'The day following the date you have just been given. The Prince will be well installed by then.'
'I give them the credit card details. If they check, they'll find it's all kosher.'
'All right. You still have some money left, I hope?'
'A little. Good suits don't come cheap.'
'You will also need some new luggage. A case, of superior quality. Fill it with bulky objects unconnected with yourself. Cushions, newspapers - something like that. Be careful not to leave fingerprints.'
'I wasn't born yesterday.'
Rhadi said primly, 'I'm telling you all this because we won't be in contact again - not until after it's over. On the day, you must arrive in disguise, by a taxi hired outside one of the main railway stations. You will be carrying the suitcase. You check in to the Dorchester at two in the afternoon. No earlier, no later.'
'How do I let you know which suite I've been given?'
'Do you have a mobile?'
'Of course.'
'Get a new one. New number. Use it only for this. Once you're alone in the suite, call Zahir and tell him where you are. This is his number. Got a pen?'
'Go ahead.' Harry noted it. 'Do I call you as well?'
'No need. Shortly after, Zahir will knock. You will admit him, and Ibrahim, and your job will be over, apart from leaving discreetly.'
'I think I can manage that.'
'Where will you go?'
'Straight to Ireland. I have a cottage there.'
'Good man.'
'But I'll be back for the payout. A hundred grand, we agreed. I have to say this, Rhadi. Perish the thought, but if your friends should be so unwise as to change their minds about my share, I know enough to put you all away, and I can arrange it at no risk to myself.'
'Harry, that won't happen. These are men of honour. When they give their word, they keep to it.'
'They'd better.'
Georgina looked into Diamond's office on the Thursday, two days after the search of his house. 'Don't get up.'
Unusually he was at the computer, checking the Scotland Yard site for the latest on the missing wife of DCI Weather, the old colleague Julie had mentioned. There was nothing new.
'You look busy,' she told him.
'Raking through the embers, that's all.' He looked at her over the screen, fearing the worst. 'Have you heard from forensics?'
'About the gun? No. You know what they're like. It could take another week.' She remained standing, with her hands on the back of the chair in front of his desk. 'Peter, I'm sorry the search had to be done the way it was, without even telling you in advance. I sanctioned the application for the warrant after Curtis McGarvie convinced me you probably had the gun in your possession. It wasn't just a hunch. He looked at your service record, found you were an authorised shot'
'He told me.'
'The point is that the fatal bullets could have been fired from a police handgun. The calibre—'
'I know this, ma'am.'
'And when he learned there were problems over the firearms issued from Fulham in your time there, and asked to see the records and found you were the last to use that particular gun, it couldn't be shirked. You'd already denied owning a weapon. You weren't going to put your hand up unless we produced it.'
'Which you have.'
'We're not being po-faced about this. You wouldn't be the first officer, or the last, to acquire a gun for his own protection. Because you denied it, we don't automatically disbelieve everything else you said.'
He listened in silence, thinking this wasn't the heart-to-heart it was meant to appear. She was doing her best to soften him up. When this didn't work, McGarvie would put the boot in.
'There's tremendous sympathy for you in CID - as there is throughout the station,' Georgina went on. 'You're under huge stress even without the extra pressure of the investigation. I have to say that Curtis has risked a lot of unpopularity from the ranks.'
'My heart bleeds.'
'He knew what the job implied when he took it on. He'll get to the truth.'
'He's taking his time.'
'That isn't fair, Peter. He's working flat out, and so are the team. If you'd been frank about the gun, you'd have saved him many hours of work.'
That angered him. 'If you really want to know, I didn't own up to the gun because I knew it would distract them. Yes, I'm out of order to have kept the thing, but everyone's wasting their time on it. It's six weeks since the murder and the trail's gone cold.'
'We don't know that. Other lines of enquiry are being followed.'
