Diamond nodded, neither conceding nor defying. He leaned closer to Billington. “Where did you go?”
Billington chose silence, probably relying on the sister to bring this to a quick conclusion.
“If you left the house as you just suggested, where did you go?”
He shook his head.
“Can anyone vouch for this? Where did you spend the rest of the night if it wasn’t in your own house?”
Billington looked away.
“If you won’t answer, I’ll have to assume that you can’t because you made it up.”
“Assume what you like.”
“That night I’m talking about, did you try anything with Britt?”
Billington frowned. “What do you mean-try anything?”
Diamond turned his head to satisfy himself that the sister had moved on. “A bit of slap and tickle.”
A faint trace of color rose in the patient’s cheeks. “I didn’t even see her. She was upstairs. We live on the ground floor.”
“How do you know she was upstairs? Did you hear her?”
“I saw the light at her window as I came along the street.”
A plausible answer. “You’re telling me you didn’t go into her flat that night? Didn’t even knock on the door?”
“Definitely not.”
“It’s no secret that you fancied her, used to give her chocolates and flowers. There you were, alone in the house with her for once. Don’t tell me you missed your chance.”
“I wasn’t in the house five minutes.”
“Ah, yes. This unlikely story that you went out again. If you won’t tell me where you spent the rest of the night, perhaps you’ll say what you did in that five minutes.”
“Collected my car key. Went to the toilet.”
“Then you left the house again?”
“Yes.”
“After collecting your car key. So you drove somewhere?”
The assumption was rather obvious. In Billington’s supposedly depleted state a sarcastic comment would sound too sharp, so he gave Diamond a despising look. “Yes. I didn’t need my car keys on holiday so I left them in the house. My old motor was parked in the street for a couple of weeks. I called home because I wanted to use it. Is that what you want to know?”
“Why won’t you tell me where you spent the rest of that night? Did you return to your house at any time?”
“No.”
“Were you with a woman?”
He gave no answer.
If this had been an interview room at the nick, Diamond would have come down harder. There were people who coughed at the first hint of the third degree and Billington gave every indication of being one, but this wasn’t the time and place.
Instead, the oblique approach. “Let’s talk about Britt. We know of several men friends she knew over the period she was lodging in your house. Did you meet that rock musician- what was his name?-Jake, em. ..”
“Pinkerton.”
“So you did.”
“I’m getting tired,” said Billington.
“Bright lad, that one. Sussed the pop music industry and invested in production when he’d made his millions performing. Did he come to the house?”
“If you want to chat to someone, why don’t you try another ward?”
“Did you meet Jake Pinkerton?”
A heavy sigh.
“When he came to the house, it must have registered with you. He’s a famous name. Mega-famous. Always on the telly. You do remember?”
A yawn.
Diamond persevered. “They had a fling, I gather, Britt and her millionaire muso, a few steamy nights at his place, but they were free spirits, both of them. Not the sort of people who move in together.”
Billington’s eyelids drooped.
This was going nowhere, and it didn’t seem worthwhile starting on Britt’s other lovers. “Your car, Mr. Billington. What was it?”
“MGB.”
“What?”
The eyes opened. “MGB, I said.”
Even Peter Diamond, no car buff, knew that these days the MGB was regarded as a classic. They’d stopped building them about 1980. He wouldn’t have thought a colorless character like this would own an MGB. “Are you telling me you left an MG sports car on the street for two weeks while you went on holiday?”
Billington blinked and stared. “Didn’t say that.”
“You told me a moment ago that this was the reason you went back to the house on the night of the murder: to collect your car key.”
“We weren’t talking about my car. Mine’s an old Vaux-hall.”
Confusion, then. Real, or contrived?
“What’s this about an MGB, then?”
“That was Britt’s-when she was seeing Pinkerton. Red. Beautiful little car.”
“I didn’t think she drove.”
“She got rid of it later. Didn’t get another, far as I know.”
“So we’re talking about some time back?”
“I was. What were you on about?” He made it sound as if Diamond was the one suffering post-concussional effects.
“How long before the murder?”
“Couple of years. I don’t know. It wasn’t my business, was it?”
“But you’d know if she owned another car after she got rid of the
MGB.”
“She didn’t.”
“So she was without wheels. Did you ever give her lifts in your old Vauxhall?”
“A couple of times to the station.”
“Did you ever meet her train to drive her home?”
“No.”
“Ever buy her flowers?”
“Buy them? No.”
“You picked them from the garden.”
“Why not?” said Billington. “She was living in my house. People can be civil to each other without ulterior motives.”
The way this pat little speech came out told Diamond it was well rehearsed. The civilized behavior card. He was tempted to trump it with a blunt mention of the bum-shot clippings Julie had found. But as the ward sister was likely to bring this interview to a premature end any time, he moved on fast to a topic of more urgency. “There was another man Britt was seeing shortly before she was killed. Quite a celebrity in his own way, wasn’t he? That show jumper, Marcus Martin. Did he visit the house?”
Billington perked up, the adrenaline flowing now that someone else might be under suspicion. “He was calling right up to the time we went on holiday.”
“You met him, then? When did he first appear?”
“Only a week or so before we left for Tenerife. He was an arrogant bastard. Treated us like servants.”
“In what way?”
He proceeded to tell the story. “Once I remember he had a dog with him. Big, spotted thing. I don’t know what breed it was or what it was called. He hooked the lead over our hall stand and told me to keep an eye on it, without so much as a ‘please.’ We had a polished wooden floor and I could hear the claws scratching it, ruining the surface, while Mr. Martin, cool as you like, started up the stairs to Britt’s rooms. I asked him politely to leave the dog outside the front door. Apart from anything else, we keep a cat. But Lord Muck took not the blindest notice. So presently I took the dog outside myself and tied it to the railings.” The incident must have made a deep impression, more than four years on, for Billington to have recalled it. And his concussion had miraculously lifted to do justice to the outrage he obviously felt.
“What happened when he found the dog had been moved?”
“He came downstairs because it started howling, making a God-awful racket. The next thing, this bumptious fathead marched into our private flat with the dog and said I had no right. Cheek. He got more than he bargained for when Snowy started on him.”
“Snowy?”
“The cat. She felt cornered, you see. The dog came in and hurled itself toward her. Snowy clawed its nose. She’s fearless. You never heard such yelping. That was the last time he brought the dog into our place, I can tell you.”
“Did Britt have anything to say?”
“She had the good sense to keep out of it.”
A thought occurred to Diamond. “What happens to your cat when you go on holiday?”
“It goes next door. That’s always been open house for Snowy. They’ve got an old tabby who clears off upstairs and leaves the food trough to Snowy.”