The grin faded.
Julie added, “Want to whisk me away?” She was learning how to deal with his irony. Too well.
He said, “That’s why I’m here.”
“Have you got time for a coffee?”
“Do you drink the coffee in this place?”
Her eyes widened. “There isn’t anything the matter with it, is there?” She hadn’t entirely got his measure.
Of course he left her to wonder about the coffee. He now felt he’d given as good as he’d got. “Get me a tea and we’ll update each other.”
Presently they had a table to themselves and Julie reported on her search of the Billington residence. “If the cassette I was looking for was there, I’m afraid it eluded me. I searched everywhere I could think and I had a SOCO to help. It’s safe to say that Winston Billington got rid of it, if he ever acquired it at all.”
“Find anything else?”
“A packet of raunchy pictures stuffed into an envelope in the secret drawer of an antique writing desk. What a letdown! I thought I’d struck gold and all I found was backsides.”
“Whose backsides?” Diamond solemnly asked. “Any we know?”
She shook her head. “How could I tell? Faces didn’t feature at all.”
“Pictures, you say. Photos?”
“Scraps of paper clipped out of soft-porn mags. Pathetic, really.”
“We all get our thrills some way,” he said philosophically.
“Well, I found it sad.”
“You’re not sorry for him?”
“Sorry for the women in the pictures, reduced to that.”
“They don’t need your sympathy. It pays better than the police.”
“I wouldn’t do it for anything.”
Fleetingly, he was reminded of the modeling offer he’d been made by Chelsea College, and chose not to mention it. That was for Art, not pornography, and he hadn’t signed up- yet. “And you found nothing else of interest?”
“No.”
“Letters, a diary?”
“We were looking for something the shape and size of an audio cassette,” she reminded him. “We didn’t want to get sidetracked.”
“Understood.” He summarized his interview with Prue Shorter, taking care not to understate his astuteness in recognizing Una Moon in one of the photos of the Trim Street squatters. “Beautiful how things link up.”
“Just a coincidence, I expect,” Julie commented with serious want of tact.
“Coincidence be buggered!” said he in an injured tone. “She’s living in a squat in Widcombe, so it’s quite logical that she should have been in squats before. I wasn’t surprised to spot her there. These crusties all know each other. They represent-what’s the jargon I’m groping for?-a whole subculture.”
“Are you going to question her?” asked Julie, adding, when he didn’t answer, “Correction. Am I going to?”
“One of us is, for sure. My big mistake four years ago was that I didn’t follow all the leads we had.”
“You can’t possibly follow up every lead in a murder investigation. And now with only two of us..
“Una Moon may be a crucial witness,” he stated with an oracular air.
“But if Winston Billington is the murderer, where does she fit in?”
“I’m far from certain that he is.”
She waited interestedly for him to say more. It wasn’t often that Peter Diamond admitted to doubts of any sort.
“We shouldn’t count on a confession when he recovers consciousness,” was all he added.
“He was seen going into the house.”
“If you believe G.B.”
“Don’t you?”
“G.B. is, or was, a drugs dealer. Telling lies goes with the job.”
Julie was plainly unsettled by all this. Diamond seemed ready to jettison most of the progress they had made, and she didn’t understand why. “But we have it confirmed by Mrs. Billington that her husband came back early from Tenerife. That checks with G.B.’s statement.”
“Checks with it, yes. Confirms it, no.”
She didn’t appreciate the distinction. “We know Billington perjured himself in court.”
“But we don’t know why.”
She sighed and said, “Something is going over my head here.”
He explained. “The point is this. Billington cut short his holiday and returned early. We don’t have copper-bottomed proof yet, but since we have corroboration from two sources we’ll take this as more than likely true. It’s the most interesting thing to emerge since you and I started on this. Now suppose G.B. also got to know this information, either back in 1990 when it happened, or some time since. He could easily have concocted a story to implicate Billington in the murder.”
“I understand that. But why?”
“To shift the suspicion.”
“Away from himself, you mean?”
“Or someone he wants to protect.”
She was still skeptical. “How would G.B. have found out about Billington’s holiday arrangements?”
“Through the grapevine. All those crusties at the Trim Street squat had met Britt when she came to do her story on the place. There was a lot of interest in the murder. Billington’s evidence at the trial was written up in the press. His picture was in the local papers at the time of the inquest. It only wanted one person to recall seeing him here in Bath at the time he was supposed to have been in Tenerife.”
She pondered the matter. “But we’ve been assuming that Billington returned early because he fancied his chance of some action with Britt. He bought flowers at Tenerife Airport, remember.”
“So Mrs. Billington told us.”
“We can check the credit card records.”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying all this may not have happened?”
“I’m saying there may be another explanation.”
“He told his wife the story of the emergency meeting in London.”
“She told us he told her.”
“Don’t you believe her either?”
“Not until we’ve checked it ourselves. I’ve got a list of things that need following up ASAP, and one of them is that meeting. Get on the phone to Billington’s head office and see if they have any record of it. I also want to know if Una Moon has any form.”
“I’ll run her name through the PNC,” said Julie, forgetting Diamond’s computer phobia.
“Don’t we keep records of our own in this Constabulary?” he said peevishly.
“The PNC is quicker.”
Rather than arguing, he said, “As it’s so quick, see what you can find on the rest of the bunch: Billington, Marcus Martin, Jake Pinkerton and G.B.”
She didn’t protest. “Do we have a surname for G.B.?”
This wrongfooted him. He remembered trying to tease out the name, and failing. Annoyed with himself, he fired one of his regular broadsides: “It’s all initials these days. We don’t need words anymore. PNC, SOCO, CPS, PACE. Three days back in Bath and my brain is clogged with letters of the alphabet.”
“What do you suggest I do, then?”
“About the Police National Computer? Do you really want me to answer that?”
She smiled faintly. “I meant about G.B.”
When really taxed, he could sometimes dig deep into his memory. “There’s a unit to monitor the crusties over that midsummer festival nonsense every year. Operation Stonehenge, or whatever they call themselves. OS, no doubt. They ought to know his name.”
“I’ll try them. Shall I check Prue Shorter while I’m at it?”
“On the computer? Yes.”
“She’s still a suspect?”
He nodded, as if the question were superfluous.
Julie said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d ruled her out.”
“Why should I?”
“You thought originally that she might be a lesbian, jealous about Britt’s affairs with men, but now we know she had a daughter, that motive is out.”
He said, “I don’t see why. Did the sexual revolution pass you by? There are plenty of lesbian mothers about. Haven’t you heard the expression AC/DC?”
Julie exercised restraint, refraining from pointing out that he was now using initials himself. “Fair enough. I’ll check her, too.”
He finished his tea. “Whilst you expose yourself to gamma radiation, I’m going to look for John Wigfull. I want to know whether they’ve charged Mrs. Billington yet.”