“Were you in the race, sir?” Diamond asked.
“Me?” He looked pained by the question. “It’s for fun-runners.”
Paul Gilbert spoke up for his school friend Harry Hobbs. “Some of them are better than that.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Konstantin said. “The winner’s time wasn’t anything special.”
Gilbert refused to let it rest there. “It’s a brute of a course, more like cross-country in parts. You wouldn’t expect fast times.”
Olga gave her husband a told-you-so look. “You hear that, Konstantin?”
“I heard.” He added something in Russian that drew a glare and a quick one-syllable response from Olga.
Diamond wasn’t interested in their feuding. Konstantin’s snide remarks were undermining the interview and could well be stopping Olga from speaking frankly about Pinto. “Were you in Bath on the day of the race?” he asked Konstantin. “You said you didn’t run it, but were you watching?”
“I had better things to do.”
“But you weren’t abroad at the time?”
“I was here making conference calls if I remember rightly.”
“Not cheering on your wife?”
“Give me a break.”
Disgusted, Diamond turned back to Olga. “Where does everyone go after the race? Did you see Tony?”
Olga shook her head. “I go straight home. Shower, much drink, big pizza, long sleep.”
“Did he phone? Wouldn’t he like to find out if you went all the way?” In the split second before the words came out, he knew how crass they sounded and he stumbled over them, making the gaffe ten times worse.
Olga turned the colour of her sweatsuit and vigorously shook her head and Diamond, too, felt himself blushing.
Konstantin spoke a few sharp words to Olga in Russian and then swung back to the visitors. “She isn’t here to be insulted. She’s answered more than enough of your questions. You’d better leave now. I’ll see you out.”
“Is that Olga’s wish?”
“It’s mine. She is my wife and this is my house.”
29
Outside, Diamond fumed, more angry with himself than with Konstantin. His self-respect had taken a kicking. “Bastard. I should have fronted it out, got heavy with him.”
Gilbert didn’t comment, so Diamond asked himself the question.
“Why didn’t I? Because I was getting nowhere. She can’t talk freely with him standing over her.”
“What more could she have said?”
“I don’t know, Paul. I just don’t know. I needed to question her more closely.”
“About Pinto?”
“We weren’t there to talk about the weather.” He released a long, angry breath that ended in a groan. “I messed up, didn’t I, opening my big mouth about going the whole way? I was talking about the bloody race, not her sex life.”
“Easy to do.”
“What?”
“Slip of the tongue. It was on your mind already. It was on mine.”
“Whether she slept with Pinto?”
“She wouldn’t have told us if she had.”
“Why should she? It’s private to her if it happened but I suspect it didn’t. He was on a good thing, getting regular fees as her personal trainer. Olga may well have had thoughts about bedding him, but from everything I know of Pinto, he’s a one-night-stand man. What was that crude phrase you came out with when we were watching the race?”
“Love ’em and leave ’em?”
“That’s not what I remember.”
Gilbert grinned.
“But it’s true. That was his attitude to women. He wouldn’t have kept coming back three times a week. Olga was his meal ticket, not his mistress.”
They got into the waiting police car. “Where to, sir?” the driver asked.
“Larkhall. Bella Vista Drive.”
“Are you thinking the friend knows something?” Gilbert asked.
“I can’t tell until we’ve questioned her, can I? If they’re as close as Olga suggested, she knows stuff you and I don’t.”
“About Pinto?”
“More about Konstantin. From all we saw of him, he’s the controlling type. Some of what we heard was emotional abuse. I was uncomfortable with it, so God knows what Olga was feeling.”
“She isn’t totally submissive.”
“We can agree on that. I like her spirit, but he’s doing his best to break it.”
“He was pissed off that she’d hired a trainer.”
“Stood out a mile, didn’t it? He goes away on business and when he gets back the basement is stuffed with all the latest bodybuilding equipment and his wife is taking orders from a personal trainer.”
“Could it be worse than that? Could he suspect that Pinto actually made out with her?”
“Even if it didn’t happen? That would really get to Konstantin. Got to be faced. I can’t wait to hear from this friend of hers.”
The one good thing about Bella Vista Drive was the bella vista and there wasn’t much of that, a glimpse of green hills through a slot between blocks of hideous butter-yellow stone. The housing was typical of the so-called urban renewal of the 1960s, packing-case terracing on two floors that could have been designed by a child with a pencil and ruler. The contrast with the palatial façade of Olga’s street couldn’t have been more extreme.
A postman told them which eyesore was Maeve Kelly’s. Kids of school age were skateboarding in the street so there was a good chance school was out and she would be at home.
The young woman who answered the chimes was younger and prettier than any teacher Diamond could remember from his own schooldays. She confirmed that she was indeed Maeve Kelly.
The usual reassuring words about this being a routine enquiry got them inside.
Maeve’s home was a box, but she had gone to unusual lengths to make it different. She had turned the living room into a game reserve inhabited by hippos in every form except the living animals, in ceramic, wood, bronze, resin, wire, plastic, glass, wool and satin. One fine beast of leather was large enough for a child to sit astride and another on a crowded wall unit was nine-tenths submerged in what looked like water but was actually transparent plastic. There were paintings, photos and embroideries.
“Don’t ask,” Maeve said. “They’re a flaming nuisance. I was brought up in Zambia and I couldn’t resist the big one as a reminder of home when I saw it in Harrods. My friends and family got the idea I was a hippo freak and I was inundated, every birthday and Christmas. I don’t throw gifts away when people have taken the trouble to find them and this is the result. Have a seat if you can find one. Sling the stuffed toys on the floor.”
Diamond made for a hippo-print armchair. “I grew up with that Flanders and Swann song, ‘Mud, mud, glorious mud.’ Before your time.”
“I know it well. All too well. I can’t count the people who have sent me the YouTube clip.”
Paul Gilbert had settled into a rocking chair with hippo armrests. “Isn’t the hippo an endangered species?”
“Definitely if I have anything to do with it. How can I help you?”
Diamond launched into his prepared speech. “We just met your friend Olga, the Russian lady, and she told us how you rescued her when she was mugged.”
“‘Rescued’ is putting it far too strongly. If that’s what this is about, I’m no use to you as a witness. I came along too late to stop it happening. I was out for a run in Great Pulteney Street one evening and heard a cry for help and found Olga down some basement steps. Helped her home, that’s all.”
“And now she’s your friend for life.”
“She’s a sweetie. I think she’s lonely. Her husband’s away a lot of the time.”
“Not today. We met him.”