Authors: Peter Lovesey
Confusion, then. Real, or contrived?
“What’s this about an MGB, then?”
“That was Britt’s—when she was seeing Pinkerton. Red. Beautiful little car.”
“I didn’t think she drove.”
“She got rid of it later. Didn’t get another, far as I know.”
“So we’re talking about some time back?”
“I was. What were you on about?” He made it sound as if Diamond was the one suffering post-concussional effects.
“How long before the murder?”
“Couple of years. I don’t know. It wasn’t my business, was it?”
“But you’d know if she owned another car after she got rid of the MGB.”
“She didn’t.”
“So she was without wheels. Did you ever give her lifts in your old Vauxhall?”
“A couple of times to the station.”
“Did you ever meet her train to drive her home?”
“No.”
“Ever buy her flowers?”
“Buy
them? No.”
“You picked them from the garden.”
“Why not?” said Billington. “She was living in my house. People can be civil to each other without ulterior motives.”
The way this pat little speech came out told Diamond it was well rehearsed. The civilized behavior card. He was tempted to trump it with a blunt mention of the bum-shot clippings Julie had found. But as the ward sister was likely to bring this interview to a premature end any time, he moved on fast to a topic of more urgency. “There was another man Britt was seeing shortly before she was killed. Quite a celebrity in his own way, wasn’t he? That show jumper, Marcus Martin. Did he visit the house?”
Billington perked up, the adrenaline flowing now that someone else might be under suspicion. “He was calling right up to the time we went on holiday.”
“You met him, then? When did he first appear?”
“Only a week or so before we left for Tenerife. He was an arrogant bastard. Treated us like servants.”
“In what way?”
He proceeded to tell the story. “Once I remember he had a dog with him. Big, spotted thing. I don’t know what breed it was or what it was called. He hooked the lead over our hall stand and told me to keep an eye on it, without so much as a ‘please.’ We had a polished wooden floor and I could hear the claws scratching it, ruining the surface, while Mr. Martin, cool as you like, started up the stairs to Britt’s rooms. I asked him politely to leave the dog outside the front door. Apart from anything else, we keep a cat. But Lord Muck took not the blindest notice. So presently I took the dog outside myself and tied it to the railings.” The incident must have made a deep impression, more than four years on, for Billington to have recalled it. And his concussion had miraculously lifted to do justice to the outrage he obviously felt.
“What happened when he found the dog had been moved?”
“He came downstairs because it started howling, making a God-awful racket. The next thing, this bumptious fathead marched into our private flat with the dog and said I had no right. Cheek. He got more than he bargained for when Snowy started on him.”
“Snowy?”
“The cat. She felt cornered, you see. The dog came in and hurled itself toward her. Snowy clawed its nose. She’s fearless. You never heard such yelping. That was the last time he brought the dog into our place, I can tell you.”
“Did Britt have anything to say?”
“She had the good sense to keep out of it.”
A thought occurred to Diamond. “What happens to your cat when you go on holiday?”
“It goes next door. That’s always been open house for Snowy. They’ve got an old tabby who clears off upstairs and leaves the food trough to Snowy.”
The cat’s welfare ceased to be of interest. “Britt’s friendship with this man started only a few weeks before she died, am I right?”
“As far as I know.”
“They were still seeing each other at the time you went on holiday?”
“I believe so.”
“Did Martin bring flowers for Britt?”
He shook his head. “That one was far too mean.”
“Did anyone? Did bouquets ever get delivered to your door?”
“I can’t remember any.”
“Did Martin ever stay the night?”
“No one did. We made that very clear to Britt and she respected it.”
“Did you respect
ber?”
Billington frowned. “How do you mean?”
“Her privacy. Did you ever go into her flat when she was out?”
“Only for maintenance.”
“What maintenance is that?”
“Checking the radiators for leaks, changing light bulbs, inspecting the fabric—the usual things, you know.”
“I can guess,” said Diamond, and he could.
“She had nothing to complain of.”
“That night you found her dead. What time was it you went into her flat—about one A.M. , wasn’t it? Was that maintenance, or what?”
“That isn’t funny.”
“But I want an answer.”
Billington’s gaze shifted to the ceiling as he recollected that evening. He was still talking lucidly. “It had been so quiet. Usually we could hear her moving about. She always took a shower before going to bed, and we’d hear the water going through the system. We’d hear her footsteps across the floor. That night, nothing.”
“But there must have been times when she spent the night in other places. She had lovers. What made this night so special that you decided to check?”
“It was coming back after being away. You’re more aware of things, sounds and that. Of course we noticed the milk hadn’t been taken in. We assumed she was away, but it wasn’t like her to go off without telling the milkman. She was such a well-organized person. Violet started worrying about her, and couldn’t get off to sleep. In the end she nagged me into checking.”
Knowing Violet Billington, Diamond thought it likely that the worry wasn’t so much over Britt Strand’s welfare as the possibility that she had done a flit without paying her rent. “Tell me what you found.”
“I’ve told you before. I’ve told it in court. I’ve told it dozens of times.”
“Refresh my memory.”
He screwed his face into a resentful look and turned his eyes toward the end of the ward where the sister had gone. “Well,” he said after a time, seeing no one coming to his aid, “I let myself into the flat and spoke her name. I had a sense that the place was empty and yet not empty. It was a strange sensation. As far as I can remember I went straight to the bedroom. The door was open. I didn’t switch on the light at first. I could just about see that the bed was occupied, but there was a smell that wasn’t healthy. I asked if she was all right. There wasn’t even a movement from the bed. So I stepped out into the passage and put that light on, which gave me enough to see what had happened. It was the worst moment of my life. I still get nightmares.”
“What did you do?”
“Went downstairs and told Violet. She came up to have a look. Then we phoned the emergency number. That’s all.”
“Tell me about Britt’s appearance.”
He gave a shrug. “What do you mean—appearance? She was dead.”
“Describe the scene.”
“You saw it. You were one of the first.”
“I need to hear it from you.”
He closed his eyes and started to speak like a medium in trance. “The curtains are drawn. Her clothes are lying on a chair by the dressing table, folded. Shoes together on the floor, neat-like. She’s lying face up on top of the bed, not in it, in a white dressing gown and pajamas. Blue pajamas. The dressing gown is made of towel stuff. It’s open at the front. The pajamas are stained with blood, pretty bad, but dry and more brown than red, and so is the quilt she’s lying on. One arm—the right—is stretched out across the bed. The other is bent across her stomach. She’s turned a sallow color and her mouth is horrible. Deep red. Filled with dead roses.” He opened his eyes. “If Mountjoy didn’t do this, you’ve got to get the brute who did.”
“Your time’s up, Inspector, more than up,” a voice broke in. The redoubtable sister had reappeared.
“I hope not,” said Diamond.
“What?”
He gave her a smile. “I’ve still got things to do. But I’m leaving.”
Events were not running smoothly for Diamond. First, when he went to look for the Escort it had gone; Julie had taken it to pursue the woman who had visited Billington. Second, he carried no personal radio; hadn’t even thought of asking for one. So he had to use a public phone to get a taxi back to Bath. But there was a consolation: the driver recognized him from the old days. They had a satisfying to-and-fro listing the inflictions they considered were ruining the character of the city: black London-style cabs, sightseeing buses, tourism, ram-raids, “New Age” travelers, shopping malls, traffic wardens, busking, Christmas decorations, students, old people, schoolchildren, councillors, pigeons, surveys, horse-drawn carriages and opera singing in front of the Royal Crescent. Diamond felt much beter for it by the time the cab drew up in front of the shabby end-terrace near the bottom of Widcombe Hill where Una Moon, and, until recently, Samantha Tott, were squatters.
His spirits plummeted again on learning from a hairy young man in army fatigues that Una had moved out.
“Where can I find her?”
“Who are you, then?”
“A friend.”
“What time is it?”
Diamond usually asked that himself, and expected to be told. “Around two-thirty, I imagine. Where will I find her at this time?”
“Up the uni.”
“The university?”
“Unicycle.”
“Ah.” Diamond’s face registered the strain of this mental leap.
“Down by the abbey,” his informant volunteered, and then asked, “If you’re a friend, how come you don’t know she juggles?”
Diamond got back in the cab.
A crowd of perhaps eighty had formed a semicircle around two performers in the Abbey Churchyard, close to the Pump Room. A man in a scruffy evening suit and top hat was doing a fire-eating act before handing the lighted torches to a young woman wobbling on a unicycle, who juggled with them. Not a convenient moment to question her about the Trim Street squat.
She was as thin as a reed, with a face like a ballerina’s and fine, dark hair in a plait that flicked about on her back with her movements controlling her bike. Ms. Moon, beyond any doubt.
A church clock chimed the third quarter and Diamond seriously considered interrupting the performance, regardless that it wouldn’t be a popular move, and might be dangerous. He decided to give them two minutes more, two minutes he could use to update himself on the siege, for the north end of the Abbey Churchyard led to Orange Grove. He strode in that direction.
Street barriers had been placed across the pedestrian crossing by the Guildhall, blocking the access to Orange Grove. A constable was stretching a band of checkered tape across the pavement.
Diamond explained who he was and asked what was happening now. On Commander Warrilow’s orders, he learned, the area in front of the Empire Hotel had been closed to traffic and pedestrians. Sensitive listening equipment had been set up and certain landmarks around Orange Grove were being used as observation points. Someone was posted on the roof of the abbey in the tower at the northeast end; not a marksman, the constable thought. It wouldn’t be good public relations, would it, to use a place of worship as a gun emplacement?
“Have they appeared at the window at all since the girl was spotted?” Diamond asked.
“Not so far as I know, sir. He won’t let her do that again, will he? He’s got the whole hotel to himself, so he might as well keep her in a room at the back. There’s plenty of choice.” This policeman seemed to be making a bid for CID work.
“Yes, but he’ll want to see what’s going on down here,” Diamond pointed out.
“He’d do better to watch the stairs inside the building. That’s how we’ll reach him—unless Mr. Warrilow is planning something dramatic with a helicopter.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
It was time he returned to the buskers. The crowd was clapping as he crossed the yard. Evidently the show was ending. People on the fringe started moving away. A few generous souls stayed long enough to throw coins into the top hat. The next act, a string quartet, was waiting to take over the pitch.
Una Moon was gathering up smoking torches when Diamond approached her and introduced himself. The moment Samantha was mentioned she stood up and said earnestly, “Is she all right? Have you found her?”
“Let me get you some tea and we can talk,” he offered without answering the question. “There’s a cafe in the covered market with a place to sit down, or used to be.”
She asked if her friend the fire-eater could join them. Buskers stick together when hospitality is on offer. The fellow in the top hat winked companionably.
Diamond fished in his pocket for a few silver coins and asked the fire-eater to cool his mouth somewhere else. And returned the wink.
He offered to carry the unicycle the short way to the Guildhall market, which is hidden behind the Empire Hotel and the Guildhall. The market cafe wasn’t quite in the class of the Pump Room for afternoon tea, but it was almost as convenient, and a better place to interview a busker. Seated opposite Diamond, across a table with a green Formica top, she warmed her hands around the thick china mug and watched him speculatively with her dark brown eyes.
“You ought to wear more in this weather,” he told her, eyeing the thin black sweatshirt she had on.
She ignored that. “Tell me about Sam.”
He could ignore things, too, when it suited him. “We don’t have much time. Una Moon. That’s your real name, is it?”
She frowned. “What’s it to you?”
“Not many of you people use your real names, do you?”
“Why should we?” she rounded on him. “It’s a free world. We have a right to protect ourselves from goons like you slotting us into the system. I want to be an individual, not a piece of computer data.”
“But Una Moon is your own name?”
“How do you know that?”
“From a computer. And before you protest about your civil liberty, it’s a national computer. I’m on it, too, and so is the Prime Minister and everyone who keeps a car.”
She scowled. “I don’t keep a car.”
He said, “We needn’t go into the reason why you appear.” He’d decided a touch of intimidation would speed the process.
She stared defiantly.
“Sam also uses her own name,” he pointed out.
“She’s new to this. She’ll learn—if she survives. It’s bloody disgraceful that you haven’t caught the bloke by now.” Una was more aggressive than the girlish features and plait suggested.
He remarked, “I sense that you’re not comfortable with somebody like me knowing your name.”
“Piss off, copper.”
“By the way you speak, you had a middle-class upbringing and a good education. Were you at university?”
“Listen,” she said. “Whether I went to university doesn’t matter a toss. What are you—trying to relate to me, or something? There are more important things to do, you know.”
“You’ve been living this life for some years, I take it?”
“What do you mean—‘this life’? The squatting? Of course I bloody have, ever since I dropped out of Oxford. Now I’ve told you—I was in college for a year and a bit. Can we move on to some more useful topic, like what you’re going to do about Sam?”
He persisted. “You were living in the Trim Street squat at the time Britt Strand was murdered. I’ve seen your photo.”
She became more defensive. “She wasn’t killed in that house. None of us had anything to do with that.”
“She visited the squat to research an article and have the pictures taken. That was only ten days before she died. How much do you remember about it?”
“Have you got a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “Have to use one of your own.”
She produced a matchbox from her pocket and took out a half-smoked cigarette and a match and lit up. “Britt Strand knew what she wanted and how to get it. She picked up one of the guys in the squat—well, the number one guy really, and got to work on him to soften up the rest of us for this piece she was going to write.”
“You mean G.B.?”
She nodded.
“Another one who prefers to be nameless,” commented Diamond.
“That’s his choice.”
“Fine, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have G.B. written on his social security documents.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Were you ever his girl?”
She gave him a glare. “That’s typical of the way you people see us. Just because we lived in the same building it doesn’t mean we screwed. There were other people around, you know. It was a community, right?”
“So nobody minded him bringing this smart Swedish blonde to write up the story of your squat?”
“I wouldn’t say nobody minded, but it was G.B.’s gaff. He staked it out and made sure it was empty.”
“How’s that done?”
“Lots of ways. You slide dry leaves in the slits in the door and check if they’ve moved in a couple of days. You can shove fly posters through the letter box and see if they get picked up. Of course you go back and see if there are lights at night. G.B. did all that. He was the first one in. It was thanks to him we had a place to doss down.”
“G.B. is a bright lad.”
“He’s switched on, but he lost cred with some of us when it was obvious the Swedish bird had him on a string. He really got it bad.”
“How do you know?”
She sighed and glared. “They’d been seen around. There isn’t much you can do in this poky town without everyone knowing about it.”
“But he consulted you all about bringing her to the house, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he told us what she was asking. We talked it through. Some of our crowd didn’t want their faces in the papers. G.B. said the piece Britt was supposed to be writing wasn’t for a British magazine. She was going to sell it abroad, so in the end we agreed. After all, she was willing to pay for it.”
“No one had second thoughts?”
“What do you mean?”
“After the visit, was anyone nervous over what she would write?”
“Like what—getting labeled as scroungers, or something? We’re used to that.”
“Did she ask any personal questions?”
“Not to me.” Una reached for the tin ashtray between them. “What are you driving at? Do you think one of our lot topped her?”
“It’s possible. Maybe—as you said—someone objected to being photographed.”
“If they did, they should have topped the photographer, not the writer.”
“Too late. The pictures were taken,” said Diamond. “The article was never written, so the pictures were never published.”
“Where did you see them?” she asked.
“At the photographer’s. Do you remember Prue Shorter, a large lady?”
She gave a nod, eyed his physique and seemed on the point of saying something, before thinking better of it and putting the cigarette to her lips instead.
“I’ve seen all the shots that were taken that afternoon,” he went on. “Not the kind of stuff you find in glossy magazines. I’ve been trying to work out why Britt was so interested in you lot. There isn’t much glamor in a bunch of crusties and their dogs and a heap of beer cans in a back street in Bath.”
“Some of us cleaned the place up for those pictures,” Una recalled.
“I beg your pardon. But it wasn’t long after the murder that you all moved out, am I right?”
“Not long.”
“Any reason?”
“G.B.,” she said. “Trim Street was his gaff. He got depressed. The entire house was pit city when he was feeling low. There were rows all the time. Some of us couldn’t stand it and shoved off. I must have been in six different gaffs since then.”
“With some of the old crowd?”
“Here and there.”
“G.B. is still about.”
“Yes.” She grinned. “He’s got it made. He’s a cool cat now.”
“You’re not bitter toward him?”
“G.B. is all right.” The words didn’t convey the way she spoke. This was a high compliment.
“A regular guy?”
“Better than that. He could have made us pay. I’ve heard of guys who open up empty houses and act as squat brokers. G.B. never asked for a penny.”
“I think he makes his money pushing drugs,” said Diamond.
She blew out smoke and looked up into the domed roof.
“How about Samantha?” He switched the subject. “When did she move in?”
“To Widcombe Hill? Not so long ago. In the summer. She had a bust-up with her parents. The usual story. She’s younger than I am, hasn’t had the corners knocked off yet, if you know what I mean, but I like Sam. It was bloody irresponsible when the papers printed that stuff about her busking— her old man being in the police and all that.”
“You can’t blame the press for what happened.”
“I can and I do.” Her small mouth tightened so hard that the color drained from her lips.
“You know her,” said Diamond. “How will she stand up to this kidnapping?”
“She’s quite strong mentally. She’ll hold out if she gets the chance. My fear is that this Mountjoy guy will get heavy with her. The asshole has been violent to women before. I remember reading about him after he was sentenced. His marriage broke up through the way he treated his wife. And there was some other woman he beat up.” Una jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray. “You’ve got to find her fast.”
“Oh, but we have. She’s in the next building to this.” While Diamond told her about the incident at the window of the Empire Hotel, Una stared like an extra overacting in a silent film. “What we’ve got now,” he summed it up, “is a siege, an armed siege.”
“He’s
armed?”
she whispered.
“If we want to avert a tragedy, someone must talk him down, and that’s me. But he isn’t interested unless I crack the Britt Strand case. I’m ninety-nine percent sure Mountjoy wasn’t the murderer. It’s down to a handful of suspects, which is why I’m talking to you.”
“You suspect
me?”
Under her anxious scrutiny, he answered candidly, “I’ve no reason to, but you’re one of the people I didn’t question four years ago. You may know something nobody else does.”
“Is that why you asked me about G.B.? You suspect him?”
He swirled the dregs of his tea and put the mug to his mouth.
“He’s not violent,” she said, the outraged words tumbling so fast from her lips that they merged and practically lost their sense. “I’ve never known G.B. to attack anyone. Never. Just because he’s big doesn’t mean he’s dangerous. You’re so wrong about this.”