Diamond said, “I don’t think you understood my question. How do you know that your husband murdered Miss Strand, as you allege?”
This time he drew an answer of stunning candor.
“Because he asked me to lie to you to cover up for him. He wasn’t really with me in Tenerife on the night she was killed. He was already back in England. He cut short our holiday after getting a phone call. He said he had to attend a crisis meeting. It was a crisis for someone all right.”
“When was this?”
“The call?”
“The flight home.”
“The day she was killed. He doesn’t realize how repulsive he’s become. He still thinks he’s God’s gift to women. The young things round the pool weren’t interested, so he made up his mind to come home and try his luck with the lodger.”
“Is this what you believed at the time?”
She lowered her eyelids. “No. I swallowed the lie. I really believed he had an emergency at work.”
“And when you got back?”
“He met me at Bristol Airport and drove me home.”
“How did he seem?”
“Twitchy. I put it down to the problems at work. When we got home, the first thing I noticed was the milk bottles on the doorstep. Britt hadn’t taken in her milk for two days. It didn’t seem that important. She might have gone away in a hurry to interview someone. But I couldn’t understand why Winston had left two pints going sour. He blustered about it, said he’d stayed in London for another meeting. He isn’t much of a liar. I knew he was making it up.”
“Did you query it?”
“I was too tired to bother. We went to bed and I was dog tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt uneasy about the lodger upstairs. She really preyed on my mind, so I asked him to check, and you know the rest.”
“We don’t,” said Diamond. “We don’t know what induced you to make a false statement when the police arrived.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Diamond.
She turned her eyes upward and pursed her lips. “Winston told me he didn’t want you people bothering his bosses by checking whether he was telling the truth. He was worried about his job and he thought he might lose it if the police came asking about his movements. It was simpler all round if we both said we’d traveled back together the same day. I said I refused to tell any lies, but if he wanted to speak for both of us, that was up to him, and that’s what happened, if you check your statements. In mine, I stated when I returned to Bristol and I made no mention of Winston.” For a moment, Mrs. Billington’s eyes had a gleam of triumph.
“So he behaved as if someone else had killed Britt Strand?” said Diamond.
“That’s what he wanted me to think.”
“And did you?”
“At the time, yes. I knew he was an incurable skirt-chaser, but I’d never dreamed he was dangerous.”
“When did that occur to you?”
“When you came to see me this morning. It’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t think Mountjoy killed her. You’re on to Winston at last, asking about the sexy cards he sells and whether we grow roses in the garden. I can put two and two together.”
Ten minutes ago, Diamond had been cockahoop at putting Winston Billington into the frame. Now his elation drained. His worst apprehensions were confirmed. Whatever the rights or wrongs of it, his interview must have triggered the attack. “But you said yourself that the roses couldn’t have come from your garden,” he said limply.
“He’d given her roses in the past.”
“These were from a florist.”
“I know. What does it matter anyway,” she said. “He killed her. I did some checking after you went. I went through his credit card statements for four years ago. He keeps everything for five years, silly mutt. The day he returned from Tenerife, the day of the murder, he spent the equivalent of ten pounds sixty-five at the florist’s at Los Rodeos Airport.”
“That’s why we couldn’t trace the shop,” Diamond said, more to himself than anyone else.
Mrs. Billington hadn’t finished. “And just to be sure I phoned his head office and asked the managing director’s secretary to check whether there really had been an emergency meeting on October the eighteenth, 1990, that Winston had to attend. There wasn’t. The boss himself was away on business in Scotland for the whole of that week. Now do you understand why I clobbered the rat when he stepped inside the door tonight?”
Diamond understood. He also felt marginally more comfortable in his mind that he wasn’t solely responsible for unleashing the avenging wife.
Chapter Seventeen
“No change, I’m afraid, dear,” the charge nurse said when Julie Hargreaves enquired about Winston Billington. The “dear” was kindly meant; the nurse had taken her for a relative, mishearing “DI” as “Di,” a common error. Julie went over to the uniformed embodiment of the police, a youthful constable who was sitting bored in the corner drumming with his fingertips on an upturned plastic coffee cup.
“Any signs of life?” she asked him.
“He groans sometimes.”
“Is that good?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Why don’t you get some air for an hour? I’ll take over. Bring me some tea when you come back. Milk and no sugar.”
He nodded his thanks and left.
She ventured as close as she could to the bed. The little she could see of the patient’s face was gray, the eyes closed, one forcibly, turned purple and heavily swollen. His head was bandaged and he had a ventilator over his nose and mouth. There was another tube giving him a transfusion and leads connected to his chest were monitoring his heart rate. In all, it wasn’t the ideal way to meet the principal suspect. She marveled at the ferocity of the diminutive Mrs. Billington and the power of money when it takes the form of a bunch of coins swung in a plastic bag.
She sat down to begin her vigil. For a time, at least, she’d got a break from Diamond. He wasn’t easy to work with just now. She’d heard him called curmudgeonly, and she wouldn’t argue with that at this stage of their working relationship. She understood the sense of personal failure that was oppressing him over what had happened four years ago. In a way though, she preferred Diamond’s abrasiveness to the emollient manner of John Wigfull, her real boss. For all Diamond’s bluster and boorishness, she felt secure with him. He was open in his emotions. When he smiled (which was rarely just now) it was genuine. When he was gloomy, he shared it. He consulted her and appeared to listen. Mind, he didn’t confide much in anyone else. He seemed to regard the rest of the Bath CID as turnipheads. He obviously felt deep resentment that she didn’t fully understand over his resignation a couple of years ago. She’d gathered that he had always been out of sympathy with the high-ups. For all that, his reputation as a dynamic head of the Murder Squad was still spoken of with awe in Manvers Street. He’d led a strong, loyal team, now dispersed.
About his personal life she had gleaned little so far. She now knew he’d once played rugby for the Met. She’d heard from others that he had been spotted on occasions in the stand at the Recreation Ground, where Bath RFC, the best club side in the country, played their home matches. She’d also been told that he had a natural rapport with kids, in spite of having none himself. The Christmas after he’d quit the police, he’d taken a job as Father Christmas in the Colonnades shopping precinct-and proved to be a popular Santa. He wouldn’t have needed padding.
