'We could put out a message.'
'There's a phone on the table beside you,' said Diamond. 'Come on, man!' With that, he began to feel marginally better.
Wigfull got through and ensured that the motor patrols would be alerted. 'In that fast car she's probably heading for the motorway,' he said when he had finished. 'They'll pick her up in the next hour with any luck.' He continued to fuel his optimism. 'Well, we're quite a bit further on, funnily enough. The lady does a bunk and confirms herself as the number one suspect, in my book, anyway. She's going to regret this. Look, would you like me to see if I can find some sort of painkiller?'
'The first sensible thing you've said,' Diamond told him.
A short time later, he lowered himself gingerly into the passenger seat of his car. The codeine Wigfull had found in the bathroom was beginning to work. Wigfull closed the door gently on him and walked round to the driver's seat and got in.
Then he gave an embarrassed cough.
What's the matter with him now? Diamond thought.
'The keys.'
'Why didn't you think of it before? Why didn't I, come to that?' Nothing is so awkward as fishing in your pocket when you're seated in a car, or as perilous, when you're sore down there.
It was an effort and a pain, but Diamond prised them out and handed them over and they drove off. He didn't offer to map-read. It was up to Wigfull to remember. They took the two sharp turns and then steered left to the top of the narrow hill that had caused such problems on the way up. Wigfull stopped the car.
'Not again.'
The way down was obstructed.
Diamond started to laugh. It was ridiculous to do so, because every movement gave him a spasm of pain, but he couldn't prevent it. He shook with laughter.
The car halfway down the hill was a stationary black Mercedes – stationary because it had met another vehicle coming up. They were bonnet to bonnet, quite literally. The vehicle the Mercedes had hit was a red Mini with the headlights full on. The driver, familiar in his trilby, had got out and was standing beside the cars examining the damage. There was a figure still seated in the Mercedes.
'Can't be too serious if his lights are still working,' said Wigfull. 'I'll trot down and see.'
Diamond got out and hobbled after him. This was going to be worth the discomfort.
Chapter Nine
THE DAMAGE TO THE VEHICLES was slight, no more than a flaking of paint from the Mercedes and a small dent in the nearside wing of the Mini. But it was enough to provide a pretext. Having established that neither driver was injured, Wigfull solemnly took particulars from the old man – a retired doctor – who owned the Mini, while Diamond opened the door of the Mercedes, introduced himself and asked the woman inside to hand him the key.
'Thank you. Now would you move across to the other seat?'
She obeyed, her hands trembling as she put them out to support herself.
'Sure you're all right?'
'Yes.'
He lowered himself towards the driver's seat, then realized just in time that he wouldn't fit. The level of the seat had been raised by two squares of foam rubber, leaving so little space below the steering wheel that it would have courted disaster to squeeze the already suffering portion of his anatomy under there. 'I'll have to move these.'
She shrugged her consent and he managed the manoeuvre at the second try.
'You're Mrs Dana Didrikson?'
'Yes.' Her face had turned the colour of skimmed milk, accentuated by the brown hair that framed it. A neat, finely-shaped mouth and dark, intelligent eyes that now had a hunted look. Without it, Diamond might have guessed that she was a teacher or a social worker.
Capable of murder? he asked himself as he said aloud, 'Would you care to tell me how this happened?'
'I was driving too fast. It wasn't his fault. I thought I'd stopped in time.'
'Why the hurry?'
She let out a sigh that said this was playing games because they both knew the reason. 'I was trying to escape.'
Simple cause and effect. Naturally she'd hurried because she was trying to escape. From her deadpan manner, she might have been talking about the weather.
Diamond couldn't match her composure. He quivered. The adrenalin coursed through him. The breakthrough was happening. All those miserable hours by the lake, in the caravan, on the phone to Merlin, at case conferences, watching the pesky computer screens, teasing out information from the professor – were about to be rewarded.
His throat had gone dry. He dredged up the one word that mattered. 'Escape?'
'Out of the back of the house. Didn't you see me?'
'We saw you.'
'Well, then.' More words, apparently, were superfluous.
Not wishing to say one syllable that might discourage her candour, he kept to practicalities. 'Your car was parked at the back, I take it?'
She nodded. 'I got in and drove too fast. What's going to happen to me?'
'We're going to require a statement. Would you wait here, please?' He hauled himself out of the seat and approached Wigfull, who was still going through the motions of questioning the elderly Mini driver. 'Reverse the Mercedes, John. She's willing to cough the lot, I think.'
The old man said at once, 'If she's admitting responsibility, I'd like it noted.'
'Thank you for drawing it to our attention, sir,' said Diamond. 'An officer will come and see you in due course.' He returned to the Mercedes and got into the back seat, behind Dana Didrikson. 'Back to the house,' he told Wigfull when he got in.
At the top of the hill, he transferred to his own car and drove the short distance, and somehow his soreness was less disabling now. Wigfull followed in the Mercedes and they parked both cars in front of the Didrikson house.
The door stood open as they had left it. Sensing that a second escape bid was unlikely, Diamond allowed Mrs Didrikson to go in first. She called out a name.
'If that's your son you're calling,' said Diamond, 'he went out through the front as we came in.'
She said, 'He had no reason to run off.' More loudly, she called, 'Mat, are you there?'
Wigfull explained, 'He attempted to stop us from entering, ma'am. We could do him for obstruction and assault. He caught Mr Diamond well and truly.'
She said with contempt, 'He's just a schoolboy.'
Diamond signalled to Wigfull not to pursue the matter, a fine instance of altruism in the line of duty. 'We'll be wanting to interview you at some length, Mrs Didrikson.'
'Here?'
'Down at Manvers Street. It's late already. You might wish to put a few things in an overnight bag.'
'You want me to come to the police station? Can't you talk to me here?'
'That won't be possible.'
'What about Mat? I can't leave him alone all night. He's only twelve, you know.'
Diamond assured her that the boy would be taken care of in her absence. The Abbey Choir School had a house for boarders in Lansdown Road. While Mrs Didrikson, accompanied by Diamond, went upstairs to pack her bag, Wigfull spent some time on the phone arranging for a patrol to find the boy and drive him to the school to spend the night there.
