'I did. This morning I phoned the Dorchester and asked if they happened to know if he reported for duty on February the twenty-third, the morning Steph was murdered. Yes, they said, he was in the kitchen, cooking.'
'This I refuse to believe,' McGarvie said to Georgina as if Diamond had finally flipped. 'How would anyone remember one day in February?'
'Because it was Shrove Tuesday - Pancake Day.'
'So?'
'People in the catering business remember Pancake Day. The Dorchester put on a big charity lunch hosted by the Variety Club of Great Britain. All the catering staff were there from early in the morning. It was one of the biggest lunches of the year.'
'Is this certain?'
'Dixon-Bligh was in the kitchen at the Dorchester cooking three hundred pancakes.'
'So he was definitely innocent?'
'Of murdering Steph? Yes. And almost certainly of murdering Patsy Weather. But there's no question he was involved in the diamond heist that went wrong. His fatal mistake was blabbing to his girlfriend.'
For some minutes after Diamond left Georgina's office, nothing was said. McGarvie sat in the armchair shaking his head at intervals.
Eventually, Georgina said, 'He's a loose cannon with a habit of hitting the target. A good detective. The best. I only said the things I did because I thought he'd cracked this, gone off and cracked it, and hung you out to dry.'
'I know, ma'am.'
'But he failed. We all failed. This was one of those wretched cases that beat everyone.'
33
On the first day of November, Curtis McGarvie's overtime budget was cancelled by Headquarters. Inevitably, the Stephanie Diamond inquiry was scaled down drastically, and the decision came almost as a relief to the team. They'd run through their options. Nothing new had come up. McGarvie remained in charge, with Halliwell as his deputy, assisted by three CID officers and two civilian computer operators. These days they rarely stepped outside the incident room.
Peter Diamond observed this with detachment. He'd long since lost any confidence in the murder team. He, too, was becalmed, but he promised himself it was temporary. He would never give up. He still lay awake for long stretches of the night wrestling with the big questions: why had Steph never mentioned her appointment in the park? Who was 'T'? What was the link - if any - with the shooting of Patsy Weather?
One rainy afternoon he phoned Louis Voss at Fulham. This wasn't in any way inspired, or clever. He just felt the need to talk to someone he trusted.
After they'd got through the small talk he said, 'You saw the stuff in the papers about Dixon-Bligh, I'm sure.'
'Poor sod, yes,' Louis said. 'He wasn't your man after all, then?'
'Someone else's. It gives fresh meaning to that old phrase about guarding your tongue.'
'Ho-ho. So where are you now on this investigation?'
'Nowhere.'
'I can't believe that, Peter.'
'None of the suspects measured up.'
'Square one, then?'
'Square one - which has to be Fulham nick when you and I and Stormy and Patsy were keeping crime off the streets of West London, or trying to.'
'Patsy?'
'Mary Poppins if you prefer - though I thought we'd all moved on since then.'
'You're speaking of Stormy's wife?' Louis said.
'Or wife-to-be, in those days. I'm still wondering why those two got hitched.'
'She was a good-looking woman, a knockout when she was young.'
'That's what I mean. He's a likeable guy, but let's be frank, his looks are against him.'
Louis laughed. 'Who told you that? Stormy pulled the girls like a tug-of-war team.'
Unlikely, he thought. He'd heard Stormy admit to playing away, but hadn't pictured him as quite so active. 'I can't say I noticed at the time.'
'You were a boss man. The guys at the workface knew the score, and Stormy scored more than most. Don't ask me his secret.'
Louis had no reason to exaggerate, Diamond reflected. He heard himself say something rather profound. 'Maybe women feel more confident with an ugly man. Or more confident of keeping him.'
Profound, yet hard to prove. Still, he'd watched a trained protection officer, Gina, mellowing under Stormy's charm offensive, even though it had all the subdety of a Sherman tank. 'So did he change his ways after she married him?'
