'All the way along,' Gina said. 'I'm going to call my guvnor.'
* * *
Eleven hours in, Curtis McGarvie tried another tactic on Joe Florida. Strictly speaking, the murder of Patricia Weather was being handled by DCI Billy Bowers. He'd informed Bowers of the arrest and invited him to join in the questioning, but up to now he hadn't appeared.
'Where were you on Friday, March the twelfth?'
Florida answered casually, 'Who knows?'
'London?'
'Maybe.'
'South-west London? Your own manor?'
'What's this about?'
'A woman went missing that day.'
'Hold on, will you?' Florida said. 'Are you trying to stick something else on me?'
'Her body wasn't found until a few days ago, on a railway embankment in Surrey.'
'Jesus, I don't believe this,' Florida said, turning to his brief. 'These assholes want to fit me up with a double murder.'
The solicitor said, 'My client wasn't informed of this at the time of his arrest.'
'Correct,' McGarvie told him without apologising. 'I was getting ahead of myself. At this stage we're questioning him about the murder of Stephanie Diamond.'
'What does he mean - 'at this stage'?' Florida demanded. 'They can't do this to me.'
'We'll take a break,' McGarvie said. 'We've got a long session ahead of us.'
West Wittering was less than an hour's drive from the safe house. The long stretch of coast on the Selsey peninsula is girdled by salt-marsh, sand dunes and fields where geese congregate in hundreds. On summer weekends the beach attracts large crowds, but in October is left to a few dog-walkers, windsurfers and the occasional scavenger with a metal detector. The land above the beach is owned by the West Wittering Estate and you enter through a coin- operated barrier. When the tide is out, as it was when the armed response team arrived, the stretch of sand is vast.
Officers in helmets and black body armour and carrying Heckler & Koch MP5s were already checking the beach huts with dogs when Diamond and Stormy Weather drove up. There was an air of confidence about the search. Apparently a local shopkeeper had been shown a picture of Dixon-Bligh and was certain he had bought food a number of times in the past two weeks.
Stormy looked at Diamond as if he was Nostradamus.
The wooden huts, about a hundred and fifty on a turf promenade above the beach, were a testimony to people's individuality. They had obviously been there long enough for some to have been replaced and others given a facelift, so the doors and walls were decorated in a host of different styles and colours. Shuttered windows, verandahs and payed fronts were desirable extras. The majority were padlocked. A few of the oldest had conventional mortice locks built into the doors. It would be one of these Dixon-Bligh had illicitly used.
Diamond eyed the line of pitched roofs stretching almost to the sand dunes on the skyline at East Head, and asked the senior man how long the search would take.
'Not long, sir. The dogs will know if he's inside.'
This confident prediction was followed shortly by a result. The two springer spaniels started yelping and scratching at the door of one shabby hut towards the near end of the row. Their handlers had to haul them away.
'Game on,' the man in charge said.
Everyone took up strategic positions. Officers with submachine-guns crouched and took aim in the shingle below the level of the huts, watched from behind a stout wooden groyne by the others, including Diamond and Weather.
Diamond told a senior man they didn't want the suspect killed and was informed they were using soft-point rounds.
Through a loudhailer the occupant of the hut was told that armed police were outside. He was instructed to come out, hands on head.
There was no response.
Two more warnings were given. Then the order came to force an entry. A distraction device, some kind of thunderflash, was lobbed behind the hut and went off with a terrific report.
Instantly four men armed with sub-machine-guns dashed to the hut from either side. The only way in was through the front and it wouldn't take much. The wooden door was half-rotten through years of exposure to salt spray. A burst of gunfire shot away the hinges.
The door fell outwards and hit the paving stones. It had not been locked.
But no one was inside.
The anticlimax silenced everyone. There was that feeling of sheepishness - not unknown to Diamond - when the long arm of the law has reached out and missed.
Finally the man in charge said, 'Stupid bloody dogs.'
'Back to it, lads,' some other officer said. 'There's a million more fucking huts.'
The man at Diamond's side said, 'Which genius gave us this tip-off?'
Diamond said nothing, and Stormy stayed silent as well.
