Diamond Dust

'Did he hell!'

'She put up with it?'

'At a price, no doubt.' Now it was Louis who ventured an opinion on the ways of women. 'A smart wife has her terms. Read the tabloids. There are plenty of examples.'

'Of big divorce settlements?'

'No, of wives who stay married and appear to put up with all the philandering - at a price. They come out the winners.'

'So you think she had Stormy's number?'

'Oh, yes,' Louis said. 'I watched it happen over the years. He had flings, but none of them lasted. She always reined him in.'

'Did she play around herself?'

'You're joking. She was more interested in nannying than nooky. She put her energies into chivvying us into being nice to each other - which isn't easy in our job. Well, you know what she was like. A cheery word for everyone.'

'I remember.'

'No one was better at organising a leaving party. She put on a terrific do for me when I retired. It was such a send-off I felt embarrassed coming back to the civilian job a couple of years later.'

'Yes,' Diamond said. 'She laid on a good party when I left Fulham.'

'I remember. And even after her retirement she was always coming back reminding us to organise some do or other that couldn't be ignored. We thought the world of Trish - which made it all the harder to understand why she was murdered.'

'Did you just call her Trish?' Diamond asked.

'For Patricia.'

'Is that what she was known as?'

'After the Mary Poppins joke was played out, yes.'

'Stormy calls her Patsy.'

'His privilege. She was Trish to the rest of us. Is this important?'

'I don't know,' Diamond said, but he could hear blood pumping through his head like a swan in flight. 'I'd better go, Louis. I'll talk to you again.'

He put down the phone.

The monstrous thought bombarded his brain. Could T' have been Trish - a woman? In the weeks immediately after the shooting he'd done his utmost to keep an open mind about the sex of Steph's murderer. But as the main suspects had lined up, all of them male, he'd drifted into thinking only a man could be the killer.

It needed a huge leap of the imagination to cast Patricia Weather as a killer. Nobody ever spoke badly of her. He remembered her as a warm, outgoing personality. She and Steph had probably met once or twice at social events, but they were never close friends. He could think of no reason for them to fix a meeting so many years after he and Steph had left Fulham and gone to live in Bath. And he knew of nothing that could have driven her to murder.

Besides, someone had murdered her, for God's sake.

Out of the question, then?

Not when he came at it from another direction. All along, he'd been at a loss to explain why Steph had gone to the park that morning to meet her killer. But if 'T' were Trish, sweet, caring Trish, the woman everyone regarded as Mary Poppins, and she suddenly made contact and suggested a meeting, it was possible Steph would have gone along.

Trish, being so efficient, would almost certainly have done the weapons training course in the underground range at Holborn nick. It was on offer in the eighties, and she would have wanted to prove herself as good as the men.

But that was a world away from murdering Steph.

For the millionth time, he came up against this barrier. Why should anyone have wanted to kill his gende, trusting, unthreatening wife?

He reached for a pen and paper and forced himself to jot down her possible motives.

1. She had a grudge against me.

2. She had a grudge against Steph.

3. She feared Steph knew some secret about her.

4. She was out of her mind.

None of them stood out. Number 1 seemed unlikely; she was one of the few colleagues he'd never had a spat with. 2 and 3 were doubtful, considering Steph had never actually worked with the woman and scarcely knew her. And he'd heard nothing about a mental illness.

Maybe I'm wrong, he thought. Maybe they did know each other, and I didn't get to hear of it because Steph didn't think it important.

He picked up the phone and pressed redial.

'Louis? Me again. This is a long shot, but do you know anything about Trish Weather's life before she arrived at Fulham?'