'Can't say I do.'
'Could you find out?'
'That's personal data, Peter.'
'Yes, family, education, previous employment, all that stuff. Should be on her application to join the police, if that's still on file.'
'You're not listening,' Louis said. 'I can't access people's personal files.'
'But she's dead, Louis.'
The line went silent for a time.
Then Louis said, 'Couldn't you get this from Stormy?'
'I'd rather leave him out of it at this stage.'
Louis sighed.
He heard nothing back the next day. No bad thing to mark time, he told himself. He'd leapt at the possibility that Trish might be the 'I' in Steph's diary. Now he needed to ponder it calmly.
And the more he pondered, the more he feared it was another blind alley.
He'd almost abandoned the idea when Louis phoned back.
'There isn't much, Peter. She applied for the police straight after leaving school. Did her basic at Peel Centre - Hendon, to you and me - and spent a year at West End Central before she started at Fulham. It's a clean record.'
'Any fireams experience?'
'She was an AFO from nineteen eighty-seven.'
'Was she, indeed!'
'Also did courses on juveniles, driving, race relations and drugs.'
'Is there anything on her early life?'
'Not a lot, but this might interest you. She was born and brought up in Bath. She did her schooling at the Royal High School. The family lived in Brock Street.'
Brock Street led to the Royal Crescent and Royal Victoria Park. He gave a whistle that must have been painful to hear down a phone-line. 'Spot on, Louis.'
'Does that help?'
'It's not what I was rooting for, exactly, but it may answer one question I've sweated blood over - why they met where they did. You see, the park where Steph was murdered wasn't a place she would have chosen. She had her favourite parks, but the Victoria wasn't one of them. I've always believed her murderer suggested meeting there.'
After a pause, Louis said, 'Peter, you're not seriously putting Irish in the frame for your wife's murder?'
'Things are falling into place.'
'But she's dead. She was the second victim.'
Diamond didn't answer. His thoughts were galloping ahead.
Louis waited. 'Peter?'
'Yes?'
'I can see problems here. You want to be careful.'
'Why?'
'You know what McGarvie and Billy Bowers will think if they get wind of this theory? They'll think you went out and shot Trish Weather yourself.' After another long pause he said, 'God, I hope you didn't.'
34
A Mr and Mrs Gordon Jessel still lived in Brock Street, Bath, according to the phone directory. A check of the birth registers confirmed that they were the parents of Patricia.
Seized by the need to share the news with someone else, Diamond called Julie Hargreaves that evening and told her he had a new theory that 'F was Patricia - or Trish -Weather. At first she refused to entertain it. But so had he, at first. Julie caught her breath when he mentioned that Trish had been an Authorised Firearms Officer.
'So what do you have here?' she said, assessing the information with the precision he valued so much. 'The name beginning with 'T'. The link with Fulham and the police. Experience with guns. The fact that she was brought up in Bath, so she knew where to set up the meeting with Steph. Anything else?'
'Something pretty important. Steph wouldn't have thought of Trish as threatening. She had this friendly personality everyone warmed to.'
'Then why?' Julie asked. 'What had this charming woman got against Steph?'
'Before I come to that, there's a different 'why'.'
'Yes?'
'Why did Steph go to the park at all?'
'It was fixed. It was in her diary.'
