Diamond Dust (18 page)

'And . . . ?'

'My clothes are filthy. I've a good mind to send you the dry-cleaning bill, but I think I found your main cases - except for Missendale.'

'That went to a board of inquiry. It wouldn't be down there. Doesn't matter. It wouldn't have any bearing. You found the protection case, I hope? Joe Florida?'

'That's there. And the Brook Green shooting. Two or three others.'

'Great work, Louis.'

'What you've got here are photocopies of the main documents. I couldn't copy everything.'

'Understood.'

Louis eyed him speculatively. 'Does a le Carre character ever ask George Smiley what the hell he's up to?'

Diamond shook his head. 'They skirt around it. That's why the books are so long.'

'Would it have anything to do with the body found at Woking yesterday?'

'You read the papers, too.'

'Couldn't miss it. You want to be careful, Peter. There's a professional gunman out there. You may think you're on his tail, but he's on yours.'

'Thanks, Louis. I'll sleep better for knowing that.'

He left soon after with the files.

25

J
ulie was right. It took two whole days for anyone else to make the connection with DCI Weather's missing wife. Two days of inertia for Peter Diamond. True, he studied the case files Louis had photocopied. He combed them minutely, regardless that he'd extracted everything of substance inside an hour on his train ride back to Bath.

Top of the heap was the protection racketeer, Joe Florida, released from Wandsworth in 1995 after serving seven years of a twelve-stretch. Joe Florida's wish-list of slow tortures, emasculations and other cruel fates for police officers who had crossed him was well documented. He told Diamond in one of his interviews prior to being charged that he would 'blow you away, you pig' (though Diamond remembered some adjectives the transcription left out) and repeated the threat more graphically in court after sentencing. As he was being taken down he had shouted - and Diamond remembered this clearly -'I've put a notice on you, copper. I'll do the business on you when I come out. You'll wish you'd never heard of me.' Such taunts from the dock were not uncommon, and the police and judiciary treated them philosophically in the knowledge that several years behind bars dulled the memory and weakened the intent. But in view of what had happened, Joe Florida had to be taken seriously. The probation service had kept tabs on him for three more years after release. He'd returned to West London, to a flat in an upmarket street in Chelsea, so he was obviously not without funds. Under 'Current Employment' on his file someone had written
Nothing known,
a succinct summing up. He was a career crook, well capable of slipping back into crime without drawing attention to himself.

Tucked away in a section about the surveillance operation on Joe Florida was a name Diamond noted with interest. He circled it with a pen. One of the team assigned to watch the suspect's flat had been DC Weather. A minor role apparently, but it was not impossible Stormy had helped make the arrest and got himself on Florida's wish-list

The Assistant Chief Constable herself, Georgina Dallymore, brought the news late Monday afternoon when things had gone quiet, stepping unannounced into Diamond's cluttered office and exclaiming breathlessly, 'Peter, I think we have the breakthrough. Curtis has been talking to the Surrey Police at Woking, where the remains of that woman were found at the end of last week. They have an ID now, and she's confirmed as an ex-police officer, the wife of a CID officer
you may well have worked
with in the Met.'

'DCI Weather,' he said as if they were discussing nothing more enthralling than last night's television. 'Yes, I know the bloke.'

'You've heard already?' He'd just shot Georgina's fox, and she was not pleased.

He said in the same flat tone, 'Mrs Patricia Weather, aged thirty-eight, dark-haired, five-six, stocky, dressed in a dark green padded coat, black woollen skirt with an artificial leather belt, pink jumper, Marks and Spencer underwear, tights and low unfashionable black shoes, size seven with a narrow heel.'

'How do you know all this?'

This was not the time to mention his trip to Woking. 'Most of it is in the papers, apart from her name, ma'am. That's on the PNC under missing persons.'

Georgina eyed him warily, suspicious she was being gulled. Nobody associated computer science with Peter Diamond.

As an extra touch, he explained, 'And the Yard puts out these bulletins.'

'And you put two and two together?'

'It wasn't quite so obvious as that. I couldn't say for sure.'

'But you worked it out. Independently of our inquiry, you worked it out.'

'I do have an interest in the case, ma'am.'

Still huffy, she told him, 'I came to put you in the picture, and there's no need, apparently.'

'Ah, but it's nice to have it confirmed.'

She nodded and said with as much acid as she could convey, 'In the unlikely possibility that it
hasn't
reached your ears, I've called a case conference for tomorrow afternoon, and Surrey Police and the Met will be represented. I'd like you to be there as well. Any theories you have about this development will be of interest to us all.'

He thanked her, a necessary gesture. Even he recognised the need to kowtow on occasions.

Georgina unfroze a couple of degrees. 'Let's hope this brings a result. You're entitled to expect it. A fresh perspective ought to make a difference.' It was as near as she would come to saying McGarvie was all at sea.

Still she lingered, and Diamond waited. Eventually she said, 'I was never in the Met, so I can't speak from first hand about things that happened in the eighties. Everyone knows corruption was endemic then and the official inquiries didn't deal with the problem. Countryman should have made a difference and was wound up far too soon. What was that other inquiry run by Number Five Regional Crime Squad?'

'Operation Carter.'

'Yes, they collected some damning evidence and didn't deliver in the end, or were shut down. You were at Fulham in those days. You must have seen abuses.'

'They weren't the norm, ma'am.'

'Don't take this personally, Peter.'

Whenever he heard those words he knew something personal was about to be slung at him.

'You had to face a board of inquiry over that Missendale case. I know you took it to heart at the time.'

'I was angry.'

'You were exonerated.'

'With a rider about my overbearing manner.'

'Which everyone except you has forgotten. Will you hear me out? This changes everything, this identification. Both murders could well have roots in things that happened at the time I'm speaking of, things you'd rather forget. We need to know what they are, Peter. We've all had episodes in our past we gloss over. Speak frankly, and you have my word there will be no witch-hunt.'

'What about, ma'am?'

'Anything at all. The point is this. We have to stop this killer from murdering anyone else. That's paramount. Your iffy conduct fifteen years ago doesn't matter a jot compared to that.'

He was stung into a sharp riposte. 'No, ma'am,' he told her, feeling the blood rush to his face,
'this
is the point. My wife had two bullets put through her brain. If you think I'd hold back on anything to shore up my dodgy career, you must have a low opinion of me.'

'That isn't so,' she said through tight lips. She turned and left the room.

He felt a twinge of guilt. Georgina had come in spontaneously, genuinely wanting to share her news with him. So often of late when she'd spoken to him, there had been a hidden agenda. This time she'd dredged up his past - or tried to - and said a couple of tacdess things and he'd reacted more tetchily than ever. He needn't have put her down.

Too late to mention it.

Another of the case files he'd acquired from Louis featured a white teenager, a crop-headed loner called Wayne Beach who had a liking for guns. As a juvenile, Beach had twice been caught in possession of firearms acquired by his criminal family. For a short time in the early eighties he had made a living robbing and shooting taxi drivers. His method was simple and effective. He'd hail a cab late at night when the driver had stacked up an evening's fares in the West End and ask to be driven to some street where he'd already parked a stolen car. He'd get out and instead of paving the fare he'd pull out a handgun and shoot the driver, usually in the leg, and demand his takings. The drivers always paid up. He would smash the two-way radio and put another bullet into one of the taxi tyres before walking calmly to the stolen car and escaping. One night in Edith Road an eagle-eyed constable spotted a parked car reported as stolen three hours before. On the off-chance that this was the taxi-bandit a team headed by Diamond was issued with arms and sent to lie in wait. Beach was ambushed and shot in the hip. It was not stated in the file whether Stormy Weather had been one of the DCs in support.

Beach had been given five years on that occasion and had served several terms since for malicious wounding. The significant feature in his case was the way he felt about guns. He was a trigger-happy hard man with no scruples about inflicting pain on innocent victims. It wasn't enough to use the gun as a threat. He always fired. The case notes said he had an image of himself as a holdup man in the old American West. He put bullets into people without any compunction whatever. Killing hadn't featured among his crimes, it was true, though one of the drivers had almost bled to death. But he had to be taken seriously as a possible killer now.

He'd been released from Wormwood Scrubs last Christmas, in plenty of time to have shot Steph and Patricia Weather.

Georgina said to the room in general, 'This is Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond,' and added on a softer, apologetic note, as if suddenly realising she was in the holy of holies, the Chief Constable's suite, 'the husband.'

'Widower,' Diamond corrected her.

'We already met,' DCI Bobby Bowers said without elaborating, and nobody picked up on it.

The case conference was around the oval table where officers' careers were blessed or blown away. Coffee was served in porcelain cups and saucers instead of mugs and there were Jaffa Cakes instead of chocolate digestives. There was little else to report. It was a fact-finding exercise for all concerned, and no facts were found that were new to Diamond.

At one stage someone made the ill-considered remark, 'Patsy Weather was a copper, one of our own. This time we'll get this guy, whatever it takes.'

Diamond demolished him with a look.

Afterwards he offered to show Bowers the way down to the car park.

'Nothing else at the scene, then?' he asked the young DCI.

'Only bits of bone.'

'No bag? No rings?'

'I'd have mentioned it just now, wouldn't I?'

'When's the post mortem?'

'Tomorrow.' Bowers glanced at his watch. 'Would you have time to show me your crime scene?'

They drove out to Royal Victoria Park in Bowers' white Volvo. This late in the afternoon they found a space easily on Royal Avenue below the Crescent and walked across the turf to the place near the stone bandstand where Steph had fallen. The sympathetic tributes of flowers and wreaths had long since disappeared. No one would have known this was a murder scene. A couple of schoolkids locked in a passionate embrace behind the bandstand had not been put off. The proximity of strangers didn't put them off either.

Bowers stared across the lawns, velvety in low-angled sunlight, to the glittering row of parked cars along the avenue and above them the curve of the most-photographed terraced building in Europe. He took in the great trees to the left and the conifers away to the right. Turning, he noted how close were the tall bushes screening them from Charlotte Street Car Park.

'Hard to equate with my railway embankment.'

'You've got a park nearby.'

'Yeah, but this is so open.' He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Diamond, who shook his head. 'And she was just gunned down and left here?'

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without emotion.

'There was no attempt to move her?'

'Too risky.'

'You mean he would have been seen dragging her to his car?' Bowers cupped his hand over his lighter to get a cigarette going and exhaled a long sigh of smoke that seemed to express the difficulty he was having with this crime scene. 'Why wasn't he seen shooting her?'

'He?'

A pause. Bowers raised an eyebrow. 'You don't really suspect this killer is female?'

'I'm keeping an open mind - or trying to. But you asked about the risk of being seen. I've given thought to that,' Diamond said, more comfortable talking practicalities. 'You'd think a public park in broad daylight would be a stupid place to murder someone, but this was a cold morning in February at a time of day when most people were already at work - and I've checked more than once. It
is
deserted here around that time.'

'Do you think he - or she - worked that out?'

'Probably.'

'So he
could
have moved the body if he'd wanted to.'

'To a car, you mean?'

'The car park is right here behind us.'

Diamond was dismissive. 'No chance. Its use is totally different. By that time of the morning it's busy, three-quarters full and with cars coming in all the time. The people aren't coming this way. They're going down into town for shopping and looking at the tourist sites. You couldn't carry a body to a car without being seen. Besides, there are cameras, and, yes, every tape has been checked.'

Bobby Bowers raked a hand through his crop of dark curls. 'I seriously wonder if we're right to link these two shootings.'

'Tell me why.'

'Your wife was certain to be found in a short time. It was a bold, professional hit, as if they didn't care who heard the shots. But my shooting has all the signs of being covert. The killer took pains to move her to a clever hiding place. The body might never have been discovered. If he's so brazen about murder A, why go to all the trouble of concealing murder B?'

Diamond had no explanation. 'Have you spoken to DCI Weather?'

'Only to confirm identification. That was enough for starters. He was in shreds, as you must have been.'

'God only knows how I would have coped with chewed-up bones. I suppose he identified her from the clothes?'

'Yes. The bones were no help. Her dental records were sent for. They match.'

'When will you interview him?'

'It's being done as we speak, by the two DIs you met at the scene. I'll know more after I've heard the tape.'

'Will you see him yourself?' Diamond asked.

'Sure to.' A feral glint invaded Bowers' eyes for an instant.

Diamond's sympathy went out to Weather. 'He'll get the third degree like I did, the husband being the first suspect.'

Bowers declined to confirm this. He said, 'I don't know about the treatment you were given.'

Diamond enlightened him, and at the end of it said, 'I was saying Stormy Weather can expect the same.'

'Depends.'

'But you don't rule it out.'

'Would you, in my position?'