He gave a shrug. “What do you mean-appearance? She was dead.”
“Describe the scene.”
“You saw it. You were one of the first.”
“I need to hear it from you.”
He closed his eyes and started to speak like a medium in trance. “The curtains are drawn. Her clothes are lying on a chair by the dressing table, folded. Shoes together on the floor, neat-like. She’s lying face up on top of the bed, not in it, in a white dressing gown and pajamas. Blue pajamas. The dressing gown is made of towel stuff. It’s open at the front. The pajamas are stained with blood, pretty bad, but dry and more brown than red, and so is the quilt she’s lying on. One arm-the right-is stretched out across the bed. The other is bent across her stomach. She’s turned a sallow color and her mouth is horrible. Deep red. Filled with dead roses.” He opened his eyes. “If Mountjoy didn’t do this, you’ve got to get the brute who did.”
“Your time’s up, Inspector, more than up,” a voice broke in. The redoubtable sister had reappeared.
“I hope not,” said Diamond.
“What?”
He gave her a smile. “I’ve still got things to do. But I’m leaving.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Events were not running smoothly for Diamond. First, when he went to look for the Escort it had gone; Julie had taken it to pursue the woman who had visited Billington. Second, he carried no personal radio; hadn’t even thought of asking for one. So he had to use a public phone to get a taxi back to Bath. But there was a consolation: the driver recognized him from the old days. They had a satisfying to-and-fro listing the inflictions they considered were ruining the character of the city: black London-style cabs, sightseeing buses, tourism, ram-raids, “New Age” travelers, shopping malls, traffic wardens, busking, Christmas decorations, students, old people, schoolchildren, councillors, pigeons, surveys, horse-drawn carriages and opera singing in front of the Royal Crescent. Diamond felt much beter for it by the time the cab drew up in front of the shabby end-terrace near the bottom of Widcombe Hill where Una Moon, and, until recently, Samantha Tott, were squatters.
His spirits plummeted again on learning from a hairy young man in army fatigues that Una had moved out.
“Where can I find her?”
“Who are you, then?”
“A friend.”
“What time is it?”
Diamond usually asked that himself, and expected to be told. “Around two-thirty, I imagine. Where will I find her at this time?”
“Up the uni.”
“The university?”
“Unicycle.”
“Ah.” Diamond’s face registered the strain of this mental leap.
“Down by the abbey,” his informant volunteered, and then asked, “If you’re a friend, how come you don’t know she juggles?”
Diamond got back in the cab.
A crowd of perhaps eighty had formed a semicircle around two performers in the Abbey Churchyard, close to the Pump Room. A man in a scruffy evening suit and top hat was doing a fire-eating act before handing the lighted torches to a young woman wobbling on a unicycle, who juggled with them. Not a convenient moment to question her about the Trim Street squat.
She was as thin as a reed, with a face like a ballerina’s and fine, dark hair in a plait that flicked about on her back with her movements controlling her bike. Ms. Moon, beyond any doubt.
A church clock chimed the third quarter and Diamond seriously considered interrupting the performance, regardless that it wouldn’t be a popular move, and might be dangerous. He decided to give them two minutes more, two minutes he could use to update himself on the siege, for the north end of the Abbey Churchyard led to Orange Grove. He strode in that direction.
Street barriers had been placed across the pedestrian crossing by the Guildhall, blocking the access to Orange Grove. A constable was stretching a band of checkered tape across the pavement.
Diamond explained who he was and asked what was happening now. On Commander Warrilow’s orders, he learned, the area in front of the Empire Hotel had been closed to traffic and pedestrians. Sensitive listening equipment had been set up and certain landmarks around Orange Grove were being used as observation points. Someone was posted on the roof of the abbey in the tower at the northeast end; not a marksman, the constable thought. It wouldn’t be good public relations, would it, to use a place of worship as a gun emplacement?
“Have they appeared at the window at all since the girl was spotted?” Diamond asked.
“Not so far as I know, sir. He won’t let her do that again, will he? He’s got the whole hotel to himself, so he might as well keep her in a room at the back. There’s plenty of choice.” This policeman seemed to be making a bid for CID work.
“Yes, but he’ll want to see what’s going on down here,” Diamond pointed out.
“He’d do better to watch the stairs inside the building. That’s how we’ll reach him-unless Mr. Warrilow is planning something dramatic with a helicopter.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
It was time he returned to the buskers. The crowd was clapping as he crossed the yard. Evidently the show was ending. People on the fringe started moving away. A few generous souls stayed long enough to throw coins into the top hat. The next act, a string quartet, was waiting to take over the pitch.
Una Moon was gathering up smoking torches when Diamond approached her and introduced himself. The moment Samantha was mentioned she stood up and said earnestly, “Is she all right? Have you found her?”
“Let me get you some tea and we can talk,” he offered without answering the question. “There’s a cafe in the covered market with a place to sit down, or used to be.”
She asked if her friend the fire-eater could join them. Buskers stick together when hospitality is on offer. The fellow in the top hat winked companionably.
Diamond fished in his pocket for a few silver coins and asked the fire-eater to cool his mouth somewhere else. And returned the wink.
He offered to carry the unicycle the short way to the Guildhall market, which is hidden behind the Empire Hotel and the Guildhall. The market cafe wasn’t quite in the class of the Pump Room for afternoon tea, but it was almost as convenient, and a better place to interview a busker. Seated opposite Diamond, across a table with a green Formica top, she warmed her hands around the thick china mug and watched him speculatively with her dark brown eyes.
“You ought to wear more in this weather,” he told her, eyeing the thin black sweatshirt she had on.
She ignored that. “Tell me about Sam.”
He could ignore things, too, when it suited him. “We don’t have much time. Una Moon. That’s your real name, is it?”
She frowned. “What’s it to you?”
“Not many of you people use your real names, do you?”
“Why should we?” she rounded on him. “It’s a free world. We have a right to protect ourselves from goons like you slotting us into the system. I want to be an individual, not a piece of computer data.”
“But Una Moon is your own name?”
“How do you know that?”
“From a computer. And before you protest about your civil liberty, it’s a national computer. I’m on it, too, and so is the Prime Minister and everyone who keeps a car.”
She scowled. “I don’t keep a car.”
He said, “We needn’t go into the reason why you appear.” He’d decided a touch of intimidation would speed
