The Last Detective (25 page)

But they were interrupted by the ward sister. 'Your X-rays are through, Matthew, and we can't find anything amiss. I think we can safely send you back to school.'

'Right away?'

She winked at Diamond. 'After four, I think.'

Steph took the news infinitely better than he'd expected.

'When the microwave oven arrived, I knew something ghastly must have happened. I'm glad you thought of me. Of course, it's barmy getting me a present.'

'Stupid.'

'Not stupid. No, I won't have that. Daffy, if you like, but I always knew you were daffy - well, ever since that day you brought the donkeys to the brownies' camp.' She smiled. 'Not everyone appreciates you.'

'Too true. I wasn't right for the job. I was an ogre.'

'You're not a violent man.'

'Tell that to Mr Tott. Steph, let's face it, man-management wasn't my strongest suit. I got by because I drove people hard. No one was given any favours.'

'That isn't bad management. After all, you weren't running a playgroup.'

He was forced to smile.

She said, 'In your job it was no good trying to be popular.'

'No, but I had to command respect, and I'm not sure it was there any more. I should have kept up with technology. I was the only one on the squad without a pocket calculator. I still do mental arithmetic'

'I don't think you ever settled down in this place.'

'It's not the place. It's the frustration. The top dogs provide you with all these aids and expect you to be super-efficient, but when all's said and done you're investigating people; dodgy people, dangerous people, frightened people. And the villains are more sophisticated than they would have been twenty years ago. You've got to talk to them, get inside their minds and tease out the truth. That's what I joined the GID to do. These days it's slide-rule policing. You have to justify the bloody hardware. Supposedly there's this infallible forensic back-up, but they're understaffed, and the results take weeks, months to come back. Meanwhile what do you do with your suspect? The law won't let us hold him indefinitely. Is it any wonder that we try for confessions? All these cases of statements taken under duress that you hear about — it's the result of pressure — pressure in a system that isn't functioning properly.' He sighed and shrugged. 'Sorry, love. I didn't mean to unload it all on you.'

'Better out than in,' Stephanie commented. 'But if you can face it, I'd like some help with my new piece of hardware. Let's see if we can work the microwave.'

Together they cooked a passable meal of steamed plaice and vegetables in a miraculously short time. They cracked open a bottle of Chablis and agreed that it wouldn't be wise for him to rush off to the Job Centre in the morning. He would take a week off, do up the kitchen (which now looked too scruffy to house the microwave) and think about his future.

In the morning he wrote his formal letter of resignation.

ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY THE
Bath Evening Chronicle's
main headline was
GERRY SNOO
KILLING
- BATH WOMAN
HELD.
The essential facts were few. Dana Didrikson, a thirty-four-year-old company driver, had been brought before the magistrates on a charge of murdering television actress Geraldine Jackman on or about 11 September last, and had been remanded in custody. The proceedings had lasted only a few minutes.

With new priorities pressing, Peter Diamond turned to the Situations Vacant. He had to let go, he kept telling himself. The letting go was briefly delayed by a mental picture of John Wigfull cock-a-hoop in the charge room at Manvers Station, but the hell with it, he thought - I've moved on.

Traditionally, ex-policemen looked for work with private security firms. All morning, he had worked through the Yellow Pages, trying his luck with what he had always thought of as Mickey Mouse organizations. Some of the names made him squirm as he spoke them. 'Is that Secure and Sleepeasy?' 'Somerset Sentry-Go?' The only result of this phoning - apart from all the metered units he'd used - was the discovery that his seniority didn't have the pull that he'd counted on. If anything, it was a handicap; the people he spoke to didn't see an ex-superintendent riding the vans or on foot patrol in the big stores, and they were unwilling to take him on as an executive. His experience with murder squads wasn't a recommendation for dealing with business clients.

The Yellow Pages also listed a number of detective agencies offering vast ranges of services. On enquiry they turned out to be one-man outfits run by retired police sergeants uninterested in taking on an ex-superintendent as a sidekick.

In the next two weeks, he broadened the search, trying for office work of any description, and still got a series of rejections. Too many middle-aged men were touting for white-collar jobs, he was unkindly told, and had he thought of labouring? As this generally involved climbing ladders or wheeling barrows over planks, activities ill-suited to a fat man, he didn't warm to the suggestion.

His luck changed in the last week in November. 'I've been offered
two
jobs,' he was able to tell Stephanie one Friday evening. 'Two jobs that I am singularly qualified to perform.'

'Two - that's marvellous,' she told him. 'Are they safe?'

'Safe? I should say so! You know the new shops in the Colonnades, just off Stall Street? Well, they want a Santa Claus to rove around the precinct chatting to the kids and so on. Ho, ho, ho! All under cover. Three of us were interviewed and I got it on the size of my waist. I start tomorrow, for a limited season.'

'Oh, Peter.' Stephanie's face creased in dismay.

'What do you mean - "Oh, Peter"?'

'I know jobs are thin on the ground, but ...'

'But what?'

'A detective superintendent dressing up as Father Christmas?'

'A DS no longer,' he reminded her.

'It's such a comedown.'

'Not at all. Santa is a VIP to twenty per cent of the population. The rest won't know me from Adam.'

She sighed. 'What's the other job?'

'Barman-cum-bouncer at the Old Sedan Chair, evenings only.'

'Where's that, for pity's sake?'

'The new pub in that road behind the theatre.'

'Don't they get a lot of rowdies from the disco club?'

'That's why they need a bouncer, my love.'

One evening he saw in the paper that Dana Didrikson had gone through the committal proceedings at the magistrates' court and had been sent for trial at Bristol Crown Court on the charge of murder. He turned to the sports pages and tried to interest himself instead in a fitness report on Bath's crop of rugby international players.

He proved to be a popular Santa, in spite of the fact that he had nothing to give away except balloons stamped with the Colonnades logo. The role appealed to him and he filled it with a gusto and panache that had never characterized his police career. The awestruck faces of small children, eyes shining with anticipation, enchanted him. As a childless parent, he had never had much difficulty convincing himself that kids, like dogs, were in the main a nuisance. Now, behind the white nylon whiskers, he shamelessly played Dad.

One afternoon on the top floor of the Colonnades he saw Matthew Didrikson and a couple of friends playing some game that involved the glass-sided lift that served the three levels of the precinct. The shop-owner who had interviewed the would-be Santas had been sufficiently impressed by Diamond's police background to speak of the nuisance sometimes caused by boys of school age running about the concourse, but as Diamond had pointed out, a man in a Father Christmas outfit wasn't best-placed to control tearaway kids. As it happened, Matthew and his friends weren't kicking cola cans about or bumping into old ladies. The worst that could be said about them was that they were monopolizing the lift. It was a slack time, early in the afternoon, and he decided to leave them to it.

Shortly after, they must have tired of the game, because they came over to poke fun at Father Christmas. No small children were about, no danger of illusions being shattered, so he submitted to the send-up, which was as bawdy as he expected from schoolboys their age - did he have a fetish for black wellies? ... or were stockings his hang-up? ... and (pointing to the balloons) didn't he know what you were supposed to do with condoms?

They found their own wit so hilarious that there was a delay before Diamond's riposte got through: 'If you want to know, I get my kicks from shopping choirboys to their headmaster.'

The glee changed abruptly to near-panic. 'He knows us!' Two ran off. Only Matthew remained, staring him out with his dark eyes, and commenting, 'I know that voice, and that's a naff disguise.' It was serious criticism this time.

He was straight with the boy. He explained that he was no longer working with the police, and this was his job.

Matthew matched him in candour by admitting that he and his friends had slipped out of school for an hour. They were supposed to be rehearsing carols in the Abbey at four, and no one would bother about their whereabouts, before then.

Diamond took the opportunity to ask something that had been on his mind since he'd read that Dana Didrikson was in police custody, charged with murder. 'Where are you going to be over Christmas?'

'With Nelson — one of my friends. And his parents. I'm spending all the hols there.'

'Kind of them.'

'Nelson owed me one.'

Diamond recalled what he had heard of the accident at Pulteney Weir. The boy who had flung the stick that had caused Matthew to slip had been called Nelson. A three-week stay wasn't bad compensation for one wild act of mischief.

Until hearing of this invitation, Diamond had assumed that the school would board Matthew somewhere during the holidays, perhaps at the house of one of the teachers. Quite an ordeal for any kid. Since their conversation in the hospital, Diamond's dislike of Matthew had lessened. He understood some of the reasons behind the brashness. If the truth were told, he had a strong streak of alienation in his own personality. In fact, his sympathies had shifted so far as to consider asking the boy over to their place for a day. He'd discussed it with Stephanie, and she had given her consent. She'd always liked kids. Now, after all, the offer wouldn't be necessary. Matthew would be better off with company his own age.

Matthew may have sensed the thaw. Revealing strains he would not have owned to in front of the other boys, he asked, 'How long will she have to wait for the trial?'

'Your mother? Quite a few months, I'm afraid.'

'Will she get off?'

Diamond hesitated, torn between honest opinion and comforting lies. 'It depends on the evidence. Look, I think you'd better find your friends and get to that choir practice. Your mother has worries enough, without hearing that you're playing truant. Have a good Christmas, son.'

The bar work each evening was gruelling after a day on his feet parading the precinct. Thankfully there were intervals when he could shift his weight to a stool. The clientele were mostly under twenty - taking breaks from the disco across the street - generally amenable, but out to impress and not always exhibiting youth in its most appealing form, thus providing a counterbalance to Santa's small clients during the day. Even the most winsome kids grew up into teenagers.

The weeks passed, and so did his stint as Santa Claus. He and Steph spent Christmas quietly. A card arrived from the CID lads, a sombre scene of a decrepit old man dragging a yule-log along a snowy lane. Maybe that was how they pictured him in his new life. They had all signed it, including Wigfull. And when he looked at the names -Keith Halliwell, Paddy Croxley and Mick Dalton - they appeared remote, an indication, surely, that he
had
let go.

So much so, that one evening in mid-January he had to think hard before putting a name to the man in a black padded jacket who strolled into the Old Sedan Chair and said, 'How are you? I was told I might find you here.' A voice that was more Yorkshire than West Country. The penetrating eyes, broad face and black moustache of Professor Gregory Jackman.

Diamond gave his barman's nod. 'What can I get you, Professor?'

'A cognac. Have one with me.'

He turned down the offer with good grace, making clear that no other drink would tempt him. Whether the visit was out of curiosity, or had some ulterior purpose, a dignified aloofness recommended itself.

'I was told that you left the police,' Jackman ventured after he'd taken a sip of the cognac. He'd picked an evening when the disco was closed, and a mere handful of drinkers were in, at tables some distance from the bar.

Diamond busied himself washing glasses, so Jackman provided his own comment on what had happened since they'd last met. 'It's a bastard.'

Without looking up, Diamond said, 'I'm coping.'

'I meant the fact that you jacked it in. That really sunk Dana.'

'Leave it out, will you?' said Diamond. 'That's a closed book for me.'

'It isn't for Dana. She's accused of a crime she didn't commit. If nothing is done, she'll be sent down for life.'

'You expect me to do something about it?'

'She needs help.'

Diamond turned his back and reached for more empties. 'That's the job of her defence lawyers.'

'I've talked to her solicitor. She has no answer to the prosecution case.'

Diamond plunged the glasses in the water. 'She did it, then.' If his indifference to Mrs Didrikson's plight came across as callous, he was under no obligation to spare Jackman's feelings.

Some new people - a party of five Americans - entered the bar and stood by it settling the question of who should stand the round and what they would choose to drink. Jackman went silent until they had been served their drinks and taken them to a table.

'You don't really believe she's a murderer,' he said.

'What I believe or don't believe is of no more importance now than how I feel about the Channel tunnel or women priests,' said Diamond. 'I'd rather not prolong this, Professor.'

'Greg. You called me Greg when you were interviewing me.'

Diamond sighed, unwilling to believe that a man of intelligence had been taken in by an interrogator's ploy.

'How
do
I get through to you?'Jackman asked.

'That isn't the question,' Diamond said. 'The question is what do you want from me? And the answer is that I have nothing to offer except a drink.'

'You lived with the case for weeks. You did the groundwork. You must have come up with alternative theories, even if they were later set aside. That's how you can help - by suggesting avenues we haven't considered.' can help 'We?'

'Her defence. I told you I'm in touch with her solicitor.'

'Is that wise?' Diamond asked, intrigued, in spite of his determination to remain uninvolved. 'Surely the prosecution will be out to establish a relationship between you and Dana Didrikson. By actively taking up her case, you hand them a trump card.'

Jackman ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, where it remained. 'I know. It's a dilemma. But I
do
care. I care passionately. Can I be frank with you? There's no relationship between Dana and me, not in the way it's generally understood. We haven't been to bed. We've never even talked in intimate terms. But over these difficult weeks I've come to regard her as someone . .. Oh, let's face it - I care about what happens to her. I want to get her out of this mess. And you're perfectly right. My involvement can only damage her now. God, I sound like something out of a third-rate Victorian novel.'

Diamond felt the creeping unease that any man feels when another bares his soul. Up to now he'd thought of Jackman as the flinty academic, urbane and self-possessed.

Nor had the soul-baring finished. 'And Dana has shown quite touching faith in me.'

'In what way?'

'Ask yourself why she didn't call the police on the day she found Gerry's body. She came to the house and found her lying dead in bed. Anyone would have assumed that I'd murdered my wife, wouldn't they?'

Diamond answered with a neutral twitch of the lips.

Speaking in the partisan tone of a smitten man, Jackman went on, 'She's incredibly good to me. Even after the body was found in the lake, she didn't come forward. When you went to interview her, she made a run for it. All very suspicious in the eyes of the law. But I'm certain she did it to protect me. She didn't want to be instrumental in getting me charged with murder.'

'How did you know she made a run for it?'

'From her solicitor. He's got the police file with all the statements.'

'In that case,' said Diamond, 'you're more up to date than I am. How much has she admitted?'

'Only that she went to the house and found the body.'

'She's sticking to that?'

'Of course.'

There was an assumption in that 'of course'. Diamond was expected to concur in Dana Didrikson's innocence. However, he remained unconvinced. Once or twice before he'd heard such rationalizing from men in love. Or guilty men.