house number. I sat on a wall across the street and watched. After a bit, the light went on downstairs and the front door opened and a bloke came out. I’m certain it was Mountjoy. I’ve seen his picture in the papers.”
If true, this really was sensational and Diamond didn’t conceal the excitement he felt. “Did anyone come to the door with him?”
“She was there, yes. I had a clear view.”
“You mean Britt?”
“Who else?”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Hundred percent.”
“How was she dressed?”
“In a skirt and blouse buttoned to the neck-and if that surprises you, it’s nothing to the surprise I had. What’s more, there was no embrace, nothing. Not even a few civil words. She shut the door fast, before he was through the gate. He didn’t look back, either. Marched off up the street. That was the end of it. He didn’t kill her. You banged up an innocent man, Mr. Diamond.”
“And you withheld vital information from the police,” Diamond retorted, which was an agile reaction considering the force of what had just been said. “Why didn’t you come forward?”
“A crusty? You’re joking. You’d have swung it on me, no problem. I’d have been the poor, benighted sod who did four years in Albany. I mean, I was there in Larkhall. I had the motive and the opportunity.”
“So what’s changed? Why are you talking about it now?”
G.B. fielded the question smoothly. “What’s changed, Mr. Diamond, is that you’re sitting in my mobile home asking questions about the murder. I’ve got to defend myself.”
“Right. How do we know you didn’t go into the house and kill her?”
“Someone else did.”
“That’s easily said.”
“I saw them.”
Diamond’s pulse quickened.
G.B. took his time over continuing, probably sensing the need to pick his words with care. “After Mountjoy left, I thought about going in. I was still pissed off about the way she’d used me and then dropped me. I wanted a civilized discussion.”
It sounded unlikely, but Diamond observed a tactful silence.
“The thing is,” G.B. continued, “I was thrown by what I’d just seen, the way her date had been shown the door. You’d think he’d insulted her mother or kicked the cat, or something. I stood about for a bit, not sure whether to go over and knock on the door or leave it for another day. I must have been deep in thought because I didn’t notice this other old git walking up the street. I don’t know where he came from. There he was, opening the front gate and stepping up to the door like he owned the place. He took a key from his pocket and let himself in.”
“He had a door key? What was he like?”
“I only had the back view. Thin. Average height. Wearing a flat cap and overcoat. Middle-aged, going by the way he moved. I saw him for about ten seconds, that’s all.”
“This couldn’t have been Mountjoy returning?”
“No way. He’s bigger, and they were differently dressed.”
“Was he carrying anything? Like a bunch of flowers, for instance?”
“I didn’t see any flowers.”
“Roses, I’m talking about.”
G.B. shook his head.
“And then what?” Diamond asked.
“I left. Seeing him arrive made up my mind. He was sure to come to the door if I knocked and I didn’t want any hassle.”
“You assumed he was the landlord?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean when you say you didn’t want any hassle?”
G.B. grinned good-naturedly. “I might have thumped him.”
“And after that a civilized discussion with Britt would have been unlikely?”
“Right. It was only later when I read about the murder in the papers that I found out that the owners were away in the Canaries. When they got back they discovered the body, so it couldn’t have been the landlord I saw, could it?”
Diamond took the question as rhetorical. Mentally he was already in another place, putting questions to someone else. He went through the motions of asking G.B. whether he had returned directly to Trim Street on the night of these events. Then he tried for a better description of the mystery caller, but got nothing new. G.B. had said it all the first time.
Diamond led Julie out of the camper. He felt sick to the stomach. What he’d just heard was devastating if it was true: the confirmation that he’d blundered back in 1990 and sent down the wrong man.
“You’d better drive,” he told Julie.
Chapter Fifteen
Frank Wiggs, a television engineer living in Morford Street, one of the surviving Georgian terraces of artisan dwellings on the lower slopes of Lansdown Hill, called out to his wife Nina that he wouldn’t be long. Nina called back that if he was, he’d find the door bolted. It was their usual affectionate exchange before Frank left for a night at his usual pub, the Pig and Fiddle in Saracen Street, where they served Ash Vine, “the bitter for serious drinkers.” Nina had long ago given up going with him.
Having checked that he had some cash and a pack of cigarettes, Frank closed the front door behind him and set off at a brisk walk down the hill.
Left to her own resources for the evening, Nina was not despondent. She reached for the television remote control and silenced the inane panel game that was showing. She opened a drawer of the sideboard and took out a box of Belgian chocolates she had bought that afternoon from the little shop on Pulteney Bridge. She popped a truffle into her mouth, crushed it rapturously between her teeth, swallowed it fast and treated herself to another, followed by a violet cream. Needing something to lubricate her throat, she opened the lower section of the sideboard and reached to the back where she kept the brandy-in a place where Frank never looked except at Christmas when the family came. All he ever drank was beer. She poured herself what she thought of as a half measure-half filling a brandy glass-put it on a tray with the chocolates and the portable phone and carried them upstairs to the bathroom where she converted the cistern over the toilet into her private altar. While running the water, she tipped in some bubble bath. Then she removed her clothes, trimmed her toenails, tried the scales and took another three truffles. Satisfied that the water was right, she stepped in and immersed herself to the shoulders. Bliss. She reached for the brandy and the phone.
Twenty minutes later, in sprightly conversation with her friend Molly in Aldershot, Nina heard a sound from downstairs like the shattering of glass. Her immediate thought was that she must have left the sideboard door open and the cat had crept inside and knocked over some wine glasses. The silly animal had got in once before and snapped the stem of their last Waterford goblet from the set her Aunt Maeve had given them as a wedding present. The damage would be done by now and the cat would have run off, so Nina scarcely paused for breath in giving Molly the story of this French film she had videoed about a rich woman who hired young men as servants and seduced them.
A short time after this she was conscious of the stairs creaking, but the central heating caused the wood to contract, so there was no reason for unease.
Then the bathroom door opened and a man looked round the door.
Nina slammed the phone against her breasts. She found the pluck to say, “Get out!”
He said, “Stay calm. I won’t touch you.”
Molly in Aldershot said, “I think we’ve got a crossed line. I can hear someone else.”
