Diamond's heavy evening had left him bereft of cordialities. He said grouchily, 'I don't know why I came. I've damn all to tell you.'
They went inside. The interior was cold. Presumably the heating had gone off and Jackman had been too distracted to notice.
'You'll have to forgive the state of the place,' Jackman explained. 'You people… Sorry, let me start again. The police left it in a hell of a mess and I haven't straightened it out yet.'
'They must have been looking for the Jane Austen letters.'
'They needn't have troubled. I already searched the house from top to bottom. My files are going to take months to sort out again.'
The piles of books on the living room floor and the pictures removed from the walls didn't trouble Diamond; he'd seen searches before. Authorized them. He picked up a replica T'ang horse from an armchair, deposited it on the floor and sat down heavily, still in his raincoat. 'I'm not staying long.'
'Coffee?'
'Let's get to the point. It's the car log, is it?'
Jackman nodded.'It's missing.'
'It should have been in the car.'
'Well, it wasn't. The police files contain no reference to it. I checked with Dana's solicitor. He said if it had been there, a copy would have been included in the file that was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service and made available to the defence.'
True.'
'There's nothing – no reference to a log. Mr Siddons -the solicitor – has spoken to Dana. She insists that she always kept the log in the glove compartment of the car.'
'It was there the last time she drove the car?'
'The day you took her in for questioning.' No imputation of malpractice was discernible in Jackman's words. His own conduct preoccupied him. 'I was so concerned when I heard it was missing that I did the dumbest thing. At the time I didn't appreciate how damaging it could be. I went down to the police station and demanded to see Chief Inspector Wigfull. Did it off my own bat, without telling Siddons. I asked Wigfull if the police were holding the log.'
Diamond winced. 'That was unwise.'
'I mean, I didn't accuse him of perverting the course of justice, or anything like that. It was all very civilized. I told him Dana insisted the log had been in the car. He said it hadn't been found.'
'John Wigfull wouldn't tell you that if it wasn't true,' said Diamond in all sincerity. His former assistant was too much the police college man to sully his career with misleading statements.
Gregory Jackman drew no comfort from the assurance. He emitted a long, tremulous sigh that signalled more alarming depths in his confession. He was standing stiffly in front of a white, denuded bookcase like a convicted man lined up for mugshots.
'I made a blinding error by drawing it to their attention – handed a trump card to the prosecution. Siddons is incensed. He says they might have missed the significance of the bloody log. Now they'll seek to suggest that Dana destroyed it.'
The gravity of what had happened came home to Peter Diamond. Almost certainly the disappearance of the log would now be used against Dana Didrikson.
He asked precisely what she had told her solicitor.
'She's adamant that she never took the log out of the car except on the last day of each month when it went in for checking at the Realbrew office. She always got it back the next day. She's telling the truth. I know it.'
'Does she remember any discrepancies?'
Jackman shook his head slowly. 'She doesn't. She says it was up to date. The last entry would have been the day you arrested her.'
'Invited her for questioning,' Diamond corrected him. 'Was it all written in her own hand?'
'Yes.'
'She's positive?'
'Utterly.'
'So we must expect her to say so in court.' He took a grip on the chair-arms. 'I'm not surprised your Mr Siddons is busting a gut.'
Jackman looked about him as if he wanted to pace the floor, a feat rendered unlikely by the chaos of books and ornaments.
Diamond, meanwhile, was searching his own soul. 'I take a share of the responsibility,' he admitted. 'I started this hare.'
And should have seen where it was leading, he went on to tell himself. Dana Didrikson would have been better off if the log had never been mentioned. The prosecution were sure to question her about it now, and the more she insisted that it had been properly kept, the stronger would be the implication that she had destroyed it.
A sense of guilt oppressed him, adding to his burden of self-reproach.
'I could do with a coffee after all, if you don't mind.'
While Jackman was busy in the kitchen, Diamond brooded in the armchair. The probability was strong that Dana Didrikson was the killer, but to treat her guilt as a certainty was a cop-out. His interference had stacked the odds more heavily against her. If he could think of something to redress the balance, he had a moral duty to mention it.
Yet when Jackman returned with the coffee, nothing of comfort was said by either man. At Realbrew Ales next morning, he started to expiate his error. 'No,' he told the receptionist, 'I don't have an appointment. On a visit like this it isn't the practice to announce that we are coming. Kindly inform the Managing Director – Mr Buckle, if that is he – that he has a visitor.'
'I'll see if he's free. Your name, sir?'
'Diamond.'
'And what shall I say you have come about, Mr Diamond?'
'Taxation.'
It worked. She mouthed an 'Oh', pressed a button on the intercom and spoke into it with her hand cupped over her mouth and her eyes on Diamond as if he were pointing a gun at her.
While waiting to be shown upstairs, he pictured the panic in the manager's office. From all he had heard of Stanley Buckle, his relationship with the tax authorities was likely to be precarious.
'You'll have to bear with me, old chum,' were Buckle's first words when the confrontation came. 'I'm supposed to be in Bristol for a meeting in twenty minutes, and you know what the bloody traffic is like.'
He got up from behind his desk and shook Diamond's hand, clearly resolved to disarm the threat if at all possible. The hand was warm and damp. Shorter than Diamond had pictured him, neat-featured, with slicked-back, receding black hair, Buckle beamed benignly and gold gleamed at the edge of his mouth. His choice of clothes was about right for a wheeler-dealer with a spread of business interests… fawn-coloured suit with brown shirt and a pale yellow silk tie that was probably called champagne-coloured by the fashion house it came from. A rosebud was in his lapel.
'I won't detain you long,' Diamond promised.
'Tax matter, is it?'
'It's not unconnected.'
'Nothing personal, I hope?' A smile.
Diamond shook his head. He could be amiable, too. 'Strictly business. I believe you have extensive business interests in the West Country, Mr Buckle.'
That's putting it strongly,' said Buckle. 'I do a bit of importing in addition to my work here.'
'Importing what?'
'Novelty goods, cheap toys – that sort of thing. I supply quite a number of toyshops and stationers with items from the Far East.'
'Japan?'
'Hong Kong and Taiwan principally.'
