“is one of those detachable flashing beacons that Kojak used to have. You put your arm out of the window, slam it on the roof and off you go. Everyone knows it’s an emergency.”
The road widened and he succeeded in overtaking a small white van. “Did she know you were tailing her?” he asked Julie.
“I don’t think so. There were a couple of hairy moments when she looked back, but I merged with other people on the street.”
The road ahead dipped and gave them a longer view. “Any sign?” Diamond asked.
“I don’t know… Hold on-yes! Just about to go out of sight. See?”
While he was trying to see, the white van-the only thing he had overtaken so far-trundled past him again. For the next couple of miles the oncoming traffic prevented him from making any progress. Some traffic lights at the Viaduct pub hindered him further, but Julie pointed out that there was a steep hill ahead that was obliging everyone to move at the speed of the slowest.
Soon after they reached the top, they were rewarded with the sight of the yellow lorry at the side of the road and Shirl in the act of climbing down from the cab. The stretch of road here was fringed by trees on either side.
“Watch where she goes,” ordered Diamond, the man of authority once more. “I’m going past.”
He slowed to a crawl-to the incandescent fury of the driver of the BMW behind him-until he found a place to pull in on some even turf about a hundred yards on. In his mirror he saw the lorry flashing its direction light to move off again.
“She stayed this side of the road,” said Julie as they got out.
Shirl wasn’t in sight, however. She must have headed straight into the wood, a dense, dark strip that funneled outward to cover a substantial area. After trekking back along the road, they found a bridle path, the only route she could have taken.
They started in pursuit. A brisk walk over frost-hard leaves brought them to a clearing occupied by up to a dozen vehicles in various states of dilapidation. A smoldering fire and a pair of barking dogs gave promise that the place was inhabited.
A woman-not Shirl-stepped out of an ancient double-decker bus and Diamond asked if G.B. was about.
She must have been about thirty, with a weathered, intelligent face and cropped hair. She said as her gaze moved from one to the other, assessing their potential for trouble, “Who wants him?”
“I’m Peter Diamond. This is Julie Hargreaves. Friends of Shirl.” Which was overstating it, but worth trying.
“Shirl?”
“Shirl. You must know Shirl. Only we’d like to meet G.B.”
The exchange was interrupted by a sudden shout of, “No! Don’t touch me, you bastard! Get away!” from the interior of a large black van close by. A piercing scream followed. A door in the side of the van was flung open and a young woman in just a T-shirt and knickers fell out, picked herself up and ran sobbing across the clearing to a caravan. In the doorway of the van she had left stood a man holding a broad leather belt. He slammed the door shut.
“Was that him?” Diamond enquired.
“G.B.?” Their informant looked more surprised by the question than the incident. “No. Follow me.” She took them around the side of the bus and back into the wood again, or so it appeared until a short path brought them to another clearing where a large, sleek camper van was parked in isolation, a stately home on wheels, not more than two years old according to its number plate. It had a TV dish attached to the side.
“Wait.” The woman rapped on the door with her knuckles.
It was Shirl who opened it. She looked beyond the woman, sighted Diamond and Julie and put her hand to her throat. She turned and said something inaudible inside the van. A few words were spoken and then she stepped down and said with a resentful note, “You’re to go in.” She, it seemed, had been ordered to leave.
G.B. civilly got up to greet his visitors when they entered. He wasn’t built for life in a van; he had to dip his head, although Diamond, no midget, could stand upright with ease. Neither did the accent sound right for the traveling life. It was more Radley than Romany. “Do find yourselves somewhere to sit down. You want some background on that Swedish woman who was murdered in Bath, I gather.”
This was the assurance G.B. needed, apparently. No mention of other matters. He’d wanted to agree on the agenda first.
Diamond gave a nod. “Shirl did a fine job for you. She could have a future in the CID if she wanted.”
“Not if she steps out of line. I didn’t send her to you.”
“She acted independently?”
“Women,” said G.B.
No question: he had altered. Whereas his head had been shaven in the photo Diamond possessed, he now sported a crisp haircut that would not have looked out of place in a Martini commercial. His black sweater, jeans and designer trainers were straight out of GQ: the new-look G.B. was a dapper figure with a disarming smile. All the menace of dress and demeanor had been discarded, except the one feature he could not alter, the “lazy” left eye that Prue Shorter’s camera had caught. Recalling the photograph, and Marcus Martin’s account of the greatcoated crusty who had created a sideshow at the window of the Canary cafe, this was a transformation to rank with the emergence of a butterfly.
The van, too, was luxuriously fitted, the curtains, cushions and seat coverings in a matching fabric that could have come from Liberty’s. G.B. had gone upmarket, but why? Diamond’s quick assessment was that this was probably a drug pusher in the process of distancing himself from the mugs who used the stuff. It was a familiar scenario. The pusher first identifies his market by mingling with the potential buyers, dressing as they do. In time he gets rich and gives up that pretense. The crusties depended on G.B. now. If he’d come dressed in a bowler hat and pinstripes they’d still buy from him.
“G.B.-are those your initials?” Diamond asked when he had lowered himself onto a bench with as much dignity as a fat man could. He was civil in his manner to G.B. The drugs connection, if any, was someone else’s concern.
G.B. answered, “No, it’s just a nickname for a patriotic fellow who used to keep a bulldog with a Union Jack coat. Tea or coffee?”
They hadn’t expected the offer, but it seemed to go with the new image. “Tea for me.”
“Me, too,” said Julie.
“So what’s your real name?”
“G.B. I answer to G.B.,” he said smoothly. “I’ve been called worse things in my time, so I settled for that.”
Diamond moved on to more urgent business. “We didn’t meet at the time of the Britt Strand murder.”
“No reason to,” G.B. said with his back turned, attending to the kettle.
“Except that you apparently met Miss Strand in the weeks leading up to her death and we tried to interview everyone.”
“Yes, I met her,” G.B. admitted, turning to face them, “but so did hundreds of other people, I reckon. When you think about all the contacts Britt must have made in the course of a week-”
“It was our job to trace them,” Diamond said to cut him off. “We missed you the first time around.”
G.B. gave a smile of sympathy. “It must be deeply frustrating. You’ll never trace everyone, particularly after so long.”
“We’ll do our best.”
“Memories go slack.”
“We’ll prod them, then.”
“The best of luck.”
Diamond thought as he listened that G.B. was trying a mite too hard to present himself as the genial, laid- back host. It was more than likely that drugs were hidden somewhere in the caravan, which could account for his behavior, but there was always the chance it was prompted by something more relevant to the present investigation. “Would you care to tell us how you came to meet Britt Strand?”
He said without hesitation, “She came looking for me. This was the summer before she died. I heard that this blond woman was chatting up the crusties outside the pump room, asking about me. I was damned sure it was
