Authors: Peter Lovesey
Pinkerton looked unhappy with this interpretation. “Cooled off, I said. We were grown-ups. We stayed friends. Why do you want to know all this?”
“I’m trying to see it from Mountjoy’s point of view,” Diamond said, at full stretch to make it plausible. “If he’s in the area, either it’s to settle old scores or find something out. He’s got to be taken seriously.”
“He won’t trouble me. Why should he trouble me?”
Diamond didn’t venture a reply. “I’d like to
get
a fuller picture of Britt Strand. What else do you remember about her?”
Pinkerton slid his eyes upward, as if an image of Britt were painted on the ceiling. “The presentation mainly. She was immaculate, blond, a real blonde, with sensational skin. Good smile. Most probably had her teeth fixed along the way. In her business you have to be confident. She oozed it, sex and confidence. She was a great lay. Typically Swedish with no inhibitions. Fancy a livener?” he said, drawing a line under that phase of the conversation.
Diamond shook his head.
“Britt liked her whiskey straight,” Pinkerton added. “She could put them away.”
“I thought she was TT.”
“She was a journalist.” Apparently that spoke for itself. “Booze is bloody expensive in Sweden. They go wild when they come over here. Now you mention it, she did ask for a tonic with lemon and ice last time we met. One hangover too many, I guess.”
“Perhaps she used alcohol to put her in the mood.”
“And drank tonic water to batten the hatches? Maybe.”
“Was she romantic?”
“What do you mean?”
“Speaking of putting her in the mood.”
“Romantic?” He still treated the word as foreign.
“Well?”
“Basically, no. She didn’t go in for violins and roses. Ah.” He stopped and said, “I see what you’re getting at. Roses. No, I never gave her any. Red roses played no part in our relationship. I can’t believe anyone who knew her would think she liked that crap.”
“This relationship ...”
“We didn’t live together.”
“Did she come here?”
“Was it her place or mine, you mean? Always mine. Here or the studio. You’re wasting your time with me.”
How often had Diamond heard that piece of advice from a suspect who wanted him off his back. For the present he was disinclined to take it. “But you can tell me all about Britt.”
Pinkerton got up and went to a rosewood desk that opened into a drinks cabinet. He held out an empty wine glass. “Sure you won’t?” He poured himself a brandy. “What can I tell you that I haven’t already?”
“Did she mention any fears?”
“About what?”
“Other men pestering her. She was stunning to look at, you said yourself.”
“Britt could handle that.”
“She didn’t handle someone with a knife and a bunch of roses.”
There was a silence that seemed not to trouble Pinkerton.
Diamond said, “Would you mind telling me why the . . . arrangement between you and Britt cooled, as you put it?”
“No reason,” said Pinkerton.
“Come on. You slept with her. This terrific blonde who put so much into the sex. Did she dump you? Is that the expression?” Maybe he would get somewhere by goading Pinkerton.
But the self-composure was impenetrable. “We dumped each other, if you want to put it that way. No fights. No big scenes. Nothing said, even. We just stopped screwing. If you find that hard to believe, Mr. Diamond, I can’t help you.”
“It didn’t cross your mind at any stage that she might want to write something uncomplimentary about your past?”
Pinkerton’s brown eyes regarded Diamond steadily. “My past? A few teenage trips on resin-assisted cigarettes don’t amount to hard news by today’s standards. She wrote a profile that she cleared with me first. She sold it to several magazines. All about my state-of-the-art studio in the wilds of Wiltshire, in a wood where nightingales sing. No dirt, on me or anyone who works with me. The piece didn’t need it. I have no other secrets, Mr. Diamond. I don’t date any of the royal family and I can’t predict Derby winners. Satisfied?”
After that little onslaught Diamond realized that he was ring-rusty. He was glad no one from CID was there to hear it. “Did you go to the funeral?” he threw in finally, knowing the answer.
“Yes.”
“Why, if you didn’t cate that much about her?”
“I’d have looked a right flake if I hadn’t. It was in all the papers that I was an ex-boyfriend. There were some ugly hints in the tabloids. I went for purely selfish reasons, if you want to know.”
Diamond accepted this with a nod.
Then Pinkerton threw in an extra. “And I wasn’t the nerd who sent a bunch of red roses to the funeral.”
It was obvious that something dramatic was happening when Diamond looked in at Manvers Street Police Station around nine-thirty the same evening. In the room where the hunt for Mountjoy was being coordinated, the three sergeants and their team of civilian clerks had stopped work. They were supposed to be taking information from uniformed officers reporting the results of an evening hoofing around the city checking potential hideouts. Everyone—including the small queue waiting to report— watched Commander Warrilow, who was speaking urgently into a phone. He beckoned across the room to Diamond.
Self-congratulation spread across Warrilow’s features when he had finished the call. “You’re just in time for the action,” he told Diamond. “We’re about to take Mountjoy. He’s holed up at a caravan park on a farm out at Atworth. I’ve got a response car there already and two more on the way and we’re sending in a team of marksmen.”
“When was this?”
“The sighting? Barely twenty minutes ago. Want to be in at the kill?”
Diamond let the insensitive choice of expression pass. “All right.”
“Better move, then,” said Warrilow. “I’ll give you the state of play as we go.”
They stepped sharply along the corridor with Warrilow broadcasting his news loudly enough for the entire second floor to hear: “The first intimation of something was earlier this evening, about six-thirty. A farm worker saw a moving light in one of the caravans, as if someone was using a torch. He crept up close and heard voices inside. Reported it to the farmer, who did damn all about it. He was too busy with the cows, or something. Later the farmer was back in his house having supper when he heard a motorcycle being driven up the lane and went out to investigate. No one has any business going up there. It’s a farm track. None of the caravans are in use. They’re locked and parked in his field for the winter, over a hundred of them. Farmer goes to have a look, finds the lock of this van has been forced and starts to go in, but Mountjoy appears at the door, shoves him in the chest and knocks him down.”
“Are we sure it was Mountjoy?”
“Positive. The farmer has just been shown the mugshot. Anyway, he didn’t mix it, just hared back to the house and dialed 999.”
“Mountjoy will have scarpered by now.”
“We’ll have him,” Warrilow said with confidence. “It’s way out in the country. Open fields and very little cover. We’re sealing the area with roadblocks.”
“Any news of Samantha?”
“Not yet. I don’t want anyone approaching that van before we’ve checked it.”
A line of cars waited with their beacons flashing. They got into the first and it sped off northward through the city center. Diamond had a vague idea that Atworth was a village west of Melksham. A mercifully short ride; he hated traveling at speed, particularly when someone else was at the wheel. And there was no prospect of being distracted by conversation because Warrilow was totally absorbed issuing orders over the radio. It sounded as if the combined forces of Avon, Somerset and Wiltshire were converging on the caravan park.
They took the London Road as far as Bathford and peeled off under the railway viaduct, where a police barrier was already in operation. The roads became more narrow and from the backseat it looked impossible to pass oncoming cars. There’s no law of science that says that a speeding police car is less likely to crash than any other; rather, statistics show the reverse to be true. More than once as they swung around a blind corner he braced himself and shut his eyes.
“Coming up on the left, I think,” said Warrilow.
Another blue flashing police beacon greeted them at the farm entrance. The officer standing by the response car directed theirs up the track to the farmhouse.
Warrilow was first out, keen to make his impression as the man of the hour. Diamond stayed put. He had no official role to play and if guns had been issued he would be marginally safer in the car. He didn’t share Warrilow’s relish for this situation. He simply wanted to know the outcome. If successful, the police operation would bring a premature end to his reexamination of the Britt Strand murder. Farr-Jones and Tott would be more than happy to give him his marching orders.
Frustrating. Just when he was starting to function again as a detective. Not much progress, of course, but things could have begun to happen. No one had satisfactorily accounted for the roses in the victim’s mouth. Or the dozen red roses sent without a message to the funeral. He would have liked another crack at the case, if only to remove all doubt.
A private car drew up beside them. John Wigfull. He must have been off duty, probably relaxing at home with his train set, Diamond thought uncharitably. He watched Wigfull stride away toward the fields where the caravans were parked.
“Not my sort of holiday, dragging one of those things down to Devon being cursed by everyone else,” he said conversationally to the driver. “I bet you hate them. The point of going away is staying somewhere nice, seeing some decent views, eating some good food, isn’t it? Buy one of those and you’re stuck in a field looking out at more of the ugly things and eating pot noodles. I’d rather rent a cottage or go to a good hotel when I can afford it.”
The driver wouldn’t comment. Perhaps he belonged to the Caravan Club.
Discomfort in the back of the car eventually persuaded Diamond to get out. He strolled along the lane and joined the group who seemed to think they had a safe vantage point. Among them, he presently gleaned from the conversation, was the farmer. It seemed he was worried about possible damage to the caravans in his care. He didn’t want the owners coming back next spring and finding bullet holes in the sides of their vans.
“This man in the caravan—are you sure he’s the one we’re looking for?” Diamond asked.
“Hundred percent, sir.”
“You had a good look at his face?”
“I were as close to him as I am to thee.”
“Yes, but it was dark.”
“I can see in the dark.”
“What’s your secret—carrots?”
“Are you being sarky, mister? You’re speaking to the man who were knocked over by the bugger.”
“And did that assist identification?”
Diamond had the last word because a searchlight was switched on in the field ahead and everyone’s attention focused on a white caravan standing in a row of about twenty. Curtains were drawn across the two small windows in view.
Warrilow’s voice came over a loud-hailer: “Mountjoy, I want you to listen carefully. This is the police. You are surrounded and we are armed. Do exactly as I say and no one will get hurt. First, you are to release Miss Tott. Then you will come out yourself with your hands on your head. Is that clear? First, Miss Tott. Allow her to come out now.”
Another light beam swung across the space in front of the caravans and stopped at the door. The forced lock was clearly visible. Everyone watched for a movement, but none came.
“Mountjoy, it’s all over,” said Warrilow. “Release the young lady now.”
A short time after, he added, “You’re being very unwise. You have another twenty seconds.”
Privately, Diamond thought it was Warrilow who was being unwise. Time limits are unhelpful in siege situations unless they are agreed by both sides.
At least a minute went by. Then someone in Diamond’s group spotted two masked figures in black approaching the caravan from the unlit side, creeping swiftly around it, right up to the door. One rammed it open with his hand and the other lobbed something inside.
“Tear gas,” murmured a voice.
Still no one came out.
“What happens if they aren’t in there after all?” someone asked.
“There are ninety-nine other caravans to search,” said Diamond with a yawn.
“He were definitely in there,” the farmer insisted.
Nobody disputed it, but the tension had eased.
A man wearing a gas mask and armed with a gun entered the caravan, spent a few seconds inside and then came out and spread his arms to gesture that no one was there. The search would have to widen in scope. Warrilow began issuing fresh orders.
Diamond stayed well in the background, preferring to prowl around the farm buildings. Not that he expected to find anyone. He was sure Mountjoy would have quit the area immediately after the fracas with the farmer—if, indeed, the man inside the caravan had been Mountjoy.
The impression he got of this farm was that it barely deserved being described as such. He guessed that the farmer— who must have been over sixty—relied on the caravan parking fees as a main source of income. There were no animals apart from a few chickens. The farm machinery consisted of a tractor with mold growing on the wheels from disuse. Maybe the policy known as “set aside” had something to do with it. Diamond vaguely understood the economics that paid farmers to limit their production, but found it depressing to observe.
Emerging in the lane again, having completed his tour, he spotted the man who had checked the interior of the caravan. The gas mask was off now.
“What was in there?” Diamond asked.
“The caravan? Definite signs of an intruder, sir. A half-eaten loaf, some apple cores, a milk carton, a piece of rope. He can’t have got far.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We found the motorbike behind a hedge, so he doesn’t have wheels anymore.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“What did you say, Mr. Diamond?” It was Warrilow himself, butting in on the conversation.
“I said I wouldn’t count on Mountjoy being without wheels. There’s a garage behind the farmhouse with an up-and-over door which is open. Empty. If I were you, I’d ask the farmer what make of vehicle he drives.”
“Gordon Bennett!”
“Really? I’d have thought an old Cortina was more his style.”