The Summons pd-3

by Peter Lovesey

  “I bet he used the same words exactly.”

  Diamond thought about this. “Let’s suppose you’re right. Wouldn’t he have told the truth when he knew he was a witness in a murder inquiry?”

  “Men are incurable liars about their sex lives.”

  “Now you’re talking like one of those feminists.”

  “Talking sense, you mean.”

  He let this pass. They were both letting things pass in the interest of the case. “There could be another explanation. He tried coming on strong with Britt and got the brush-off. It rankled. No, worse than that, it bruised his ego. He was angry, maybe angry enough to kill.”

  Julie was looking doubtful. “Would she have let him into the house?”

  “That’s why he took the roses. She’d find it difficult to slam the door in his face.”

  “That late at night?” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re police trained. She was a fun-loving Swedish girl.”

  She took a breath prior to reacting to this and then thought better of it and said, “Do you want another theory? He kept trying to chat her up and the roses finally did the trick. She went to bed with him. When it came to the action, he couldn’t perform.”

  There was a pause while Diamond assessed this new scenario. They crossed the Churchill Bridge over the Avon and got as far as the traffic lights at Midland Bridge Road before he said, “I like that. It’s better. It fits their characters.” Speaking almost to himself, he rephrased what Julie had said. “He makes one more attempt. Takes the roses. She lets him in. She’s in the mood and he can’t manage it. Kills her out of frustration. It’s the best we’ve thought of.” He sighed. “But it’s only speculation, Julie. We’ve got nothing positive on this creep, not so much as a ruddy parking offense.”

  “So how do you want to handle this?” she asked, as if that were all that remained to be said on the matter. “You might do better on your own. With me listening, he’s less likely to admit he isn’t the stud he claims to be.”

  “No, I want you there. Just back up everything I say. He’ll sing, and we’ll see if it’s the tune we want to hear. Left at the next junction.”

  They took the Locksbrook Road turning, the gateway to Bath’s trading estates and the austere rows of Victorian terraced housing that have little to do with the popular image of the city. The road merged into Brassmill Lane, past factories and warehouses. Toward the Newbridge end, beyond a caravan park, lay a stretch of open ground where a couple of goats looked up from their grazing. Beside it was a garden with a low wall.

  “There.”

  The sign over the gate in gothic lettering read:

  The Last Post

  Pet Crematorium and Memorial Garden

  A line of cars in the street outside suggested that the obsequies for Horatio were not yet over.

  “Popular horse,” Diamond commented as they got out.

  “How did they bring it here?” Julie asked, looking along the line of vehicles. “I don’t see anything large enough.”

  “Maybe they delivered it earlier.”

  Inside was a stretch of lawn patterned with flowerbeds in a herringbone formation. At this stage of the year the few surviving roses were limp and brown-stained. Small plaques mounted on posts were ranged at intervals in the soil, each bearing the name and years of birth and death of a deceased animal and sometimes a few lines of verse as well. There were plastic and metal models of cats and dogs, framed photographs faded by the weather, decaying wreaths and, here and there, fresh flowers.

  At the far end was the funeral party, at least forty, perhaps more, among them a priest in a black cassock. Most of them seemed to be young women, several carrying bunches of flowers. Marcus Martin, with strands of his red hair lifted intermittently from his bald patch by the light breeze, was to the left holding a wooden casket the size of a shoebox.

  “Small horse,” Diamond murmured to Julie.

  She gave him a glare.

  The funeral party lowered their heads as if in prayer.

  From behind Diamond’s back a voice announced in a stage whisper, “It would be quite all right to join in. It isn’t too late.”

  The speaker was a bearded man in a dark suit.

  “Are you the undertaker?” Diamond asked.

  “The owner of the gardens.”

  “Ah. Ever had such a turnout for one animal before?”

  He fingered his collar. “It is, I think, a unique occasion.”

  “Was the horse cremated here?”

  “No, in Frome. But that’s where the incinerator happens to be. It isn’t a consecrated place. The ashes were collected and brought here for disposal. Seeing that Horatio was such a well-known and popular horse, the owner thought it right that his ashes should be interred in a garden like this where his many admirers may freely visit. The gate is always open here.”

  One of Diamond’s most useful talents was his ability to sustain a serious conversation regardless of the subject. “Is this your first horse funeral?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “You generally cater for cats and dogs?”

  “That’s why we call our memorial garden The Last Post. Most cats have a scratching post somewhere and dogs have a lifelong interest in lampposts.”

  “Not to mention postmen,” said Diamond.

  This was received with a solemn nod. “We also take on the occasional rabbit. We couldn’t cremate a horse here. But there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done elsewhere. It’s just that a large animal like that entails a certain amount of trouble and expense.”

  “Normally they’d sell the carcass for cats’ meat, I suppose,” Diamond remarked. “Or to the hunt.”

  The man cleared his throat, concerned, apparently, in case Diamond’s words were carrying across the lawn to the funeral party.

  “How about burial?”

  The answer required a hand over the mouth. “We couldn’t do that here. You’d need a mechanical digger. Mind, the Queen has her favorite horses interred on the Royal estate.”

  Diamond’s attention had shifted to where the funeral was going on. He remarked to Julie, “Some of those young girls are carrying red roses.”

  The owner of the memorial garden told them, “They feel it as a personal loss, the young girls.”

  “Never considered red roses as an emblem of grief,” said Diamond, more to himself than anyone else. “No offense meant,” he picked up the conversation, “but some people would think it stretching religion too far, having funerals for animals.”

  “It’s not a funeral in the strict sense of the word, more a thanksgiving for the life of the departed one and the pleasure it gave us. If you have a pet of your own you may be sure that when the parting comes, as it must eventually, we can offer you peace of mind and a permanent memorial.”

  Julie thanked him.

  Diamond said, “You should get one of those Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.”

  The man’s eyes gleamed at the prospect.

  There were signs of progress across the lawn. Marcus Martin had lowered the casket into a hole in the ground and some of the funeral party were stooping to place their flowers in or around the grave. A camera flashed. The priest stepped back and snagged his cassock on a rose.

  Martin turned and undoubtedly spotted Diamond and Julie striding toward him, although he looked away at once and started a conversation with another mourner.

  “You don’t mind?” Diamond said, at Martin’s shoulder. “We need another bite at the cherry.”

  “I’ve nothing to add to what I told you before,” Martin responded. “And this is hardly the occasion-”

  “So we’ll take you to the car,” Diamond told him firmly.

  Uncomfortably wedged beside Martin in the backseat of the Escort, Diamond said, “We’re pushed for time. In your steamy relationship with Britt Strand, did you ever see her naked?”

  Marcus Martin was entitled to be startled by the directness of the question, but he answered
it smoothly enough. “Of course.”

  “More than once?”

  “Frequently.”

  “So she wasn’t shy about her body?”

  “Certainly not. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re obviously the man to ask about the butterfly tattoo on her left buttock.”

  The trap wasn’t oversubtle, but it worked.

  “Oh, that,” said Martin in as offhand a manner as he could manage.

  “Must have looked cute when she walked,” said Diamond. “Was it a red admiral or a peacock?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Martin said. “I know nothing about butterflies.”

  “You know nothing about Britt’s butt, full stop,” said Diamond. “There was no tattoo, my friend. I imagined it, just as you imagined your affair with the lady.”

  “Oh, but-”

  “Let’s have it straight. She turned you down, right? The wild and steamy three weeks never happened.”

  “Em…”

  “Should have realized you’re a specialist in horseshit. We could do you for making a false statement, do you know that? Better not push your luck, chum. Can we rely on anything you told us? She came to you to get some riding in, strictly with the horses. Is that right?”

  Diamond was fizzing. Nothing could equal the satisfaction of snaring a liar. To have caught the glib, golden-tongued Marcus Martin was a particular pleasure.

  Martin leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to appear calm. “Broadly.”

  “You made a play for her and she wasn’t having any?”

  “You policemen make things sound so crude.”

  “Yet according to previous statements you visited the house in Larkhall on more than one occasion.”

  “That was true,” he insisted, opening his eyes and sitting forward. “She had no transport. I used to drive her back in my Range Rover.”

  “Hope springs eternal. But she gave you the frost each time, did she? Afternoon tea in the Canary was part of the campaign, was it not?”

  Martin’s voice was a semitone higher. “No, it was quite unplanned, in fact. She wanted to do some shopping that afternoon, so I parked the car in town and joined her for tea.”

  “That was when you saw G.B. and got nervous of the company she kept, or so you claimed.”

  “I was speaking the truth. I still nourished hopes of, er…”

  “Getting inside her joddies?”

  “Joddies?”

  “Jodhpurs.”

  “I suppose that sums it up, if vulgarly.”

  Diamond picked up on the part of the answer that mattered. “You didn’t give up? You didn’t take no for an answer?”

  “Who does?” said Martin, seizing the opportunity to make a general point. “They all say no at the beginning.”

  “And mean ‘yes’?” said Diamond. “Better watch what you say, my friend. DI Hargreaves here is a rampant feminist.”

  Julie, motionless in the front seat, made no comment, but the look she was giving both of them in the driving mirror made her disapproval clear.

  “You persisted,” Diamond continued with his demolition of Marcus Martin. “You couldn’t believe she’d turned down an offer from you, the international show jumper, adored by all those little girls who muck out the stables. Are you sure you never bought her flowers? Have a care. We’ve caught you out in one lie already.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “A bunch of roses would be more your style than some fellows’. We checked every florist for miles around. Care to reconsider?”

  “I didn’t buy her flowers of any sort, ever.” Martin’s voice was taut, under strain. There could be no question that he knew the significance of what was being asked, but was he lying?

  “When was the last occasion you saw her?”

  “I’ve told you this before.”

  “And I’m giving you this chance to tell it as it really happened.”

  Martin shook his head wearily. “The weekend before she was killed I traveled to Brussels with the national show-jumping team. On, I think, the Thursday before that she came out for an afternoon at the jumps. She said it would be her last opportunity, as she’d recently enrolled on a college course that would take up all her time. I offered to drive her back to Bath as usual. She said she’d arranged a taxi. The message was loud and clear. We didn’t even shake hands at the end of the session.”

  “When did you return from Brussels?”

  “The Sunday evening, late.”

  “And you didn’t see Britt again?”

  “No.”

  “Nor have any contact?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Remind me of your movements on Thursday, the eighteenth of October, 1990, the last evening of Britt Strand’s life.”

  “I spent the evening quietly with a friend.”

  “The young woman who died shortly after of meningitis?”

  “That’s correct. Had she lived-”

  “We wouldn’t be having this conversation, sir. You’d have a cast-iron alibi.” Diamond was at his combative best. The danger, he knew, was that he could dominate too much and shock his adversary into quiescence. “Your statement of four years ago had you in the flat in Walcot Street on the crucial evening with this young woman. What was her name?”

  “Kelly McClure.”

  “Could anyone else vouch for this?”

  “I told you at the time. No.”

  “Pity. I’m doing my best for you. You gave me some indispensable information that proved to be correct and the least I can do is help you out.”

  “What information was that?” Martin asked, suspicious of this change of tactics.

  “Things Britt confided, about her landlord pestering her, giving her presents and so forth. It was true. I verified it. You must have been a good listener for Britt to have talked so frankly.”

  Martin didn’t accept the compliment. “It was only her way of telling me to keep off. She was being uncomplimentary about men in general when she said it.”

  “You also put us on to another man in her life: G.B., the crusty.”

  “He wasn’t a serious boyfriend,” said Martin. “She was using him.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Couldn’t have made it plainer.” He was more willing to talk now the spotlight had moved elsewhere. “She was a bloody good journalist doing the professional thing, buttering up a contact. She was writing this article about the crusties in Bath.”

  “I know. You’re sure she wasn’t playing the same game with you?”

  He frowned. “What game?”

  Diamond unfolded a theory that he had not discussed with Julie, or anyone, for the very good reason that it had only just occurred to him. “You just said it: buttering up a contact.”

  “What could I tell her?”

  “You tell me, Mr. Martin. Show jumping is an upper-crust sport that I’m sure has a place in the glossy magazines she wrote for. She was a good rider herself, so she probably followed the careers of international riders like yourself. No professional sport is without its scandals and you’re well placed to tell all.”

  Martin sounded skeptical. “Oh, yes?”

  Dredging deep-because he was ignorant about the horse world-Diamond said, “The doping of horses, for instance. What’s that painkilling drug they give them-bute, is it called?”

  “You’re way behind the times.” Martin scathingly dismissed the suggestion.

  Unperturbed, Diamond said, “But what sells magazines- the sort she wrote for-is human interest, never mind our four-legged friends. People-trading. Present company excepted, the things people are willing to do to make it big in show jumping or eventing. I bet you can tell some tales.”

  “If I did,” said he, “I’d be out. Do you think I’d chuck in my career?”

  “If you did, you’d have a motive for murder.”

  “What?”

  “You give her the dirt, regret it later, go back and silence her.”

  “No.
” Martin hammered the seat in front with his fist. “I’ve told you the truth. Britt wasn’t interested in me or my career. She simply came to my place to ride. I fancied her, drove her home a few times, but she left me in no doubt that she wanted to be left alone. Is that too difficult for you to grasp?”

  Outside, the daylight had gone. Dusk is a nonevent on some October evenings. All the other cars had left except a Range Rover that must have belonged to Martin. And still nothing of substance had emerged from this interview. Stubbornly Diamond began casting the net for one more trawl.

  “All right, Mr. Martin. I’m accepting what you’ve told me. You didn’t make love to her. You didn’t give her material for a story. You didn’t kill her.” He let that sink in before saying, “You’re still a witness, and you could be a crucial one. You spoke to her several times in the last month of her life. You’ve told me about other men she mentioned-Billington and G.B. Was there anyone else?”

  Martin thought a moment said, “No.”

  Diamond continued to probe. “I asked you once before if she ever mentioned John Mountjoy.”

  “I didn’t know of his existence until I heard he was arrested.”

  “Right. Did she speak of anyone else indirectly, without speaking his name, any other man she was seeing?”

  “No.”

  “Someone, perhaps, who was watching her, someone she didn’t even know? Did you get the impression that she knew she was under threat?”

  “No. Quite the contrary. She had this air of confidence.”

  “As if she was in control of her life?”

  “Yes. Well…” He stopped.

  At Martin’s side in the darkness, Peter Diamond waited.

  “She did once confide that she-how did she express it?-that she didn’t want to be under an obligation to anyone. I think I offered to forget the fee she owed me for the riding. She insisted on paying. She said once a friend had helped her out at a difficult time. She said something about acts of kindness putting the recipient under an obligation.”

  “Did she tell you the name?”

  “No.”

  “A man?”

  “Yes, I got that impression.”

  “And he was troubling her?”

  Martin shook his head. “She didn’t put it like that. I’m trying to remember what she did say. The sense I got was that she’d been through some major crisis a couple of years back.”