‘The one behind Sainsbury’s.’
Leaman spoke into his radio.
Diamond kicked at some weeds growing through the asphalt. Then he returned to Paloma and sat in the car with her.
She asked if there was any progress and he shook his head.
‘I’d better tell you,’ she said without looking at him.
‘Tell me what?’
Mental pain has its own vocabulary. From the depth of her being came a moan primal in its intensity. A mother’s lament. People say there is nothing worse to endure than the death of your own child. Maybe something is worse, Diamond thought, and that is to discover that your child has grown up into a cold-blooded killer.
The sound died away. Her eyes were still squeezed shut and her head was shaking.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, knowing it wasn’t. He was at a loss.
She reached for his hand and gripped it with extraordinary force. Then the words came, haltingly, each one as if it hurt. ‘You asked just now if I’d had any suspicion about Jerry. Well, I don’t know what you call suspicion, but I’m his mother and I see him a lot, and I’ve had a horrible feeling for weeks that he was getting into something bad, something illegal, though nothing so terrible as this. How could anyone imagine…?’ A sob jerked from her chest. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t go on.’
‘Try,’ he said. ‘I need to know.’
She drew another long breath. ‘I could tell he was on edge a lot of the time, ever since he became so involved in this church. But they’re church people and they shouldn’t be doing bad things, so I kept telling myself I must be mistaken.’
‘Did you raise it with him?’
‘Quite a few times. That is, I didn’t say he was up to no good. I said I could tell he was under pressure. I didn’t think it was the job, or a woman. I wondered if he had money problems, but he knew I could help him out and sometimes did.’
‘What did he say when you spoke to him?’
‘That I was fussing and ought to treat him like a grown-up. It’s so hard.’ The tears streamed from her eyes again. ‘You’ve got to let go, I know that. But as his mother I could sense he was in some kind of trouble and it was getting worse all the time. Little things you notice, like if we were shopping he’d move into another aisle to avoid people he recognised. Or he’d jump if the phone rang. And he changed his address about five times in two years for no good reason.’ She swung to face Diamond and her voice broke up as she said, ‘That’s why I wrote you the letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘That first letter asking to meet you in the Saracen’s.’
Ambushed yet again. That letter. ‘The one I ignored?’
‘Yes, it was unforgivable what I did. I had this stupid idea that if I started a friendship with a policeman, a senior policeman, and invited you home, Jerry would be shocked into stopping whatever he was doing that was making him so furtive.’
He’d taken one low punch before, when she’d told him he was virtually entrapped. He’d ridden that one, telling himself he should be flattered to get the attention. Now he’d found out she’d picked him because of his job, not who he was. He was just ‘a senior policeman’.
Paloma’s next words came in a burst, as if to stop him saying anything. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I deceived you. I used you. I read about you and knew you’d lost your wife three years ago. I thought you were probably lonely. Once I’d got this idea, I pursued you. I was driven. It was the only way I could see of getting through to my son.’
He couldn’t speak. It was his turn to be numb. He closed his eyes, absorbing it all. What a mug. All the soul- searching about starting a relationship, the guilt about Steph, the belief that someone found him sexually attractive — overweight and middle-aged as he was — all this was down to vanity. Pathetic. Even after learning that the affair had been plotted by Paloma to reel him in, he’d forgiven her. Deep down, he’d been flattered that she cared enough to go to all the trouble she had.
Now he knew she hadn’t wanted him at all except to make a point to her shithead son, as evil a killer as he’d come across.
Conned.
‘And none of it succeeded,’ he managed to say finally. ‘He didn’t give a toss.’
‘That’s wrong, Peter. When he met you and learned I was going out with you he was shocked to the core. I could tell.’
‘He carried on with the killing.’
‘Peter,’ she said. ‘I just want to say-’
‘Don’t say anything. Not now. I can’t take any more.’
He got out of the car and started walking to where Leaman was speaking to someone on his radio. He felt betrayed.
But at this low point he still had to function. A killer was out there. Another victim was about to die.
One thing made sense. Paloma’s last remark — about Jerry being shocked to the core — linked up with a real event. Jerry must have torched his own car, the precious Nissan Pathfinder, in panic that it would be searched and reveal DNA from his recent victims, Delia and Danny.
There seemed to be something happening. Leaman flapped his hand to him to hurry.
‘We’ve got the shout, guv. The Hosannah van is in Sainsbury’s car park, just like you said.’
50
A fter telling Paloma where he was driving, he was silent. He didn’t trust himself to say more.
The trip was a short belt into the city along the Upper Bristol Road and then south to Green Park. Unusually for Diamond, he put his foot down. Not much was on the move at one twenty in the morning. Sirens and beacons were not being used. This would make the inrush of police vehicles conspicuous, so he’d ordered a discreet operation. He didn’t want Jerry Kean alerted and making a run for it.
Back in 1966, after nearly a century of railway history, the last train pulled out of Green Park station. It was decided not to demolish the fine Palladian facade built by the Victorians. It fitted in with the rest of Bath and hid the train shed behind. Now the site was regenerated as a shopping precinct with car park, shops, superstore, restaurant and covered market. Diamond wished he’d thought of this place as a likely site for the next execution. The arched interior with its cast-iron ribs was in the classic style of St Pancras and other great stations. Crucially for Jerry Kean, there was open access. Once the market stalls inside were closed for the day, the old train shed was deserted. Ample opportunity to sling a cord over a girder and rig up another spectacular hanging.
Not many cars were parked overnight in the space where rail tracks had once run. In his private car Diamond drove past the police vehicles and right up to the end where the great arched shed was. It was difficult to see much, but he picked out the Hosannah van and stopped a few spaces away.
He’d expected Leaman the keeno to be ahead of him. Instead, when he got out, the first to come up was Georgina. Seeing the triumphant look in her eye, he would have settled for Leaman.
‘Glad you made it, Peter,’ she said. ‘My tactics seem to have paid off.’
‘Your tactics?’
‘Pulling out all the stops. The massive surveillance exercise.’
‘That was your idea?’
‘My decision.’ She was taking any credit that was going. Such is the privilege of assistant chief constables.
‘Have you made the arrest, then?’
‘Good Lord, no. I’ve only been here three minutes, straight from seeing the organiser of the ram raids. The man who calls himself Harry Lang, would you believe?’
He didn’t trust himself to comment.
Georgina added, ‘DI Halliwell interviewed him in hospital with me sitting in. He admits to everything.’
