certain amount of trouble and expense.”
“Normally they’d sell the carcass for cats’ meat, I suppose,” Diamond remarked. “Or to the hunt.”
The man cleared his throat, concerned, apparently, in case Diamond’s words were carrying across the lawn to the funeral party.
“How about burial?”
The answer required a hand over the mouth. “We couldn’t do that here. You’d need a mechanical digger. Mind, the Queen has her favorite horses interred on the Royal estate.”
Diamond’s attention had shifted to where the funeral was going on. He remarked to Julie, “Some of those young girls are carrying red roses.”
The owner of the memorial garden told them, “They feel it as a personal loss, the young girls.”
“Never considered red roses as an emblem of grief,” said Diamond, more to himself than anyone else. “No offense meant,” he picked up the conversation, “but some people would think it stretching religion too far, having funerals for animals.”
“It’s not a funeral in the strict sense of the word, more a thanksgiving for the life of the departed one and the pleasure it gave us. If you have a pet of your own you may be sure that when the parting comes, as it must eventually, we can offer you peace of mind and a permanent memorial.”
Julie thanked him.
Diamond said, “You should get one of those Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.”
The man’s eyes gleamed at the prospect.
There were signs of progress across the lawn. Marcus Martin had lowered the casket into a hole in the ground and some of the funeral party were stooping to place their flowers in or around the grave. A camera flashed. The priest stepped back and snagged his cassock on a rose.
Martin turned and undoubtedly spotted Diamond and Julie striding toward him, although he looked away at once and started a conversation with another mourner.
“You don’t mind?” Diamond said, at Martin’s shoulder. “We need another bite at the cherry.”
“I’ve nothing to add to what I told you before,” Martin responded. “And this is hardly the occasion-”
“So we’ll take you to the car,” Diamond told him firmly.
Uncomfortably wedged beside Martin in the backseat of the Escort, Diamond said, “We’re pushed for time. In your steamy relationship with Britt Strand, did you ever see her naked?”
Marcus Martin was entitled to be startled by the directness of the question, but he answered it smoothly enough. “Of course.”
“More than once?”
“Frequently.”
“So she wasn’t shy about her body?”
“Certainly not. Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re obviously the man to ask about the butterfly tattoo on her left buttock.”
The trap wasn’t oversubtle, but it worked.
“Oh, that,” said Martin in as offhand a manner as he could manage.
“Must have looked cute when she walked,” said Diamond. “Was it a red admiral or a peacock?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Martin said. “I know nothing about butterflies.”
“You know nothing about Britt’s butt, full stop,” said Diamond. “There was no tattoo, my friend. I imagined it, just as you imagined your affair with the lady.”
“Oh, but-”
“Let’s have it straight. She turned you down, right? The wild and steamy three weeks never happened.”
“Em…”
“Should have realized you’re a specialist in horseshit. We could do you for making a false statement, do you know that? Better not push your luck, chum. Can we rely on anything you told us? She came to you to get some riding in, strictly with the horses. Is that right?”
Diamond was fizzing. Nothing could equal the satisfaction of snaring a liar. To have caught the glib, golden- tongued Marcus Martin was a particular pleasure.
Martin leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to appear calm. “Broadly.”
“You made a play for her and she wasn’t having any?”
“You policemen make things sound so crude.”
“Yet according to previous statements you visited the house in Larkhall on more than one occasion.”
“That was true,” he insisted, opening his eyes and sitting forward. “She had no transport. I used to drive her back in my Range Rover.”
“Hope springs eternal. But she gave you the frost each time, did she? Afternoon tea in the Canary was part of the campaign, was it not?”
Martin’s voice was a semitone higher. “No, it was quite unplanned, in fact. She wanted to do some shopping that afternoon, so I parked the car in town and joined her for tea.”
“That was when you saw G.B. and got nervous of the company she kept, or so you claimed.”
“I was speaking the truth. I still nourished hopes of, er…”
“Getting inside her joddies?”
“Joddies?”
“Jodhpurs.”
“I suppose that sums it up, if vulgarly.”
Diamond picked up on the part of the answer that mattered. “You didn’t give up? You didn’t take no for an answer?”
“Who does?” said Martin, seizing the opportunity to make a general point. “They all say no at the beginning.”
“And mean ‘yes’?” said Diamond. “Better watch what you say, my friend. DI Hargreaves here is a rampant feminist.”
Julie, motionless in the front seat, made no comment, but the look she was giving both of them in the driving mirror made her disapproval clear.
“You persisted,” Diamond continued with his demolition of Marcus Martin. “You couldn’t believe she’d turned down an offer from you, the international show jumper, adored by all those little girls who muck out the stables. Are you sure you never bought her flowers? Have a care. We’ve caught you out in one lie already.”
“Absolutely not.”
“A bunch of roses would be more your style than some fellows’. We checked every florist for miles around. Care to reconsider?”
“I didn’t buy her flowers of any sort, ever.” Martin’s voice was taut, under strain. There could be no question that he knew the significance of what was being asked, but was he lying?
“When was the last occasion you saw her?”
“I’ve told you this before.”
“And I’m giving you this chance to tell it as it really happened.”
Martin shook his head wearily. “The weekend before she was killed I traveled to Brussels with the national show-jumping team. On, I think, the Thursday before that she came out for an afternoon at the jumps. She said it would be her last opportunity, as she’d recently enrolled on a college course that would take up all her time. I offered to drive her back to Bath as usual. She said she’d arranged a taxi. The message was loud and clear. We didn’t even shake hands at the end of the session.”
“When did you return from Brussels?”
“The Sunday evening, late.”
“And you didn’t see Britt again?”
“No.”
“Nor have any contact?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Remind me of your movements on Thursday, the eighteenth of October, 1990, the last evening of Britt Strand’s life.”
“I spent the evening quietly with a friend.”
