'Right.' Diamond gave an apologetic smile. He now remembered Mary vividly. 'We were a cruel bunch.'
'It was a bit OTT. She got tired of the whistling and singing. And of course every time an umbrella was handed in it was hung on her peg. Though I have to say she fitted the role in some ways. She was a born organiser.'
'So when did you marry her?'
'November, eighty-six,' Stormy said, and for a moment his face creased, but he controlled the emotion and stood the photo on the empty wall unit.
Diamond, too, was thoughtful, marvelling that a young woman as pretty as 'Mary' Jessel had fallen for the Bardolph of Fulham nick.
'She was younger than you?'
'Fifteen years.'
'And she got to be sergeant.'
'At Shepherd's Bush. Served all her time at two stations just down the road from each other. She would have made inspector if she'd stuck with it. She was a fine copper.'
'She jacked it in?'
'Only about a year ago. She set up her own secretarial agency from home. It was just starting to build when 'Was she ever with CID?'
He shook his head. 'Uniform for the whole of her career, and pleased to do it. Very good with the public, anyone from juveniles to junkies.'
'And no one looked better in a white shirt,' Diamond reminisced. 'So she wouldn't have been on any of the cases you and I got roped into?'
'Not as CID. Do you want tea? Or there's a pub only five minutes away.'
'Sounds good to me.'
From the way they were greeted by the landlord of the Forester, Diamond guessed Stormy - or Dave, as he was trying hard to think of him - had spent plenty of time here lately. The urge to get out of the house where every picture, every chair, every cup has the potential to strike at the heart is hard to resist, as he well knew.
Over a glass of bitter at a. corner table in the saloon bar, his old colleague was more at ease. They had never been close companions, or even said much, but the shared experience drew them together. Diamond found himself speaking more frankly about the impact of Steph's murder than at any time up to now. 'There are days . . . The worst part is when you've been relaxing without knowing it - let's face it, forgetting what happened - and then something touches you like a finger, forces you back to reality, and . . . and . . . there's no other way to put it - she dies all over again.'
This drew a nod of recognition from Stormy.
Diamond added, 'What keeps me going is the promise I made to find the scumbag who did it. And I will. They keep telling me to stand aside and leave it to the murder squad. How can I? You feel the same, don't you?'
So much intensity from someone he'd known as a senior officer must have been daunting, but Stormy nodded at once.
Diamond was well launched. 'The murder inquiry is going nowhere. I've found out more through bloody-minded obstinacy than McGarvie and his television appeals and scores of men on overtime. It's incentive, Dave. You can't sit back. Even if they were right on the heels of the killer - which they're not - I'd still be going it alone. I owe it to Steph.'
'I know how you feel.'
Diamond took a long sip of beer, willing Stormy to open up a little, and he did.
'They kept saying she'd come back, hinting all the time that we'd had a run-in - as if it was something unusual. We were always having dust-ups. We were one of those couples who scrap all the time and feel better for it. Doesn't mean we didn't love each other.' He looked down into his drink. 'When a grown woman goes missing, nobody takes it seriously, not for weeks. She's just another name on a list.'
'How did it happen?'
'Her leaving? Nothing happened. Everyone was hinting there must have been some great punch-up. There wasn't. I came home from work one evening and she wasn't there.'
'When was this?'
'A Monday in March. The twelfth.'
'Two weeks and a bit after Steph was killed.'
'Right. I actually read about your wife being shot, and I remembered you from the old days, and was really sorry. I didn't send a card or anything because I didn't think you'd remember me, and it's difficult to know what to write.'
Diamond gave a nod. 'What about when your wife went missing? Did it cross your mind what had happened to Steph?'
'No, I didn't connect them. I didn't think Patsy was dead. You don't. I hoped she'd walk through the door any minute. And I guess I didn't want to face up to the worst possible explanation. You think of everything else, loss of memory, an accident, a coma. Anything that lets you hope.'
There are different degrees of torture, Diamond thought. Steph's sudden violent death had seemed like the ultimate. Stormy's months of not knowing was another refinement, and he wasn't sure how he would have coped with it. 'It's very isolating. No one knows what to say to you. They shun you if they can.'
'Tell me about it.'
'And of course they don't want us to investigate. I don't know if you've been told this, but the argument goes that a smart defence lawyer would cry foul if you or I helped to arrest our wives' murderers.'
