'Which everyone except you has forgotten. Will you hear me out? This changes everything, this identification. Both murders could well have roots in things that happened at the time I'm speaking of, things you'd rather forget. We need to know what they are, Peter. We've all had episodes in our past we gloss over. Speak frankly, and you have my word there will be no witch-hunt.'
'What about, ma'am?'
'Anything at all. The point is this. We have to stop this killer from murdering anyone else. That's paramount. Your iffy conduct fifteen years ago doesn't matter a jot compared to that.'
He was stung into a sharp riposte. 'No, ma'am,' he told her, feeling the blood rush to his face,
'That isn't so,' she said through tight lips. She turned and left the room.
He felt a twinge of guilt. Georgina had come in spontaneously, genuinely wanting to share her news with him. So often of late when she'd spoken to him, there had been a hidden agenda. This time she'd dredged up his past - or tried to - and said a couple of tacdess things and he'd reacted more tetchily than ever. He needn't have put her down.
Too late to mention it.
Another of the case files he'd acquired from Louis featured a white teenager, a crop-headed loner called Wayne Beach who had a liking for guns. As a juvenile, Beach had twice been caught in possession of firearms acquired by his criminal family. For a short time in the early eighties he had made a living robbing and shooting taxi drivers. His method was simple and effective. He'd hail a cab late at night when the driver had stacked up an evening's fares in the West End and ask to be driven to some street where he'd already parked a stolen car. He'd get out and instead of paving the fare he'd pull out a handgun and shoot the driver, usually in the leg, and demand his takings. The drivers always paid up. He would smash the two-way radio and put another bullet into one of the taxi tyres before walking calmly to the stolen car and escaping. One night in Edith Road an eagle-eyed constable spotted a parked car reported as stolen three hours before. On the off-chance that this was the taxi-bandit a team headed by Diamond was issued with arms and sent to lie in wait. Beach was ambushed and shot in the hip. It was not stated in the file whether Stormy Weather had been one of the DCs in support.
Beach had been given five years on that occasion and had served several terms since for malicious wounding. The significant feature in his case was the way he felt about guns. He was a trigger-happy hard man with no scruples about inflicting pain on innocent victims. It wasn't enough to use the gun as a threat. He always fired. The case notes said he had an image of himself as a holdup man in the old American West. He put bullets into people without any compunction whatever. Killing hadn't featured among his crimes, it was true, though one of the drivers had almost bled to death. But he had to be taken seriously as a possible killer now.
He'd been released from Wormwood Scrubs last Christmas, in plenty of time to have shot Steph and Patricia Weather.
Georgina said to the room in general, 'This is Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond,' and added on a softer, apologetic note, as if suddenly realising she was in the holy of holies, the Chief Constable's suite, 'the husband.'
'Widower,' Diamond corrected her.
'We already met,' DCI Bobby Bowers said without elaborating, and nobody picked up on it.
The case conference was around the oval table where officers' careers were blessed or blown away. Coffee was served in porcelain cups and saucers instead of mugs and there were Jaffa Cakes instead of chocolate digestives. There was little else to report. It was a fact-finding exercise for all concerned, and no facts were found that were new to Diamond.
At one stage someone made the ill-considered remark, 'Patsy Weather was a copper, one of our own. This time we'll get this guy, whatever it takes.'
Diamond demolished him with a look.
Afterwards he offered to show Bowers the way down to the car park.
'Nothing else at the scene, then?' he asked the young DCI.
'Only bits of bone.'
'No bag? No rings?'
'I'd have mentioned it just now, wouldn't I?'
'When's the post mortem?'
'Tomorrow.' Bowers glanced at his watch. 'Would you have time to show me your crime scene?'
They drove out to Royal Victoria Park in Bowers' white Volvo. This late in the afternoon they found a space easily on Royal Avenue below the Crescent and walked across the turf to the place near the stone bandstand where Steph had fallen. The sympathetic tributes of flowers and wreaths had long since disappeared. No one would have known this was a murder scene. A couple of schoolkids locked in a passionate embrace behind the bandstand had not been put off. The proximity of strangers didn't put them off either.
Bowers stared across the lawns, velvety in low-angled sunlight, to the glittering row of parked cars along the avenue and above them the curve of the most-photographed terraced building in Europe. He took in the great trees to the left and the conifers away to the right. Turning, he noted how close were the tall bushes screening them from Charlotte Street Car Park.
'Hard to equate with my railway embankment.'
'You've got a park nearby.'
'Yeah, but this is so open.' He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Diamond, who shook his head. 'And she was just gunned down and left here?'
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak without emotion.
'There was no attempt to move her?'
'Too risky.'
