There were farm buildings visible in the valley, so there ought to be some sort of lane or track that linked eventually to the road he had left. He didn’t fancy toiling back up the hill to the monument.
Some way down the hillside he remembered his promise to phone Stephanie. She would sigh and put this down as another lapse. Over the years she had assembled quite a dossier of broken promises. He couldn’t argue with most, but this time he had remembered. Why did it have to be in such an inconvenient place?
The descent became less steep as he approached the floor of the valley. Ahead was a stream with a ford where-he was pleased to discover-a track crossed. Good news: the crossing point was marginally above the level of the water, so he kept his feet dry. The next obstacle was a cattle grid. Having crossed that without turning an ankle he paused for thought; he must have tramped more than a mile and a half. A decision had to be taken. The signpost by the ford invited him to continue up the other side and along the Cotswold Way, but that could mean trudging on for a hundred miles through the whole of the Cotswold Hills into the heart of Gloucestershire.
There was a limit to his good nature and he’d reached it.
Propped against a five-barred gate, he eyed the scene. The track that snaked through the valley was not the prettiest thing he had seen since he started this excursion, but it was the most welcome. Some attempt had been made to tarmac the surface, presumably for cars, because to one side an area of grass had been leveled and laid with gravel. He’d noticed a sign that mentioned angling access, although today there were no cars and no fishermen. It all added up to a shortcut back to the main road.
He was thinking he could do with a drink, wondering how pure the stream might be, when he became conscious of an engine note from the direction of the farm somewhere to his left. The sound was pitched too high for a tractor or a lorry. For one sour moment he wondered if it could be Commander Warrilow’s helicopter. Then he saw it coming along the lane at speed, a motorcycle. The rider was in black leathers and a red crash helmet with a black visor.
A volley of thoughts attacked his brain. Then the bike was skidding to a stop a few yards from him. Without lifting the visor, the rider turned and unfixed a second helmet from the passenger seat and threw the thing at Diamond’s feet.
Diamond ignored it. There was no point in saying anything. The engine drowned all sound.
The rider beckoned vigorously. He seriously expected a fifteen-stone man to put it on and ride pillion.
Diamond folded his arms and looked in the other direction.
Chapter Six
It was apt that Mountjoy should have summoned Diamond to a battlefield. The strategy behind this encounter would not have disgraced a field marshal. However, as field marshals know, battle plans have to be adjusted as events unfold.
It wasn’t a case of Diamond outmaneuvering the enemy. He hadn’t any strategy of his own; he simply refused to ride pillion.
So eventually he won this skirmish because the motorcycle had to be silenced. The rider switched off and lifted his visor. Four years in Albany had given a gaunt look to the face, but the features were as Diamond remembered, more Slavonic than Anglo-Saxon, the dark brown eyes deep-set, cheekbones high and wide, mouth and jaw uncompromising.
Diamond gave John Mountjoy the kind of indifferent nod he gave strangers who stood beside him in bars. There were a dozen questions he was keen to ask at the right opportunity. This was Mountjoy’s show: let him get on with it.
“We’re not talking here,” Mountjoy called across.
By saying nothing, Diamond appeared to concur.
Mountjoy shouted, “Pick up the helmet and get on the blasted bike.”
Diamond shook his head.
“What did you say?” demanded Mountjoy.
“Nothing. I said nothing. This would be easier if you took off your helmet.”
“What?”
“I said… Oh, forget it.” It was obvious that Mountjoy couldn’t hear a word.
Now Mountjoy tried a more persuasive tack. “I won’t take you far.”
“You won’t take me anywhere,” answered Diamond, but he was speaking to himself.
“Playing for time, are you, until the mob with the guns and shields get here?”
Diamond shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m bloody telling you, copper, you can write off the girl if you pull me in.”
It was strange listening to this educated voice trying to speak the language of a hard man. Mountjoy’s prison years may have toughened him, but only four years ago he had been the principal of a college, and it showed. He had been vicious then, only his violence had been domestic, his victims women. He had never mixed it on the streets.
Diamond yawned conspicuously and looked away, taking an unwarranted interest in some strands of wool that a sheep had left attached to the barbed wire fence.
He seemed to get his point across, because after scanning the surrounding fields to make sure he couldn’t be ambushed, Mountjoy lowered the kickstand of his motorcyle. Then he lifted the helmet from his head and rested it on the fuel tank.
Prison had added some streaks of gray to his dark hair. He raked it with his free hand. “We’ll talk here, then.”
“Suit yourself,” said Diamond as if the decision had been Mountjoy’s alone.
Mountjoy understandably felt the need to assert his position. “Did you year me just now? If you pull me in, that’s curtains for the girl.”
“It’s not my job to pull you in.”
“What do you mean?”
Diamond was on the point of saying he was no longer on the police payroll. He checked himself. He might get nothing out of Mountjoy if he dashed his hopes. “You’re not my problem,” he said. “Albany is Hampshire. They’re the boys who want to find you.”
Mountjoy said, “Correction, Superintendent. I’m still your problem. You put me away in 1990 for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“Not that old line!” said Diamond with contempt, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. “Think of something better than that, John.”
Muscles twitched ominously in Mountjoy’s cheeks. “I’m telling you, Diamond. I didn’t kill Britt Strand. I’m no saint, but I’ve never killed anyone… yet.”
“That’s a threat, is it?”
“They won’t let me appeal. What am I supposed to do to get justice?”
“You harm Samantha Tott and you’re finished. You realize that?”
Mountjoy didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Think about this, then. I broke out of Albany. I could have gone anywhere and stayed out of sight, but I came back to Bath. Why? Why would I put myself at risk if I’m guilty?”
In fact this was a point Diamond had been brooding over. “I don’t know, but I’ll give you some advice for nothing. If you really think you have a case, you’d be better off going to one of those television companies who make programs showing the police as inept. Or bent. They’re the people who get verdicts overturned.”
“I’m not saying you were bent. If I believed that, I wouldn’t be talking to you. You were wrong, tragically wrong, and I can’t forgive you for that, but I think you were honest in your mistake. You’re my best hope. I’ve got to get you to admit that you screwed up.”
“Under threat?”
“Have I threatened you?”
“Samantha Tott is under threat.”
“She’ll survive if you do as I tell you.”
“However you put it, John, it’s a threat.”
Mountjoy glared at him. “Can you suggest any other way of getting justice?” He seemed to have dismissed or not listened to the suggestion about television. “I can’t tell you who murdered the Strand girl. That was your job.”
“There was no other suspect.”
“I know. Everything pointed to me. I had the motive. She was out to get the dirt on me.”
“You’ll have to remind me of the details,” Diamond coaxed him. Anything to get him more relaxed and more talkative. “I’ve done other cases since. She was a freelance journalist, wasn’t she?”