Diamond Dust

31

All this came like a wake-up call to Diamond. He now remembered Stormy mentioning how Patsy Weather worked with junkies at some stage. Like much else, it had been squirreled away in his memory, unlikely to have been recovered but for this.

Gina was just as fired up as the two detectives. 'Can you be certain she knew Dixon-Bligh?'

'If he was on her patch using drugs, you can almost bank on it,' Stormy told her, eyes dilated enough to have you believe he, too, was high on something.

'Why would he want to murder her? She'd retired from the police, you said.'

'He wasn't to know that, was he? I don't know how they met again. Pure chance, I guess. Patsy was always ready to talk to someone she knew. He'd assume she was still on the strength.'

'So he put a gun to her head and shot her?' she said in a rising tone of disbelief. 'What for?'

'Fear of arrest. He thought he was nicked.'

'For petty thieving to fund his habit?'

'No, no, no,' Stormy cut in. 'He was on the run. He faced a murder rap. He'd already shot Peter's wife.'

'Ah.' She raised her hand like a tennis player who has just been served an ace. Then turned to Diamond. 'I'm not thinking straight today. When was your wife murdered?'

'February the twenty-third.'

'And your wife?' she asked Stormy.

'Disappeared on March the twelfth.'

'Two weeks after.'

'Just over.'

She was checking alternately between the two. 'Your wife was shot in a park in Bath?'

Diamond nodded. He'd cross-checked everything in his own mind, and he was as sure of the facts as Stormy, though he tried to appear calm.

'And Dixon-Bligh was once married to your wife? Why would he want to kill her?' Gina asked.

'For money, for his drugs.' Put bluntly like that, it was chilling. But every explanation he'd ever imagined was guaranteed to chill.

She kept her bright, shrewd eyes on him, inviting him to say more.

Patiently, he took her through the crucial details. 'I told you there were entries in her diary about phoning someone she knew as "T". Dixon-Bligh's name is Edward. Ted, right? That's the name you've been using yourself, I notice.'

'Right.'

He switched to a more immediate way of telling it. 'She reminds herself when I'm coming in late: "P out. Must call T." He says he needs to see her, and she promises to think it over. She gets her hair done – and that's typical of Steph, wanting to look right, even for a meeting with that berk. She calls him again – from a public phone, so the calls won't appear on our statement – and arranges this meeting in the park on the Tuesday. She says nothing to me about any of this, and Steph wasn't like that. Since reading what she wrote, I've driven myself nuts trying to understand why she set up those phone calls and meetings and kept me out of it. But now I learn he was a drug-addict, it's all much clearer. This is the set-up. He's pestering her for money, and she doesn't want me to know about it. Steph is confident of handling him herself. He's her ex, and she thinks she knows him. She may well have been sending him small amounts of cash for some time. She'd know my reaction.'

'Unsympathetic?'

'To put it mildly.'

'Does he possess a gun?'

Unexpectedly, Fiona Appleby spoke up. 'Yes.'

All eyes were on her.

'What sort?' Diamond asked.

'Pistol.'

'Revolver?'

'Yes. He did some shooting in the Air Force. He was on the command team at Bisley. The gun was his own. He kept it in the drawer beside the till. Said he'd produce it if ever anyone tried to hold up the restaurant.'

Stormy turned up his palms as if no more needed saying.

But Gina still required convincing. 'Why shoot her when all he wanted was money for drugs?'

Diamond answered in a measured tone, drained of emotion. 'He brings the gun with him intending to force her to hand over more money than she intends, or credit cards, maybe, instead of the small handout she offers. She refuses. Steph was very strong-willed. He points the gun at her head. She tries to push him away or says something that angers him and he squeezes the trigger.'

This had directness, the simplicity of cause and effect that carried conviction.

Gina had listened impassively. She pointed a finger at him. 'Okay. It's payback time. You said just now you knew of places he might be hiding in. Were you bullshitting, or can you deliver?'

In point of fact, all the bullshitting had come from Stormy, but sometimes when your bluff is called, the brain goes into overdrive. Without hesitation Diamond launched into the story Steph had once told him about the beach hut. 'At one time when he was in the Air Force and married to Steph they were based at Tangmere, in Sussex. They lived in married quarters, I think, and didn't like it much. The one good thing about it was that they were close to the sea, and on his days off they'd escape to some local beach with a peculiar name I'm trying to remember. Wittlesham?'

'Wittering?' Gina said, following this acutely. 'West Wittering isn't far from Tangmere.'

'You've got it. West Wittering. Steph told me they rented a beach hut one summer. They'd use it to change into swimming things, and brew up tea on an oil stove and so on. The point about this is that even after the rental ended, he kept a spare key, and for years he used to go back and open up the hut and use it.'

Gina was frowning. 'After it was rented to someone else?'

'People only use them a fraction of the time.'

'Sneaky.'

'That was Steph's reaction. She wouldn't join him.'

Gina was ahead of him now. 'You're thinking he might be holed up at the beach?'

'It wouldn't be a bad place to hide.'

'Out of season, too,' Stormy added support. 'Nice and quiet. You could survive pretty well in a beach hut.'

Diamond put in a note of caution. 'I don't even know if the huts are still there. Do they still have them at West Wittering?

'All the way along,' Gina said. 'I'm going to call my guvnor.'

Eleven hours in, Curtis McGarvie tried another tactic on Joe Florida. Strictly speaking, the murder of Patricia Weather was being handled by DCI Billy Bowers. He'd informed Bowers of the arrest and invited him to join in the questioning, but up to now he hadn't appeared.

'Where were you on Friday, March the twelfth?'

Florida answered casually, 'Who knows?'

'London?'

'Maybe.'

'South-west London? Your own manor?'

'What's this about?'

'A woman went missing that day.'

'Hold on, will you?' Florida said. 'Are you trying to stick something else on me?'

'Her body wasn't found until a few days ago, on a railway embankment in Surrey.'

'Jesus, I don't believe this,' Florida said, turning to his brief. 'These assholes want to fit me up with a double murder.'

The solicitor said, 'My client wasn't informed of this at the time of his arrest.'

'Correct,' McGarvie told him without apologising. 'I was getting ahead of myself. At this stage we're questioning him about the murder of Stephanie Diamond.'

'What does he mean – "at this stage"?' Florida demanded. 'They can't do this to me.'

'We'll take a break,' McGarvie said. 'We've got a long session ahead of us.'

West Wittering was less than an hour's drive from the safe house. The long stretch of coast on the Selsey peninsula is girdled by salt-marsh, sand dunes and fields where geese congregate in hundreds. On summer weekends the beach attracts large crowds, but in October is left to a few dog-walkers, windsurfers and the occasional scavenger with a metal detector. The land above the beach is owned by the West Wittering Estate and you enter through a coin-operated barrier. When the tide is out, as it was when the armed response team arrived, the stretch of sand is vast.

Officers in helmets and black body armour and carrying Heckler & Koch MP5s were already checking the beach huts with dogs when Diamond and Stormy Weather drove up. There was an air of confidence about the search. Apparently a local shopkeeper had been shown a picture of Dixon-Bligh and was certain he had bought food a number of times in the past two weeks.

Stormy looked at Diamond as if he was Nostradamus.

The wooden huts, about a hundred and fifty on a turf promenade above the beach, were a testimony to people's individuality. They had obviously been there long enough for some to have been replaced and others given a facelift, so the doors and walls were decorated in a host of different styles and colours. Shuttered windows, verandahs and payed fronts were desirable extras. The majority were padlocked. A few of the oldest had conventional mortice locks built into the doors. It would be one of these Dixon-Bligh had illicitly used.

Diamond eyed the line of pitched roofs stretching almost to the sand dunes on the skyline at East Head, and asked the senior man how long the search would take.

'Not long, sir. The dogs will know if he's inside.'

This confident prediction was followed shortly by a result. The two springer spaniels started yelping and scratching at the door of one shabby hut towards the near end of the row. Their handlers had to haul them away.

'Game on,' the man in charge said.

Everyone took up strategic positions. Officers with submachine-guns crouched and took aim in the shingle below the level of the huts, watched from behind a stout wooden groyne by the others, including Diamond and Weather.

Diamond told a senior man they didn't want the suspect killed and was informed they were using soft-point rounds.

Through a loudhailer the occupant of the hut was told that armed police were outside. He was instructed to come out, hands on head.

There was no response.

Two more warnings were given. Then the order came to force an entry. A distraction device, some kind of thunderflash, was lobbed behind the hut and went off with a terrific report.

Instantly four men armed with sub-machine-guns dashed to the hut from either side. The only way in was through the front and it wouldn't take much. The wooden door was half-rotten through years of exposure to salt spray. A burst of gunfire shot away the hinges.

The door fell outwards and hit the paving stones. It had not been locked.

But no one was inside.

The anticlimax silenced everyone. There was that feeling of sheepishness – not unknown to Diamond – when the long arm of the law has reached out and missed.

Finally the man in charge said, 'Stupid bloody dogs.'

'Back to it, lads,' some other officer said. 'There's a million more fucking huts.'

The man at Diamond's side said, 'Which genius gave us this tip-off?'

Diamond said nothing, and Stormy stayed silent as well.

Interestingly the dogs were still straining at their leashes to return to the empty hut. The handlers had a problem getting them back to work.

'I know it's obvious no one is in there,' Diamond told Stormy, 'but I want a closer look.'

They stepped up to the hut and over the bits of timber that had been the door. There were definite signs of recent occupation. Just inside the doorway was a folded sleeping bag. Also a torch, a cut loaf and a carton containing canned food and beer. An A to Zof West Sussex and a copy of the Sunday Express – last week's edition. He picked up the torch and switched it on. 'What do you make of that, Dave?'

Stormy bent closer to the area of flooring caught in the beam of light.

Diamond told him, 'That's what excited the dogs.'

'Stormy wetted his finger and touched the dark patch. 'You're right. It's blood.'

After the forensic team and SOCOs arrived there was the usual hiatus. Clearly someone or some animal had shed blood in the beach hut, but it was a mystery where they had gone. The sniffer dogs took no interest in any of the other huts, or the changing rooms, toilets or cafe higher up the beach. With nothing else to detain them, the armed response team packed up and drove away.

'Looks like the Arabs got to him first,' Stormy said.

'Killed him, you mean? For blabbing?'

He nodded. 'Those guys don't take prisoners. Did you ever see Lawrence of Arabia?'

'If he's dead, I don't know where they left him.'

'Buried him on the beach, I expect. It wouldn't take long.’

'Wouldn't be long before he was found, either. Plenty of people come along here walking their dogs, even at this time of year, and when a dog gets a whiff of blood… And how would the Arabs have found him here?'

'They're smart operators, Peter. They escaped from the Dorchester under the noses of one of these hotshot teams of ninjas, so it's not beyond them to track Dixon-Bligh to his hideout.'

'Unless.'

'Unless what?'

'Unless this is a totally unrelated incident. Remember it was a hunch that brought us here.'

'Let's say a brainwave.'

Diamond sniffed. 'We can hope so.'

They sat on a wooden beam facing the band of grey sea and the misty outline of the Isle of Wight. Nearer to them, gulls and sandpipers in their hundreds had colonised the wet sand.

'I hope this smackhead isn't dead,' Stormy said. 'I want him put on trial.'

'Be better off dead when I catch up with him,' Diamond muttered.

'You don't want to foul up your career for a scumbag like that.'

'Watch me.'

'That's precisely why you and I are sidelined.'

From behind them a uniformed PC called Diamond over to where the incident tapes kept any onlookers out of the sterile area. 'Gentleman here wants a word, sir. He appears to know something.'

The informant was a tall, elderly man with a white moustache. He was wearing a windcheater and brown corduroys tucked into green Wellingtons. His red setter started forward and licked the back of Diamond's hand.

'Something to tell me, sir?'

'Seeing all the activity here I wondered if it's anything to do with that fellow they found on the beach yesterday.'

'What fellow?'

'Couldn't tell you who he was. I was walking the dog as usual and saw what happened. Some windsurfers spotted him half in, half out of the water at damned near high tide. Blood all over his shirt, but no wound that I could see. He was obviously in a bad way. Out to the world. They took him off in an ambulance.'

'Where would they have taken him?'

'Casualty, I expect. Chichester has the nearest A & E Department.'

'If my client were to make a voluntary statement about his movements on the day in question,'Joe Florida's solicitor said, 'and if he proved to your satisfaction that he had no part in the matter under investigation, would you be willing to set aside any possible prosecution on matters of a lower tariff?'

'No deals,' McGarvie told him.

'In that case, he has nothing else to say.'

Keith Halliwell leaned towards his SIO and whispered something.

McGarvie gave a petulant click of the tongue and sat back in his chair, raking both hands through his hair. Finally he said, 'If you were talking about something that happened outside our jurisdiction – we're from another force, Avon and Somerset, you understand – my colleague and I wouldn't' – he sighed, hating this – 'wouldn't necessarily be under an obligation to investigate.'

'He needs a stronger assurance than that.'

'Are you saying that after all this he remembers what he was doing on February the twenty-third?'

Joe Florida pointed to the tape recorder mounted on the wall. 'Turn that fucker off, and I'll tell you.'

'Typical breakdown in communications,' Diamond grumbled on the drive to Chichester. 'If someone is brought into hospital with blood all over him and no explanation, it's a police matter. The local CID must have been out at that beach looking for evidence. Why didn't we hear about it?'

'Because we were with Gina's lot,' Stormy pointed out. 'They're not exactly the local plod.'

Thanks to Stormy's driving they reached St Richard's Hospital inside half an hour. The doctor in Accident &Emergency took them into an office at once. A stethoscope hung from his neck and he fingered the sound-receiver as he spoke. 'Yes, I was on duty yesterday when the man was brought in from West Wittering. From the contents of his pocket he was called Edward Dixon-Bligh, but he hasn't been formally identified yet'

'So he's dead?'

'On arrival.'

'Do you know the cause?'

'Loss of blood.'

'But where from?'

'His mouth. This is hard to believe, but someone cut out his tongue.'