stone has been cleaved, it changes personality, just as you do for a living, or so I'm told. Are you in?'
'For a hundred K guaranteed?'
'Guaranteed.'
'I'll incur some expenses.'
'We can take care of that.'
'Over and above my hundred grand?'
'Expenses - yes. What do you have in mind? The disguise?'
'A suit. I can't walk into the Dorchester in what I'm wearing.' It was worth the try, Harry thought, and he was mightily impressed when it got a result.
'I was thinking the same,' Zahir said, looking him up and down. 'Fifteen hundred in expenses, then.'
'Upfront?'
'Rhadi will see to it'
They shook hands.
'What next?' Harry asked, trying not to show his awe at the deal.
'You buy some decent clothes, and then you wait. We all wait.'
'For the word from your fellow in the Dorchester?'
'Which he will give to you.'
'Is this hotel man reliable? One hundred per cent?'
'Be assured of that. He held the Queen's commission. He was an officer in the Royal Air Force Catering Branch.'
11
'How did you . . . ?'
'Your door was open.'
'Bloody liar. You put your boot against it.'
'So it was open,' Diamond said.
He didn't usually force an entry when calling on a witness, but the rules change for winos. Warburton clearly wasn't in any shape to get up and greet a visitor. He was on the floor, his back propped against a greasy leather armchair on which the lurcher was curled up asleep, oblivious of Diamond's arrival. Maybe it, too, was pie-eyed. Empty cider bottles were scattered about the floor.
'You're that copper,' Warburton said through his alcoholic haze, as if Diamond needed reminding.
There was another chair, an upright one, with a plate on it with the dried remains of a meal of baked beans. Diamond chose to remain standing. He was trying to decide if the man was capable of coherent answers.
'What you want?' Warburton asked.
Diamond ignored him and walked through to the second room of this foul-smelling basement.
A mattress on the floor and an ex-army greatcoat slung across it, presumably for bedding. More empty bottles.
He stooped and looked under one side of the mattress. And then the other. Nothing except some dog-eared
Back in the main room, watched by the still-supine tenant, he sifted through the few possessions. From a carton containing cans of dog food, baked beans and a stale loaf, he picked out a supermarket receipt.
'What's this? Thirty-eight pounds fifty-three? You had a good splurge on the twenty-third. In the money, were you?'
'Me social, wasn't it?'
'On a Tuesday? Come off it, Jimmy. This was the day you found the woman in the park. You nicked the cash from her bag, didn't you?'
'I never.'
'So what did you do with the bag?'
No answer.
'Where is it, Jimmy? No messing. This is a murder inquiry.'
Warburton blurted out in a panicky voice, 'I never killed her. I reported it, didn't I?'
'You did the right thing, there. And I've been asking myself why you bothered, Jimmy. So public-spirited that you felt compelled to raise the alarm? I don't see it.'
‘’S a fact.'
'Now that I have this . . .' Diamond held up the till receipt '. . . I'm starting to get the picture. You're not such a
