Diamond Dust

'For the tape, would you confirm it?'

'I was trained to use firearms, yes.'

'Were there occasions when you were issued with a handgun?'

'Yes.'

'A Smith & Wesson revolver?'

He said with mounting unease, 'That was the standard sidearm before they switched to automatics.'

'Point three-eight?'

'You know as well as I do.'

'At Fulham, where you served, guns were issued and returned according to procedure, were they?'

'To my knowledge, yes.'

'You always returned the guns you carried?'

'Of course.' This could only be leading one way, he thought with disaster bearing down on him. How could McGarvie have learned that he acquired that gun back in the nineteen-eighties? It had been signed out and signed in again.

'Before we go on,' McGarvie said with obvious relish in prolonging this, 'I'd better give you some background. We've been in contact with the Met.'

'The Met - what for?'

'A certain Smith & Wesson revolver at Fulham - where you served - went missing in nineteen eighty-six, about the time the change to automatics took place. It hasn't been traced since.'

'Nothing to do with me.'

'You were the last to be issued with it.'

'And I bet I returned it. Always did.'

'Yes, the paperwork was in order. But after that, there's no record of the gun with that serial number.'

'Not my fault. You can't stick that on me.'

McGarvie smiled with the confidence of a player with trumps in hand. 'Procedures at Fulham in the eighties were somewhat relaxed - shall we say? It's not impossible the issuing officer made a mistake.'

'Not in my case, he didn't. You just agreed it was returned and signed in.'

'The officer in question later appeared before a disciplinary board charged with negligence. A number of weapons couldn't be accounted for. Clearly the rules were breached in some way.'

'Am I missing something here? What has this got to do with my wife's murder?'

'She was shot with a point three-eight revolver. When I questioned you before, you denied owning one. You just repeated that denial.' McGarvie's brown eyes glittered. Reaching under the desk he took out a sealed evidence bag and passed it across. 'For the purposes of the tape, I am now showing the witness exhibit D03, a police-issue point three-eight Smith & Wesson revolver recovered this morning from the garden of his house in Lower Weston.'

Diamond's voice shrilled in disbelief. 'What are you saying? You found this in my garden?'

'With some ammunition. Wrapped in a cloth in a biscuit tin buried in the vegetable patch.'

Vegetable patch? This had to mean the little plot where Steph grew tomatoes last summer. He was silent while his brain raced, trying to make sense of it.

McGarvie added, 'The serial number confirms this gun as one missing from Fulham since nineteen eighty-six. You were issued with it and apparently returned it. Do you have any explanation?'

He was up to his eyeballs now. A horrible hissing started in his ears - the old blood pressure problem threatening. After a long pause he said, 'I wasn't strictly straight with you just now. This gun has been in my possession ever since I was in the Met.'

McGarvie gave a grunt of satisfaction. 'So you lied.'

'Well—'

'You lied.'

'They were dangerous times. We had some hard men on our patch.'

'Face it, Peter.'

'You asked if I owned a gun. I don't. It's still police property.'

'Now you're playing with words.'

'Okay. I should have come clean when you asked me.'

'What stopped you?'

'Didn't want to draw you up a blind alley. All this horse-shit about the gun has nothing to do with my wife's murder.'

'Ho.' McGarvie turned to exchange a look with the sergeant beside him. 'And if it turns out to be the murder weapon . . . ?'

'No chance. It was in the loft of my house, in a shoebox.'