he murmured, “Beg your pardon.”
From behind him came the command, “Open the door and step inside.”
He knew who it was.
A gun at your back is more sobering than black coffee; a gun held by a convicted murderer is doubly efficacious. Diamond’s rehabilitation was immediate.
It was no bluff, either. A black automatic was leveled at him when he turned to face John Mount joy.
“The gun isn’t necessary,” Diamond said.
The change in Mount joy was dramatic. On Lansdown a couple of days before he’d looked gaunt and pale as prisoners do, yet he’d seemed well in control. Now he was twitchy and the dark eyes had a look of desperation, as if he’d discovered that freedom is not so precious or desirable as he’d supposed. The strain of being on the run was getting to him, unless the unspeakable had happened and he was marked by violence.
Speaking in a clipped, strident voice, he ordered Diamond to remove his jacket and throw it on the bed. What did he suppose-that it contained some weapon or listening device? He waved him to a chair by the window.
It would not be wise to disobey.
“What have you got to tell me?” he demanded. “Speak up.”
“Would you mind lowering that thing?”
“I’ll use it if you don’t speak up.”
Whether the threat was real, Diamond didn’t know, but there was real danger that he would fire it inadvertently, the way he was brandishing it like an aerosol.
“There is progress,” Diamond told him, spacing his words, doing his utmost to project calm whilst thinking how much to tell. “Definite progress. I now have a witness who saw you leaving the house where the murder took place. At approximately eleven o’clock. More important, he’s positive he saw Britt at the front door showing you-”
Mountjoy cut him short. “Who is this?”
“Someone she knew.”
“‘He,’ you said. What was he doing there? I didn’t see him.”
Diamond continued the drip, drip of information, trying to dictate the tempo of this dangerous dialogue. “Watching the house, he says.”
“Who was he? You must know who he was.”
“He fancied his chances as the boyfriend. Someone told him you’d taken her out for a meal. He was jealous. He went to the house to see for himself if it was true. Stood outside in the street. He says you left without even shaking her hand and moved off fast.”
“That much is true,” Mountjoy admitted. “Is he the killer? Why did he tell you this? Who is he?”
The advantage had shifted. Mount joy’s hunger to have the name was making him just a shade more conciliatory. Diamond was far too experienced to miss the opportunity to trade. “What’s happening to Samantha? Is she all right?”
“Don’t mess with me,” said Mountjoy, touchy at the mention of Samantha. “I want the name of this toe rag.”
“Better not abuse him,” Diamond cautioned. “He’s your best hope so far.”
“Who is he?”
“Is Sam still alive?”
No response.
“You know if you hurt her, laid a finger on her, they’d get you.”
“What do you mean-‘they’? You’re one of them.”
A slip of the tongue. He said, “The top brass.”
“They will anyway.”
“If you play it right,” Diamond broached a more positive offer, “you ought to survive. The gun isn’t going to help. I don’t know where you got it, but you’d be safer without it.”
The warning seemed timely when Mountjoy used the back of the hand that was holding the gun to wipe his mouth. Whatever the man’s misdemeanors, he was no gunman.
Diamond sensed that he was on the brink of getting some information about Samantha. It was worth giving more. “As a matter of fact,” he volunteered, “I don’t have the name of this witness who saw you leaving the house. He’s a crusty, a traveler.”
“One of that lot? Who’s going to believe him?”
“I do, for one.”
This caused Mountjoy to frown. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“You sent me down. Are you actually admitting you got it wrong?”
“It’s beginning to look that way.”
“Was this crusty the killer?”
“Probably not.”
This wasn’t the answer Mountjoy had expected. The muscles in his face tensed and he said thickly, “Who the hell is it, then?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What?”
“-but I’m closing in,” Diamond added quickly. “That’s why it’s so important that Samantha is released unhurt. She is all right still, isn’t she?” And after receiving no reply, he said, “Look, the people who are running the manhunt are getting anxious. If you could give them some proof that she is still alive, it might buy us both some time. If not”-he glanced at the gun-“it could end very soon, John, and in a bloody shoot-out.”
Mountjoy’s troubled eyes held his for a moment, but he gave no response.
“Will you tell me something else?” Diamond asked him, his brain in overdrive. “That last evening you spent with Britt: did she mention anyone she was seeing?”
“Other men, you mean? I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“I mean no. Why would she want to talk to me about boyfriends?”
“Perhaps to give you the message that she was already dating someone.”
“Well, she didn’t. I did most of the talking, chatting her up, you could say.”
“Didn’t that involve asking her questions about herself?”
“Yes, but you don’t ask a woman who else she’s sleeping with.”
Fair point. Diamond was compelled to admit that on a first date the conversation was unlikely to venture down such byways. It was a long time since he’d been on a first date. “Who paid for the meal in the Beaujolais?”
“I used my credit card, but she insisted on giving me money to cover her share. She said something about modern women valuing their independence.”
“You must have expected her to offer.” Diamond moved on-smoothly, considering the circumstances-to the real point that interested him. “Did you by any chance give her some flowers?”
Mountjoy was annoyed by the question. Muscles tensed in his cheek. “The roses? No. Will you get it into your thick head that I didn’t murder her?”
“There’s a big difference between buying flowers for a lady and murdering her,” Diamond said. “Someone else could have seen your flowers and taken it to mean she was two-timing.”
“They were not my flowers.”
“Pity. It would have made a nice gesture, the kind of gift a woman would appreciate from a mature man such as yourself. You wouldn’t have to arrive at the restaurant with them. You could have had them delivered to the house.”
“I didn’t.”
“So did you notice any roses in the flat when you went back there?”
“No.”
“Would you have noticed?”
“Probably.”
