The Summons

Chapter Seventeen

“No change, I’m afraid, dear,” the charge nurse said when Julie Hargreaves enquired about Winston Billington. The “dear” was kindly meant; the nurse had taken her for a relative, mishearing “DI” as “Di,” a common error. Julie went over to the uniformed embodiment of the police, a youthful constable who was sitting bored in the corner drumming with his fingertips on an upturned plastic coffee cup.

“Any signs of life?” she asked him.

“He groans sometimes.”

“Is that good?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why don’t you get some air for an hour? I’ll take over. Bring me some tea when you come back. Milk and no sugar.”

He nodded his thanks and left.

She ventured as close as she could to the bed. The little she could see of the patient’s face was gray, the eyes closed, one forcibly, turned purple and heavily swollen. His head was bandaged and he had a ventilator over his nose and mouth. There was another tube giving him a transfusion and leads connected to his chest were monitoring his heart rate. In all, it wasn’t the ideal way to meet the principal suspect. She marveled at the ferocity of the diminutive Mrs. Billington and the power of money when it takes the form of a bunch of coins swung in a plastic bag.

She sat down to begin her vigil. For a time, at least, she’d got a break from Diamond. He wasn’t easy to work with just now. She’d heard him called curmudgeonly, and she wouldn’t argue with that at this stage of their working relationship. She understood the sense of personal failure that was oppressing him over what had happened four years ago. In a way though, she preferred Diamond’s abrasiveness to the emollient manner of John Wigfull, her real boss. For all Diamond’s bluster and boorishness, she felt secure with him. He was open in his emotions. When he smiled (which was rarely just now) it was genuine. When he was gloomy, he shared it. He consulted her and appeared to listen. Mind, he didn’t confide much in anyone else. He seemed to regard the rest of the Bath CID as turnipheads. He obviously felt deep resentment that she didn’t fully understand over his resignation a couple of years ago. She’d gathered that he had always been out of sympathy with the high-ups. For all that, his reputation as a dynamic head of the Murder Squad was still spoken of with awe in Manvers Street. He’d led a strong, loyal team, now dispersed.

About his personal life she had gleaned little so far. She now knew he’d once played rugby for the Met. She’d heard from others that he had been spotted on occasions in the stand at the Recreation Ground, where Bath RFC, the best club side in the country, played their home matches. She’d also been told that he had a natural rapport with kids, in spite of having none himself. The Christmas after he’d quit the police, he’d taken a job as Father Christmas in the Colonnades shopping precinct-and proved to be a popular Santa. He wouldn’t have needed padding.

She was intrigued to know what his wife was like. The woman who coped with Peter Diamond’s grouchy temperament and stayed wedded to him would be fascinating to meet. Mrs. D (Julie had learned) was small and independent-minded, and put a lot of energy into community work. Once she had been Brown Owl to a troop of brownies and more recently she had worked in charity shops. Some people joked that Diamond was dressed by Oxfam.

A moan from Billington interrupted her musing about the Diamonds and reminded her why she was there. She got up and looked at him. There wasn’t a flicker, so she returned to the chair.

This was the first case of serious assault by a wife against her husband that Julie had come across, though the press periodically reported on battered husbands as if it was a logical consequence of the feminist revolution. She’d watched a television program once and been amazed and skeptical that men- big fellows, some of them-allowed themselves to be hit with heavy objects. Of course, such incidents were statistically negligible compared to the domestic violence suffered by women. Julie knew: she was the automatic choice to investigate attacks on women and she’d seen some sickening injuries. More than once she’d had to defend herself from the aggressors, so she wasn’t too appalled that once in a while a woman beat up a man.

Having recently looked at the police photos of Britt Strand’s corpse, she couldn’t raise much sympathy for Winston Billington. It wasn’t compassion that made her hope he would recover entirely and be capable of answering questions. If the bastard died, it would be difficult to procure enough evidence of his guilt to satisfy an appeal court and prove that the judgment against Mountjoy had been in error. It would be so much more positive if the appeal were backed by a signed confession.

Another sound. This time the patient moved his head. Anxiously Julie looked through the glass door to see if a nurse was about. Suppose Billington recovered consciousness only for a short time. What a responsibility she would have to shoulder! She tried to think what she ought to ask him. To accuse him of murder might be enough to kill the man. Yet if she didn’t ask the obvious, she’d be in breach of her duty. Imagine telling Peter Diamond, “Well, he did recover consciousness briefly and I asked him how he was feeling. He said,‘Not too good,’ and died.”

Damn Violet Billington for doing this.

Another disturbing scenario took shape in Julie’s thoughts. If Billington did die, his wife’s evidence became indispensable. Julie hadn’t been present when Mrs. Billington had shopped her husband to Diamond, so it was impossible to tell how convincing she had sounded. Was she reliable? Was it conceivable that she had invented the story to justify her vicious attack on her husband?

No. There was corroboration from an independent source. G.B. the crusty had seen a man of Billington’s appearance enter the house in Larkhall after Mount joy had left.

That was the clincher. But for that, you could well imagine the vindictive wife inventing the story of her rampant husband. After all, Violet Billington didn’t know everything that had happened that fatal night four years ago. Couldn’t. She’d been in Tenerife when Britt Strand had been murdered. And according to her account (relayed by Diamond) Winston had admitted nothing. She’d hit him before he gave his version of the story.

The charge nurse returned and checked that the blood was still moving evenly along the transparent tubes. “Your dad?” she asked.

“No,” said Julie with forbearance. “I’m not related.”

“Just a friend?” The nurse said it sympathetically, but with a gleam of interest in her eye.

“Actually I’m on duty. I’m a detective inspector.”

“Really?” She took a longer look at Julie. “Shouldn’t you be with the wife? I thought she was the assailant.”

Around 10 P.M., Diamond phoned Julie at the hospital.

“Has he said anything yet?”

“Just a lot of groaning.”

“He’s conscious, then?”

“Not really. In fact they’ve given him something to ease the pain, and he seems to be sleeping now.”

“Is the brain damaged?”

“They don’t know. The doctor was talking about a scan, but they wouldn’t do it tonight.”

“Not much point in you staying, by the sound of it. Let’s both clock off. See you in the morning, early.”

“How early is early?”

“Why don’t you join me for breakfast at the Francis, say about eight-thirty?”

“A working breakfast?”

“No. Just breakfast. Well, not just breakfast. You’ll get a chance to sample the Heritage Platter. So will I. Had to miss it this morning. Don’t quote me, Julie, but there have got to be some perks in this.”

He put down the phone. Across the room, Commander Warrilow was facing the wall, pressing his finger against a map of the city. Diamond in this uncharacteristically benign mood went over and perched on the desk assigned to Warrilow. “Did you have any joy in the sewer?”

Warrilow took this as more sniping, and scowled.

“Looking for Mountjoy,” Diamond prompted him.

Without shifting his gaze from the map, Warrilow said, “If you really want to know, we’re looking at an area just a few streets away. A man answering Mountjoy’s description was seen in Julian Road earlier this evening and we had another sighting about the same time in Morford Street.”

“Alone?”

“What do you expect?” said Warrilow, turning to glare at him. “He’s got the girl trussed up somewhere, poor kid. I’m told that there’s quite an amount of empty property around Julian Road, sometimes used by dossers. I’m having it searched.”

“You’re convinced he’s in the city, then?”

“It’s looking more and more like it. Whether Samantha is here with him-in fact, whether she’s still alive-I wouldn’t like to speculate. I’m getting increasingly worried about her.”

Diamond eased himself off the desk and glided to the exit. This wasn’t a tactful moment to go off duty, but he’d had enough.

In twenty minutes he was in the Roman Bar at his hotel, the solitary Englishman among three groups of German and Canadian tourists. Inevitably after a few brandies he was drawn into their conversation and just as predictably he found himself having to account for the presence of the crusties in such a prosperous-seeming city.

“It’s a mistake to lump them together,” he found himself pontificating. “There are distinctly different groups. You have the so-called new age travelers, dropouts, mostly in their twenties, usually in combat fatigues or leather. Hair either very short or very long. Never anything in between. They have dogs on string or running loose and they can seem quite threatening. Actually they ignore people like us, unless they want money. We inhabit another planet to theirs. Then there’s a hard core of alkies-men about my age-always with a can or bottle in their hands. They’re shabby, weather-beaten, but conventionally dressed in sports jackets and corduroys. They sometimes shout abuse. So do I when I feel brave enough.”

This earned a laugh.

“I’m serious. I could easily join them soon,” he confided as he drained the brandy glass. “I don’t have a proper job. Chucked it in two years ago. So I look at those guys and know it’s only a matter of time.” Having unburdened himself of this maudlin prediction, he rose, unsteadily. “Sleep well, my friends, and be thankful it isn’t a shop doorway you’re lying in.”

As he was moving off he overheard someone saying, “Britain is just teeming with eccentrics.”

To which someone else added, “And crazies.”

He didn’t look round. He made his way ponderously to the lift. He’d talked (or drunk) himself into a melancholy mood and he knew why. The solving of the Britt Strand case was going to hurl him back into the abyss of part-time work in London. These few days had been a cruel reminder of better times and he hadn’t needed to be reminded. He wanted to be back in Bath and more than anything he wanted his old job back.

Outside his room he was fumbling with the key when he became aware of a slight pressure in the small of his back. In his bosky state he didn’t immediately interpret it as sinister. Assuming he must have backed into someone, he murmured, “Beg your pardon.”

From behind him came the command, “Open the door and step inside.”

He knew who it was.

A gun at your back is more sobering than black coffee; a gun held by a convicted murderer is doubly efficacious. Diamond’s rehabilitation was immediate.

It was no bluff, either. A black automatic was leveled at him when he turned to face John Mount joy.

“The gun isn’t necessary,” Diamond said.

The change in Mount joy was dramatic. On Lansdown a couple of days before he’d looked gaunt and pale as prisoners do, yet he’d seemed well in control. Now he was twitchy and the dark eyes had a look of desperation, as if he’d discovered that freedom is not so precious or desirable as he’d supposed. The strain of being on the run was getting to him, unless the unspeakable had happened and he was marked by violence.

Speaking in a clipped, strident voice, he ordered Diamond to remove his jacket and throw it on the bed. What did he suppose-that it contained some weapon or listening device? He waved him to a chair by the window.

It would not be wise to disobey.

“What have you got to tell me?” he demanded. “Speak up.”

“Would you mind lowering that thing?”

“I’ll use it if you don’t speak up.”

Whether the threat was real, Diamond didn’t know, but there was real danger that he would fire it inadvertently, the way he was brandishing it like an aerosol.

“There is progress,” Diamond told him, spacing his words, doing his utmost to project calm whilst thinking how much to tell. “Definite progress. I now have a witness who saw you leaving the house where the murder took place. At approximately eleven o’clock. More important, he’s positive he saw Britt at the front door showing you-”

Mountjoy cut him short. “Who is this?”

“Someone she knew.”

“‘He,’ you said. What was he doing there? I didn’t see him.”

Diamond continued the drip, drip of information, trying to dictate the tempo of this dangerous dialogue. “Watching the house, he says.”

“Who was he? You must know who he was.”

“He fancied his chances as the boyfriend. Someone told him you’d taken her out for a meal. He was jealous. He went to the house to see for himself if it was true. Stood outside in the street. He says you left without even shaking her hand and moved off fast.”

“That much is true,” Mountjoy admitted. “Is he the killer? Why did he tell you this? Who is he?”

The advantage had shifted. Mount joy’s hunger to have the name was making him just a shade more conciliatory. Diamond was far too experienced to miss the opportunity to trade. “What’s happening to Samantha? Is she all right?”

“Don’t mess with me,” said Mountjoy, touchy at the mention of Samantha. “I want the name of this toe rag.”

“Better not abuse him,” Diamond cautioned. “He’s your best hope so far.”

“Who is he?”

“Is Sam still alive?”

No response.

“You know if you hurt her, laid a finger on her, they’d get you.”

“What do you mean-‘they’? You’re one of them.”

A slip of the tongue. He said, “The top brass.”

“They will anyway.”

“If you play it right,” Diamond broached a more positive offer, “you ought to survive. The gun isn’t going to help. I don’t know where you got it, but you’d be safer without it.”

The warning seemed timely when Mountjoy used the back of the hand that was holding the gun to wipe his mouth. Whatever the man’s misdemeanors, he was no gunman.

Diamond sensed that he was on the brink of getting some information about Samantha. It was worth giving more. “As a matter of fact,” he volunteered, “I don’t have the name of this witness who saw you leaving the house. He’s a crusty, a traveler.”

“One of that lot? Who’s going to believe him?”

“I do, for one.”

This caused Mountjoy to frown. “You do?”

“Yes.”

“You sent me down. Are you actually admitting you got it wrong?”

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

“Was this crusty the killer?”

“Probably not.”

This wasn’t the answer Mountjoy had expected. The muscles in his face tensed and he said thickly, “Who the hell is it, then?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What?”

“-but I’m closing in,” Diamond added quickly. “That’s why it’s so important that Samantha is released unhurt. She is all right still, isn’t she?” And after receiving no reply, he said, “Look, the people who are running the manhunt are getting anxious. If you could give them some proof that she is still alive, it might buy us both some time. If not”-he glanced at the gun-“it could end very soon, John, and in a bloody shoot-out.”

Mountjoy’s troubled eyes held his for a moment, but he gave no response.

“Will you tell me something else?” Diamond asked him, his brain in overdrive. “That last evening you spent with Britt: did she mention anyone she was seeing?”

“Other men, you mean? I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

“I mean no. Why would she want to talk to me about boyfriends?”

“Perhaps to give you the message that she was already dating someone.”

“Well, she didn’t. I did most of the talking, chatting her up, you could say.”

“Didn’t that involve asking her questions about herself?”

“Yes, but you don’t ask a woman who else she’s sleeping with.”

Fair point. Diamond was compelled to admit that on a first date the conversation was unlikely to venture down such byways. It was a long time since he’d been on a first date. “Who paid for the meal in the Beaujolais?”

“I used my credit card, but she insisted on giving me money to cover her share. She said something about modern women valuing their independence.”

“You must have expected her to offer.” Diamond moved on-smoothly, considering the circumstances-to the real point that interested him. “Did you by any chance give her some flowers?”

Mountjoy was annoyed by the question. Muscles tensed in his cheek. “The roses? No. Will you get it into your thick head that I didn’t murder her?”

“There’s a big difference between buying flowers for a lady and murdering her,” Diamond said. “Someone else could have seen your flowers and taken it to mean she was two-timing.”

“They were not my flowers.”

“Pity. It would have made a nice gesture, the kind of gift a woman would appreciate from a mature man such as yourself. You wouldn’t have to arrive at the restaurant with them. You could have had them delivered to the house.”

“I didn’t.”

“So did you notice any roses in the flat when you went back there?”

“No.”

“Would you have noticed?”

“Probably.”

“So-getting back to your conversation over dinner- did you talk about her work?”

“Hardly at all. Mostly we discussed Swedish cooking and various cars I’ve owned.”

Heady stuff! Diamond thought. “You’re a keen driver?”

“Used to be.”

“Was she?” He already knew the answer, but he wanted to keep the man talking.

“She seemed to understand what I was on about, only I don’t think she owned a car. She said you could manage easily in Bath without one, what with the minibuses and the trains.”

“And friends with cars. You drove her back to Larkhall after the meal in the Beaujolais?”

“Yes.” Mountjoy was becoming twitchy again, rubbing the gun against his sleeve.

“Did you get the impression that the house was empty?”

“It was. It was in darkness. We had it to ourselves. I thought I had it made until she started on about the Iraqi students I was enrolling. Then I knew she’d set me up. I was pretty sure she had a tape recorder running somewhere.”

“Of course,” Diamond said aloud, and it sounded as if he’d expected nothing less, whereas in reality he spoke the words self-critically. Of course she would have used a tape recorder, a top journalist. “Did you look for it?”

“There was no need. She went on about evidence and pictures and documentation, but I admitted nothing. Didn’t even finish the coffee. I got up and left. I was pretty upset, but I saw no point in giving her abuse.”

“She saw you to the door?”

“If you mean she followed me downstairs saying she’d got all the evidence she wanted and I deserved everything that was coming to me, yes. She slammed the door after me. I walked to where I’d parked my car in St. Saviours Road and drove home.”

“Did you see anybody along the street?”

For some reason this inflamed Mountjoy. “I was too bloody angry to notice. Look, I’ve told you all this at least a dozen times before, you fat slob. You’re just trying to fob me off with this horseshit about the crusty. Britt Strand was a class act. She wouldn’t mix with rubbish.”

“She didn’t normally. She was using him, the same as she used you.”

“What for?”

“A story about a squat in Bath.”

“That’s no story. That wouldn’t even make an inside page in the local paper. I’m not satisfied, Diamond. We had an arrangement. I trusted you. When are you going to deliver?”

“Soon.”

“Tomorrow.”

Diamond thought fleetingly of the man lying unconscious in the RUH. “That’s too soon.”

“Tomorrow-or never.” He tugged open the door and was gone.

All Diamond had to do was pick up the phone and tip off Warrilow. Instead, he went to the kettle and switched it on, picked a sachet of coffee from the bowl and emptied it into a cup. He spilled some of the Nescafe, not because he was in a state of shock, but because he was cack-handed. Always had been. Couldn’t help it. He could handle an interview.

Well, considering his interview wasn’t planned, he hadn’t done too badly. True, he hadn’t confirmed whether Samantha Tott was still alive, but he had just teased out the clue that would transform the investigation.

If there was time.

His elation was short-lived. There was a strange sound in the room, a whine, rising to a fast crescendo, followed by a click. Acrid fumes invaded his nose. There was no water in the kettle and he’d burnt out the element.