'Until when?'
Another crushing uncertainty hit him.
'Don't know,' he was forced to admit. 'After you interviewed me last time, I went up to the loft to look for it, and the box was empty.'
'Is this another half-truth?'
'No.'
'Why did you need the gun?'
'For protection. If you want it straight, I was losing confidence in your investigation. I thought I might need to open up some fresh lines of inquiry.'
'With a gun in your hand? Going it alone, eh - contrary to the ACC's instructions?'
Diamond shrugged. There were more important issues now than defying Georgina.
'If the gun wasn't in the loft, who could have moved it except you or your wife?'
'I've tried to think ever since I noticed it was gone. I don't have an answer.'
'You don't have answers to much. Sure you didn't panic after we visited the house? Sure you didn't take the gun from the loft and bury it in the garden?'
'I didn't bury it'
'You didn't?'
He sighed heavily.
'Then who did? Someone trying to fit you up, I suppose?' McGarvie said with sarcasm.
'I've no idea. This is a total shock to me. Listen, if I wanted to get rid of the thing, why would I bury it in my own garden?'
'No one suggested you wanted to get rid of it. Far from it. You thought you might need it again.'
'This is unreal.'
'It isn't looking good, Peter. There's a time period on the morning of the murder when you have no alibi. You say you came into work, but no one here saw you before eleven.'
'I was in my office.'
'Keeping your head down - to quote you. Then, ten days ago, you brought in your wife's handbag.'
Incensed at the way things were being twisted, he blurted out, 'That was a responsible act.'
'In the bag was her diary with certain entries suggesting she'd been in contact with someone referred to as 'T', and who - apparently - she'd arranged to meet in Victoria Park on the morning of her death.'
'Well?'
'We can't say for sure if those entries were written by your wife.'
'Jesus! Of course they were.'
'We've checked the record of phone calls made from your number. There's nothing on the fifteenth or the nineteenth. Both days are blank. There were no calls to 'T'.
'Doesn't mean they didn't happen.' He cast about for an explanation. 'Maybe she used the phone at work, or went out to the callbox up the street.'
'Why?'
'For privacy. Or maybe she intended to call, but 'T' called her first. There won't be any record of incoming calls.'
'I think it's more likely the diary entries are forgeries. Manufactured evidence.'
'Oh, come on.'
'An attempt to deflect attention.'
'It's Steph's handwriting, for Christ's sake.'
'I wouldn't call it handwriting. Most of the entries are printed.'
'Her printing, then.'
'Easy to fake.'
Diamond gave an exasperated sigh.
McGarvie added, 'You had plenty of time to work on it'
'The diary was in the bloody handbag in the stone vase in the park.'
'That's open to question. Our search team didn't find it.'
'Because they didn't look in the right place.'
'They tell me they did.'
'They're covering their arses. Ask Warburton. He slung the bag in there.'
