Africa and he couldn’t wait to get started and show us how brilliant he was. Now, the guys in our team were great practical jokers and when we were getting close to Wales on the M4 one of them had the lovely idea of asking Bruce if he’d brought his passport with him. You should have seen his face. He said he didn’t know it would be needed. Of course we wound him up then, saying how strict the Welsh were at the border crossing point and that he should forget about playing rugby that afternoon. We’d better drop him off on the English side of the Severn Bridge and pick him up on the way home. He was shattered, totally taken in by all this.
“Then someone suggested that we put Bruce into the boot and cover him over with tracksuits and shirts and things and drive across the bridge. He was touchingly grateful. So we stopped at Aust services on the English side and watched this massive South African climb in and try and make himself inconspicuous.”
“Rotten lot!”
“We closed the thing and drove across and stopped the car just beyond the tolls and walked around it pretending to be a border patrol, tapping on the bodywork.”
“Then did you let him out?”
“Not until we’d driven another ten miles. And then nobody let on, because when the match was over and we were driving back, we did the whole thing again.” He shook with laughter, remembering it. “Well, he had scored a couple of jammy tries.”
Julie said, “That’s so mean! Men’s humor is a mystery to me.”
One of the first people they saw on returning to Manvers Street was Chief Inspector John Wigfull, officious as usual, issuing orders along the corridor to some hapless civilian clerk who had rashly stepped out of her office.
“There you are,” he said when he’d done with her, pointing toward Diamond and Julie as if they needed to account for themselves. “Can I have a word?”
“What about?” asked Diamond.
“Mrs. Violet Billington. You interviewed her this morning, I believe.” The tone was definitely accusing.
“I did.”
“Alone?”
Diamond said, “Yes,” trying to sound unflustered while his thoughts careered both backward and forward seizing on alarming possibilities. Surely the old biddy hadn’t made a complaint. He’d treated her fairly, for pity’s sake. Once before in this place where protocol was holy writ he’d been carpeted on a trumped-up charge of assault. That was the occasion when he’d thrown up the job.
“How was she?” asked Wigfull.
“What’s this about?”
“Mrs. Billington. I’m asking how she was.”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “All right.”
Wigfull said, “Because we’ve got her downstairs. She’s battered her husband senseless. Any idea why?”
Diamond shook his head, lost for words.
Wigfull went on to explain that less than an hour ago an emergency call had come in from the house in Larkhall. The student lodger had returned from college to discover her landlord, Winston Billington, lying unconscious in the hall bleeding from head wounds. Assuming that someone had broken in, the student had rushed through to the kitchen to see whether Mrs. Billington had also been attacked. She had not. She had been sitting at the table drinking vodka. She had admitted to the student that she was responsible for the assault and had agreed that as her husband still appeared to be breathing they had better call an ambulance.
“Where is he?” Diamond asked.
“In intensive care at the RUH. We’ve got a man at the bedside in case he recovers.”
“He’s that bad?”
“They say the injuries are severe. She used a plastic bag filled with copper coins. They kept it by the door and put their excess change in it to dole out to people collecting for charity. Two poundsworth of coppers can make quite a dent in someone’s skull.”
“And is she talking?”
“At this minute, no. She’s in the toilet, throwing up. Too much vodka. Don’t worry. WPC Blinston is with her.”
Diamond turned to Julie. “You’d better get down to the hospital.”
Wigfull said, “Didn’t you hear? There’s a man at the bedside already.”
“I want Julie there.” Momentarily it threatened to become a clash of wills. In a rare act of conciliation, Diamond confided, “We’ve got new information on his possible involvement in the Britt Strand murder. We were all set to interview him. If he should come round, anything he says could be vital.”
Julie left for the hospital.
Diamond joined Wigfull in an interview room, across a table from Mrs. Violet Billington, the self-confessed husband-beater. Dressed in a faded green and white cardigan that made Diamond think of overcooked cabbage, she was almost as pale as the box of tissues in front of her, yet the blue eyes conveyed the same contempt she had shown earlier in the day.
However, she was prepared to talk.
Having recited the formal preliminaries of a taped interview, Wigfull asked the tense little woman whether she was willing to describe what had happened to her husband.
She summed it up in a sentence. “He came home and I hit him.”
“There must have been a reason.”
After a pause: “He’s a monster-that’s the reason.”
“You’d better explain what you mean by that, Mrs. Billington.”
Wigfull received the full force of the withering stare. “Why ask me? You know perfectly well that he murdered our lodger.”
Considering the explosiveness of this statement, Diamond exercised commendable restraint as he took over the questioning. “You’re speaking of Britt Strand? We must have it confirmed for the record.”
“Who do you think I mean-the Queen of Sheba?”
“Britt Strand?”
“Oh, come on-of course!”
“Has he told you this himself?”
“No. But he didn’t have to,” said Mrs. Billington. “I know. And you know, too. You were coming for him this evening.”
“Coming to interview him,” Diamond made clear, at pains to conduct this scrupulously while the tape was running. “If he hasn’t actually confessed to you, what are your grounds for saying he murdered Britt?”
She said vehemently, “You don’t know him like I do. He’s got sex on the brain-at his age. You’d think an old man would grow out of it. Not him. He’s always been out for the main chance, flirting with girls young enough to be his daughter. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve caught him out. He’s not even subtle about it. I’ve had them phoning the house asking to speak to him. I’ve found their cigarette ends in the car. I’ve seen the hotel bills.”
“That may be so, but loose living is one thing and murder another.”
“He killed this one because she wasn’t having him. She didn’t succumb to his blandishments. He kept trying and she kept giving him the frost. His pride couldn’t take it.”
“How do you know this?”
“I saw the evidence. He tried all his usual overtures, boxes of chocolates and bunches of flowers, but she wasn’t interested.”
“He gave her presents while you were there?” Wigfull said in disbelief.
“He wasn’t that obvious with it.”
“How do you know about the presents? You looked into her flat?”
“No need. She threw them out with the rubbish. Flowers from our garden and whole boxes of Milk Tray, unopened. He always gives Milk Tray. Pathetic, isn’t it? That TV advert must have sunk into his brain. Anyway, they ended up in the bin, still in their wrapper. That’s how much that one thought of him. She wasn’t some pathetic creature in one of the shops he visits desperate for attention. She had better fish to fry.”
If Mrs. Billington had any sympathy for the fate of her former lodger, she wasn’t exhibiting it. The reference to “that one” depersonalized Britt unpleasantly. She was given no credit for resisting the wayward husband. The bitterness was all-consuming.
