Diamond Dust (19 page)

The chill of evening was in the air and the first lights were visible in the Crescent. Without either man suggesting enough had been said, they returned silently across the turf to the car, leaving the scene to darkness and the snogging schoolkids.

At home with a mug of tomato soup in his fist and a chunk of bread on his lap he watched the nine o'clock news on TV. Nothing. Maybe they had run the Woking story the previous night. He didn't watch much these days. The news seemed as remote from real life as the soaps.

He'd delayed for as long as he could manage. He reached for the phone and pressed out the number he'd obtained that morning from the incident room.

'DCI Weather?'

'Who is this?' The voice was defensive.

All too vividly he remembered being under siege by the press. 'Peter Diamond. I don't know if you remember me. We have a couple of things in common. I'm deeply sorry to hear about your wife.'

There was no response at all. But what do you say in the circumstances?
'So am
/'?
'No problem'} 'Thanks'?

Diamond waited, then said, 'We served together, you and I, at Fulham, back in the eighties.'

'That's right,' the voice became a touch less combative, yet still drained of animation. 'And your wife has been shot like mine. They told me.'

'So I know how you feel. It's hell.'

'Worse.'

'Look,' Diamond said, 'may I call you by your first name? It's so long ago I only remember—'

'The nickname.' The way Stormy Weather closed him down made the tired old joke seem one more infliction.

'And your real name is . . . ?'

'Dave.'

'Dave. Right. A lot of guys came and went,' Diamond said to excuse his defective memory.

'And I was just a DC in those days,' Dave Weather said.

'I'm Peter.'

'You said.'

'I'd like to meet up if possible. You're going to be under all sorts of pressure. It may help to talk to someone who knows what it's like.'

'I don't feel like talking.'

'I know. I didn't. But you want to find the dickhead who killed your wife, right? And the high-ups are telling you to keep away. They don't want the likes of you and me getting involved.'

'They've got their reasons.'

'Like leave it to us, it's in good hands?'

'Something like that. And as the husband I'm personally involved.'

'I heard it all seven months ago. I'm still waiting for some progress, let alone an arrest' Diamond was trying his damnedest, and at the same time sensing he should have waited a couple of days. The man was shell-shocked, just as he had been.

He still refused to give up. 'You know they're treating the two killings as connected? There was a case conference here in Bath today. I was called in to give the dope on operations you and I were both involved in. Hard task, all these years later. When you feel up to it we really should compare notes.'

'Is that what they suggested?'

'No. This is my idea.'

The response remained lukewarm. 'If you think it will make a difference.'

'I'm certain,' Diamond said, elated at the small concession he'd winkled out. 'I'll come to you. You're in Raynes Park, aren't you?'

Dave Weather backtracked. 'My place is a tip. I've done sod all to keep it straight in the last six months and now I've had the CID all over it.'

Which Diamond treated as an R.S.V.P.

'Likewise. I'm still in chaos here. Dave, I don't give a toss what your place looks like. What's the address?'

26

T
he moment Stormy Weather opened the door of his mock-Tudor semi in Raynes Park, Diamond remembered him. How could he have forgotten a skin like that, the colour of freshly sliced corned beef? A man could spend his life shovelling coal into a furnace and not end up with so many ruptured blood vessels. You never knew when he was blushing because it was his natural appearance. Happily for Stormy, it wasn't off-putting for long. If anything, it endeared him to people. With a few exceptions, none of us likes our own face much, and it's a relief to be with someone who has more to put up with than we do.

Today the poor bloke was understandably careworn as well as florid. A faded black Adidas T-shirt and dark blue corduroy trousers hung loosely from his tall frame. He took a moment to register who his visitor was (Diamond put this down to his own hair-loss) and then invited him inside, through a hallway littered with newspapers still folded as they'd been pushed through the door. 'You'll have to make allowances,' he said, kicking some aside. 'Patsy would go spare if she saw the place in this state. She kept a tidy house.'

The sitting room was misnamed now, because there wasn't a seat available. The chairs and sofa were all piled high with drawers, books and CDs. It looked like the aftermath of a burglary. 'They went through the place a couple of days ago,' Stormy explained. 'I can't pretend it was tidy before, but they didn't help matters.'

'They' must have been a police search squad.

'It happened to me.' Diamond stooped and picked a framed photo off the floor, a black and white shot of a young woman at the wheel of a police Panda car. 'Is this your wife?'

Stormy reached for the photo and practically snatched it from him. 'I've been looking all over for that. I thought they must have taken it away.' He held it in both hands. 'Yes, this is Patsy about the time we met. Well, you must remember her. She was on the relief at Fulham when you were CID.'

'So I was told. Can I have another look?' Diamond stood beside Stormy, then drew back to get a clearer view. Soon he'd want glasses. More than once Steph had told him to see an optician. 'Of course I knew her. Didn't we call her Mary Poppins?' Instantly regretting he'd come out with anything so crass, he added, 'But her real surname - what was that?'

'Jessel.'

'Yes. Pat Jessel.' Clumsily, he tried to make up for his boorishness. 'I can't for the life of me remember how she got that nickname.'

Stormy sighed and told the story, and the canteen humour of twenty years ago jarred on the ear like an old LP. 'She was the fresh-faced rookie with very good manners who tried too hard to please. She had a perpetual smile and this amazing posh accent like Julie Andrews. One day Jacob Blaize sent down for a coffee and Patsy wanted to know if he liked it black or white and someone said "White, with just a spoonful of sugar" and the whole room started whistling the tune. She was stuck with it then. No one called her anything but Mary after that.'

'Right.' Diamond gave an apologetic smile. He now remembered Mary vividly. 'We were a cruel bunch.'

'It was a bit OTT. She got tired of the whistling and singing. And of course every time an umbrella was handed in it was hung on her peg. Though I have to say she fitted the role in some ways. She was a born organiser.'

'So when did you marry her?'

'November, eighty-six,' Stormy said, and for a moment his face creased, but he controlled the emotion and stood the photo on the empty wall unit.

Diamond, too, was thoughtful, marvelling that a young woman as pretty as 'Mary' Jessel had fallen for the Bardolph of Fulham nick.

'She was younger than you?'

'Fifteen years.'

'And she got to be sergeant.'

'At Shepherd's Bush. Served all her time at two stations just down the road from each other. She would have made inspector if she'd stuck with it. She was a fine copper.'

'She jacked it in?'

'Only about a year ago. She set up her own secretarial agency from home. It was just starting to build when 'Was she ever with CID?'

He shook his head. 'Uniform for the whole of her career, and pleased to do it. Very good with the public, anyone from juveniles to junkies.'

'And no one looked better in a white shirt,' Diamond reminisced. 'So she wouldn't have been on any of the cases you and I got roped into?'

'Not as CID. Do you want tea? Or there's a pub only five minutes away.'

'Sounds good to me.'

From the way they were greeted by the landlord of the Forester, Diamond guessed Stormy - or Dave, as he was trying hard to think of him - had spent plenty of time here lately. The urge to get out of the house where every picture, every chair, every cup has the potential to strike at the heart is hard to resist, as he well knew.

Over a glass of bitter at a. corner table in the saloon bar, his old colleague was more at ease. They had never been close companions, or even said much, but the shared experience drew them together. Diamond found himself speaking more frankly about the impact of Steph's murder than at any time up to now. 'There are days . . . The worst part is when you've been relaxing without knowing it - let's face it, forgetting what happened - and then something touches you like a finger, forces you back to reality, and . . . and . . . there's no other way to put it - she dies all over again.'

This drew a nod of recognition from Stormy.

Diamond added, 'What keeps me going is the promise I made to find the scumbag who did it. And I will. They keep telling me to stand aside and leave it to the murder squad. How can I? You feel the same, don't you?'

So much intensity from someone he'd known as a senior officer must have been daunting, but Stormy nodded at once.

Diamond was well launched. 'The murder inquiry is going nowhere. I've found out more through bloody-minded obstinacy than McGarvie and his television appeals and scores of men on overtime. It's incentive, Dave. You can't sit back. Even if they were right on the heels of the killer - which they're not - I'd still be going it alone. I owe it to Steph.'

'I know how you feel.'

Diamond took a long sip of beer, willing Stormy to open up a little, and he did.

'They kept saying she'd come back, hinting all the time that we'd had a run-in - as if it was something unusual. We were always having dust-ups. We were one of those couples who scrap all the time and feel better for it. Doesn't mean we didn't love each other.' He looked down into his drink. 'When a grown woman goes missing, nobody takes it seriously, not for weeks. She's just another name on a list.'

'How did it happen?'

'Her leaving? Nothing happened. Everyone was hinting there must have been some great punch-up. There wasn't. I came home from work one evening and she wasn't there.'

'When was this?'

'A Monday in March. The twelfth.'

'Two weeks and a bit after Steph was killed.'

'Right. I actually read about your wife being shot, and I remembered you from the old days, and was really sorry. I didn't send a card or anything because I didn't think you'd remember me, and it's difficult to know what to write.'

Diamond gave a nod. 'What about when your wife went missing? Did it cross your mind what had happened to Steph?'

'No, I didn't connect them. I didn't think Patsy was dead. You don't. I hoped she'd walk through the door any minute. And I guess I didn't want to face up to the worst possible explanation. You think of everything else, loss of memory, an accident, a coma. Anything that lets you hope.'

There are different degrees of torture, Diamond thought. Steph's sudden violent death had seemed like the ultimate. Stormy's months of not knowing was another refinement, and he wasn't sure how he would have coped with it. 'It's very isolating. No one knows what to say to you. They shun you if they can.'

'Tell me about it.'

'And of course they don't want us to investigate. I don't know if you've been told this, but the argument goes that a smart defence lawyer would cry foul if you or I helped to arrest our wives' murderers.'

'So get lost. Yes,' Stormy said, 'I was told that.'

Encouraged, Diamond moved a stage on. 'Yet if you and I put our heads together we'd be more likely to get to the truth than anyone else. We know who we crossed swords with. They don't.'

Stormy's brown eyes met Diamond's, slipped away and then came back. 'You're right,' he said with sudden fervour. 'Together we could nail this jerk.'

Warming to the man, Diamond took him into his confidence, telling him about the case files Louis Voss had copied.

Stormy heard all this with awe. He'd only just grasped that unofficial action was possible. Diamond's bull-necked attitude must have come as a shock. But as soon as the Joe Florida inquiry was mentioned Stormy recalled being on the surveillance team. 'He was given a long term.'

'Twelve. He was out after seven.'

'Out?' Stormy was appalled. 'That beats everything. That toerag. Most professional crooks have something to be said for them. Florida was evil.'

'You met him personally?'

'Twice. I sat in on interviews.'

'Questioned him?'

'No, I was only a DC at the time. Blaizy was in charge. You do remember Jacob Blaize?'

Too well, Diamond thought bitterly. 'Retired to Spain, the last I heard.'

'For some reason, he wanted me as the back-up in those sessions. I didn't mind. Saw myself as the up-and-coming detective, hand-picked by the guvnor. I didn't know Blaizy couldn't stay in an interview room for more than ten minutes at a time.'

Diamond frowned, then grinned as the explanation surfaced. 'His prostate problem? I'd forgotten about that.'

'It meant I spent more time alone with Joe Florida than anyone would wish to.'

'Did he talk?'

'Did he hell. He was after cigarettes. He could see I was a smoker. I may have been wet behind the ears, but I knew you don't dish out fags for nothing. So I took a fair amount of flak from Joe Florida.'

'Did he threaten you?'

'Let's say I wouldn't have needed a vasectomy if he'd got to me first.'

'He made his living out of threats,' Diamond recalled. 'I took a few. And in the protection racket you're not a serious player unless you mean what you say.'

'Joe did. Two shops torched, was it?'

'And a child almost died. She was in the cot upstairs. They got her out in the nick of time.'

'I remember.'

'So you spent time alone with him?' Diamond said eagerly. 'I didn't know that. Was there anything more serious from him than bumming a fag?'

'Such as?'

'He didn't try and make a deal? What I'm driving at, Dave, is something big enough for him to hold a grudge all the time he was in jail.'

'And then murder my wife, just to get back at me? No, there was nothing
that
extreme. I can't think of anyone who would behave like that. Even a shitbag like Florida.'

Diamond nodded. 'I keep saying the same. It's not just evil. It's twisted. Insane.' He paused. 'Do you think prison blew his mind?'

'He wouldn't be the first.'

'I mean to find out. I'm going to find him. If he murdered Steph, I'll have him.'

'I'm with you all the way.'

The hackneyed phrase had never meant so much to Diamond.

'Another beer?'

When he returned to the table, he said to Stormy, 'I was telling you about those files.'

'Files?'

'From Louis Voss at Fulham.'

'Right. I'm with you.'

'One was the Brook Green shooting.'

'I remember that.'

'You do?'

'Only I wasn't on the team.'

Diamond blew gently at the froth on his beer. 'Okay. There are others. Let's shuffle the pack again. How about a teenager by the name of Wayne Beach?'

The name brought a glimmer to Stormy's eye. 'Remind me, will you?'

'A loner. Armed robbery. Taxi drivers.'

'Ah - that little prick. We ambushed him one night in Edith Road.'

This was better than Diamond had hoped.
'We?
You were there? Tell me you were there.'

'I was. It was all very sudden. You were in charge, weren't you? You needed licensed shots and I was roped in, along with anyone else who happened to be there. I was behind a hedge in the garden opposite.'

'You didn't fire the shot?'

'No. That was another guy across the street. A sergeant. The name's gone now. But after Beach threw down his weapon I was one of the first to pin him. And I escorted him to the nick.'

'So he knows you?'

'I wouldn't think he remembers now.'

Privately, Diamond thought the opposite. Stormy's geranium-coloured skin had instantly triggered his own memory when he called at the house.

'He'd remember you better,' Stormy added.

'Maybe. I did the interviews and gave evidence. The thing about Wayne Beach is that he's a gun freak. He's done several stretches.'

'He'd be in his thirties now.'

'Thirty-four. Released from the Scrubs last December.'

'December? Shordy before . . . ?'

'Right.'

'So we have an address?'

'Thanks to the Probation Service, yes. Some high-rise in Clapham. Are you game?'

Stormy raised both thumbs.

'He'll be armed,' Diamond cautioned. 'Do you have a shooter?'

'Sorry. Do you?'

'Not any more.' Diamond leaned back and rested his hands on his paunch as if that concealed a secret weapon. 'Just have to outsmart him.'

'We can do that,' Stormy said with confidence, raising his glass. 'Here's to us. Whatever it takes.'

'Whatever.' Diamond clinked his glass and drank deeply. He had an ally now.

The outsmarting of Wayne Beach needed neutral ground and the surprise element, they decided. It would court disaster to visit his flat. They sat in a CID Vauxhall opposite the graffiti-scarred building in Latchmere Road, Clapham, watching the residents come and go. Their man would emerge at some point to buy cigarettes or food, or place a bet, or pick up his social security. It went without saying that he hadn't gone into honest employment.

After a couple of hours with no result they were thinking about food themselves. They'd seen a number of dodgy-looking people enter or leave the building, but that was not remarkable. It was a run-down, fifties-built tower block, a place of last resort that probably housed more lowlife than Wayne Beach.