“Yes, but he’ll want to see what’s going on down here,” Diamond pointed out.
“He’d do better to watch the stairs inside the building. That’s how we’ll reach him-unless Mr. Warrilow is planning something dramatic with a helicopter.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
It was time he returned to the buskers. The crowd was clapping as he crossed the yard. Evidently the show was ending. People on the fringe started moving away. A few generous souls stayed long enough to throw coins into the top hat. The next act, a string quartet, was waiting to take over the pitch.
Una Moon was gathering up smoking torches when Diamond approached her and introduced himself. The moment Samantha was mentioned she stood up and said earnestly, “Is she all right? Have you found her?”
“Let me get you some tea and we can talk,” he offered without answering the question. “There’s a cafe in the covered market with a place to sit down, or used to be.”
She asked if her friend the fire-eater could join them. Buskers stick together when hospitality is on offer. The fellow in the top hat winked companionably.
Diamond fished in his pocket for a few silver coins and asked the fire-eater to cool his mouth somewhere else. And returned the wink.
He offered to carry the unicycle the short way to the Guildhall market, which is hidden behind the Empire Hotel and the Guildhall. The market cafe wasn’t quite in the class of the Pump Room for afternoon tea, but it was almost as convenient, and a better place to interview a busker. Seated opposite Diamond, across a table with a green Formica top, she warmed her hands around the thick china mug and watched him speculatively with her dark brown eyes.
“You ought to wear more in this weather,” he told her, eyeing the thin black sweatshirt she had on.
She ignored that. “Tell me about Sam.”
He could ignore things, too, when it suited him. “We don’t have much time. Una Moon. That’s your real name, is it?”
She frowned. “What’s it to you?”
“Not many of you people use your real names, do you?”
“Why should we?” she rounded on him. “It’s a free world. We have a right to protect ourselves from goons like you slotting us into the system. I want to be an individual, not a piece of computer data.”
“But Una Moon is your own name?”
“How do you know that?”
“From a computer. And before you protest about your civil liberty, it’s a national computer. I’m on it, too, and so is the Prime Minister and everyone who keeps a car.”
She scowled. “I don’t keep a car.”
He said, “We needn’t go into the reason why you appear.” He’d decided a touch of intimidation would speed the process.
She stared defiantly.
“Sam also uses her own name,” he pointed out.
“She’s new to this. She’ll learn-if she survives. It’s bloody disgraceful that you haven’t caught the bloke by now.” Una was more aggressive than the girlish features and plait suggested.
He remarked, “I sense that you’re not comfortable with somebody like me knowing your name.”
“Piss off, copper.”
“By the way you speak, you had a middle-class upbringing and a good education. Were you at university?”
“Listen,” she said. “Whether I went to university doesn’t matter a toss. What are you-trying to relate to me, or something? There are more important things to do, you know.”
“You’ve been living this life for some years, I take it?”
“What do you mean-‘this life’? The squatting? Of course I bloody have, ever since I dropped out of Oxford. Now I’ve told you-I was in college for a year and a bit. Can we move on to some more useful topic, like what you’re going to do about Sam?”
He persisted. “You were living in the Trim Street squat at the time Britt Strand was murdered. I’ve seen your photo.”
She became more defensive. “She wasn’t killed in that house. None of us had anything to do with that.”
“She visited the squat to research an article and have the pictures taken. That was only ten days before she died. How much do you remember about it?”
“Have you got a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “Have to use one of your own.”
She produced a matchbox from her pocket and took out a half-smoked cigarette and a match and lit up. “Britt Strand knew what she wanted and how to get it. She picked up one of the guys in the squat-well, the number one guy really, and got to work on him to soften up the rest of us for this piece she was going to write.”
“You mean G.B.?”
She nodded.
“Another one who prefers to be nameless,” commented Diamond.
“That’s his choice.”
“Fine, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have G.B. written on his social security documents.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Were you ever his girl?”
She gave him a glare. “That’s typical of the way you people see us. Just because we lived in the same building it doesn’t mean we screwed. There were other people around, you know. It was a community, right?”
“So nobody minded him bringing this smart Swedish blonde to write up the story of your squat?”
“I wouldn’t say nobody minded, but it was G.B.’s gaff. He staked it out and made sure it was empty.”
“How’s that done?”
“Lots of ways. You slide dry leaves in the slits in the door and check if they’ve moved in a couple of days. You can shove fly posters through the letter box and see if they get picked up. Of course you go back and see if there are lights at night. G.B. did all that. He was the first one in. It was thanks to him we had a place to doss down.”
“G.B. is a bright lad.”
“He’s switched on, but he lost cred with some of us when it was obvious the Swedish bird had him on a string. He really got it bad.”
“How do you know?”
She sighed and glared. “They’d been seen around. There isn’t much you can do in this poky town without everyone knowing about it.”
“But he consulted you all about bringing her to the house, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he told us what she was asking. We talked it through. Some of our crowd didn’t want their faces in the papers. G.B. said the piece Britt was supposed to be writing wasn’t for a British magazine. She was going to sell it abroad, so in the end we agreed. After all, she was willing to pay for it.”
“No one had second thoughts?”
“What do you mean?”
“After the visit, was anyone nervous over what she would write?”
“Like what-getting labeled as scroungers, or something? We’re used to that.”
“Did she ask any personal questions?”
“Not to me.” Una reached for the tin ashtray between them. “What are you driving at? Do you think one of our lot topped her?”
“It’s possible. Maybe-as you said-someone objected to being photographed.”
“If they did, they should have topped the photographer, not the writer.”
“Too late. The pictures were taken,” said Diamond. “The article was never written, so the pictures were never published.”
“Where did you see them?” she asked.
“At the photographer’s. Do you remember Prue Shorter, a large lady?”
She gave a nod, eyed his physique and seemed on the point of saying something, before thinking better of it and putting the cigarette to her lips instead.
“I’ve seen all the shots that were taken that afternoon,” he went on. “Not the kind of stuff you find in glossy magazines. I’ve been trying to work out why Britt was so interested in you lot. There isn’t much glamor in a bunch of crusties and their dogs and a heap of beer cans in a back street in Bath.”
“Some of us cleaned the place up for those pictures,” Una recalled.
“I beg your pardon. But it wasn’t long after the murder that you all moved out, am I right?”
“Not long.”
“Any reason?”
“G.B.,” she said. “Trim Street was his gaff. He got depressed. The entire house was pit city when he was feeling low. There were rows all the time. Some of us couldn’t stand it and shoved off. I must have been in six different gaffs since then.”