‘He hasn’t got form if that’s what you were thinking.’
‘No, I’m thinking we can find more stuff about his background, where they were living and what job he did. It’s all on record somewhere. Run a check on the man. Meantime I’ll go and see the girls’ grandma, Amanda Williamson. She’s the best hope.’
Not so. When he tried Amanda Williamson’s home number, her recorded voice announced, ‘I’m sorry but I’m not taking calls this week or next. You can leave a message after the tone.’ Shot yourself in the foot, Diamond, he thought.
Maybe she gave her temporary address to Corcoran. He called him and got another recording. Whoever invented the answer-phone should be made to listen to recorded messages for eternity.
He believed in seeing people face to face. He drove to Walcot Street and was about to press Corcoran’s doorbell when he became aware of a young woman at his side, small, dark and oriental. She could only be Marietta, the Filipino child-minder. Her arms were full of shopping, and as she struggled for a door key a French loaf slipped out of its paper wrapper.
Diamond held on at the second attempt, inches from the ground. Not bad for the world’s worst catcher, he told himself.
But in handing the loaf back he knocked it against his other elbow and snapped it.
‘Sorry.’
She seemed to forgive him without speaking.
He felt for his ID and showed it. ‘I came to see Mr Corcoran, but maybe you can help. I need to speak to Mrs Williamson — Amanda. I know she has the children and she’s gone to a different address.’
Marietta shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir, this is not possible.’
‘Little girls? Sharon? Sophie?’
She shook her head.
He put out his hand for the door key. ‘Let me do that.’
‘Sorry, sir. This is not possible. I cannot allow this.’
‘I must speak with Mr Corcoran,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You go away, please, sir.’
‘Police,’ he said, taking her hand and guiding it into the lock.
She sighed as the door swung inwards.
The moment he stepped in he understood why he wasn’t welcome. Ashley Corcoran was on his back on the Afghan rug. He was naked and so was the large blonde riding him like a three-day eventer.
12
H e didn’t check the time, but he guessed it was about ten fifteen in the morning. He hadn’t imagined this kind of thing going on in Bath when other people were sitting at their desks or doing the shopping. And his arrival didn’t affect the performance. The bouncing blonde came to a resounding climax. Literally resounding. She repeated ‘yes’ seven times, as positive an endorsement as any lover could wish for.
After the last ‘yes’, Diamond looked away and discovered Marietta had disappeared with her shopping.
The blonde disconnected and stood up. She was built like a ship’s figurehead. She spotted Diamond and padded across the wood floor, slapping the fronts of her thighs. ‘It really gets you here,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t have a ciggy, by any chance?’
From the floor, Corcoran called out, ‘Who’s that? Who are you talking to?’
‘One of your muso friends, I guess,’ the blonde said.
Corcoran sat up. At the sight of Diamond, he put his hand over his crotch. ‘Who let you in?’
‘Does it matter?’ Diamond said, doing his best to emulate the blonde’s self-possession. ‘I tried phoning first.’
‘What do you want this time?’
‘To find Amanda.’
The blonde put her hands on her hips. ‘And who the fuck is Amanda?’
‘I take it she’s got Sharon and Sophie with her,’ Diamond said, trying to confine the conversation to Corcoran and himself.
‘A threesome?’ the blonde said in an outraged voice.
‘They’re little girls,’ Diamond said in an aside to calm her down.
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Her grandchildren.’
‘I’ve heard enough,’ she said. ‘I’m off. Do you mind? You’re standing on my bra.’
She was right about that. He moved his foot. Her clothes were in a heap just inside the door. It seemed she’d stripped the moment she’d arrived. Whether she was here on a professional visit or out of friendship he didn’t ask. Whichever it was, Ashley Corcoran hadn’t wasted much time grieving for his former lover.
Diamond took a few steps towards him, allowing the blonde to get dressed out of his line of vision. ‘She must have told you where she was going.’
‘The noticeboard above the kettle.’
He crossed to the kitchen and found the address scribbled on the back of an envelope pinned to the board. Amanda had gone to friends in Bradford on Avon.
Back in his car, driving out of town, he thought about the effect this scene had had on him. He hadn’t seen a naked woman for a long time, let alone having sex on the floor. Strange that the experience hadn’t turned him on. Was he past all that? He’d gone three years without sex. Hadn’t felt deprived. Hadn’t fancied anyone. The celibate life wasn’t of his choosing. Steph’s murder had put everything into a different perspective. Was his abstinence out of loyalty to Steph? Partly. There was also the thought that no other woman could compare with her.
Steph wouldn’t have insisted he remained a lonely widower. One evening they’d had the conversation most couples have at some stage in their marriage: what if one of us dies suddenly? They’d agreed it would be selfish and unloving to deny the surviving partner another relationship. ‘But only after a decent interval,’ she’d joked. ‘I wouldn’t want you chatting up my sister at the funeral.’ He’d promised her solemnly that he wouldn’t trouble Angela, ever. Then Steph had said she couldn’t make any promises if some gorgeous bobby representing the Police Federation was sent to offer condolences. ‘I often wondered what “condolences” meant,’ he’d said, and they’d laughed and poured another glass of wine, and sudden death had seemed remote.
So there it was. Three years of the monastic life had left him indifferent to a spectacle that would have turned most guys into rampant studs. The blonde had been on the large side, true, but she was pretty, young, firm-bodied and happy to be seen. He faced the depressing prospect that his sex drive had run down like an old battery, not from overuse, but neglect. Did it matter, considering his situation? Yes, it did. He didn’t care to admit he was past it.
The address he’d got for Amanda Williamson turned out to be one of the seventeenth-century weavers’ cottages high up the steep hillside overlooking Bradford, higher even than the spire of the parish church. A woman too young to be Amanda answered his knock and was threatening to send him away until he showed his ID and said he thought Mrs Williamson would be willing to talk to him.
Amanda came out and they shared a bench in the tiny front garden. She was over sixty, dressed informally for someone her age, in a loose top and black jeans. ‘The girls are inside watching National Velvet,’ she said in a voice that could have presented Woman’s Hour in 1950. ‘I brought some DVDs with me. That film is over sixty years old, but they don’t seem to mind.’
‘Liz Taylor at eleven.’
‘You saw it?’
‘Not when it first came out.’
She smiled faintly. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘Would you mind if I tape our conversation? I’m supposed to type it up later.’
‘Do I have to wear a mike, or something?’
‘No,’ he said, showing her the small pocket recorder he’d brought. ‘Just ignore this. Would you mind telling
