The Finisher

34

“Murat!”

The word meant nothing to Diamond. He had almost passed out from shock, suffocation and the near certainty that his arm had been wrenched from its socket.

“Murat!” The voice was Olga’s and she was bellowing her disapproval in words he took to be Russian. They needed no translation.

Diamond’s attacker got the message and acted on it, relaxed the hold, removed the shoulder choke, released the suffering arm and rolled off the bed.

Diamond still couldn’t move. He lay winded, wounded, inert and angry with himself that he’d stupidly walked into the trap. The open window and the chair beneath it had so taken his attention that he’d not checked to see if anyone had been waiting behind him poised to attack.

Ingeborg’s voice broke through the ringing in his ears. “Are you okay, guv?”

Dumb question in the circumstances, but what else could she have said?

“I’ll let you know.” He tried to extract his face from the bedding, felt an explosion of pain in his neck and flopped down again.

“Maybe if you roll the other way,” Ingeborg said.

He wasn’t willing to try.

“Who the hell was that?” he managed to say.

“I’ve no idea.”

Then Maeve’s voice joined in. “Murat is Olga’s boyfriend. He must have thought you were up to no good, coming up the stairs like that.”

Boyfriend? Olga was a married woman.

As if she read his thoughts, Maeve said, “He’s a lovely guy. A gentle giant really.”

“Really?” Diamond said with as much irony as he could express with his face flat to a mattress. Giant, yes. Gentle, no.

“He’s staying here, helping Olga get over her shock of being made homeless. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Now Olga spoke some words in English. “He is professional wrestler.”

Diamond needed no convincing of that. At the cost of more pain spreading from neck to shoulders, he managed to roll over as Ingeborg had suggested. She propped a pillow under his head.

“Try that, guv.”

He could see them now, the three women and his tall assailant standing over him like witnesses at an autopsy. The image was so disturbing that he wriggled into a position against the headboard that left no doubt he was a living being.

“Is he Russian?”

“Albanian,” Olga said.

Albanian. A memory stirred in Diamond’s befuddled brain, but he wasn’t ready to make connections. It was easier to listen than speak.

“But I speak to him in English.”

That was English? You could have fooled me, Diamond thought.

Big Murat gave a nod. He didn’t have any difficulty understanding her. The pair were intimate companions.

“We meet in St. John’s,” Olga added.

Diamond was no wiser. Could be anywhere. She might as well be talking about the capital city of Newfoundland.

Maeve filled in some details. “The Eastern Orthodox church, St. John of Kronstadt. They’re so hospitable. They gave him a place to sleep. Before that, he was living rough, poor man.”

The truth was coming together in his head now. Murat had been one of the two Albanians who escaped from Pinto’s basement prison in Duke Street. One had been recaptured and the other was unaccounted for.

Maeve added, “Now that Konstantin is out of it, Olga has invited Murat to move in with her.”

Simple as that. To a smart woman like Olga, there’s no such thing as a setback; there are only opportunities.

“Why did he attack me?”

“He thought you were a Border Force officer, I expect.”

And I should turn him in as an illegal immigrant, Diamond felt like saying. He was getting his head straight. But there was a more urgent matter to be settled than Murat’s status. “Help me up,” he told Ingeborg, offering his good arm and swinging his feet to the floor.

The room started spinning. He took a deep breath and stabilised himself as much by force of will as the blood flow to his brain. He moved to the open window and looked for Keith Halliwell.

Keith wasn’t in the street any longer.

“I’m needed downstairs.”

“You’re not safe to move yet,” Ingeborg said.

“You go first. I’ll steady myself with a hand on your shoulder.”

With reluctance, she allowed herself to be used as a prop. They got to ground level and he stood unaided.

“You can’t take anyone on in this state,” Ingeborg said.

“Watch me.” Brave words, but he knew she was right.

The terrace opposite was a mirror image of the building they were leaving. He crossed the street, taking in as much reviving air as he could. And when he reached the door of the house that faced Maeve’s, it was ajar, so he pushed it fully open and stepped inside.

The first person he saw was Halliwell. With him was a small, smiling man in a pink long-sleeved shirt and tight white jeans.

“This is Mr. Franklin, the landlord and owner of the house, guv.”

Mr. Franklin had spent some holidays in Spain, going by the framed posters of bullfighting all the way along the hall. His bright-eyed, darting look suggested he was eager for some action on his own premises and expected Diamond, the limping matador, to make the moves that would achieve the coup de grâce.

Diamond looked away from him. “And?”

Halliwell pointed at the ceiling.

“Has anyone spoken to him?”

“Like you ordered, we waited for you. I’ve got John Leaman watching the rear of the house and young Gilbert is out front.”

“Are we certain our man is up there?”

“Gilbert saw movement at a window.”

“He will have watched the two of us cross the street. He’ll know it’s showdown time. I’ll go up and speak to him.”

“You look as if you’ve been in a fight already,” Halliwell said.

Ingeborg said, “He has.”

“Yes, and I came off second best.” He was already on the stairs, driven by his strong desire to see this through to its conclusion. His brain had snapped into full consciousness. The throbbing and the soreness in his body were unimportant at this stage. Halliwell and Ingeborg were close behind him.

He’d learned his lesson and wouldn’t charge into the front room of the small flat. Instead, he paused on the landing and spoke with all the consideration he would employ when visiting a sick friend in hospital.

“Trevor?”

After some hesitation came, “I’m in here.” No hint of aggression.

“The house is surrounded. We’re police officers.”

“I guessed you must be.” A door was opened. “You’d better come in.” Broad-shouldered, muscled, but only average in height, Trevor, the PE teacher, stepped back to allow them inside. He was dressed in a black T-shirt that on his torso looked as if it was a boy’s size, black jeans and a red baseball hat with the British Heart Foundation logo.

Diamond knew the face. He’d never met the guy, but the features were familiar. The cavernous, troubled eyes, wide mouth and oversize teeth. A thrilling moment of certainty. Theory confirmed as fact.

For a suspected killer, Trevor was remarkably hospitable. “I don’t have chairs for everyone, but you’re welcome to sit on the bed.” Mr. Nice, it appeared.

And Diamond cooperated, too, and with gratitude, by letting the side of the bed take the strain.

But every cop knows — like every fighter — that you don’t drop your guard just because your antagonist does.

“We’ll check you over first.” He gestured to Halliwell to make a body search.

Trevor didn’t object.

While the pat-down went on, Diamond took stock of the small bedsit and the set-up wasn’t as he’d expected. In fact, there was no obvious set-up at all. No surveillance gear. No camera, telescope, binoculars. No gallery of secretly taken photos of Maeve. The pictures on the wall were entirely of sports teams and action studies of professional athletes. A collection of medals on ribbons. Glass-topped computer desk and rotating chair. A two-shelf bookcase stuffed with paperbacks. No room for anything else.

“You take the chair,” Diamond told Trevor. “These two are happy to stand. They spend their time sitting in front of screens.”

He passed up the offer, opting instead to face the music from an upright position.

“What is it with the BHF cap, Trevor? Here you are wearing it at home and I was told you didn’t think much of it.”

He reddened enough to match the scarlet baseball cap. “Who told you that?”

“Maeve Kelly.”

“That I don’t think much of my cap?”

“That’s what she told me yesterday.”

“She’s wrong. I wear it all day when I’m here.”

“She hasn’t seen you in it.”

“Because I wouldn’t wear it to work. I look after it. You can’t trust anyone.” He put both hands to the peak and made sure the angle was right before pressing his fingertips against the soft fabric behind.

That small gesture was a revelation. He was drawing comfort from the cap, fondling it like a living thing because it came from Maeve, regardless that it was the catalyst for the chain of events that led ultimately to a violent death.

“Maeve gave it to you and you presented her with a gift in return.”

“How do you know about that?” Trevor said, blushing again.

“A valuable Toby jug. She told me.”

“What did she say about the jug?”

“That it was very old, one of the first to be made.”

“She said that?” He was pathetically ignorant about the true reaction of the woman who meant so much to him.

He changed his mind about standing. He grasped his computer chair, wheeled it closer to Diamond and sat in it, within touching distance. He was hearing something encouraging and unexpected — that Maeve had appreciated the value of his eccentric gift.

Or so he convinced himself.

Diamond didn’t need to disillusion Trevor. He was getting an insight into the heart of this case. He could see in the moist brown eyes how completely the guy was infatuated. No need to hurt him by revealing Maeve’s disrespect for what she’d called the sodding Toby jug or that she’d accidentally smashed it and been on a guilt trip ever since.

“I knew she’d find out its true worth at some stage,” Trevor said in a hushed voice as if he was talking about Mother Teresa, “but she never said anything. She may have donated it to charity. They’re not daft in these shops. They spot antique items. Maybe they told her its value. She’s very public-spirited. She raised a four-figure sum for the BHF by running in the Other Half.”

“And you coached her.”

“Is that what she told you? A slight exaggeration. It didn’t amount to much. Running is something I know a lot about, so I offered a few tips, that’s all.” He touched the talisman cap again. “She really said I coached her, did she?”

“Words to that effect, anyway. Whatever advice you gave, it worked. I heard she ran the full distance.”

“All credit to her, yes.”

“You weren’t running yourself?”

“Not this year. I’ve done it before.”

“You know all about the Other Half, do you?”

“Sport is my thing.”

“Obviously. Sport and Maeve. Twin obsessions.”

Trevor reacted to the last word by bringing his hands together in his lap and tightening them so hard that the knuckles turned to ridges of ivory.

“Let’s face it, Trevor,” Diamond went on. “You can’t get her out of your head. You don’t want to. Ever since she gave you the cap you’re wearing, you’ve idolised her. It’s why you live here, across the street, why you follow her about. I was prepared to find you’re a voyeur, but I’ve changed my opinion. You’re not a stalker either, not in any unpleasant way. When you follow her anywhere, it’s from a wish to protect her. Am I speaking sense?”

Trevor didn’t answer.

“You do follow her sometimes, don’t you?”

“She’s safe with me,” he said.

“I don’t doubt that for a second. But God help anyone else who tries it on.”

Trevor flattened his palms against his beefy thighs and stared down.

“Such as Tony Pinto?” Diamond said. “Bit of a tomcat, sniffing around sports girls for a few months now. You knew about his reputation, I’m sure. So did I. I can tell you, Trevor, I despised the guy. I didn’t shed any tears when I found out he was killed.”

Trevor looked up, frowning, thrown by the last remark.

Diamond had genuine sympathy for the lovelorn loner he was gently and methodically dismantling. “When Pinto made his move on Maeve, it all happened quickly and at the worst possible time. On the day before her big race, he turned on the charm, offered expert advice on how to run and gave her more than just advice, in a bedroom upstairs in that squalid pub where he was drinking with her. Made you mad. I’m guessing now, but you weren’t far away at the time, were you?”

Trevor emitted a sigh that was as good as confirmation.

“The waiting must have been painful for you. Where were you — inside the pub, or standing out in the street?”

Now he took a deep breath, remembering. “I didn’t go inside until after they came out. She would have seen me. The seating area wasn’t much bigger than this room. Then I spoke to the barman, like Pinto was my friend and we had a bet over whether he’d...” He couldn’t get the words out.

“Made out with her?”

He lowered his face again. “The arsehole had hired an upstairs room in advance.”

In Trevor’s mind all the blame was heaped on Pinto. Maeve was still Snow White.

“The next hours must have been hell for you.”

He made no response, suspicious, perhaps, that he was being lured into admitting he planned the killing.

Diamond chose not to press him. They would go over this again in an interview room before he made his statement.

“The next day, instead of accompanying Maeve on your bike during the race, you followed Pinto and watched him chat up another woman who was clearly unsettled by him. Am I right?”

This time he spoke a clear, “Yes.”

“The young woman decided to quit the race rather than enter the mile-long tunnel with Pinto. He went after her and fortunately she got away. Was that because you tackled him on Combe Down?”

He nodded.

“Tell me about it.”

“You seem to know it all.”

“You’re the only one who knows how he ended up where he did.”

Trevor straightened in the chair. No doubt he’d rehearsed this a hundred times, trying to make sure he gave it the best possible gloss — not easy when you’ve killed a man and disposed of the body. “He was crossing a field on the side of a hill. I left my bike at the side of the road to follow him. He turned round and there I was, a few steps behind him. Like you say, I was mad. Angry, I mean. I hadn’t slept at all. I called him names. I wanted to hit him, I don’t mind telling you, but it wasn’t much of a fight. He slung a punch or two and so did I, not enough to hurt him. He had a longer reach than me. But when he aimed another punch and missed my chin, I put both hands against his chest and pushed him and he fell back like a skittle and cracked his head. It was stone where he fell, with only a thin covering of turf. I could see straight away he was out to the world.”

“Dead?”

“He didn’t move. Is that what you want to know?”

His version chimed in with what Dr. Sealy had said about the linear fracture suggesting Pinto had fallen backwards and hit his head.

“I want to hear the rest, Trevor — what you did when he was lying still.”

“It’s weird. It should have been satisfying, knocking him out, but it wasn’t. All I’d done was shove him in the chest. I wanted him to get up and I’d throw a real punch at him, but he didn’t. I stood over him and he didn’t move. After a bit I started to walk away. Then I thought better of it. What if I’d killed him? I went back and felt for a pulse at the side of his neck. There wasn’t any. I didn’t panic exactly, but I knew I’d be in deep trouble if he was found. I decided to get the body out of sight. There was a copse at the edge of the field and I dragged him there, thinking I’d cover him with bracken and stuff. After I got him there, I saw this iron grille almost covered in weeds and I knew what it was.”

“A ventilation shaft.”

He nodded. “We’ve had school trips to Combe Down to teach the kids about the old mines. I’ve seen a covered shaft before. I managed to lift the grille and dropped him in. That’s it, really.”

No, it isn’t, Diamond thought. You don’t want to tell me the rest because it implicates you even more. “Bad luck for you that we found him down there. We were searching for someone else — Belinda Pye, the young woman he was pursuing.”

“So how did you get onto me?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Diamond said. “There was nothing obvious to connect you to the killing. And you made our job more difficult by making it appear that he finished the race. Covering your tracks, you thought. We studied the video of the finish, the exact time he was supposed to have crossed the line. Pinto’s name appears in the results, but the runner wasn’t Pinto, it was you, trying to hide from the camera behind some fun-runner with the Royal Crescent on his back. Your number wasn’t visible, but your head and shoulders were, briefly.”

“I thought I was out of shot.”

“But registering a time?”

“And I did. He’s in the results.”

“And there had to be an explanation,” Diamond said.

Trevor waited to hear it, still wanting to give nothing away.

“You were carrying Pinto’s chip. The timing system is electronic, so every runner has to wear one. Before you dumped the body down the shaft, you removed the chip from his shoe. With that, you could masquerade as a competitor. You took a short cut through Lyncombe and joined the stragglers completing the last section of the race and carried the chip across the line, right? The electronics showed Pinto finished, so what happened on Combe Down was neatly erased as far as anyone could tell. But I’ve studied the video and it was definitely you.”

Trevor felt for the baseball cap again and pushed the peak higher up his forehead. “In a strange way, I’m relieved it’s over. What happens next?”

“We take you in as a suspect and get a statement from you. A confession is your best option.”

“Concealing a body is a serious crime, isn’t it?”

“Serious, but not the worst.”

“I didn’t intend to kill him.”

“You’ve made that clear.”

Diamond nodded to Halliwell, who told Trevor to stand up. He cuffed him and said, “Let’s go.”

Paloma joined Diamond that evening for what he called a painkiller — a therapeutic pint in his local, the Old Crown at Weston, a dog-friendly pub where Hartley seemed to know he was appreciated and lay on his side as if to announce that all shoes and chair legs in this sanctum were safe from his attention.

“So Olga comes out of this best,” Paloma said after she’d heard the story of Diamond’s day. “She escapes from Konstantin, who is the real villain, and ends up with the gorgeous Murat.”

“Gorgeous he is not,” Diamond said. “He left me with one good arm and a pain in the neck that isn’t going to go away for the rest of the week.”

“But you won’t turn him in?”

“My battered body tells me to lock him up and throw away the key, but I guess not. He was trafficked. If I reported him, the taxpayer would have to pay for his keep while his asylum application was considered. Allowing him to move in with Olga at her expense is a better option.”

“And Trevor. What will happen to him?”

“The police have some discretion in dealing with first-time offenders who make full confessions. Have you heard of out-of-court disposals? They’re a way of dealing with someone without prosecuting them and saddling them with a criminal record. I said nothing to him about this, but I’ll speak to Georgina.”

“The other baddy in this case, apart from Konstantin, was Tony Pinto, as you said from the start.”

“And there’s a twist,” he said. “Pinto liked to be known as the Finisher, striking fear into everyone under his control. As it turned out, the real Finisher was Trevor, and in more than one sense.”

“He finished off Pinto,” Paloma said. “What else?”

“He finished the race. He hadn’t run the course, but he finished and carried Pinto’s microchip over the line.”

“Neat.”

“I think so.”

“Clever old you.” She swirled the gin and tonic in her glass and watched the movement of the floating slice of lemon. “That leaves only one thing to be settled.”

“What’s that?” His face changed rapidly from a look of mild enquiry to strong suspicion that something personal was about to be said.

But he was reassured. “Hartley,” Paloma said.

At the sound of his name, the small dog raised his head to look at her.

“His owner, my neighbour Miriam, will be back from Liverpool at the weekend. She’s arranged the care package for her mother. I’m going to miss him. The house will seem empty without him.”

“Maybe you should get one of your own.”

“A dog?”

“Or a cat.”

“Funny,” she said. “I was thinking along the same lines. How would you feel if I made an offer to Raffles?”

“To move in with you? Yikes!” he said. “He wouldn’t stand for that. I’d need to come with him.”

She laughed. “Would that be such a bad thing?”