Diamond Dust

'He's a dipso. His memory isn't reliable.'

'He remembered enough to tell me.'

'So you say. You didn't pass the information on to us. That bag was potentially crucial evidence and you recovered it yourself, if your account is true, with no witness. Hours later, you handed it in.'

'I told you at the time, I looked at what was inside.'

'Did you write anything in the diary?'

'Did I what?'

'You heard me.'

'Oh, get away! You're losing it, McGarvie.'

McGarvie reached for the package containing the gun and drew it back across the table like a gambler who has scooped the pool. 'The next step is to have this test-fired and see if the rifling matches the bullets found at the scene.'

'You really want to stick this on me, don't you?' Diamond said. 'Have you given any thought at all as to why I would murder my wife?'

McGarvie was unfazed. 'Why would anyone murder her? She appears to have been a popular, charming, inoffensive woman. If anyone has a reason, it's you, and it's well hidden. I don't know what happened in your marriage, but it'll come out - unless you want to open up now.'

'You disgust me.'

'In my shoes, you'd think the same, Peter. The husband has to be the number-one suspect, and when he brings suspicion on himself, you act.'

A telling comment.

Diamond said bleakly, without conceding anything, 'What happens now?'

'I'll get you to write a statement about the gun. When ballistics have checked it, we can talk again. I'm not going to hold you here.'

'Am I supposed to be grateful? In the meantime, the real killer is laughing up his sleeve.'

'We're pursuing every possible lead.'

'Oh, sure.'

'Interview terminated at four twenty-six.'

14

The phone was going when he finally got home after six. He'd had all the hassle he could take for one day, so he didn't pick it up. They'd give up presently. He and Steph had experimented with an answerphone for a time. It hadn't survived long. It was faulty (or, more likely, his attempt to install it was faulty) and kept running the messages into each other. You'd get a 'Hi, Diamonds' from Steph's sister and then a male voice would come in selling double glazing, followed by the tail end of a message about a parcel some unknown firm had been trying to deliver for days. He'd ripped out the contraption in a fury and plugged in the simple phone they'd used before.

He took a brief look around. A search team executing a warrant was supposed to do its work with 'minimum disruption'. The door of the living room wouldn't open over the rucked-up carpet, the pictures were still off the walls and the drawers in the wall unit wouldn't close and were in the wrong places. Steph would have spent the evening straightening up. He ignored the mess. Out in the garden, he stood looking balefully at the place where the tin box containing the gun was supposed to have been found. No use denying there was a hole in the ground. One more weird twist to this nightmare. He had no explanation. His world had gone so crazy that he actually asked himself whether he could have buried the gun himself and wiped the episode from his memory. So much had been squeezed into the five weeks since Steph's death that certain things already seemed remote, if not unreal. Why would he have wanted to hide the gun - unless his brain had flipped and he'd done the unimaginable thing he'd been denying?

'Christ, no,' he said aloud. 'You may be so dumb you couldn't find your arse with two hands at high noon, but you would never hurt Steph.'

He returned indoors and the phone started again, so he lifted the receiver and clicked it dead. Made himself tea and tried to decide if he could stomach beans on toast again.

The cat wanted to eat, for sure. It pressed against his leg, making piteous sounds. He opened a tin and put down some food.

Then the damned phone went again. 'You're bloody persistent, whoever you are,' he said before finally putting it to his ear. 'Yes?'

'Where have you been?' a familiar voice asked. 'I've been trying to reach you for days.'

'Julie. If I'd known it was you . . .'

'Great! You just let it ring, do you? What if it was a real emergency instead of an old oppo wanting to know how you're coping?'

'What do you mean - 'a real emergency'? Don't you think I'm in a real emergency already?'

'Still getting to you, is it?' Julie's voice sounded more concerned. As his deputy until a couple of years ago, she knew all about his mood swings. They'd led in the end to her request for a transfer to Headquarters.

'I'm up shit creek, Julie. The prime suspect. They searched my house this morning, with a warrant - would you believe? - drove me to the station and put me through the grinder. McGarvie thinks I'm Dr Crippen.'

'How ridiculous. Whatever for?'