Killing with Confetti

17

With the guest list in his pocket and the schedule for the wedding in his head, Diamond left the house in Camden Crescent feeling as unhappy as ever about this godawful job. Joe Irving had given away nothing except his partiality for the kitten. That hadn’t fooled Diamond. The man was as benign as an electric chair.

There was the small consolation that Irving hadn’t rubbished the idea of Diamond protecting him. No doubt it amused a crime baron to have a senior policeman covering his ass. Little did he know. The words of Herb, the small-arms instructor at Black Rock, were lodged in Diamond’s memory. Personal protection officer, are you? Because I wouldn’t want you protecting me or anyone I know.

You could bet your life the brute was making plans of his own.

He hadn’t mentioned bringing bodyguards. Everyone on the Irving side of the guest list was either a friend of Caroline’s or a bridesmaid, or a parent of a bridesmaid. No mysterious uncles or distant male cousins. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be armed henchmen in support.

A parking notice was stuck to Diamond’s windscreen. He was twenty-five minutes over, for pity’s sake. And he’d gone to the trouble of leaving the thing in the Broad Street car park. He swore, ripped it off and tossed it on the back seat. If the police station hadn’t been relocated, he wouldn’t have needed to bring his car into town every time he was on a job.

Muttering strong words about the top brass and their crackpot decisions, he drove round the one-way system and parked in Orange Grove. Didn’t buy a ticket. Only wanted a look at abbey churchyard. He knew the place like a second home, but he had never made a security assessment of it. His visits there had usually been therapeutic, an escape from the madhouse known as Manvers Street police station (secretly beloved now that he’d left it). He would sit among the tourists on the benches in the middle of the square and contemplate the West Front, the ascending and descending stone angels in various states of preservation, as good a metaphor as he could find for a fraught and fallible copper trying to cling on to the ladder. Today he had a different perspective.

He’d seen weddings here occasionally. As a spectacle they didn’t excite him much, but he knew what went on. Although the square was pedestrianised, an exception would be made for the cars bringing the bride, her father and the bridesmaids. The chauffeur was permitted to mount the pavement from the High Street side, move slowly around the side of the abbey, stop at the west door to deliver his passengers and exit by way of York Street on the south side.

Diamond crossed the flagstoned yard and stood where the car would stop for Joe Irving and Caroline to emerge and pose for a photograph before entering the abbey.

The most dangerous moment.

With his back to the great double doors, he took a slow, panoramic view of the buildings in front of the abbey. Which of them might a sniper choose as a vantage point? On his right, the south side, were shops and over each of them three floors with casement windows. Above the tourist office was a balcony with iron railings that wouldn’t provide any cover. Any one of about thirty windows would be a better bet, certainly within firing distance. A gunman could crouch behind the long drapes and not be seen. But they were windows in offices and private apartments with obvious practical difficulties in using them. The sniper would need to deal with whoever occupied them.

Memo: visit each owner on the day and check for suspicious visitors.

Closer still, on the left side of the square, were the historic Roman Baths screened by the Greek-style façade and extensions. One feature caught Diamond’s attention immediately: a curved corner within fifteen yards of where he was standing. It was topped by a balustrade about twenty feet high and forty yards in length that ran from the edge of the main Pump Room extension and around to link eventually with the east side of the Great Bath. Get up there behind the stonework and you’d be so close to the action that you couldn’t miss. Even a gunman of Diamond’s standard couldn’t miss.

How the sniper got up there and down was not important. He’d manage it.

Memo: on the morning of the wedding make certain the balustrade wasn’t hiding a hitman.

And there’s more than one way to crack an egg. What was to stop a gunman riding in on a moped or scooter and carrying out a drive-by killing — the favoured method of murder among professionals in the twenty-first century? A guy unrecognizable in leathers and a helmet and dark visor drives up as the bride is stepping out of the car — always a slow performance. The bridesmaids are waiting and step forward to assist with the dress.

The killer ignores the bride and the bridesmaids.

The real action happens on the other side of the car.

The father of the bride steps out, a soft target. Two or three shots and the gunman speeds away.

Plausible. Horribly plausible.

So would the hit come before the ceremony or after?

Definitely before, when all the other guests are inside the abbey. Fewer witnesses. A clean line of fire.

Leaving it till after would risk confusion. People mill around and get in the way while the official photographs are being taken. By then, the bride’s father is lost in the crowd.

Troubled at how simple it would be, Diamond retraced his steps.

The drive-by killing is the way I’d do it, he thought. But how the heck can I stop it? Without help, it’s impossible.

When he returned to the car, there was another parking notice. Nothing was going right.

On the drive back to his home in Weston, he pondered the hopelessness of his mission. He couldn’t see himself outgunning a professional hitman. When it came to pulling the trigger he was more likely to hit one of the stone angels on the abbey front.

The time had come to get realistic.

He needed back-up.

‘What am I going to do, Raffles?’ he asked his venerable tabby when he got home and opened a tin of ocean fish. This was the measure of his crisis of confidence, expecting a cat to have the answer.

Raffles was too hungry to respond. Only when the dish was empty and the last flakes of fish licked from the teeth did the veteran cat, after grooming his fur, look Diamond in the eye.

It wasn’t a look that offered an opinion.

‘Maybe I’ll get away with it and nothing will happen on the day,’ Diamond said. ‘What do you think? Will I get lucky?’

As if finally to make a statement — but more likely to ask for more — Raffles got off his haunches and walked over to where Diamond was standing. The usual trick was to rub his head against the trousers.

This time was different. A sniff at the fabric followed at once by the sound cats make deep in their throats that is close to a growl. Tail lashing, Raffles turned and stalked from the room.

The smell of the new jeans?

The lingering scent of the kitten?

Or of Joe Irving?

Will I get lucky? No chance.