Diamond Dust

28

The photocopier at Fulham nick must have been red-hot over the weekend. McGarvie was now in possession of a thick stack of paper: Diamond's entire record of cases with the Met. Three of the most experienced officers in the incident room had combed each page for the crucial mentions of DC Weather's name among the detectives involved.

'One stands out,' McGarvie informed Diamond when he turned up on Monday. 'This Florida. Protection racketeer. A hard man.'

'Can't disagree with that'

'Jacob Blaize headed, right?'

Diamond nodded.

'With you as second in command?'

'Sidekick.'

'And Weather was a junior officer on the team, mainly on surveillance duties, but I discovered he also sat in on several interviews Blaize did with Florida.'

Tell me something new, Diamond thought.

McGarvie was showing signs of excitement. 'And we can assume Weather spent time alone with Florida when Blaize left the room, as he must have.'

'Frequently,' Diamond confirmed.

'You know that for sure?'

'Blaizy was always being caught short.'

The eyes widened, revealing more than anyone would wish to see of the engorged blood vessels. 'Was he, by God? That's something I didn't get from the files.'

'Well, you wouldn't.'

'It meant interruptions, did it?' He was getting as hyper as when he had dug up the gun in the garden.

'Every ten to fifteen minutes.'

'Sounds like prostate trouble.'

'He was on a waiting list.'

Diamond was amused to see McGarvie bring his palms together and rub them as if he was using the drying machine in the gents: the association of ideas. 'You see what this means? This was before we had videotaping. An old hand like Florida would have made use of those breaks. He'd get to work on the young officer sitting across the table. He'd try intimidation.'

'For what? A smoke?' It was hardly enough to justify the killing of Patsy Weather, Diamond was implying, and McGarvie needed to do better.

But he was way ahead, compounding the plot. 'No, he'd twist the facts of the case to make it seem he was being set up by you and Blaize. He'd shake the young man's confidence, doing his damnedest to turn him, you see. He'd think he'd got him as an ally, someone who could testify later that the interview had been improper. When he didn't do it by persuasion, he'd use threats -threats he really meant to carry out. He saw enough of Weather to remember him long after. When a man like Florida has festered in jail for twelve years-'

'Seven,' Diamond said. 'He was out after seven.'

'More than enough to turn his brain.'

'His brain didn't need turning. He hated the police. I can see -just about – that he might have wanted revenge on Blaizy and me. We nailed him. But Stormy Weather? I don't think so. He was small beer.'

McGarvie was unshakeable. 'You and I don't know what passed between them. Maybe Weather was induced to make a promise he never kept. Maybe Florida thought he could rely on Weather to save his skin.'

Maybe… Maybe… This was futile speculation, and both knew it. Nothing would be certain unless Stormy admitted he'd played along, or Florida was induced to tell all. No matter; for the present it suited Diamond if Florida was the prime suspect, leaving him free to pursue Wayne Beach. Just to get a measure of McGarvie's resolve, he asked, 'Have you given up on Dixon-Bligh, then?'

'No trace. He's holed up somewhere. Arrears of rent. The Met are working on it.' He made it sound like their problem.

Joe Florida was firmly in the frame.

Stormy Weather arrived at Bristol Temple Meads just after eleven, and Diamond met him on the platform and remembered to call him Dave. They drove directly to Sion Hill, an elegant, curving street of eighteenth-century houses built on an incline above the Gorge.

'Bit of a change from Latchmere Road,' Stormy remarked when they were parked opposite a gracious four-storey terrace with ironwork balconies, tall shutters and striped awnings.

'Envious?'

He eyed the building approvingly. 'It isn't bad for a second home. Does he own all of it?'

'That's what I heard from my snout.'

'He must have salted some money away between his prison terms.'

'More than you and I ever earned, Dave.'

They lapsed into silence, brooding on a theme familiar to policemen: the inequity between the law-enforcers and the law-breakers. 'Personally,' Stormy said after some time, 'I wouldn't choose to live in Bristol. The traffic is a pain. Always was.'

'Sounds like the voice of experience.'

'Does it? I'm only an occasional visitor.'

'Best way.'

'As a matter of fact,' Stormy said, 'I'm interested in Brunei.'

Diamond had to think before cottoning on that Stormy was speaking of the Victorian engineer. 'Top hat and big cigar?'

A nod. 'One of my heroes. I do some model-making as a hobby, and his constructions are quite an inspiration. I made an SS Great Britain and a Suspension Bridge.'

'From kits, you mean?'

'God, no. That's schoolboy stuff. I go there and take photos and draw up plans and build the things from my own materials.'

Weird, the things some policemen do with their spare time, Diamond thought. Keith Halliwell bred pigeons for racing and John Wigfull had a telescope and was supposed to use it to study the stars.

Stormy went on, 'So I've made quite a number of research trips, you could say. Getting here is the hardest part.'

'Ah, the one-way system is our secret weapon in the war against crime. You'd find it easier escaping from a Dunkirk beach than Bristol. If you want to visit the Brunei sites you're better off using the railway he built and walking the rest.'

Stormy agreed with that. He glanced at the house again.

'What do we do now? Go in?'

'Let's watch for the time being,' Diamond said. 'The place is probably stiff with shooters.'

'Catch him off the premises? We've tried that once.'

'This time I expect a result. So you're an admirer of old Issy Brunei?' he said, pleased to have found a topic unconnected with the tragedies in their lives. 'Have you been to Bath?'

'Not since I was a kid.'

'You ought to come. He changed the look of the city when the railway came through. The old GWR station is one of his buildings and so is the viaduct behind, but he also cut through Sydney Gardens, one of those parks the Victorians liked to strut around in their finery, and it was a neat job.'

'Yes, I'd like to see that.'

'You wouldn't.'

Stormy blinked and frowned. He may also have blushed, but on his blotchy skin it was impossible to tell. 'What do you mean? I know what I like.'

'You wouldn't see it – that's what I mean – unless you went right up to it. The point is that the railway is hidden from view. Really clever.'

The first person to emerge from the house, after about ten minutes, was in a red leather jacket and skirt with matching boots and a hat with a large rim that flopped. She set off down the hill with a slinky walk as if she knew her movement was being appreciated.

'Now I am envious,' Stormy said.

Diamond gave him a look. The remark was lightly made, the automatic reaction to a pretty woman, but to his still wounded mind it didn't come well from a recently bereaved man. He let it pass.

'I wonder if she comes with the house,' Stormy added, oblivious of Diamond's thinking.

'Visitor, I expect.'

'That's not the vibes I got.'

'You could be right. Maybe he sent her to do the shopping.'

'She doesn't look to me as if she's on her way to Tesco's.'

They waited ten minutes more.

'I reckon she's his bird,' Stormy insisted.

'Daughter, more like,' Diamond said.

'He's not that old, surely?'

'You've got to remember Fulham was fifteen years ago, Dave. Hello, we've got action.'

A dark green Range Rover had pulled up outside the house and a man in combat trousers and a khaki vest got out. He had the look of a body-builder, with heavily tattooed arms.

'That isn't Beach, is it?' Stormy said.

'Not the way I remember him,' Diamond said. 'I remember a puny guy.'

The muscleman pressed the doorbell.

'Just a caller, then.'

'Or a customer.'

'What – come to buy a gun?'

'Keep your eyes on the door, Dave. Let's see who opens it.'

Unfortunately, nobody did. The caller tried the bell twice more, looked at his watch, stood back and looked up to the balcony, and then gave up, returned to his car and drove off.

'We've wasted our time again,' Stormy said.

'No, look. Coming round the corner.'

The woman in the floppy hat and red leather had started up the hill towards the terrace, this time carrying a folded magazine.

Diamond watched, and something made him sure he'd seen her before. He couldn't tell the colour of her hair under the hat, but the face was one he knew. She wasn't Janie Forsyth, the she-cat who had attacked him, and she wasn't Danny Carpenter's wife, Celia. He needed a closer look.

Without a word to Stormy, he opened the door of the car and stepped across the street and stood outside the house.

Ten yards from him, the woman hesitated. Diamond stared, frowned and stared harder. It required a great leap of the imagination to tell that this lady in red leather was not, after all, a lady.

'Wayne?'

Wayne, if it was he, turned and started running back down the hill. Diamond pursued. His overweight, lumbering movement was about as ineffectual as his quarry's, hampered by high heels. But he kept running and managed to reach out and get a hand on a leather sleeve at the street corner and bring the chase to a skidding halt. He swung the person around and when they were face to face it was obvious he was right. This was not, after all, a woman. This was a skilfully made-up, smartly groomed, cross-dressed Wayne Beach. Prison life generally leaves its mark on an ex-con, but the result, in this case, had been unusual.

'How long have you been out, Wayne?'

The face tautened, making a mockery of the lipstick and foundation. 'What do you want? Who are you? I know you, don't I?' The voice also was at odds with the get-up, all too guttural.

Diamond showed his warrant card and reminded Beach who he was and how they'd met.

'You look different. You've changed,' Beach said.

'That's rich. What's all this nonsense, flouncing about in skirts?'

'It's a free country. I can dress how I want.'

'Is it a disguise, or what?'

'These are the clothes I choose to wear now. I don't need to justify them to you or anyone else.'

'Have you had the operation?'

'No, but I might.'

'What are you doing here in Bristol?'

'Visiting.'

'Come off it, Wayne. You live here. The house with the yellow door. Are you going to invite us in?'

'Us?' Beach looked across the street and saw Stormy Weather close the car door and step towards them. 'Beetroot face, as well? I know him. Once seen, never forgotten. What's going on?'

'Questions, that's all, if you play it right.'

'I did my time. You've got no right to persecute me.'

Stormy came over and took stock with a hyperthyroid stare. He shook his head and said, 'Well, I'll be buggered.'

'I wouldn't bank on it,' Diamond said. 'However, Wayne is going to invite us into his house for a coffee and answer our questions.'

'I don't have to,' Wayne said.

'I don't have to go to a magistrate for a warrant, but I will if I'm pressed.'

The bluff worked. Wayne felt in his shoulder-bag for a key and in so doing gave Diamond enough of a glimpse of the magazine he was holding to show it was the Shooting Times. They entered a hall with a crimson carpet and striped Regency wallpaper.

'Nice pad.'

'Nicer than Latchmere Road,' Stormy said.

Wayne turned. 'Listen, I only pick up the social to keep my probation officer happy.'

'Rest easy, Wayne. We're not here about your fraudulent claims.'

Beach removed the hat and hung it on a peg. He wasn't wearing a wig. He'd grown his own brown hair to a thickness any woman would have envied and had it clipped sheer at the back, twenties-style. In the kitchen – a gleaming place of natural wood and silvery appliances -he filled the kettle. They all sat on stools.

'What do you want?'

'You were released from the Scrubs when?' Diamond asked.

'Christmas. Just before.'

'So when did you move down here?'

'Not long after.'

'Not good enough,' Stormy said. 'We're talking dates, Wayne. You know the day you moved in.'

Beach gave a sigh and a toss of the head, playing the harassed female to perfection. He unhooked a spiral diary from the wall and flicked through the months. 'February the fifth.'

'Let's see that.' Diamond was reviewing his mental picture of that February morning in Royal Victoria Park. What if Steph had been approached by someone she supposed was a woman? Might that have been why her killer got so close before firing the shots? And why Wayne Beach got away without being noticed?

He handed the diary across. Diamond studied it. Each day was a narrow strip where appointments could be written in. February the fifth had the pencilled entry 'Bristol. Keys from Homefinders 11.30.' Various other appointments were filled in throughout the month, some indicated by initial letters. He looked at Tuesday the twenty-third, the day of the murder, and it was blank.

'What about this day here?'

Beach came over to look and treated Diamond to a whiff of some perfume heavy with musk. 'It's blank.'

'Does that mean you had a free day, or what?'

'No. If you look, you'll see each Tuesday is blank. I keep Tuesdays clear.'

Diamond checked the rest of the diary and saw that this was so. 'Why?'

'They're not really clear. Every Tuesday is spoken for. That's when I go to London to see Mr Dawkins.'

'Who's he?'

'My probation officer.'

'Ah.' The sound came from Diamond as if he'd taken a low punch, and that was how he felt. 'And you definitely went to London on the twenty-third?'

'I had to. Dawkins thinks I'm living in Clapham.'

'What train do you get?'

'The seven-twenty. I check in at his office at ten-thirty.'

This was beginning to look like a solid alibi. 'I'll check with him myself.'

'You wouldn't let on?' Wayne said in horror.

'What – that you're living the life of Riley here in Bristol flogging guns to any lunatic with cash in hand? Of course I'm going to let on. I'm a copper, Wayne, not your favourite uncle.'

In the act of pouring the coffee, Beach spilt some over his immaculate work surface. 'Who said anything about guns?'

'Half the criminal fraternity of Bristol. You're well known. It's a change from shooting taxi drivers in the leg. Two sugars, please.'

'Do I look like a gun dealer?'

'In your skirt and lipstick? At the risk of being misunderstood, I'd say you've got a very good front. I suppose the weapons are shipped in, up the Channel.'

'You're talking through your arse.'

'Can we look in your basement?'

Beach sighed, and dropped the pretence. 'What exactly do you want?'

'I want you to look at that calendar and tell me who bought automatic handguns in the month of February.'

'I wasn't dealing then. Honest to God. I'd only just moved in. You can't start a business from nothing.'

Diamond reached for the calendar again. 'There are letters here I recognise. DC on the twelfth, and again on the fifteenth. Would that be Danny Carpenter?'

Wayne passed a hand nervously through the shingled hair. 'Listen, you don't move into someone else's manor without a by-your-leave. I had to square it with the local chiefs, or I wouldn't last five minutes. On the days you're talking about, I wasn't dealing. I was making arrangements.'

'Dressed like this?'

He glared. 'I might be different, but I'm not stupid.'

'What brought you to Bristol?'

'I have to make a living. London was too hot to start up again. This is the next best.'

'Was there talk of a hitman coming to Bristol or Bath towards the end of February?'

'I wouldn't know. People didn't talk to me then. I was the new kid on the block. What's all this about?'

'You didn't hear? Don't you read the papers?'

Beach shook his head. 'Boring.'

'Just your gun magazines, eh?'

'That's my job.'

Diamond didn't enlighten him about the shootings. He could see nothing of use emerging. The disappointing conclusion was that they'd wasted their time on Wayne Beach. 'We're leaving now,' he said abruptly. 'You've got about twenty minutes before Bristol Police come here with an armed protection unit and knock down the door.'

'Did you believe him?' Stormy asked.

'Did you?'

'I did, oddly enough.'

'Me, too. If he'd written something in against the day Steph was shot, I'd have been suspicious. He could have done it any time. The fact that it was left blank is more convincing. I'll still check with the probation officer.'

'And will you turn him in?'

'Will I? Dave, anyone who trades in guns in scum. Whoever shot my wife and yours acquired their weapon from some flake just like him.'

He drove Stormy back to Bath, not to visit the Brunei sites, but to show him the place where Steph was killed. They parked on Royal Avenue, the road that bisected the lawns below the Crescent. Already some of the foliage had a reddish tinge and the ground under the horse chestnuts was littered with husks split by small boys in the quest for the new season's conkers. They crossed the dew-damp grass to where the body was found. He picked an empty crisp packet off the grass and crushed it in his hand.

'What's the park called?' Stormy asked.

'The Victoria. The Royal Victoria to give it its full name. This part is the Crescent Gardens.' He pointed out the advantages to the killer, the screen of bushes hiding the car park, the bandstand, the large stone vases. 'He must have waited unseen while she walked along the path and then crossed the lawn. He may not even have spoken to her.'

'And then he fired the shots and left her?'

A nod from Diamond.

'Didn't try and move her?'

Stormy wasn't being ghoulish, asking these questions. He was airing theories, and Diamond was willing to discuss them.

'Too risky. I think it was in his plan to leave her to be found.'

'Yet that wasn't the m.o. in Patsy's case.'

'I know, Dave, and I have my view on that. It's all supposition, but I think it makes sense. He covered his tracks the second time. He chose an even more secluded place to meet your wife. It could have been that little park above the railway embankment or somewhere miles away. The crucial thing is he tricked her into going to the place, the same as he'd tricked Steph.'

'How?'

'Don't know. A phone call most likely. Something he knew would bring them out. The location was written in Steph's diary, so she knew where she was headed. She was easily swayed by any appeal to her good nature – some old friend in trouble. You name it.'

'Patsy, too,' Stormy said. 'She'd drop everything and go if anyone needed her. Well, you remember what she was like, always supporting some good cause.'

It was true. Diamond could recall her doing the rounds of the office, collecting for this and that. 'Mary', as he still remembered her, was always the one who bought the present when someone was leaving. 'Well, the killer arranged to meet Patsy on some pretext, and shot her. He'd picked his spot and he'd picked the spot where he would take her after the shooting. That's the added dimension. It's one step on from the murder of Steph.'

They walked the short distance back to the car park. It was still early and Diamond offered to show his old colleague his present place of work. 'We'll call that probation officer, Dawkins, and check Beach's alibi.'

'And the Bristol CID, to tip them off about the gun-dealing?'

'Specially them.'

Bath Police Station was unusually quiet. They learned that McGarvie had gone with other senior detectives to some location in West London after a tip-off from the Met that Joe Florida had been sighted at a pub.

'Our last shot,' Stormy said.

'His.' In his office, Diamond got on with the business of tipping off Bristol about Wayne Beach. He said truthfully that he'd got the information from one of his snouts. Then he called the probation service in Clapham and spoke to George Dawkins and had it confirmed that Beach had reported there on the morning of February the twenty-third.

'He's not our man,' he told Stormy.

'Wayne isn't anybody's man.'

He gave a half-smile. 'True.'

Stormy looked at his watch. 'I'd better get my train.'

'Why – have you got a cat to feed, dog to walk?'

'No, but we've finished for today, haven't we?'

'You're staying at my place tonight. Then we can start early tomorrow.'

'On what?'

'The real last shot.'