“You won’t. I’ll find you.” He released the kickstand, turned the bike and wheeled it closer to Diamond. “I lived in Bath for longer than you, my friend. I know the backstreets and the byways. No one is going to find Miss Cute-Arse before you deliver.” He leaned down and picked up the spare helmet. “Get weaving.”
He kicked the engine into life, replaced his helmet and zoomed away toward Bath.
Chapter Seven
Not one of the top brass at Manvers Street showed any gratitude.
“Didn’t you find out anything about my daughter?” Tott asked, making it obvious that he saw no further need to grovel for Diamond’s cooperation. He’d snatched a few hours’ sleep, and was quite his old, carping self. “I thought that was the point of this exercise.”
Diamond answered, “I thought the object was to find out Mountjoy’s demands.”
Farr-Jones was quick to follow that with, “And I don’t care for them at all.” He spoke as if Diamond himself had framed the despised demands. “The fellow was justly convicted. We can’t reverse the verdict just because he has an aversion to prison.”
Commander Warrilow, the big cheese from Hampshire, tossed in his two cents’ worth. “We missed a golden opportunity. Diamond has told us nothing except that Johnny Mount-joy is now in possession of a motorbike.”
“And all the kit,” contributed John Wigfull from the far end of the room, not missing a chance to demonstrate his power of observation. “Where would he have got the kit?”
Farr-Jones snapped back, “If he can get out of Albany, he’s perfectly capable of nicking a bike and leathers.”
Little Hitlers, every one, Diamond thought. How does anything ever get decided these days? Maybe on the orders of a bigger Hitler, like me.
Warrilow continued his sniping. “If the press get wind of this, they’ll have a field day. He delivers himself to us on a plate and we let him go.”
The cliches of despair continued to rain down. No glimmer penetrated the gloom. This suited Diamond. In his long trek back from the ford to the Lansdown Road (where he had thumbed a lift from a student-a nice reversal) he had decided on a strategy. He knew the psychology of police meetings. Farr-Jones and his henchmen had to eat dust for a time. They had to be thoroughly demoralized-or they would never agree to his terms. So he offered nothing yet.
Presently Warrilow tried striking a more positive note by outlining his plans for the recapture, and it was routine stuff: roadside checks of cars, a poster campaign, searches of unoccupied buildings and outlying farms. He complained that he needed more men for the operation than Avon and Somerset were willing to provide and he wanted better media coverage.
They wrangled tediously over the dilemma posed by the embargo on the news of the kidnapping. Was it enough to inform the public only that Mountjoy had been sighted in the area and that the recapture operation was concentrated there? Warrilow wanted the embargo lifted immediately. He thought Samantha’s best hope-not to say his own-was full publicity. Farr-Jones and Tott insisted that to release news of the kidnap could hinder the delicate process of negotiating a release. They stressed Mountjoy’s record of violence to women. They didn’t want this kidnap ending in tragedy through some precipitate action by the media.
“How do you expect to make progress?” Warrilow demanded in a bitter outburst. “You talk about negotiating, but all we have are these paranoid demands for his case to be reexamined. You don’t seriously expect to humor the man by reopening the files? What’s the point if the case was cut-and-dried?”
“We’re not idiots,” Farr-Jones rebuked him. “The obvious way to deal with this fellow is play him along, let him believe we’re working on it.”
“To what purpose?”
“To involve him in the process, set up more meetings, win his cooperation.”
“And…?”
“Ultimately track him to his hideaway.”
“Which we could have done this morning.”
“With a helicopter?” said Farr-Jones, twitching in annoyance. “No, this requires subtlety, Mr. Warrilow, and it’s obvious that Mr. Diamond has to be given a role. Mountjoy trusts him apparently.”
So the focus shifted. Warrilow stared out of the window as if he no longer expected any sanity inside the room, and all other eyes were on Diamond, who in his own way looked just as disenchanted.
Farr-Jones put a hand to his neatly groomed hair as if he needed to check that it was still immaculate. He hadn’t dealt with Diamond before, and he must have been warned of his prickly personality. “It’s an intrusion on your time,” he ventured. “Inconvenient, no doubt.”
Diamond played the Buddha.
“We can’t insist that you lend a hand. We’ll be in trouble if you don’t, since Mountjoy appears to believe that you’re still on the strength, and the only cop he can trust.” Farr-Jones paused to give an ingratiating smile. His hands were lightly clasped, eyebrows arched. “What do you say?”
“I’d like to make a phone call.”
The mildest of requests can sound like threats when spoken by men of hard reputations. Farr-Jones stiffened his back.
“To my wife.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I will-after I’ve spoken to my wife.” Diamond nodded civilly and left the room.
Steph would be back about now from a morning’s shopping. After lunch she would be leaving for the Oxfam shop, so this was the ideal time to catch her at home.
He used the wall phone downstairs. “Looks as if I could be here a few days,” he told her after apologizing for not having reached her before. “Can you cope?”
“More to the point, can you?” said Steph, who never nagged, but regularly spoiled the image Diamond had of himself. “You didn’t pack an overnight bag.”
“I’ll buy myself a toothbrush.”
“And a strong aftershave, I suggest, if you’re not proposing to wash your shirt overnight. What have they talked you into?”
“Something came up from the old days and they can’t seem to handle it themselves.”
“Unfinished business?”
“I thought it was finished. Someone has another opinion.”
“If you remember, you weren’t going to have any more to do with them.”
“The ’someone’ isn’t a copper. Can’t go into details, my love.”
“No need. It’s Mountjoy you’re talking about, isn’t it? That college principal who knifed a woman journalist. I went through the papers while I was waiting here this morning for a call that didn’t come. Peter, just remember you’re a civilian now. It’s their job to catch him.”
“I’ll remember.”
There was a pause. Then she asked, “Aren’t you going to tell me to keep all the doors and windows locked and sleep with a police whistle under my pillow?”
“He won’t be coming your way.”
“So I can invite strange men home in perfect confidence, can I?”
Stephanie knew how to pierce his thick skin every time.
“What?”
“What else can a lady do when the prize is snatched away? You did leave me rather suddenly, if you remember.”
“I won’t be long.”
She gave an ironic laugh. “Where are you staying?”
He was glad she asked. He hadn’t thought until now. “The Francis.”
“And I was about to say, ‘Take care.’ “
When he returned to the meeting, it was like the star performer making an entrance. Such conversation as there was ceased abruptly. “I’d like to outline my terms,” he said, taking the chair opposite Farr-Jones and leaning forward over clasped hands. He’d never been in the position of dictating to a Chief Constable and he relished it. “I’m prepared to remain here until Miss Tott is released.”
“Good man,” purred Farr-Jones. “I knew we could rely upon you.”
“On the following conditions.” His voice overrode the Chief Constable’s. “First, I want access to the files on the
Britt Strand murder.”
Alarmed looks were exchanged between Farr-Jones, Tott and Wigfull. Warrilow rolled his eyes upward.
“You’re not serious?” said Farr-Jones. “You told us yourself that the man was guilty as hell.”
“If I’m to have intelligent contact with him, I have to be up with the case.”
There was some shifting in the chair at the far end of the table. “I don’t know that I can sanction this. You’re not a member of the police any longer.”
“That’s rich considering what you asked me to do this morning. And since I have no other duties while I’m stuck in Bath, how am I going to spend my time-sitting over coffee in Sally Lunn’s?”
This was provocative stuff, even allowing that he no longer needed to touch his forelock to anybody in the room.
Farr-Jones, pink-faced, glanced down as if suddenly aware that his fly was unzipped. “Very well. If it becomes necessary to inspect the files, you shall.”
“No ‘ifs,’ Chief Constable. This afternoon,” insisted Diamond. “I need to bone up on them today. Which leads me to condition number two. I require an assistant.”
“An assistant? You mean someone to work with? You can work closely with John. You did before.”
Diamond avoided eye contact with the career man Wigfull. “The officer I have in mind is DI Hargreaves.”
“A woman?” piped up the Chief Constable, in serious danger of flouting the Sex Discrimination Act. “Is there a reason?”
“She’s my choice.”
“But-”
“Nothing personal, but Chief Inspector Wigfull is part of the command structure now. I want full authority to act independently if necessary.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m not just going through the motions. If I find something of interest in the files, I want the freedom to follow it up.”
“You’re making this very difficult.”
“I didn’t ask to come in the first place.”
Farr-Jones turned to Tott, and a short, murmured consultation took place. It was supposed to be inaudible to Diamond, but he knew it was about damage limitation. If they could find a way of humoring him without letting him interfere with the policing, they would agree to his terms.
“Very well,” Farr-Jones said finally. “We’ll assign Inspector Hargreaves to you. And you shall have an office of your own.”
Away from the center of operations, no doubt. A cell, in effect. He didn’t reject the offer. There were compensations in being tucked away.
“And a car.”
“If you need to be driven anywhere, you can mention it downstairs.”
“I mean a car for my exclusive use.”
A martyred look spread over the Chief Constable’s features. “Very well. Does that meet all your requirements?”
“Not entirely. I’d like to have this clear, my position in the hierarchy. I answer to you personally, Chief Constable, no one else.”
“We’re not a monolithic organization, Mr. Diamond. I delegate much of my authority to others. Mr. Tott-”
“Mr. Tott is personally involved.”
“We know that.”
“It’s better to have this sorted now than later,” Diamond insisted. “Decisions may need to be taken rapidly. I’m not asking to take over the entire operation.”
Warrilow murmured, “Thank God for that.”
“What exactly are you proposing?” Farr-Jones asked tartly, signaling that his tolerance was almost at an end. “We need to coordinate any action we take.”
“I’m looking ahead. If there’s anything in the Britt Strand file that warrants fresh investigation, I want the freedom to follow it up without hindrance.”
Farr-Jones made a hissing sound by sucking in breath rather than exhaling. “Dangerous.”
“I know the law. I won’t masquerade as a police officer. When I need authority I’ll have DI Hargreaves.”
Farr-Jones was silent.
Diamond pushed his demands to the limit. “If you want my cooperation, there isn’t anything to decide.”
“Very well. Subject to, em… Subject to-”
“And finally I shall need overnight accommodation.”
“That should be no problem,” Farr-Jones said in some relief, probably thinking that a section house would be available.
“At the Francis Hotel.”
“Is there a reason?”
“I like it there.”
When Julie Hargreaves reported to Diamond in his new office on the first floor she was in a black sweater and white jeans. Her blond hair was trimmed crisply at the back and sides, the choice of a young woman confident in her femininity. “Shall I see if I can find a couple of chairs from somewhere?” she offered.
“Good idea.”
Diamond’s center of operations was a storeroom. Not a converted storeroom; no attempt had been made to convert it. Hundreds of reams of paper and boxes of envelopes lined the walls on wooden stacks. A table and a filing cabinet had been pushed just inside the door.
“I’m not sure why I was chosen,” Julie said when she had returned with two stacking chairs and helped shift the furniture into position. “I know very little about the case.”
“You’ve answered your question. It needs a fresh mind. I could give you my version and it would be partisan. I’d like you to read the files yourself and let me have your opinion.”
“On whether the case was watertight?”
“Nothing ever is. Look for the holes, Julie. I’ll see you about three o’clock.”
He went shopping in Stall Street: two shirts, a pack of three pairs of pants, said to be XL size, and things for washing and shaving. He now regretted failing to mention expenses to Farr-Jones. After ambling to Queen Square he was on the point of claiming his room at the Francis when he thought of the bookshop only fifty yards away in Chapel Row. It didn’t disappoint. He came out with a rarity for his bedtime reading: a volume he didn’t know, published in 1947 and entitled Horwell of the Yard. Already he owned Cherrill of the Yard, Cornish of the Yard and Fabian ofthe Yard -not because he was a collector, but out of his hankering for the great days when the top detectives had some clout.
Having checked in and washed at the hotel, he renewed his acquaintance with the Roman Bar. A pint of Usher’s, the local brew, and then duty called.
“How is it, Julie?”
“Difficult, Mr. Diamond.”
“Difficult because you can’t find anything, or difficult because you can and you don’t know if I can take it?”
She sidestepped. “On the face of it, this is a straightforward case. Mountjoy had his life’s savings invested in this private college in Gay Street.”
“He chose a prime site,” Diamond commented as he tried his weight gingerly on the plastic stacking chair. “A listed Georgian building in the center of Bath. Which may help to explain why he was on the fiddle, enrolling students who just wanted a piece of paper for their embassy.”
She gave a nod. “According to this, at the time of his arrest, there were almost two hundred enrolled full time and paying fees of three grand a year, when the place could only hold eighty at a pinch.”
“Then enter a young Swedish lady with a phrase book in her hand and a juicy expose in prospect.”
Julie smoothly slotted Britt Strand into her narrative. “She signed on for part-time English language classes claiming to be an au pair. Mountjoy enrolled her.”
“He was only too pleased,” Diamond cut in again. “After all, he needed a core of genuine students. Everything I learned about Britt suggested that she was highly intelligent and very professional. For a foreign girl to be working as a freelance in Bath and supplying the international press with major stories is impressive.”
“They don’t have to work out of London these days. The technology makes it so easy.” Julie’s eyes scanned the sheet in front of her. “She had her contacts in the right places. Paris Match, Oggi, Stern.”
“Plenty of contacts h
ere, too. And I doubt if most of them knew they were being used. She was a charmer, able to mix easily with all sorts. You’ve got it there in the statements. To one boyfriend she was a rock chick in leather and net tights; another guy took her for one of the Badminton set, squeezing in dates between three-day events and point-to-points; and to her college friends she was the hard-up au pair fitting in her studies with doing the chores for a mythical English family.”
Julie ventured a comment in support of the dead woman. “We all show different sides of ourselves to the sets of people we mix with.”
Diamond wasn’t having it. “Britt Strand was doing much more than that. This was deception, professional deception, and that’s dangerous. Fatal, in her case.”
“Maybe.”
He said sharply, “Do you have another explanation?”
“Wouldn’t you expect it from a fresh mind?”
He glared at her briefly, recognized his own phrase and softened his expression. “Sorry. You’re telling the story. Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, as if it would make any difference.
Julie picked up the thread again. “She succeeded in convincing everybody she was a foreigner having trouble with her vocabulary.”
“When in fact she was as fluent as you or me,” said he, failing to see any irony in regard to Julie’s frustrated attempts to be fluent.
Doggedly she went on, “The staff believed her and so did the other students. But secretly she was getting the evidence she wanted for her story. She made a friend of the secretary, so she was able to be seen in the office without creating suspicion. We know she photocopied masses of documents because they were found after her death in the locked filing cabinet in her flat. She also chatted up Mountjoy, strung him along and let him think she fancied him-when all she wanted was to soften him up and get incriminating statements.”
As a recapitulation of events Diamond had immersed himself in at the time, all this couldn’t be faulted-but he didn’t hand out bouquets. He said brusquely, “Let’s get to the evening of the murder.”
“Well, he invited her out for a meal.”
“The first time they’d been out together.”
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