Diamond Dust

by Peter Lovesey

  This was not the time to mention his trip to Woking. ‘Most of it is in the papers, apart from her name, ma’am. That’s on the PNC under missing persons.’

  Georgina eyed him warily, suspicious she was being gulled. Nobody associated computer science with Peter Diamond.

  As an extra touch, he explained, ‘And the Yard puts out these bulletins.’

  ‘And you put two and two together?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite so obvious as that. I couldn’t say for sure.’

  ‘But you worked it out. Independently of our inquiry, you worked it out.’

  ‘I do have an interest in the case, ma’am.’

  Still huffy, she told him, ‘I came to put you in the picture, and there’s no need, apparently.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.’

  She nodded and said with as much acid as she could convey, ‘In the unlikely possibility that it hasn’t reached your ears, I’ve called a case conference for tomorrow afternoon, and Surrey Police and the Met will be represented. I’d like you to be there as well. Any theories you have about this development will be of interest to us all.’

  He thanked her, a necessary gesture. Even he recognised the need to kowtow on occasions.

  Georgina unfroze a couple of degrees. ‘Let’s hope this brings a result. You’re entitled to expect it. A fresh perspective ought to make a difference.’ It was as near as she would come to saying McGarvie was all at sea.

  Still she lingered, and Diamond waited. Eventually she said, ‘I was never in the Met, so I can’t speak from first hand about things that happened in the eighties. Everyone knows corruption was endemic then and the official inquiries didn’t deal with the problem. Countryman should have made a difference and was wound up far too soon. What was that other inquiry run by Number Five Regional Crime Squad?’

  ‘Operation Carter.’

  ‘Yes, they collected some damning evidence and didn’t deliver in the end, or were shut down. You were at Fulham in those days. You must have seen abuses.’

  ‘They weren’t the norm, ma’am.’

  ‘Don’t take this personally, Peter.’

  Whenever he heard those words he knew something personal was about to be slung at him.

  ‘You had to face a board of inquiry over that Missendale case. I know you took it to heart at the time.’

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘You were exonerated.’

  ‘With a rider about my overbearing manner.’

  ‘Which everyone except you has forgotten. Will you hear me out? This changes everything, this identification. Both murders could well have roots in things that happened at the time I’m speaking of, things you’d rather forget. We need to know what they are, Peter. We’ve all had episodes in our past we gloss over. Speak frankly, and you have my word there will be no witch-hunt.’

  ‘What about, ma’am?’

  ‘Anything at all. The point is this. We have to stop this killer from murdering anyone else. That’s paramount. Your iffy conduct fifteen years ago doesn’t matter a jot compared to that.’

  He was stung into a sharp riposte. ‘No, ma’am,’ he told her, feeling the blood rush to his face, ‘this is the point. My wife had two bullets put through her brain. If you think I’d hold back on anything to shore up my dodgy career, you must have a low opinion of me.’

  ‘That isn’t so,’ she said through tight lips. She turned and left the room.

  He felt a twinge of guilt. Georgina had come in spontaneously, genuinely wanting to share her news with him. So often of late when she’d spoken to him, there had been a hidden agenda. This time she’d dredged up his past – or tried to – and said a couple of tacdess things and he’d reacted more tetchily than ever. He needn’t have put her down.

  Too late to mention it.

  Another of the case files he’d acquired from Louis featured a white teenager, a crop-headed loner called Wayne Beach who had a liking for guns. As a juvenile, Beach had twice been caught in possession of firearms acquired by his criminal family. For a short time in the early eighties he had made a living robbing and shooting taxi drivers. His method was simple and effective. He’d hail a cab late at night when the driver had stacked up an evening’s fares in the West End and ask to be driven to some street where he’d already parked a stolen car. He’d get out and instead of paving the fare he’d pull out a handgun and shoot the driver, usually in the leg, and demand his takings. The drivers always paid up. He would smash the two-way radio and put another bullet into one of the taxi tyres before walking calmly to the stolen car and escaping. One night in Edith Road an eagle-eyed constable spotted a parked car reported as stolen three hours before. On the off-chance that this was the taxi-bandit a team headed by Diamond was issued with arms and sent to lie in wait. Beach was ambushed and shot in the hip. It was not stated in the file whether Stormy Weather had been one of the DCs in support.

  Beach had been given five years on that occasion and had served several terms since for malicious wounding. The significant feature in his case was the way he felt about guns. He was a trigger-happy hard man with no scruples about inflicting pain on innocent victims. It wasn’t enough to use the gun as a threat. He always fired. The case notes said he had an image of himself as a holdup man in the old American West. He put bullets into people without any compunction whatever. Killing hadn’t featured among his crimes, it was true, though one of the drivers had almost bled to death. But he had to be taken seriously as a possible killer now.

  He’d been released from Wormwood Scrubs last Christmas, in plenty of time to have shot Steph and Patricia Weather.

  Georgina said to the room in general, ‘This is Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond,’ and added on a softer, apologetic note, as if suddenly realising she was in the holy of holies, the Chief Constable’s suite, ‘the husband.’

  ‘Widower,’ Diamond corrected her.

  ‘We already met,’ DCI Bobby Bowers said without elaborating, and nobody picked up on it.

  The case conference was around the oval table where officers’ careers were blessed or blown away. Coffee was served in porcelain cups and saucers instead of mugs and there were Jaffa Cakes instead of chocolate digestives. There was little else to report. It was a fact-finding exercise for all concerned, and no facts were found that were new to Diamond.

  At one stage someone made the ill-considered remark, ‘Patsy Weather was a copper, one of our own. This time we’ll get this guy, whatever it takes.’

  Diamond demolished him with a look.

  Afterwards he offered to show Bowers the way down to the car park.

  ‘Nothing else at the scene, then?’ he asked the young DCI.

  ‘Only bits of bone.’

  ‘No bag? No rings?’

  ‘I’d have mentioned it just now, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘When’s the post mortem?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Bowers glanced at his watch. ‘Would you have time to show me your crime scene?’

  They drove out to Royal Victoria Park in Bowers’ white Volvo. This late in the afternoon they found a space easily on Royal Avenue below the Crescent and walked across the turf to the place near the stone bandstand where Steph had fallen. The sympathetic tributes of flowers and wreaths had long since disappeared. No one would have known this was a murder scene. A couple of schoolkids locked in a passionate embrace behind the bandstand had not been put off. The proximity of strangers didn’t put them off either.

  Bowers stared across the lawns, velvety in low-angled sunlight, to the glittering row of parked cars along the avenue and above them the curve of the most-photographed terraced building in Europe. He took in the great trees to the left and the conifers away to the right. Turning, he noted how close were the tall bushes screening them from Charlotte Street Car Park.

  ‘Hard to equate with my railway embankment.’

  ‘You’ve got a park nearby.’

  ‘Yeah, but this is so open.’ He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one
to Diamond, who shook his head. ‘And she was just gunned down and left here?’

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without emotion.

  ‘There was no attempt to move her?’

  ‘Too risky.’

  ‘You mean he would have been seen dragging her to his car?’ Bowers cupped his hand over his lighter to get a cigarette going and exhaled a long sigh of smoke that seemed to express the difficulty he was having with this crime scene. ‘Why wasn’t he seen shooting her?’

  ‘He?’

  A pause. Bowers raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t really suspect this killer is female?’

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind – or trying to. But you asked about the risk of being seen. I’ve given thought to that,’ Diamond said, more comfortable talking practicalities. ‘You’d think a public park in broad daylight would be a stupid place to murder someone, but this was a cold morning in February at a time of day when most people were already at work – and I’ve checked more than once. It is deserted here around that time.’

  ‘Do you think he – or she – worked that out?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘So he could have moved the body if he’d wanted to.’

  ‘To a car, you mean?’

  ‘The car park is right here behind us.’

  Diamond was dismissive. ‘No chance. Its use is totally different. By that time of the morning it’s busy, three-quarters full and with cars coming in all the time. The people aren’t coming this way. They’re going down into town for shopping and looking at the tourist sites. You couldn’t carry a body to a car without being seen. Besides, there are cameras, and, yes, every tape has been checked.’

  Bobby Bowers raked a hand through his crop of dark curls. ‘I seriously wonder if we’re right to link these two shootings.’

  ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘Your wife was certain to be found in a short time. It was a bold, professional hit, as if they didn’t care who heard the shots. But my shooting has all the signs of being covert. The killer took pains to move her to a clever hiding place. The body might never have been discovered. If he’s so brazen about murder A, why go to all the trouble of concealing murder B?’

  Diamond had no explanation. ‘Have you spoken to DCI Weather?’

  ‘Only to confirm identification. That was enough for starters. He was in shreds, as you must have been.’

  ‘God only knows how I would have coped with chewed-up bones. I suppose he identified her from the clothes?’

  ‘Yes. The bones were no help. Her dental records were sent for. They match.’

  ‘When will you interview him?’

  ‘It’s being done as we speak, by the two DIs you met at the scene. I’ll know more after I’ve heard the tape.’

  ‘Will you see him yourself?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘Sure to.’ A feral glint invaded Bowers’ eyes for an instant.

  Diamond’s sympathy went out to Weather. ‘He’ll get the third degree like I did, the husband being the first suspect.’

  Bowers declined to confirm this. He said, ‘I don’t know about the treatment you were given.’

  Diamond enlightened him, and at the end of it said, ‘I was saying Stormy Weather can expect the same.’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘But you don’t rule it out.’

  ‘Would you, in my position?’

  The chill of evening was in the air and the first lights were visible in the Crescent. Without either man suggesting enough had been said, they returned silently across the turf to the car, leaving the scene to darkness and the snogging schoolkids.

  At home with a mug of tomato soup in his fist and a chunk of bread on his lap he watched the nine o’clock news on TV. Nothing. Maybe they had run the Woking story the previous night. He didn’t watch much these days. The news seemed as remote from real life as the soaps.

  He’d delayed for as long as he could manage. He reached for the phone and pressed out the number he’d obtained that morning from the incident room.

  ‘DCI Weather?’

  ‘Who is this?’ The voice was defensive.

  All too vividly he remembered being under siege by the press. ‘Peter Diamond. I don’t know if you remember me. We have a couple of things in common. I’m deeply sorry to hear about your wife.’

  There was no response at all. But what do you say in the circumstances? ‘So am /’? ‘No problem’} ‘Thanks’?

  Diamond waited, then said, ‘We served together, you and I, at Fulham, back in the eighties.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the voice became a touch less combative, yet still drained of animation. ‘And your wife has been shot like mine. They told me.’

  ‘So I know how you feel. It’s hell.’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Look,’ Diamond said, ‘may I call you by your first name? It’s so long ago I only remember-‘

  ‘The nickname.’ The way Stormy Weather closed him down made the tired old joke seem one more infliction.

  ‘And your real name is…?’

  ‘Dave.’

  ‘Dave. Right. A lot of guys came and went,’ Diamond said to excuse his defective memory.

  ‘And I was just a DC in those days,’ Dave Weather said.

  ‘I’m Peter.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘I’d like to meet up if possible. You’re going to be under all sorts of pressure. It may help to talk to someone who knows what it’s like.’

  ‘I don’t feel like talking.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t. But you want to find the dickhead who killed your wife, right? And the high-ups are telling you to keep away. They don’t want the likes of you and me getting involved.’

  ‘They’ve got their reasons.’

  ‘Like leave it to us, it’s in good hands?’

  ‘Something like that. And as the husband I’m personally involved.’

  ‘I heard it all seven months ago. I’m still waiting for some progress, let alone an arrest’ Diamond was trying his damnedest, and at the same time sensing he should have waited a couple of days. The man was shell-shocked, just as he had been.

  He still refused to give up. ‘You know they’re treating the two killings as connected? There was a case conference here in Bath today. I was called in to give the dope on operations you and I were both involved in. Hard task, all these years later. When you feel up to it we really should compare notes.’

  ‘Is that what they suggested?’

  ‘No. This is my idea.’

  The response remained lukewarm. ‘If you think it will make a difference.’

  ‘I’m certain,’ Diamond said, elated at the small concession he’d winkled out. ‘I’ll come to you. You’re in Raynes Park, aren’t you?’

  Dave Weather backtracked. ‘My place is a tip. I’ve done sod all to keep it straight in the last six months and now I’ve had the CID all over it.’

  Which Diamond treated as an R.S.V.P.

  ‘Likewise. I’m still in chaos here. Dave, I don’t give a toss what your place looks like. What’s the address?’

  26

  The moment Stormy Weather opened the door of his mock-Tudor semi in Raynes Park, Diamond remembered him. How could he have forgotten a skin like that, the colour of freshly sliced corned beef? A man could spend his life shovelling coal into a furnace and not end up with so many ruptured blood vessels. You never knew when he was blushing because it was his natural appearance. Happily for Stormy, it wasn’t off-putting for long. If anything, it endeared him to people. With a few exceptions, none of us likes our own face much, and it’s a relief to be with someone who has more to put up with than we do.

  Today the poor bloke was understandably careworn as well as florid. A faded black Adidas T-shirt and dark blue corduroy trousers hung loosely from his tall frame. He took a moment to register who his visitor was (Diamond put this down to his own hair-loss) and then invited him inside, through a hallway littered with newspapers still folded as they’d been pushed through the door. ‘You’ll
have to make allowances,’ he said, kicking some aside. ‘Patsy would go spare if she saw the place in this state. She kept a tidy house.’

  The sitting room was misnamed now, because there wasn’t a seat available. The chairs and sofa were all piled high with drawers, books and CDs. It looked like the aftermath of a burglary. ‘They went through the place a couple of days ago,’ Stormy explained. ‘I can’t pretend it was tidy before, but they didn’t help matters.’

  ‘They’ must have been a police search squad.

  ‘It happened to me.’ Diamond stooped and picked a framed photo off the floor, a black and white shot of a young woman at the wheel of a police Panda car. ‘Is this your wife?’

  Stormy reached for the photo and practically snatched it from him. ‘I’ve been looking all over for that. I thought they must have taken it away.’ He held it in both hands. ‘Yes, this is Patsy about the time we met. Well, you must remember her. She was on the relief at Fulham when you were CID.’

  ‘So I was told. Can I have another look?’ Diamond stood beside Stormy, then drew back to get a clearer view. Soon he’d want glasses. More than once Steph had told him to see an optician. ‘Of course I knew her. Didn’t we call her Mary Poppins?’ Instantly regretting he’d come out with anything so crass, he added, ‘But her real surname – what was that?’

  ‘Jessel.’

  ‘Yes. Pat Jessel.’ Clumsily, he tried to make up for his boorishness. ‘I can’t for the life of me remember how she got that nickname.’

  Stormy sighed and told the story, and the canteen humour of twenty years ago jarred on the ear like an old LP. ‘She was the fresh-faced rookie with very good manners who tried too hard to please. She had a perpetual smile and this amazing posh accent like Julie Andrews. One day Jacob Blaize sent down for a coffee and Patsy wanted to know if he liked it black or white and someone said “White, with just a spoonful of sugar” and the whole room started whistling the tune. She was stuck with it then. No one called her anything but Mary after that.’

  ‘Right.’ Diamond gave an apologetic smile. He now remembered Mary vividly. ‘We were a cruel bunch.’

  ‘It was a bit OTT. She got tired of the whistling and singing. And of course every time an umbrella was handed in it was hung on her peg. Though I have to say she fitted the role in some ways. She was a born organiser.’