'And your wife?' she asked Stormy.
'Disappeared on March the twelfth.'
'Two weeks after.'
'Just over.'
She was checking alternately between the two. 'Your wife was shot in a park in Bath?'
Diamond nodded. He'd cross-checked everything in his own mind, and he was as sure of the facts as Stormy, though he tried to appear calm.
'And Dixon-Bligh was once married to your wife? Why would he want to kill her?' Gina asked.
'For money, for his drugs.' Put bluntly like that, it was chilling. But every explanation he'd ever imagined was guaranteed to chill.
She kept her bright, shrewd eyes on him, inviting him to say more.
Patiently, he took her through the crucial details. 'I told you there were entries in her diary about phoning someone she knew as 'T'. Dixon-Bligh's name is Edward. Ted, right? That's the name you've been using yourself, I notice.'
'Right.'
He switched to a more immediate way of telling it. 'She reminds herself when I'm coming in late: 'P out. Must call T.' He says he needs to see her, and she promises to think it over. She gets her hair done - and that's typical of Steph, wanting to look right, even for a meeting with that berk. She calls him again - from a public phone, so the calls won't appear on our statement - and arranges this meeting in the park on the Tuesday. She says nothing to me about any of this, and Steph wasn't like that. Since reading what she wrote, I've driven myself nuts trying to understand why she set up those phone calls and meetings and kept me out of it. But now I learn he was a drug- addict, it's all much clearer. This is the set-up. He's pestering her for money, and she doesn't want me to know about it. Steph is confident of handling him herself. He's her ex, and she thinks she knows him. She may well have been sending him small amounts of cash for some time. She'd know my reaction.'
'Unsympathetic?'
'To put it mildly.'
'Does he possess a gun?'
Unexpectedly, Fiona Appleby spoke up. 'Yes.'
All eyes were on her.
'What sort?' Diamond asked.
'Pistol.'
'Revolver?'
'Yes. He did some shooting in the Air Force. He was on the command team at Bisley. The gun was his own. He kept it in the drawer beside the till. Said he'd produce it if ever anyone tried to hold up the restaurant.'
Stormy turned up his palms as if no more needed saying.
But Gina still required convincing. 'Why shoot her when all he wanted was money for drugs?'
Diamond answered in a measured tone, drained of emotion. 'He brings the gun with him intending to force her to hand over more money than she intends, or credit cards, maybe, instead of the small handout she offers. She refuses. Steph was very strong-willed. He points the gun at her head. She tries to push him away or says something that angers him and he squeezes the trigger.'
This had directness, the simplicity of cause and effect that carried conviction.
Gina had listened impassively. She pointed a finger at him. 'Okay. It's payback time. You said just now you knew of places he might be hiding in. Were you bullshitting, or can you deliver?'
In point of fact, all the bullshitting had come from Stormy, but sometimes when your bluff is called, the brain goes into overdrive. Without hesitation Diamond launched into the story Steph had once told him about the beach hut. 'At one time when he was in the Air Force and married to Steph they were based at Tangmere, in Sussex. They lived in married quarters, I think, and didn't like it much. The one good thing about it was that they were close to the sea, and on his days off they'd escape to some local beach with a peculiar name I'm trying to remember. Wittlesham?'
'Wittering?' Gina said, following this acutely. 'West Wittering isn't far from Tangmere.'
'You've got it. West Wittering. Steph told me they rented a beach hut one summer. They'd use it to change into swimming things, and brew up tea on an oil stove and so on. The point about this is that even after the rental ended, he kept a spare key, and for years he used to go back and open up the hut and use it.'
Gina was frowning. 'After it was rented to someone else?'
'People only use them a fraction of the time.'
'Sneaky.'
'That was Steph's reaction. She wouldn't join him.'
Gina was ahead of him now. 'You're thinking he might be holed up at the beach?'
'It wouldn't be a bad place to hide.'
'Out of season, too,' Stormy added support. 'Nice and quiet. You could survive pretty well in a beach hut.'
Diamond put in a note of caution. 'I don't even know if the huts are still there. Do they still have them at West Wittering?
