The Finisher

33

The next morning was a Saturday, but there was no weekend lie-in for the senior members of the murder squad. They had all been summoned to a 7 a.m. briefing. And when they heard the boss sum up his conclusions about the case in his brusque, workmanlike way, they were at first puzzled, then disbelieving, but ultimately won over. There could be no other explanation. Diamond himself had always been a pragmatist with the rare ability to see through the cleverest of deceptions. Justice was about to be served.

By 7:30, they had their orders and were on the road. Soon after 8, three unmarked cars parked in a Larkhall side street close to Bella Vista Road, where Maeve Kelly lived and Olga Ivanova was temporarily her guest. The glare of the early morning sun made the yellow stonework of the block more offensive to Diamond’s eye than he remembered. With Detective Sergeant Ingeborg Smith at his side, he walked the rest of the way to the small terraced house.

“She’ll be emotional for sure. Her life has hit the buffers,” he warned Ingeborg. “She might get physical and she’s strong, which is why I asked you to come with me.”

“How about Maeve?” Ingeborg asked. “If it comes to a fight, will she wade in?”

“They’re friends, so it’s possible, but I’d say she’s too smart to get involved.”

“Your impressions of women aren’t always reliable, guv.”

“Why did you ask, then?”

He stepped up and rang the bell.

Maeve, dressed in a blue tracksuit, opened the door. She was barefoot, blinking in the bright light, but not altogether surprised to see Diamond on her doorstep. “You’re early.”

“I don’t think I fixed a time.”

“At the weekend, eight-fifteen is early. I think she’s up and about. You’d better come in.”

As soon as they were shown into the strange, cluttered living room he wished he’d told Ingeborg in advance about the hippo collection. He didn’t want to spend time on explanations. Good thing she had the sense to say nothing. “This is Sergeant Ingeborg Smith, I should have said.”

Maeve gave Ingeborg no more than a glance. Her blue eyes, wide, tormented by her personal demons, fastened on Diamond. “Olga still doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?”

“About me and Tony in that grotty pub. Do you need to tell her?”

“I’m sure she’s got other things on her mind.”

“I feel so mean. She’s suffered enough and she’s being incredibly brave.”

“We’ll see how this develops. Before she comes in, there are a couple of questions for you. You told me you finished the race.”

“The race?”

She was so fixated on her disloyalty to Olga that she could think of nothing else.

“Get with it, Maeve. The Other Half.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t ask who else you saw during the run.”

“Thousands of people.”

“Any you know?”

“I wasn’t counting. At least a hundred.”

An answer he hadn’t expected until he remembered she was a schoolteacher and would have been cheered on by the kids she taught. “Was Tony Pinto one of them?”

Her face tightened at the mention of the name. “He started ahead of me. He would have been in a different pen. No, I didn’t spot him.”

“At some stage in the race you must have overtaken him. He finished long after you did.”

“I told you I didn’t see him.”

“The official results say so.” He was interrupted by sounds from upstairs. The cheap 1960s house had narrow joists and a thin ceiling. “Did I hear voices?”

“She talks to herself a lot,” Maeve said, but there was no disguising her own startled expression. “Poor darling, she’s going through hell. I don’t know if she heard you come in. I’ll go up and see.” Seizing the chance to cut short the questioning about Pinto, she was through the door before she finished speaking.

Diamond exchanged a disbelieving look with Ingeborg. “Sounded to me like more than one voice upstairs.”

“How many bedrooms are there?”

“In a place this size? Two, maximum.”

They both heard Maeve clearly, and then Olga’s deeper response. Two voices only. Possibly Maeve had spoken the truth about her stressed-out visitor talking to herself.

Diamond took out his phone and checked for texts. “Everyone’s in place. All exits covered.”

They heard the two women come down the stairs.

Olga appeared first, wearing a borrowed white housecoat and light grey slippers with hippo faces. She’d brushed her hair and fixed her make-up and didn’t look as if she was suffering. After Ingeborg was introduced, they busied themselves removing hippos from chairs for somewhere to sit. Maeve, not wanting to be in the same room, offered coffee and fled to the kitchen.

“She is fantastic friend,” Olga said.

“When we met last night, you said you wanted to speak to me,” Diamond said, keen to get on.

“That is true.”

“So?”

“I am homeless lady now, house full of people in white suitings. Nobody tell me when I can go back.”

“They’re checking for evidence. It’s a large house, but I should think they’ll be finished soon. If you need extra clothes or anything else personal to you, make a list and we’ll have them brought over. You were questioned, I was told, and you claim to know nothing about your husband’s criminal activities. I find that hard to believe, Olga.”

She looked back at him without blinking, as if deciding whether she was being insulted. “Listen, I am God-fearing lady, speak only truth. Konstantin he is typical Russian husband, say shit-all to me. You know. You meet him.”

“Didn’t you ever ask him about the house in Duke Street and what went on there?”

“Konstantin buy nice houses to rent is all I know.”

“Your trainer Tony Pinto lived there.”

“Tony come to Sydney Place, my home, okay?”

“He was the gangmaster and Konstantin was his controller and you say you didn’t know what they were up to?”

“I say this many times over.”

“All right. You claim to be innocent. Let’s move on. You invited me here this morning. What else do you want to say to me?”

She nodded. “Konstantin is prisoner, yes?”

Diamond’s eyes switched briefly to Ingeborg. The exchanges had been civil so far. Everything could be about to change. “He’s under arrest and being questioned. If he’s charged, he’ll appear before a magistrate and then a judge.”

“Big trouble, yes?”

“That depends what he’s accused of. He’ll have a chance to defend himself.”

“You lock him up how long?”

Keep it impersonal, he told himself. “I don’t lock him up. I don’t deal with him. The judge decides these things.”

“How long?”

“Do you understand? I don’t decide.”

She pressed him harder. “What is punishment for trafficking?”

“If he’s found guilty under the modern slavery act, you’d better prepare for bad news, Olga. It’s going to be prison.”

“How many years?”

“That will be at the judge’s discretion.” She wouldn’t understand what he meant, but the obfuscation would soften the blow.

“For life?”

He tried to look as if the possibility hadn’t crossed his mind. “That would be the worst possible outcome.”

“Worst for Konstantin.” Olga’s chest started shaking and she rocked back in the chair, arms flapping like a hen vainly trying to take flight. The only things that flew were several hippos from the table beside her.

Hyperventilating? An epileptic fit? Diamond looked to Ingeborg for assistance.

Then Olga found her voice and laughed heartily. “Worst for Konstantin, best for Olga.”

She was rejoicing in the prospect of her husband being banged up for years.

“What will you do?”

“I stay here in Bath. Enjoy myself.” She was fitting in the words between bursts of belly laughs.

“That may not be possible. Your house could be seized if it was bought with laundered money.”

“No problem. I buy another. Great Pulteney Street is nice.”

“Can you afford it?”

“Sure. I have money in bank, my money, clean money. Why do you think Konstantin marry me? My daddy he is capitalist pig, top businessman in Russia, has many companies. I ask, I get.”

“Won’t you be lonely?” Ingeborg asked.

“What for, be lonely? I have friends. Friends at church. English friends like Maeve.”

There was another sound from upstairs like a chair being moved.

They all went silent. And now heavy footfalls crossing the bedroom floor removed all uncertainty.

“Someone’s up there,” Diamond said.

“Is Maeve, I think,” Olga said.

As if on cue, Maeve stepped into the room with a tray of steaming coffee cups. “Did I hear my name?”

“Who’s upstairs?”

Diamond didn’t get an answer and didn’t expect one. He’d see for himself. He almost knocked the tray from Maeve’s grasp in his hurry to get out of the room and check. His damaged foot pained him but didn’t stop him from taking the stairs two at a time. He crossed the landing to the bedroom above the living room and immediately saw a window fully open, the stay unfastened, the curtain flapping in the breeze outside. Below the sill was a chair that must have been put there to climb out.

He went straight to it and looked down. In the time he’d taken on the stairs, nobody could have got far. He was expecting to find someone hanging from the sill or clinging to a downpipe or even standing on the small square of lawn at ground level.

He was wrong.

Across the street was Keith Halliwell.

Diamond called out, “Did anyone jump for it?”

Halliwell shook his head.

“Then how the hell—”

He didn’t get the question out. He was silenced by a sharp hit from behind. His right kidney took the force of it and before he could react to the pain, he was gripped in a tackle as ferocious as anything he’d ever felt in his rugby-playing days. He was dragged back from the window, flung on the bed and pinned to it. A forearm pressed his face into the bedding and a massive hand grabbed his arm and jerked it upwards behind his back until he yelled for mercy.