Stabs her repeatedly. Then stuffs the flowers in her mouth.”
“And leaves her like that? For two days?”
“Certainly. He wouldn’t stick around. He’d clear off fast to somewhere else, ready to claim, as he does, that he actually traveled back from Tenerife with his wife and got back two days after the murder. He had to persuade her to back him, of course.”
“Cover up for a murder?” said Julie in disbelief.
“That’s not uncommon.” Now he gave her the benefit of his years in the murder squad. “The wife who shops her husband is rare indeed, Julie. From her point of view there’s always an element of doubt. A murderer doesn’t admit to his wife that he’s taken someone’s life. She has a vested interest in believing he’s innocent. She’ll clutch at any straw. After all, it’s a criticism of her if he fancies other women. And then to be the wife of a killer, stared at by other people, hounded by the press-that’s not a pleasant prospect. So, yes, Mrs. Billington stood by him and supported his alibi. She may have believed he was innocent at first, but I get the impression four years have changed her opinion. She’s not going to blow the whistle on him now, but she can’t disguise the contempt she feels for him. Pity you didn’t meet her.”
“Meeting him will be more interesting,” said Julie.
“Well, it’s already laid on for this evening.”
“What time?”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’ll have a bite first. In fact, if you take the next turn on the right, there’s a country pub where I’m always well treated.”
This evening proved the exception. The place was not as he remembered it. For one thing, there were rows of tables covered in red cloths, with places set for dinner and plastic flower arrangements. For another, the barmaid-or waitress- asked if they had booked.
“It’s supposed to be a pub, isn’t it?” he said combatively. “We can have a drink and a snack.”
“You can have a drink, by all means. No bar snacks in the evening, sir, apart from crisps. And peanuts.”
After he’d given his opinion of crisps and peanuts, they drove on to a public house Julie knew. It had a log fire and tables where you could sit without having a menu thrust in front of you by a young woman in a white apron. They ordered filled jacket potatoes at the bar.
He was still muttering about crisps and peanuts when they were seated. “That other place won’t see me again. Cheers.”
“Round here, pubs are changing their clientele in the evenings,” Julie remarked. “There’s more money to be made from running them as restaurants.”
“Everything’s changing,” Diamond complained, mounting one of his favorite hobbyhorses. “Look at Bath. Carwar- dine’s gone now, a coffee shop of character. Owen, Owen, that nice big department store in Stall Street where I used to buy my socks and shirts. What do I see there now-a Walt Disney shop. That’s American. Just down the street there used to be a Woolworth’s. Gone. My earliest memory is being lost in Woolworth’s. Not in Bath, I mean. Another town. Woolie’s is part of our heritage, Julie.”
“It’s American,” she said. “Woolworth was an American.”
He said huffily, “You don’t need to tell me that.” With a shift of thought that was quite reasonable in his own mind, but he couldn’t expect Julie to understand, he asked, “Is there a phone here? I can call my wife while the food is coming.”
In their basement in West Kensington, Steph had been watching an Australian soap. The theme tune was going in the background. “I was wondering if we were still talking,” she remarked. “What’s the state of play? Shall I see you tonight?”
“Doubtful,” he answered. “Tomorrow looks more likely. However, I think I’m about to button up the case.”
“So long as you don’t stitch it up.”
She couldn’t know how wounding that remark was.
She said, “Are you still there? I hope they appreciate what you’re doing.”
He laughed cynically. “Some hope of that!”
She said, “Because I’m not sure if I do. I’ve had the supermarket on the phone this evening, wanting to know why you missed two days of work. What could I say, except that you got called away suddenly?”
“You could say the police came for me.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Joke.”
She said, “Speaking of jokes, it looks to me as if you might be modeling for the art class after all.”
This time his laugh was more hollow. It came home to him how much better he had felt doing police work again, even when it turned up old mistakes.
And Steph, with her well-practiced capacity to read his thoughts, said in all seriousness, “Why don’t you stay there as long as they need you? They may come to their senses and want you back-even that man you had the row with. Tott.”
He said, “I got stung this morning.”
“By Mr. Tott?”
“By a bee. On my hand.”
“That’s all right, then.”
“What?”
“I said, are you all right, then? Did you put something on it? “
Yes. I survived.”
“Teach you to be careful where you put your hands.”
He used this as the cue to say something personal that may not entirely have made up for his delay in phoning, but definitely pleased Steph. They exchanged some frivolous and private remarks before he hung up.
More mellow than he had felt all day, he went back to where Julie was sitting and said, “Don’t you have a phone call to make?”
She shook her head.
He was sorry, because she wore a wedding ring.
“Separated?”
She smiled and shook her head. “He’ll be at work. He’s in the police.”
The jacket potatoes arrived and Diamond tested one of his, risking the heat on his fingertips to feel for the cracking of rusty skin. “I like them baked the old-fashioned way, not turned into mush in a microwave,” he explained. “These will do. A well-cooked potato beats pasta or rice or anything. I was once told that if you had to survive on only one food, you’d better choose potatoes, because they contain some of all the nutrients we need. What is more, they aren’t fattening.”
“The butter is,” said Julie, noting the large chunk he was slotting between the halves.
“Don’t lecture me on diet,” he said as if she were the one holding forth about potatoes. “This is better for me than chips. When I was younger, I practically lived on chips, but then I was burning up the calories playing rugby.”
“You were a rugby player?”
“Played prop.”
“Who for?”
“The Met.”
“Metropolitan Police. That’s a good team, isn’t it?”
“It was. These days they’re languishing in Division Five South.” He sprinkled chopped ham over the potato and tried some. “I needed this. Do you want to hear a rugby story? In the mid-seventies, we were drawn away against a Welsh team in the cup. Swansea, I think it was. We had a South African playing in the second row for us. He was on attachment to the Met for six months, doing some sort of course on dog training. An enormous fellow. Bit of a bullshit artist actually. Played a lot of rugby in South Africa. Bruce was his name. Can’t remember the surname. Something Afrikaans that didn’t sound the way it was spelt. Anyway, four of us were driving to Wales in a Ford Anglia. No team buses then.”
“Including Bruce?”
“Including Bruce. He was a pain about his rugby. He reckoned the standard of play was much higher in South
