'Hang about,' Celia said. 'What's this about?'
'I don't conduct interviews on doorsteps, Celia.'
'I've done nothing wrong.'
'So it's a trip to the nick, is it?'
She opened the door wider. 'You'd better come in, you sly bastard.'
The entrance hall was virtually a foyer, circular, with doors off, a grand staircase and a marble fountain. A life- size statue of a nude woman held up a shallow bowl from which the water cascaded.
Celia showed him into a reception room that seemed to have been removed from a safari lodge, with zebra skin hangings, Zulu shields, crossed spears and huge wooden carvings of animals.
She told him, 'I'm not saying a word without Danny here.'
That suited Diamond. 'Good thinking. You'd better fetch him right away.'
She was so flustered at being fingered as a possible suspect that she didn't realise Diamond had got his way.
He stood at the window taking in the view and musing on these villains' overview of all the little mortgaged houses like his own.
He heard someone behind him say, 'You've been upsetting my wife.'
'Someone murdered mine.'
He turned. Danny Carpenter, the best-looking of the brothers, still dark-haired at forty-five or so, stood in a red polo shirt and black jeans in front of a mural of a stalking lion. Celia wasn't even in the room. No matter, now Danny had been flushed out. His short, bare arms had the muscle tone of a regular weight-lifter.
Diamond added, 'I'm trying to find the reason.'
'What reason?'
'Why she was murdered.'
'Not here, you won't,' Danny said. 'We're clean. Your people spoke to me already.'
'You've got nothing to hide, then.'
'I was at the gym.'
'And afterwards with your solicitor. I heard. A five-star alibi.'
Danny displayed his gold fillings in a slow, wide grin.
This stung Diamond into commenting, 'It's almost as if you knew something was going to happen.'
'Watch it.'
'Your brother Des is watertight, too.'
'This is going nowhere, squire,' Danny said.
'Don't tell me the Carpenter family draw the line at killing women. You could have used one of your heavies. Or hired someone.'
'You've got to be joking,' Danny said. 'Who do you think we are - Fred Karno's Army? Listen, if we wanted to get at you, we wouldn't top your wife.'
Put like that, it chimed with Diamond's own assessment, the main objection to the Carpenters as the killers: their uncomplicated notion of revenge would have resulted in his own death, not Steph's.
'If you want us off your back,' he said as if he was speaking for the entire police operation, 'you could tell me what the latest whisper is. Have you heard anything?'
'About the shooting?' Danny shook his head. 'What sort of piece was used?'
'Point three-eight revolver.'
'Doesn't say much.'
'It will when we find the weapon.'
'He'll have got rid of it, won't he?'
'Not necessarily,' Diamond said. 'This was a professional job, and professionals get attached to their pieces - don't they, Danny?'
'Let's leave it there before you say something that really gets up my nose.'
Not yet, he thought. Up to now, he'd got no signal that Danny knew more about Steph's murder than he wanted to admit. The purpose of this call was to assess the man, tease out the guilt if possible.
He tried another approach. 'You think your brother Jake's conviction was down to me, don't you?'
'You were on the case, sunshine.'
'He wasn't fitted up, you know. The girl's blood was on his shoes, in his car. This was no contract job. He flipped when she tried to sling her hook. You didn't see what he did to her face. I did. Seventeen, she was.'
Danny stared out of the window, unmoved.
Diamond said, 'There was never any doubt. The jury took under an hour.'
