'I'm doing my best. There was a mean character called Joe Florida we nailed for a protection racket. He was American, I think. Scared the shit out of Asian shopkeepers. He got a twelve-stretch, which means he could be out now and back to his bad old ways. Yes. Joe Florida.'
'Was it personal, between you and him?'
'It seemed so at the time. I haven't heard of him for years.'
'Was he the sort who'd gun down your wife?'
'Hard to say. He'd have gunned me down, that's for certain.'
'Was he organised?'
'You mean did he run a gang? Sure.'
'Joe Florida. I'll see what the Met knows. Are you sure there's nobody closer to home, apart from the Carpenter family?'
There was - but for the present, Diamond preferred to deal with Edward Dixon-Bligh himself. The case against Steph's no-good ex-husband was tenuous, and he didn't want McGarvie rooting around for the evidence of blackmail. So he shook his head. 'I've been over and over.'
And on Wednesday evening at home he had a call from Louis Voss. 'I think we've traced your man. One of the two women in the ground-floor flat did some detective work of her own. She has a business in Walham Green selling weavings - wall hangings, curtains, throws, that kind of thing - and she lent him a few items to brighten up his flat. She does that, apparently, and it helps to get her work known. When he did his flit, he took off with all the choice items she'd lent him, and she went berserk.'
'She found him?'
'She told everyone who came into the shop. That's the way to get the word around. One of her customers saw him walking out of Paddington Station last Sunday afternoon and followed him. He's living in some crummy street at the back of the station, right under the Westway flyover. Seventeen Westway Terrace. You'll be glad to hear Sally has recovered all her wall hangings.'
'I'll be overjoyed if she left him in one piece.'
'Will you come up again?'
'Tomorrow. And thanks, Louis.'
Seedy as Blyth Road had looked with its peeling stucco, it was state of the art compared to Westway Terrace. A hundred years of coal dust from the trains was sealed with the mud and oil sprayed from the flyover. A sane person would not have ventured there without a protective suit.
The first mystery: how did the place come to be named after a flyover when it obviously pre-dated it by half a century or more? He could only assume it had been called something else in Victorian times and was given a change of name during the twentieth century. One possible explanation for a change of street name was that the address had become notorious because a murder had been committed there. He was willing to believe it.
No doorbells here. He knocked at number seventeen and got no answer. These were labourers' dwellings of the two-up, two-down sort. He tried peering through the window and made out a square table with a newspaper on it. Some cardboard boxes stacked against a wall. He felt certain Dixon-Bligh was not at home. What mattered was whether he had left altogether after being tracked there by Sally - or was it Mandy? - the angry weaver.
He tried the houses on either side, and still failed to rouse anyone. He thought he heard a faint sound from within the second place, but they weren't answering for sure. It was the kind of temporary home illegal immigrants are dumped in after a long, expensive journey in a container. They'd hardly want to come to the door.
A forced entry was an option he preferred not to take. Better, surely, not to alert the suspect. Within walking distance was the Grand Union Canal and the upmarket area of Little Venice, with its trees, pubs and cafes. Maybe Dixon-Bligh had found work there. He'd been in the catering trade. For Diamond, it was a good enough incentive to leave this depressing street and go looking.
He had not gone far when a cyclist turned the corner and pedalled towards him: the first sign of life. A man of around his own age, dressed in a blue suit and flat cap, riding along in that focused way cyclists have. Diamond didn't hail him, as he might have done. Westway Terrace was a cul-de-sac, so it was certain that the cyclist would stop at one of the houses and there was just a chance . . .
His hunch was right. The man came to a halt outside number seventeen and felt in his pocket for keys.
A change of luck was overdue.
'Mr Dixon-Bligh?'
The cyclist turned and stared. There was panic, or guilt, or both, in the look. His hands gripped the bike as if he was considering escape. He didn't say a word.
Diamond stepped purposefully towards him. 'I'm Peter Diamond, Steph's second husband.'
He watched it register.
'Mind if I come in?' Diamond asked, with a huge effort to sound friendly and disarming. 'I'm up from Bath to see you.'
'What on earth for?'
'It'll be easier inside.'
Dixon-Bligh unlocked and wheeled the bike in first, leaning it against the wall just inside. Diamond stepped in after him and closed the door. The place smelt damp and the wallpaper was coated with mould.
'I tried to reach you on the phone. The number I had was obviously out of date. Are you on a mobile these days?'
Dixon-Bligh was not saying.
'You did know she was killed?'
