Diamond Dust

Stormy looked at his watch. 'I'd better get my train.'

'Why - have you got a cat to feed, dog to walk?'

'No, but we've finished for today, haven't we?'

'You're staying at my place tonight. Then we can start early tomorrow.'

'On what?'

'The real last shot.'

29

They brought in fish and chips and a couple of six-packs and spent much of the evening talking over old times at Fulham nick. Stormy had a better recall of those days than Diamond. You never forget your first year of policing, your first arrest, your first raid.

'I had other postings before then,' Diamond said to excuse his hazy memory. 'I signed on before you, Dave. Turned fifty this year - and don't say you wouldn't know it.'

'What did you do?'

'Do?'

'To celebrate the big five-o.'

'Oh - nothing.'

'Pity.'

'Save it, pal. It was after Steph was killed. What's a bloody birthday after something like that?'

'How long were you married?'

'Nineteen years. Why?'

'The way you talk about her, I'd have thought it was less.'

'Why? I felt the same about her as the day we met.'

Stormy nodded. 'I guess you were the kind of couple who hold hands in the street.'

A sharp look was exchanged. So far as Diamond could tell no sarcasm was intended. 'If we felt like it, we may have done.'

'There's the difference. We kept our distance. Doesn't mean we didn't care about each other. Like I told you, it wasn't rosebuds all the way for Patsy and me. I played away a few times - call me weak-willed, or oversexed -and she usually found out. But we always patched things up. Try and explain that kind of marriage to a sleuthhound like Bowers.'

'Did you have to?'

'Not yet, but he'll be onto it soon. Friends of ours know we scrapped sometimes. They'll tell him.'

'I'm glad you told me.' Diamond appreciated the honesty. No doubt there would be suspicions that one more 'scrap' had resulted in violence and Patsy's death. The man was realistic enough to know the pattern any investigation followed. Bowers would dissect the relationship.

Some awkwardness remained between them. Stormy, talkative, with a tendency to blunder into trouble, wasn't the sort of man Diamond would normally strike up a friendship with, but then who was? He had almost no close companions in the police. It wasn't a job that encouraged confidences. But he was glad he'd made the gesture of welcoming him to his home. With their common cause they would make an effective team.

'Do you want vinegar with that?'

Stormy shook his head. 'What I'd really like is to find out if they nicked Joe Florida.'

Diamond said it was simple. He'd call the duty sergeant and find out.

A few minutes later he passed on the news that Florida was being questioned by McGarvie at Shepherd's Bush Police Station.

'Will he ask the right questions?'

'Who knows? They sound confident.'

'Aren't you?'

'That Florida is the killer?' Diamond looked away, at the photo of Steph he'd put in a frame on the wall-unit. 'He was never top of my list.'

'But he's a vicious bastard. You helped send him down.'

'Justly. He was bang to rights.'

'So what's the problem, Peter? He's well capable of murder.'

'I can't see the logic in it. If he hated my guts - and he probably did - then why not murder me? People like Florida live by a simple, brutal code, Dave. They demand, and they get. If they don't get, they give, and what they give is violence. We're not dealing with a chess grand master here. I don't see Joe Florida scheming and plotting in jail for years thinking when I get out I'll murder the wives of the coppers who banged me up, and that'll really make them suffer.'

'He'd rather kill us?'