The Summons

CATCHEM.”

Diamond’s eyes narrowed. His face reddened. The woolly bee may not have achieved the desired reaction, but Wigfull had touched a raw nerve this time. In a tone thick with contempt came the words, “Who do they think we are?”

Wigfull blinked nervously.

“I said who do they think we are-ruddy seven-year-olds? Who are the people who dream up these names? They seem to think dimwits like you and me will learn to love computers if they give them names. We’re grown-ups, John. We’re in a police force, not a play school.”

“I don’t have any problem with it,” said Wigfull.

Diamond shot him a look that told him it was not an acceptable comment. “They think up these cutesy names and then bust a gut trying to fit rational words to justify them. There’s a police computer called HOLMES.”

“Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. What’s wrong with that?”

With difficulty Diamond resisted grabbing Wigfull by the tie and hauling him across the desk. “Doesn’t it strike you as puerile? Why use the words Large and Major together when they mean the same thing? I’ll tell you why. Because some genius rubbed his hands and said ‘We’ll call it Holmes-just the thing for the plod.’ Well, if you don’t find it patronizing, I do.”

Wigfull gave a slight, embarrassed shrug.

“Do you or don’t you?” demanded Diamond.

“I said it doesn’t bother me. I only mentioned CATCH-EM in case you wanted to see how the Strand case measured up.”

“CATCHEM!”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it.” Wigfull let go of the chair and took a step backward. “I’d better get back to the center of operations.”

“COMA,” said Diamond.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Center of Operations, My Arse. Never mind, John. You get back to it. I’m sure it’s all action there.”

Alone again, he spread more ointment over his itchy thumb. Wigfull had made him restless. The files wanted studying, yet he was going to find concentration difficult now. He reached for a folder and opened it, turned a couple of pages and stopped. He lifted the phone and pressed out a number on the keys. “Is that Mrs. Violet Billington? Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m speaking from Bath Central Police Station. My name is Diamond. Is your husband home?… No? Well, I wonder if I could trouble you? There are some questions relating to the late Miss Britt Strand. Won’t take long, if I could call on you in, say, twenty minutes? How very kind.”

In the corridor, he fell in behind Commander Warrilow in earnest conversation with a slim young woman with her hair in a thick, dark plait that scarcely moved as she walked, her gait was so smooth. He might have taken her for a ballet dancer were it not for the army greatcoat and boots she was wearing. The back view intrigued him so much that he followed them into the main computer room hopeful for a sight of her full face.

Luckily for Diamond, one of the computer operators had something to report and Warrilow cut across the room to look at the screen, leaving the young woman gazing uncertainly after him. She was pale, with the dark marks of tiredness around the eyes in a face that was not conventionally good-looking, but watchable-thin in structure, with a small, thin mouth and long jaw.

“Any idea who that is?” he asked Charlie Stiles, an old chum who for some arcane reason had joined the keyboard tappers.

“The lance corporal? Isn’t she the one who reported Mr. Tott’s daughter as missing? They live in some kind of squat in Widcombe.”

“That’ll be Una Moon, then. What’s she doing here, I wonder?”

“Keeping Warrilow up to the mark, I reckon. She’s a one-woman pressure group.”

“In that case, I won’t ask to be introduced.”

It was one of those narrow, one-way streets in Larkhall with cars parked on one side from end to end. Diamond left the Escort on a yellow line outside the post office and walked back.

There was a FOR SALE board by the front gate. Houses where murders have occurred are too commonplace these days to justify demolition or the renaming of the entire street, as was sometimes the case in times past. But it is interesting to discover what happens to them subsequently. The market value may decline somewhat, yet for every fifty potential buyers who are put off by the history of the address (if it is revealed to them before contracts are exchanged) there is usually one who has no qualms. Unfortunately for the Billingtons, that one had not yet materialized, so they were still in occupation.

Mrs. Billington, who admitted Diamond, seemed still to be affected by the tragic event. At any rate, her manner was nervous. Short and plump, with softly permed silver hair and eyes of the palest blue conceivable in a creature not a cat, she had the door open before Diamond touched the bell, and summoned him inside in an urgent whisper. “Come into the back. We’ll talk there.”

The last time he had visited this place, the hallway had been decorated in some darker shade. It was emulsioned in pale pink now, the stairs painted white. Previous visits had taken him upstairs, to the top floor, where Britt Strand had lodged and been stabbed. This morning he was ushered swiftly to the Billingtons’ kitchen/diner on the ground floor, a cozy room with a wood-burning stove, oatmeal-colored walls and a dark brown carpet. A white cat was asleep in front of the stove. A collection of small dolls dressed in national costumes was ranged along the shelves of a teak dresser.

“Forgive me for hurrying you in like that,” Mrs. Billington said in a normal voice after the door was closed. “My new lodger is upstairs, a student. I’d prefer it if she wasn’t told the history of the house.”

“Is she local?” Diamond asked.

“From Nottingham. Studying chemistry at the university. In her first year. Is it dishonest not to tell her or is it considerate?”

“Students are pretty tough-minded, I find,” said he, “particularly if the rent is reasonable. I don’t need to go upstairs. I called to let you know that Mountjoy is at large, unfortunately.” She gave him a look that showed no gratitude. “I know that.”

“Frankly this is the last place he’s likely to come back to,” he told her, “but we’re notifying everyone connected with the case. Do you have a safety chain? Better use it until he’s back behind bars, which shouldn’t be long. Did you ever meet him?”

“No. The only time he visited the house I was away in Tenerife.”

“I remember. Horrible shock for you on your return.”

“Ghastly.”

“It was your husband who found the body, right?”

“Yes. Winston still has nightmares over it. He’s been on tranquilizers ever since.”

“Remind me what it was that made you suspicious.”

“When we got back from Tenerife, you mean?” Mrs. Billington drew her arms across the front of her lilac-colored blouse and rubbed them as if she were cold. She was playing the silver-haired old lady even though she was scarcely ten years older than Diamond. “She had an order for milk, and there were two bottles on the step. And she hadn’t collected the mail from downstairs. First of all we didn’t think it justified looking into her flat. We tapped on her door and there was no answer. She could have gone off for a few days on some reporting job to do with her work. She wrote for magazines.”

“I know.”

“We put the milk in our own fridge the first evening. Then during the night I found myself wondering if perhaps she was ill upstairs and hadn’t been able to get to the door. How dreadful if we did nothing to help. So I asked Winston to take a look, and he came out looking as pale as a sheet and told me to ring the police and tell them Britt was dead. We didn’t get any more sleep that night.”

“Nor did I. How long had she been living here?”

“Quite some time. Three years, at least. She was an excellent tenant. Very reliable with the rent. We were quite fond of her.” Put like that, it said as much about the Billingtons as Britt Strand.

“She had her own key?”

“Oh, yes. To the front door and a separate one for her flat. As you know, the access was through our part of the house and if she was ever late she would creep upstairs like a mouse.”

“I must have asked you this before. Did anyone else possess a key to the house?”

“Apart from ourselves and Britt? No.”

“Did she have visitors?”

“From time to time. That large woman who took the photographs for her came sometimes.”

“Any men? I’m sure we’ve been over this, Mrs. Billington, but my memory is hazy.”

“She gave us no cause for complaint. I don’t recollect anyone staying the night. I’m not old-fashioned about morals, but as a landlord you always have a dread of a partner moving in when the place is let to a single person.”

Diamond explained that he wasn’t asking just about overnight visitors.

“Oh, there were callers from time to time. I’d have been surprised if there weren’t. She was an extremely good-looking girl.”

“Try and remember them, particularly any toward the end of her life.”

Four years on, this taxed Mrs. Billington to the limit. She managed to dredge up a memory of a caller Diamond took to be Marcus Martin, the horseman. He had called two or three times. And she was positive-because she had been asked it before-that John Mountjoy had never called while she was there.

“Was she ever sent flowers?”

A frown. “I can’t remember any arriving.”

“Did she like roses specially?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“I see you have rose bushes in the garden.”

She reddened and slipped out of her old lady role to deliver a rebuke. “Obviously you’re no gardener. You wouldn’t find a dozen roses in bud in my garden or any other in October. The ones found in the room obviously came from a florist.”

He asked whether Britt had ever discussed her journalistic work and got the answer he expected: she had not.

Diamond, better than most, always knew when he had outstayed his welcome. Suddenly he was getting the message that Violet Billington wanted him out as quickly as possible and not just for the sake of the new tenant upstairs. The question about the roses had unsettled her. This made him all the more interested in prolonging the interview.

“You must have got to know a certain amount about Miss Strand’s relationships with men.”

“Nothing.” Curt and uncompromising.

“Come now, Mrs. Billington,” he coaxed her. “No one is going to accuse you of prying into her life. She was your tenant for three years. In that time you’re bound to have seen the comings and goings and I’d have thought you’re bound to have speculated about her love life. It’s only human.”

“I’ve told you everything you have any right to know.”

“We’re not exchanging gossip,” he pressed her. “This is someone who was murdered.”

“I’ve nothing else to say on the matter. It’s over. You took the man before the courts and he was found guilty.”

Not, simply, Mountjoy murdered her. More like a refined way of saying you clobbered him and it’s your arse in a sling, mate. What did she know?

“Should I speak to your husband? Maybe he’ll feel easier talking to me.”

“You’ll get nothing out of Winston.”

She gave too much away this time. Implicit in the force of the remark was her conviction that Winston knew something and hadn’t confided in her, in spite of her best efforts.

“He’s out at work, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“Does he come home for lunch by any chance?”

“No.”

“So what time do you expect him home today?”

“I can’t say. It varies.” Her mouth pursed and those pale eyes glared in defiance.

Diamond was plumbing the depths of his memory to get a mental impression of the man. Winston Billington’s testimony at the trial had been confined to describing how he had found the body. He had never been considered as a possible suspect because the holiday in Tenerife had given him an alibi. He’d appeared younger than his wife, perhaps under fifty, a slight, dapper figure in a striped suit. “What’s his job, then? I take it he has a job?”

“Sales rep.”

“Selling what?”

“Greeting cards.”

“For a local firm?”

“No.”

“So where are they based-in London?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s the area rep?”

“Yes.”

“Visits the shops, does he, trying to interest them in the new designs? Have you got any samples around the house?”

She turned away and started busying herself with dishes. “He doesn’t keep them here. We wouldn’t have room.”

“What does he have-an office?”

“Something like that. A place where the cards are stored.”

“But you don’t have any you can show me?”

She glared. “I already made that clear, I thought.”

His curiosity was mounting. “What sort of cards are they, Mrs. Billington?”

“What do you mean, what sort? Greeting cards.”

“The sort I might choose for my wife?”

“I’ve no idea.” But she had gone a shade more pink.

“Let’s give you an idea then. Her preference is for country scenes, or animals. Not over-sentimental. A basket of Persian kittens would be too sappy for my Stephanie. She wouldn’t mind a horse looking over a gate.”

“I said I have no idea because I don’t see the blessed cards,” she told him, overriding her blushes with acrimony. “If you’ve finished, I do have things to attend to. I don’t wish to discuss my husband’s business.”

“You’re right,” said Diamond generously. “I’d better go to the fountainhead. When can I be sure of finding him at home?”

Her entire body tensed. She said, “I thought the reason you called was to warn us about Mountjoy. Winston knows he escaped. I don’t see why you have to bother us anymore. We suffered enough at the time of the murder.”

“I’m still going to speak to him.”

“He’s got nothing to say.”

“What time do you suggest?”

“After eight, if you must.”

“Certainly must.” He picked his trilby off the table. There wasn’t anything to thank her for.

“Not so much as a cup of weak tea, Julie.” He voiced his disapproval of Mrs. Billington over a sandwich lunch in the Roman Bar at the Francis. “She treated me as if I was something the cat brought in.”

“Is there a cat?”

“Yes, and it ignored me. So it was worse than being something the cat brought in.”

“You’re not having much of a day so far. And you think Mrs. Billington was keeping something back?”

He picked up the sandwich plate. “Put some of these on your plate or I’ll swipe the lot. I’m like that. It isn’t gluttony, it’s concentration. Working lunches have that effect. Yes, I’d lay money that she was withholding information, and it concerns the husband. Of course it could be simply that he deals in raunchy greeting cards and she’s ashamed of him.”

“Does he?”

“Don’t know for sure. I got the impression that they’re not the sort you’d send to your aunt. Fair enough, the shops are full of them. Mrs. Billington may not want the world to know, but if it’s a living and within the law, I’m not condemning Winston.”

“Wicked Winnie.”

He chuckled. “I can remember a time when a sales rep was called a commercial traveler and the butt of thousands of dirty jokes. I’m curious to find out whether Winston fits the picture.”

“Meaning what?” said Julie.

“Meaning was he laying the lodger?”

Julie’s eyebrows arched.

“It’s not unknown,” he added reasonably. “Middle-aged man lusting after pretty girl upstairs. When I looked at Mrs. Billington this morning-”

“Come off it, Mr. Diamond,” Julie cut in sharply. “I’m not one of your beer-drinking cronies.”

He hesitated. Once he would have waded in. But he valued Julie’s support and wanted to keep it.

She repaired the conversation seamlessly. “If he had something going with Britt, it would be interesting to discover, but where would it lead us since we know he was in Tenerife at the time of the murder?”

“I’m talking off the top of my head,” Diamond said, “but it might provide a motive that we didn’t consider at the time. If Billington slept with Britt and someone else got to hear of it, we could be talking about a jealous lover as the killer.”

“Marcus Martin?”

“He claimed he’d broken up with Britt, but we only have his word for that.”

“He had an alibi for the night of the murder, didn’t he?”

“Didn’t they all?”

Julie was becoming inured to the big man’s cynicism. “He was at a party in Warminster until one in the morning.”

“Time of death isn’t certain.”

“Yes, but the woman he was with is certain. She said he spent the rest of the night at her flat in Walcot Street.”

“Was there corroboration, though?”

“No.”

Diamond took a long sip of bitter. “I wouldn’t place too much reliance on it, then. Let’s talk to Mr. Martin this afternoon if we can.”

She looked up, surprised. “You want me to come?”

He nodded. “Unless you need more time with the crusties. How did you get on?”

She gestured with her thumb that the morning had not been a success. “They’re too guarded to talk to anyone like me, except to give me abuse. There are nine or ten of them sitting around the Abbey Churchyard area with their dogs. To get on terms with them I’d need to shave off most of my hair and get some combat fatigues.”

“And a layer of dirt,” contributed Diamond.

“Tattoos.”

“Rings through your nose.”

Julie paused and looked at him with widening eyes as it dawned on her that what was being said might actually amount to an instruction.

“All right,” said Diamond. “We’ll leave out the nose rings.”