In all probability the people who played war games were also responsible for the potted chrysanthemum plant and the faded wreath at the foot of the monument that must have been pushed through the railings. Diamond wasn’t built for bending or crouching, but he was glad he put a hand on the railings and made the effort to look more closely because he spotted the corner of a scrap of clean white paper which turned out to be a till receipt, tucked under the flowerpot. He got his arm through the bars and picked it up. On one side was a list of food items bought at Sainsbury’s the previous
day. On the other, a message printed neatly in pencil: D. WALK OFF SOME WEIGHT. FOLLOW THE PATH ACROSS THE FIELDS. M.
The gibe annoyed Diamond, mainly because Mountjoy knew that at this stage some personal abuse wouldn’t abort the mission. He pocketed the receipt and looked to his right to see what lay ahead. Another stile, inevitably. In the low moments that sometimes troubled his conscience after stepping off scales he had never contemplated anything so drastic as a country walk. In theory he supported the Ramblers’ Association in their campaigns to keep public footpaths open. He also supported the Lifeboat Association, but he didn’t go to sea in a storm.
Grudging each step, he ambled toward the stile. Things could be worse, he tried telling himself. It wasn’t raining. In fact for October it was a tolerably good morning, with a pale blue sky and a light breeze. In a raw east wind this place- what, eight hundred feet above sea level-would be bleak in the extreme. Yes, how lucky I am, he thought, to be stepping out in this splendid landscape to meet a murderer I put away. Lucky, my arse.
Having heaved himself over the stile, he started through the copse, up a gentle rise with glimpses between the trees of the traffic speeding along the Lansdown Road. Common sense told him that Mountjoy would want a view of him alone in open country before he risked coming out of hiding. At the very least he faced a twenty-minute hike.
There was no chance of missing the route. Numerous signs and arrows marking the Cotswold Way sent him steadily higher to a point where he presently emerged from the wood and started along the track beside a drystone wall speckled with yellow lichen. The direction was still gently upward, making his legs ache, but the terrain had changed to turf uncluttered by trees or bushes, a band of dark green across his vision meeting the skyline not far ahead. He must have been walking for three more minutes when a spectacular view opened to his right over the fields and across the Lam Valley to Charmy Down. The climbing was over for the time being. And there was no human being in sight.
The slight hope remained of hearing a voice at some point from behind the drystone wall that stretched ahead for a long distance. The wall was above head height, yet there were small gaps in the structure here and there that a man on the run might use, firstly to spy through and secondly as a kind of confessional screen-except that confession was probably farthest from Mountjoy’s mind. Even so, when a magpie suddenly took flight on the other side Diamond stopped and crept closer and waited, ear to the wall, willing to play the part of the priest. Without result. Sheepishly he set off again and in time came to a gap in the wall. On stepping through to check, he confirmed that he was, indeed, the only living soul in that vast landscape.
Then it had to be down the steep hillside, where, no doubt, some of the less brave of the soldiery had made their escape from the conflict three hundred and fifty years before. History had not made much impression on Diamond in his schooldays and his sense of it here was slight, but he had a strong affinity with anyone of independent mind. Mostly his thoughts were less ethereal. His feet ached. This was harder on the feet than climbing. His immediate concern was at which point he should give up and turn back. There was a limit to the distance he was prepared to go along this path, pretty as the views might be.
There were farm buildings visible in the valley, so there ought to be some sort of lane or track that linked eventually to the road he had left. He didn’t fancy toiling back up the hill to the monument.
Some way down the hillside he remembered his promise to phone Stephanie. She would sigh and put this down as another lapse. Over the years she had assembled quite a dossier of broken promises. He couldn’t argue with most, but this time he had remembered. Why did it have to be in such an inconvenient place?
The descent became less steep as he approached the floor of the valley. Ahead was a stream with a ford where-he was pleased to discover-a track crossed. Good news: the crossing point was marginally above the level of the water, so he kept his feet dry. The next obstacle was a cattle grid. Having crossed that without turning an ankle he paused for thought; he must have tramped more than a mile and a half. A decision had to be taken. The signpost by the ford invited him to continue up the other side and along the Cotswold Way, but that could mean trudging on for a hundred miles through the whole of the Cotswold Hills into the heart of Gloucestershire.
There was a limit to his good nature and he’d reached it.
Propped against a five-barred gate, he eyed the scene. The track that snaked through the valley was not the prettiest thing he had seen since he started this excursion, but it was the most welcome. Some attempt had been made to tarmac the surface, presumably for cars, because to one side an area of grass had been leveled and laid with gravel. He’d noticed a sign that mentioned angling access, although today there were no cars and no fishermen. It all added up to a shortcut back to the main road.
He was thinking he could do with a drink, wondering how pure the stream might be, when he became conscious of an engine note from the direction of the farm somewhere to his left. The sound was pitched too high for a tractor or a lorry. For one sour moment he wondered if it could be Commander Warrilow’s helicopter. Then he saw it coming along the lane at speed, a motorcycle. The rider was in black leathers and a red crash helmet with a black visor.
A volley of thoughts attacked his brain. Then the bike was skidding to a stop a few yards from him. Without lifting the visor, the rider turned and unfixed a second helmet from the passenger seat and threw the thing at Diamond’s feet.
Diamond ignored it. There was no point in saying anything. The engine drowned all sound.
The rider beckoned vigorously. He seriously expected a fifteen-stone man to put it on and ride pillion.
Diamond folded his arms and looked in the other direction.
Chapter Six
It was apt that Mountjoy should have summoned Diamond to a battlefield. The strategy behind this encounter would not have disgraced a field marshal. However, as field marshals know, battle plans have to be adjusted as events unfold.
It wasn’t a case of Diamond outmaneuvering the enemy. He hadn’t any strategy of his own; he simply refused to ride pillion.
So eventually he won this skirmish because the motorcycle had to be silenced. The rider switched off and lifted his visor. Four years in Albany had given a gaunt look to the face, but the features were as Diamond remembered, more Slavonic than Anglo-Saxon, the dark brown eyes deep-set, cheekbones high and wide, mouth and jaw uncompromising.
Diamond gave John Mountjoy the kind of indifferent nod he gave strangers who stood beside him in bars. There were a dozen questions he was keen to ask at the right opportunity. This was Mountjoy’s show: let him get on with it.
“We’re not talking here,” Mountjoy called across.
By saying nothing, Diamond appeared to concur.
Mountjoy shouted, “Pick up the helmet and get on the blasted bike.”
Diamond shook his head.
“What did you say?” demanded Mountjoy.
“Nothing. I said nothing. This would be easier if you took off your helmet.”
“What?”
“I said… Oh, forget it.” It was obvious that Mountjoy couldn’t hear a word.
Now Mountjoy tried a more persuasive tack. “I won’t take you far.”
“You won’t take me anywhere,” answered Diamond, but he was speaking to himself.
“Playing for time, are you, until the mob with the gun
s and shields get here?”
Diamond shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m bloody telling you, copper, you can write off the girl if you pull me in.”
It was strange listening to this educated voice trying to speak the language of a hard man. Mountjoy’s prison years may have toughened him, but only four years ago he had been the principal of a college, and it showed. He had been vicious then, only his violence had been domestic, his victims women. He had never mixed it on the streets.
Diamond yawned conspicuously and looked away, taking an unwarranted interest in some strands of wool that a sheep had left attached to the barbed wire fence.
He seemed to get his point across, because after scanning the surrounding fields to make sure he couldn’t be ambushed, Mountjoy lowered the kickstand of his motorcyle. Then he lifted the helmet from his head and rested it on the fuel tank.
Prison had added some streaks of gray to his dark hair. He raked it with his free hand. “We’ll talk here, then.”
“Suit yourself,” said Diamond as if the decision had been Mountjoy’s alone.
Mountjoy understandably felt the need to assert his position. “Did you year me just now? If you pull me in, that’s curtains for the girl.”
“It’s not my job to pull you in.”
“What do you mean?”
Diamond was on the point of saying he was no longer on the police payroll. He checked himself. He might get nothing out of Mountjoy if he dashed his hopes. “You’re not my problem,” he said. “Albany is Hampshire. They’re the boys who want to find you.”
Mountjoy said, “Correction, Superintendent. I’m still your problem. You put me away in 1990 for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“Not that old line!” said Diamond with contempt, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. “Think of something better than that, John.”
Muscles twitched ominously in Mountjoy’s cheeks. “I’m telling you, Diamond. I didn’t kill Britt Strand. I’m no saint, but I’ve never killed anyone… yet.”
“That’s a threat, is it?”
“They won’t let me appeal. What am I supposed to do to get justice?”
“You harm Samantha Tott and you’re finished. You realize that?”
Mountjoy didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Think about this, then. I broke out of Albany. I could have gone anywhere and stayed out of sight, but I came back to Bath. Why? Why would I put myself at risk if I’m guilty?”
In fact this was a point Diamond had been brooding over. “I don’t know, but I’ll give you some advice for nothing. If you really think you have a case, you’d be better off going to one of those television companies who make programs showing the police as inept. Or bent. They’re the people who get verdicts overturned.”
“I’m not saying you were bent. If I believed that, I wouldn’t be talking to you. You were wrong, tragically wrong, and I can’t forgive you for that, but I think you were honest in your mistake. You’re my best hope. I’ve got to get you to admit that you screwed up.”
“Under threat?”
“Have I threatened you?”
“Samantha Tott is under threat.”
“She’ll survive if you do as I tell you.”
“However you put it, John, it’s a threat.”
Mountjoy glared at him. “Can you suggest any other way of getting justice?” He seemed to have dismissed or not listened to the suggestion about television. “I can’t tell you who murdered the Strand girl. That was your job.”
“There was no other suspect.”
“I know. Everything pointed to me. I had the motive. She was out to get the dirt on me.”
“You’ll have to remind me of the details,” Diamond coaxed him. Anything to get him more relaxed and more talkative. “I’ve done other cases since. She was a freelance journalist, wasn’t she?”
“That’s the polite name for it. For pity’s sake, you remember! To get her story she enrolled in my language school, pretending to be a bona fide student. It was a shabby trick. I don’t think anyone disputed that.”
Diamond shrugged. “The scam you were working was more shabby than anything she got up to.”
“Scam?”
“Oh, come on. Enrolling young Iraqis on so-called English courses all through the summer when everyone knew Saddam was about to go to war.”
He said casually, “Fair enough. Some of them were dodging military service. Some of them were genuine students.”
“Some could have been spies. You know very well that ninety percent of them signed on to get the piece of paper saying they were full-time students. For you, they were all fee-payers, all profit.”
“You call it a scam, but it’s been going on for years in plenty of colleges I could name,” Mountjoy shifted ground. “They sign them up for fifteen hours a week of tuition knowing they won’t see them again. And it isn’t just students from Middle Eastern countries. Something like seventy-five different countries issue visas on the basis of that piece of paper. I’m not defending it. I’m just saying I don’t know why she hit on me.”
“Because you were here in Bath where she lived,” said Diamond. “And because of the timing. Saddam invaded Kuwait in August. Britt Strand was a smart journalist. She saw the Gulf War coming. An expose of your college could be sold to the tabloids as a national scandal, a private college providing a cover for potential spies.”
“It would have finished me. Well, it did, as events turned out,” said Mountjoy. “The trial wasn’t just about the killing of Britt Strand, it was the unfolding of all this school-for-spies nonsense.”
“Go on,” said Diamond. “Tell me you didn’t get a fair trial. The fact remains that you were with Britt Strand on the night she died. She’d been stringing you along, playing the Swedish au pair when in fact she’d been living in this country for years and spoke the language well enough to make her living as a journalist. She totally deceived you. She was gathering information. She’d got to your files. She had photocopies of enrollment forms and correspondence and class registers and attendance summaries and God knows what else. She was about to blow your reputation apart. I can’t think of a stronger motive for murder.”
“But I didn’t kill her.”
Diamond refused to concede anything. “You and I know that you have a history of violence to women. Your ex-girlfriend, your wife. If any of that had been admitted as evidence-”
“You knew it,” Mountjoy broke in. “It colored your perception of the case.”
“Yes, and I had another advantage over the jury,” said Diamond. “I viewed the corpse. I saw the damage you-sorry, let’s say the murderer-inflicted on her. This wasn’t what you’d call a cold-blooded killing. It was committed in anger. She was a mess, John.”
Mountjoy stared up at the sky. A small plane was passing over Bath, too far off to be on surveillance duty. His eyes returned to Diamond. “Are you refusing to look at the case again?”
“Why ask me to look at it?” said Diamond. “Surely I’m the last person to ask.”
Mountjoy was adamant. “No. You did the work. You have files on the case. Records of interviews. Lists of suspects.”
“Which suspects? There was only you.”
“You’ve made my point for me,” said Mountjoy. “You didn’t look for anyone else.”
Diamond sighed, “How long did the jury take to reach a verdict? Ten minutes, or fifteen?”
He seemed not to have heard. “If anyone can find the killer, you can.”
“So you’re not merely asking me to reverse my conclusion and prove you innocent-you expect me to pin the crime on someone else?”
“It’s the only sure way to get the verdict overturned.”
Diamond couldn’t stop himself smiling at the audacity of the man. “You’re the biggest optimist I’ve ever met. Have you thought what’s in it for me, setting out to prove that I got it all wrong in 1990?”
“You’re straight, or I wouldn’t use you,” said Mountjo
y.
Diamond noted the wording: “use,” not “ask.” There was a whopping assumption behind it. “Is there anything you can give me, any single item of fresh evidence, that would alter my opinion of four years ago?”
“No.”
Diamond spread his hands as if that settled matters.
“You’ve got to dig.” Mountjoy followed up the negative answer with passion. “How would I have found anything new, banged up in Albany? Someone killed the woman. Someone is still at liberty, laughing up his sleeve at you. Doesn’t that bug you?” When he received no answer he added, “He must have hated her unless he was a complete nut. She must have had lovers she dropped, professional rivals, people she elbowed out of a job.”
“We looked into that at the time,” Diamond told him.
“Yes, but once you had me as a suspect, did you pursue them with the same energy? The hell you did.”
For a short time the only sound was the movement of water trickling over stones. Mountjoy had offered nothing of substance to support his claim. The solitary thing in his favor was that he had gone to so much trouble to set up this bizarre meeting when common sense decrees that a man on the run lies low.
But with a young woman as hostage, he had to be humored. “Suppose I reopen the files, as you want, and still find you responsible for the murder?”
“Then you won’t be any good at your job,” said Mount-joy, his eyes widening, catching a gleam from the gray October sky.
“How long do you hope to remain at liberty? Whatever happens, you can’t expect us to suspend the search.”
“I can hold out.”
Diamond probed some more. “With the girl as prisoner? What you’re doing now-holding her against her will-is an offense.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I want action from you, Diamond. You’d better report some progress when I see you next. I have a short fuse.”
“I know that. How would I contact you?”
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