Britain’s richest women she’s in the top twenty and has the controlling interest in her old man’s company, so she can’t be a total airhead. Even so, I can’t see her discussing poetry with Axel Summers, but let’s not prejudge.
(Later) Jimmy isn’t sure if he can fix an early meeting with Walpurgis. He says she’s in a panicky state, close to a breakdown, and finding the security hard to take. They think she shouldn’t be disturbed in her present mental state. Ridiculous. I reminded him that I have a Ph.D in psychology, but it cut no ice. ‘Maybe in a couple of days,’ he said. I told him the profile can’t progress until I’ve spoken to her. You have to get tough with Jimmy, as I discovered when I insisted on meeting Matt Porter (my pin-up). This time he didn’t promise to get back to me, or anything.
I asked him if he’d spent any time with Walpurgis, and he said he had about forty minutes with her when they broke the news that she was on the Mariner’s death-list, and he’s visited her in the safe house a couple of times since. This man-eater has seen Jimmy more times than I have. Soon I’ll be getting jealous.
I said if I couldn’t get to see her myself, could I give him a list of questions to put to her? He agreed, so I jumped in with both feet and said it wasn’t quite so simple as making a list. In view of her fragile mental state I’d need to brief him personally about the way it was done, and debrief him afterwards (I have no shame), and how was he fixed this weekend?
He sounded slightly ambushed, but that’s it. Perfecto! He’s agreed to see me tomorrow morning (Saturday), and I’m off (or on) for the weekend, I hope. The weather’s going to be glorious. I shall pack my swimsuit, just in case I can tempt him out of the nick and down to the coast.
Wish me luck, Computer.
Diamond smiled at the last line, then shook his head and sighed, as if it had been addressed to him in person. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Emma’s luck had run out on Wightview Sands.
He closed down the computer and went upstairs.
14
Hen Mallin had read the files overnight. “I learned a sight more than I expected,” she said on the phone next morning to Diamond. “Almost enough to bring a blush to my innocent cheek. And I thought profiling was all about maps and diagrams.”
“Like so much else it comes down in the end to people making judgements about other people,” he said, in a rare reflective vein. “Emma Tysoe had it right about one thing. We’re all governed by our hormones.”
“Snap out of it, Pete. You’re talking like an agony aunt.”
He laughed.
“So what’s next?” Hen asked. “Do you pull in this guy Ken and wrap it up fast? He looks bang to rights.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Meaning you haven’t nicked him yet?”
“Still trying to trace him.”
“He’s right in the frame,” Hen said as if Diamond needed more convincing. “The jilted lover, consumed by jealousy. It’s one of the oldest motives around. I’m willing to bet he was the guy in the black T-shirt the Smiths saw.”
“Olga Smith saw,” he corrected her. “The husband didn’t see him.”
“So what? My money’s on him.”
A bit sweeping, ma’am, Diamond thought. He liked accuracy, and he also liked to understand why things happened. “If that was Ken, what took him all the way down to Wightview Sands?”
“Car, obviously. Emma gives him the elbow, but he won’t go away. Guessing there’s another guy in her life, he follows her to Horsham and sees her cosying up to Jimmy Barneston. While those two spend Saturday night together, the luckless Ken is sitting in his car thinking murderous thoughts. In the morning he trails her down to Wightview Sands and tries to talk her round. When his limited amount of charm doesn’t succeed, he gets really mad and strangles her.”
“Maybe,” he said, leaving plenty of room for doubt.
“Give me a better scenario if you can.”
“I’m still thinking about yours. We don’t know for certain if she spent another night with Barneston.”
“So are you going to ask Jimmy?”
“We’ll have to, obviously. Indeed, if you’d prefer to have a word with him yourself…”
“Nice try, matey,” she said in a tone that was not impressed at all. She probably regretted airing her theory now.
“You know the bloke better than I do.” He gently turned the screw. “You might get more out of him than me.”
She wasn’t fully tuned in to the Diamond sense of humour. There was a stiff silence, broken eventually by Diamond. “All right, let’s see him together.”
“When do you suggest?” she said with a definite lift in the voice.
“ASAP. You’re sure you don’t object to me being there?”
“Object? You’re a star. I’ll buy you a pub lunch.”
“You’re on.”
“And you say Bramshill have got their own copy of the files?”
“They commandeered them. It’s just a question of how long they take to decrypt them. I’m hoping you and I get to Barneston first.”
“He won’t like it one bit.”
“We’re entitled,” Diamond emphasised. “He’s become a crucial witness.”
She sighed. “OK, I’m convinced.”
“He could be a suspect, in fact.”
“Hold on, Peter. That’s pushing it. He’s a brother officer. He’s one of us.”
His skittish mood suddenly altered. His stomach tightened. That argument had been tried on him in the worst weeks of his life, and it had proved to be false. “He’s got to be treated like anyone else.”
“What, for being the last bloke Emma was seen with?”
“We don’t know what passed between them that last night. She had another night of passion in mind, but Jimmy could have gone cool on her.”
“Really?”
“It’s not unknown.”
“She’d be devastated,” Hen said. “That’s an angle I hadn’t considered. A falling out between those two. But surely it couldn’t have ended in murder? Do you truly think that’s a possibility?”
“I don’t know enough about Barneston yet. It’s all speculation until we speak to him, isn’t it?”
“Let’s do it, then.”
There was a danger of being carried away by Hen’s get-up-and-go. “Before we do, I’d really like to hear from Olga Smith, if she’s recovered enough to talk.”
“About what she saw on the beach? Now that’s a smart move. She’s out of hospital. She’s at home now. Her sister is looking after her.”
“Any news on the husband?” Diamond asked.
“He’s facing charges of smuggling cigarettes.”
“Is that all?”
“Honey, this wasn’t a few packets in his hand luggage. This was big-time smuggling, a profitable scam at the airport with some baggage handlers. They delivered them to his stockroom in cartons the size of tea chests, and he acted as a conduit to the criminal trade right across the south-east.”
“Which explains the large cash deposits?”
“And why he cut and ran when Stella Gregson called at the house. Customs and Excise have taken it over now. He’ll go down for a spell.”
“And I reckon a few of those fags will have found their way into officers’ pockets. Did he deal in cigars?”
Hen laughed. “No such luck.”
