, Diamond was less confident about his theory. But someone had taken the risk of burying the thing.

  They were drinking Black Baron, a speciality here. When Louis returned, Diamond asked him, ‘Did you hear about that woman going missing, the wife of Stormy Weather, one of the Fulham crowd from the old days, though I can’t recall him too well?’

  ‘Saw something about it on my screen. Marriage tiff, I reckon.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Changed your mind?’

  ‘Obviously, I hope she’s okay, but…’

  ‘Hope you’re wrong,’ Louis said. ‘I’ve known her for years. bu’d remember her yourself, I reckon. She was around in your time here. Fresh face, bright blue eyes, dark hair. Bit of an organiser. We called her Mary, after Mary Poppins.’

  ‘It rings a bell, but faintly.’

  ‘Nice woman, anyway, and good at her job. She got to be a sergeant at Shepherd’s Bush. Then she changed careers. Went into business on her own running some kind of temping agency.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘In the suburbs. Raynes Park, somewhere like that. Stormy is still in the Met, I think.’

  ‘Just hope his wife is all right.’ Diamond returned to the main purpose of his visit. ‘So how am I going to find Steph’s ex-husband?’

  ‘He was local, you say?’

  ‘Blyth Road – until the end of February.’

  ‘Has he got form?’

  Diamond shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Owes a couple of months’ rent’

  ‘Then it’s going to be difficult, Peter. I can put out some feelers. Dixon-Bligh is an unusual name, and that may help. If you did this through official channels you might get a quicker result.’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s only supposition up to now. A few entries in her diary that could – or could not – refer to him. Some things are starting to link up, but not enough for a general alert.’

  They walked back together. The chance to air his thoughts to an old colleague had given him a lift. But the parting handshake they exchanged outside the entrance to Fulham nick was a reminder that he was going to have to battle on alone.

  17

  Two months had gone by since Harry Tattersall had bought the suit. He’d worn it a few times around the house so that it would feel comfortable and hang well on his trim physique. Two months. He was beginning to wonder if the diamond heist had been cancelled. Nobody had been in touch, even though his answerphone was always switched on. Arabs, of course, are well known for taking the long view, hardly ever giving way to impatience – something to do with riding camels vast distances across the desert. Or drilling for oil. He had to take the long view himself. A hundred grand would be worth the wait.

  Finally the call came one Sunday evening about eight-thirty, and he was at home to take it in person, watching The Sting on TV.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Tattersall?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘The goods are coming in on the tenth of next month.’ An accent redolent of blue-grey serge and brass buttons and high tea in the officers’ mess, well up to Dorchester Hotel standards.

  The phone clicked, and that was it. Harry thought: I wonder if he gets a hundred K just for that?

  Slightly under two weeks, then. He poured himself a large Courvoisier.

  He was relaxing with the drink, spending the money
in his imagination, with the movie still running on the box, when a troublesome thought popped into his head. Suppose this entire operation was a clever sting. There was a way of checking if the call came from the Dorchester. He got up and dialled 1471. The caller had withheld his number.

  No sweat, he told himself. Any professional would do the same.

  Next morning, positive again, he took the tube to Waterloo, came up the escalator to the mainline station and strolled in sunshine along the South Bank walkways to the Royal Festival Hall, where he used one of the public phones in the foyer.

  He called the Dorchester and reserved one of the roof garden suites in the name of Sir John Mason for a week from the tenth.

  Simple.

  He called Rhadi and told him the booking was made for the tenth. They kept the conversation short.

  Then it all went quiet again. He swanned around London enjoying the good weather, the parks and the pubs. Two days before the heist was due, he went into Boots in Oxford Street and picked some hair colouring to go nicely with the moustache he’d already bought. He spent a long time choosing. Sir John Mason, he decided finally, would favour Rich Chestnut. Personally he favoured rich anything.

  18

  McGarvie was suspicious when Diamond asked for the return of Steph’s letters and papers. ‘Why do you need them?’

  ‘They were my wife’s property and they belong to me. You’ve had them nearly two months.’

  ‘You won’t let go, will you? You won’t leave this to us?’

  ‘It’s a simple request’

  ‘You can have them at the end of the week.’ From McGarvie’s tone it was clear he’d be going through every scrap of paper again in case there was something incriminating he had missed.

  Diamond asked, ‘What’s the latest on the gun?’

  ‘Still with forensics.’

  ‘They’re taking their time.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’ McGarvie said, his eyebrows arching. ‘If you know you’re in the clear, why do you keep asking?’