“Do you think she dropped him?”
“I wonder if she ever took him on board. Some of these men who brag about their sex life aren’t up to it.”
“Don’t you believe they were lovers at all?”
“I don’t believe in three wild and steamy weeks. Any woman knows the type. It’s all on the surface. Bedroom eyes. Wandering hands. They’re trying to prove something.”
“All mouth and trousers?”
She smiled.
“I must say, Julie, you’re banking a lot on intuition here.”
“Judgment.”
“Experience?”
“Judgment,” she repeated firmly without shifting her eyes from the road ahead.
“To be fair to the guy, when I questioned him four years ago, he told the same story.”
“I bet he used the same words exactly.”
Diamond thought about this. “Let’s suppose you’re right. Wouldn’t he have told the truth when he knew he was a witness in a murder inquiry?”
“Men are incurable liars about their sex lives.”
“Now you’re talking like one of those feminists.”
“Talking sense, you mean.”
He let this pass. They were both letting things pass in the interest of the case. “There could be another explanation. He tried coming on strong with Britt and got the brush-off. It rankled. No, worse than that, it bruised his ego. He was angry, maybe angry enough to kill.”
Julie was looking doubtful. “Would she have let him into the house?”
“That’s why he took the roses. She’d find it difficult to slam the door in his face.”
“That late at night?” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
“You’re police trained. She was a fun-loving Swedish girl.”
She took a breath prior to reacting to this and then thought better of it and said, “Do you want another theory? He kept trying to chat her up and the roses finally did the trick. She went to bed with him. When it came to the action, he couldn’t perform.”
There was a pause while Diamond assessed this new scenario. They crossed the Churchill Bridge over the Avon and got as far as the traffic lights at Midland Bridge Road before he said, “I like that. It’s better. It fits their characters.” Speaking almost to himself, he rephrased what Julie had said. “He makes one more attempt. Takes the roses. She lets him in. She’s in the mood and he can’t manage it. Kills her out of frustration. It’s the best we’ve thought of.” He sighed. “But it’s only speculation, Julie. We’ve got nothing positive on this creep, not so much as a ruddy parking offense.”
“So how do you want to handle this?” she asked, as if that were all that remained to be said on the matter. “You might do better on your own. With me listening, he’s less likely to admit he isn’t the stud he claims to be.”
“No, I want you there. Just back up everything I say. He’ll sing, and we’ll see if it’s the tune we want to hear. Left at the next junction.”
They took the Locksbrook Road turning, the gateway to Bath’s trading estates and the austere rows of Victorian terraced housing that have little to do with the popular image of the city. The road merged into Brassmill Lane, past factories and warehouses. Toward the Newbridge end, beyond a caravan park, lay a stretch of open ground where a couple of goats looked up from their grazing. Beside it was a garden with a low wall.
“There.”
The sign over the gate in gothic lettering read:
The Last Post
Pet Crematorium and Memorial Garden
A line of cars in the street outside suggested that the obsequies for Horatio were not yet over.
“Popular horse,” Diamond commented as they got out.
“How did they bring it here?” Julie asked, looking along the line of vehicles. “I don’t see anything large enough.”
“Maybe they delivered it earlier.”
Inside was a stretch of lawn patterned with flowerbeds in a herringbone formation. At this stage of the year the few surviving roses were limp and brown-stained. Small plaques mounted on posts were ranged at intervals in the soil, each bearing the name and years of birth and death of a deceased animal and sometimes a few lines of verse as well. There were plastic and metal models of cats and dogs, framed photographs faded by the weather, decaying wreaths and, here and there, fresh flowers.
At the far end was the funeral party, at least forty, perhaps more, among them a priest in a black cassock. Most of them seemed to be young women, several carrying bunches of flowers. Marcus Martin, with strands of his red hair lifted intermittently from his bald patch by the light breeze, was to the left holding a wooden casket the size of a shoebox.
“Small horse,” Diamond murmured to Julie.
She gave him a glare.
The funeral party lowered their heads as if in prayer.
From behind Diamond’s back a voice announced in a stage whisper, “It would be quite all right to join in. It isn’t too late.”
The speaker was a bearded man in a dark suit.
“Are you the undertaker?” Diamond asked.
“The owner of the gardens.”
“Ah. Ever had such a turnout for one animal before?”
He fingered his collar. “It is, I think, a unique occasion.”
“Was the horse cremated here?”
“No, in Frome. But that’s where the incinerator happens to be. It isn’t a consecrated place. The ashes were collected and brought here for disposal. Seeing that Horatio was such a well-known and popular horse, the owner thought it right that his ashes should be interred in a garden like this where his many admirers may freely visit. The gate is always open here.”
One of Diamond’s most useful talents was his ability to sustain a serious conversation regardless of the subject. “Is this your first horse funeral?”
“Actually, yes.”
“You generally cater for cats and dogs?”
“That’s why we call our memorial garden The Last Post. Most cats have a scratching post somewhere and dogs have a lifelong interest in lampposts.”
“Not to mention postmen,” said Diamond.
This was received with a solemn nod. “We also take on the occasional rabbit. We couldn’t cremate a horse here. But there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done elsewhere. It’s just that a large animal like that entails a certain amount of trouble and expense.”
“Normally they’d sell the carcass for cats’ meat, I suppose,” Diamond remarked. “Or to the hunt.”
The man cleared his throat, concerned, apparently, in case Diamond’s words were carrying across the lawn to the funeral party.
“How about burial?”
The answer required a hand over the mouth. “We couldn’t do that here. You’d need a mechanical digger. Mind, the Queen has her favorite horses interred on the Royal estate.”
Diamond’s attention had shifted to where the funeral was going on. He remarked to Julie, “Some of those young girls are carrying red roses.”
The owner of the memorial garden told them, “They feel it as a personal loss, the young girls.”
“Never considered red roses as an emblem of grief,” said Diamond, more to himself than anyone else. “No offense meant,” he picked up the conversation, “but some people would think it stretching religion too far, having funerals for animals.”
“It’s not a funeral in the strict sense of the word, more a thanksgiving for the life of the departed one and the pleasure it gave us. If you have a pet of your own you may be sure that when the parting comes, as it must eventually, we can offer you peace of mind and a permanent memorial.”
Julie thanked him.
Diamond said, “You should get one of those Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.”
The man’s eyes gleamed at the prospect.
There were signs of progress across the lawn. Marcus Martin had lowered the casket into a hole in the ground and some of the funeral party were stooping to place their flowers in or around the grave. A camera flashed. The priest stepped back and snagged his cassock on a rose.
Martin turned and undoubtedly spotted Diamond and Julie striding toward him, although he looked away at once and started a conversation with another mourner.