Authors: Peter Lovesey
‘What’s he up to, then?’
‘Don’t know, but I doubt if it’s sightseeing. There must be plenty of reasons why someone travels incognito.’
‘Most of them illegal,’ I went. ‘But it’s high risk these days. Whatever he’s up to, it’s got to pay well.’
‘Perhaps he’s a spy.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
‘If he is, we’ll be under surveillance ourselves.’ Vicky leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t look now, but I just noticed the guys on the next table are taking an interest in us.’
Anita and I laughed. ‘It’s you, sweetie,’ Anita went. ‘They’re watching you. If they’re MI5, I’m a prima ballerina. It’s the usual story. Can’t take you anywhere.’
Vicky’s face looked as if one of us had slapped both cheeks.
‘The question is – what next?’ Anita went. She was going to push this as hard as she could.
‘Not much we can do if he’s in Amsterdam,’ I went, more in hope than expectation.
‘He’s back tomorrow, darling. It’s only one night in the hotel. I’m thinking one of us should be at the airport when he arrives and follow him home, find out where he lives.’
‘Difficult.’
‘Why?’
‘Think it through. Ten to one he’s left his car at the airport. He’ll get into it and drive off. How are we expected to follow him? If you’re looking at me, you’ve got to remember my van isn’t built for speed. By the sound of him, he drives a Porsche, at the least.’
Vicky lifted her shoulders a fraction. ‘And I don’t have wheels at all.’
‘Great,’ Anita went. She’s about to tell us what wimps we both
are, but we’re saved by our waitress arriving with the pizzas. Vicky and I make a big deal out of deciding whose is which and if there are extra sauces. By the time it’s settled and the waitress has gone, Anita has calmed down. I wouldn’t say she’s run out of steam because I’m sure she never will.
‘I don’t want us to become a one-woman team,’ she went.
‘Now let’s be fair,’ Vicky went. ‘Ishy was out on the streets alone last night. If you want to have a go at someone, pick on me.’
‘I’m not knocking you or anyone,’ Anita went. ‘Let’s not fall out over this. Are we agreed something dodgy is going on?’
We each gave a cautious nod.
‘The thing is, we don’t know what. The Heathrow man is travelling on a ticket someone else bought. I doubt if it’s for terrorism. Terrorists don’t go to travel agencies to have their flights fixed. Neither do MI5. This is more likely to be a small-time crook who wants to pass himself off as a tourist.’
She was talking sense now and we listened.
‘We can’t even be certain he’s a crook. He could be up to naughties of some description he doesn’t want his wife to know about.’
‘In all the European cities?’ Vicky went.
‘Meeting up with his mistress, who lives abroad.’
‘Would he go to all that trouble to cover up the trips?’
‘He might, if his wife is already suspicious.’
‘He doesn’t take much spending money.’
‘Credit cards. But I think the petty crook is the best bet. He’s up to some racket that entails travelling around Europe. It can’t be beyond the wit of three intelligent women to find out what.’
‘But how?’
‘Let’s find his real identity. Next time city break man comes to the agency and makes a booking, we know the pattern.’
The MO,’ Vicky went.
‘Come again.’
The MO. It’s a police expression. Means the same thing you said.’
‘Why bother to mention it, then? He’s going to meet the woman and hand over the tickets. This time we follow the woman. She should lead us to Heathrow man. Then we find out who we’re dealing with.’
Vicky smiled and clapped her hands. ‘Neat. I’ll volunteer to be the tail.’
Anita grinned. ‘The best tail in town, as the guys on the next table will testify.’
Harmony was restored among the sleuthing sisters. We laid into those pizzas and had the key lime pie as well.
Over coffee, I asked Anita for another look at her mobile.
‘Heathrow man? D’you fancy him?’ She turned to Vicky. ‘I think she does.’ She brought up the picture and handed the phone to me.
I checked the little image. ‘Not really. But I can tell you who he is.’
One good thing about my job is that you meet people. Flowers are wanted for most of life’s special occasions and almost everyone buys them. This is a blog, not a commercial, so I’ll simply ask you to recall the times when you’ve been into a florist’s, or phoned, or ordered online. See what I mean?
Our shop has a central location and we have a monopoly in our part of the city (the location of which still has to remain a mystery). It’s quite a fashionable location actually. Without giving too much away I can reveal that we have more than our share of the rich and famous. As the delivery girl I get to meet some starry people, and I mean internationally starry. Celebs aren’t worthy of the name unless they are forever taking delivery of orchids, lilies and roses. Some see me so regularly that they know me personally and if I were indiscreet I’d tell you which of them are nice to deal with and which are plain rude. As well as film stars, TV presenters, models and footballers, I visit titled people, captains of industry, admirals, brigadiers and lottery winners. At least two of our clients are on the wrong side of the tracks. I often deliver red roses to a house known to be a brothel. And we have a regular who made his money out of gang warfare and protection. He treats me okay. He buys in bulk, a vanload at a time of whatever we have in stock leaving the choice to us. He’ll give a party and want flowers all over the house – which is big, believe me.
You may be thinking I was bluffing when I told my two fellow sleuths I recognized Heathrow man. Was it a clever way of putting a stop to our investigations? I’ve already told you I was having second thoughts about trailing around after strange men and Vicky seemed to share my opinion, but neither of us wanted to fall out with our bubbly friend, Anita. What better way could there be of bringing the project to a grinding halt than pretending to identify
Heathrow man and dreaming up a logical reason for his strange behaviour?
For example, I could say I happened to know he was an executive director of TAI, the Travel Agents’ Inspectorate, who from time to time check on the efficiency of high street agencies. He didn’t visit Anita’s branch in person, but hired a member of the public (city break man) to buy the tickets and report on the treatment he was given. City break man handed his report and the tickets to the bigwig’s PA, who in turn delivered them to Heathrow man, who made the trips and checked the quality of the flight service and the foreign hotels.
An explanation like that would put the wind up Anita for sure and stop our sleuthing stone dead. We could all go back to our comfortable girlie chat. I’m sure there are different scenarios one could think up.
But hand on heart, I didn’t make anything up. I really had recognized Heathrow man as one of my clients. I’ve been to his house a number of times. It’s not a palace and he’s not a household name. I deliver buttonholes there, a carnation for him and a corsage for his lady, generally a rose in bud with some kind of surround like maidenhair fern. I assume they go to formal dinners or receptions quite often. I haven’t met the lady, but the guy comes to the door and he’s definitely the fellow Anita snapped at Heathrow. I’d stake my life on it.
‘Brilliant,’ she went, palms in the air, eyes like searchlights. ‘Who is he?’
‘Like I just said, someone I deliver flowers to.’
‘Don’t keep us in suspense, you tease. You can do better than that.’
‘I’m trying. I can’t recall his name just now. I know the face, for sure.’ And I meant it. My memory had gone into sleep mode.
‘For crying out loud, Ish. The name must be written on the order.’
‘But I don’t have an order with me, do I? I’m calling on people all day long. Some of them I remember by where they live. He’s at the top end of Blahblah Avenue (made-up name).’
‘Nice neighbourhood. What does he do?’
‘Apart from opening the door and taking in buttonholes? I can’t tell you. I don’t question the clients. If he had a brass plate on his door I’d know, but he hasn’t.’
She gave up trying to dig the name out of me. ‘Well, it’s not beyond the power of three intelligent women to find out. It’s so much easier when he’s local.’
‘We know he’s in a relationship,’ Vicky added.
‘And they go to functions together.’ Anita clicked her fingers. ‘I reckon we’ve identified the go-between, the woman who meets city break man and collects the tickets.’
‘Could be. Could well be,’ I went. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her.’
‘You can get his name from the shop. They’ll have copies of receipts. They must have.’
‘I’ll try and get it tomorrow.’
‘We may still need to do surveillance to find his line of work. Don’t you chat him up when you go to the house?’
‘We’re not all as chummy as you,’ Vicky went, smiling at Anita.
‘I can’t let clients think I’m nosy,’ I explained.
Anita gave me a pained look with her Nefertiti eyes. ‘Friendly isn’t nosy. You learn a lot by being friendly.’
There was a second or so of thoughtful silence while I’m certain each of us was wondering how many of our innermost secrets we’d revealed to the others.
Then I was like, ‘All right, leave it with me and I’ll definitely find out who he is, or who he claims to be. Then we can decide what to do next.’
I was already wishing I hadn’t opened my big mouth. I was putting my job at risk here, giving out information about clients. You may not think a flower deliverer is in a position of trust, but she is. She knows about the passions and desires of half the town. I didn’t take an oath when I started the job, or sign the Official Secrets Act, but it gets home to you day by day that you’d better keep certain things to yourself. Once you break a confidence, where do you stop?
Maybe I do know the true identity of Heathrow man and something in my brain is blocking it out.
16
I
n sunshine early next morning Diamond drove down to the cathedral city of Wells, through a series of places that sounded as if they had been dreamed up by Agatha Christie: Peasedown St. John, Midsomer Norton and Farrington Gurney. In reality much of this was former mining land rather than the English countryside at its most picturesque. When the Somerset coal industry withered and died in the fifties and sixties, these little communities, much extended by affordable housing, became dormitory outposts for Bath.
The journey was not much over twenty miles, and he took it sedately in his Honda using most of the hour to get there, thinking not about social change in rural England, but where he would get breakfast.
In Wells, he found a privately owned café open before eight-thirty, so rare a discovery in the West Country that he was tempted to believe this would be his lucky day. Over a plate of fried bacon, two eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and baked beans, he studied the file he’d brought with him. He was in Ossy Hart territory now, but with a different agenda from the one he had given Ingeborg. First he was going to find the spot where Ossy had been gunned down. Then he would call on Mrs. Hart.
A widow too far
: get away.
He marked both locations on the street map, checked his watch, drained his cup, paid up and moved on. The city was barely awake. Window-cleaners were at work on the shop fronts. How they got clean results with so little water he couldn’t fathom. His own efforts
at home always left smears that he rubbed with paper tissue and usually made worse.
He had no difficulty finding the scene of the shooting. The tree house the sniper had used as a firing position was in a private garden west of the town. A walnut tree with a massive trunk towered over the street from behind an eight-foot brick wall. Where the first great limbs thrust out from the bole, a platform had been erected twelve feet above ground and stabilized with struts bolted into the trunk. A child-size wooden cabin was built on it and a ladder of split logs gave access. You could just see the top rungs above the wall.
It could have been purpose-built for murder.
Across the road and a short way to the right, between twenty and thirty yards off, was a street lamp. Anyone walking under there by night was an easy target. Enclosed, crouched in this snug hideout built for play by some loving father, Ossy Hart’s killer had pointed his assault rifle from an open window. With a secure position and a ledge to prop his elbows, he’d taken aim across an unimpeded view. When his victim had stepped in front of the cross hairs or been pinpointed by the red spot the sniper had released the bullets. Then he’d climbed down the ladder and escaped unseen, sheltered by the wall. A convenient garden gate was only thirty yards off.
Diamond didn’t cross the road to examine the spot where Ossy had died. The police tape had long since been removed, any blood washed away. Forensics had scoured the street for traces twelve weeks ago. Nothing would have escaped their attention. Instead he stood below the tree in empathy with the dead constable. Up to now, his prime concern had been the shooting of Harry Tasker and the attack on Ken Lockton. Today he felt kinship with PC Hart, the ex-teacher. Was it sheer bad luck that you happened to be the copper walking by, Ossy, or was your name on the bullet? Did you know your killer? Either way, a young married father had been picked off with one impassive squeeze of the trigger.
The murder of a police officer on duty is a rare event, rightly rated among the worst of crimes, sure to produce an eruption of outrage. SIOs will always say they treat every homicide with the same investigative zeal, yet the pressure to make an arrest for a police killing is unrelenting. Getting it done is a petrifying responsibility. Getting it right is no certainty.
He returned to his car and sat for a long time in silence, feeling
that burden, an ordinary man doing his best to deal with the extraordinary. The tree house was still in sight through his windscreen. On this bright morning, yesterday’s theory that the sniper must have been a brother officer felt less tenable. The notion of a policeman sneaking into that hide and waiting for one of his own kind to come within firing distance was hard to accept. If Bath CID refused to swallow the new scenario for the shooting of Harry Tasker, what would they have made of Ossy Hart’s murder? Diamond knew the answer. And now he, too, was at risk of being swayed into disbelief.