‘You could be onto something with the asphodels.’
‘Stuff the asphodels. I’ve missed you, Peter.’
‘If I’m honest, it hasn’t been much fun for me.’
‘Truce?’ she said when they reached the front door. She offered her lips and they kissed lightly.
‘Truce,’ he said. ‘Sorry – and not just for jumping to the wrong conclusion. Sorry for being an oaf on the towpath that evening.’
‘And I’m sorry for being such a grouch. Can we start over?’
‘That would be good.’
They kissed again and held each other before he got into the car and drove away.
Mrs. Carlyle came to the door of the house in Forester Road. ‘You’re the policeman.’
Diamond didn’t deny it.
‘You want to speak to Mel?’
‘That’s the general idea. Is he out in Sydney Gardens again?’
‘Definitely not. He had a phone call from one of his musical friends and ordered a taxi straight away. He was in a bit of a state if you ask me.’
‘Which friend?’
‘How would I know? But it seemed to be an emergency. Something about a cat.’
‘Cat? She’s the cellist. Has something happened to her?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. Funny name for a cellist.’
27
Cat was living south of the river in a two-up, two-down terraced house, a relic of Bath’s industrial past. Compared with Ivan’s grand address in Great Pulteney Street, Sydenham Buildings was a slum, bordered by the railway, the main road and the cemetery, but there was an advantage in that Cat had sole use of the furnished house. There are definite compensations in living apart from one’s landlord.
All the curtains were across when Diamond arrived. He was getting wise to the lifestyle of musicians. Used to working late, they were in the habit of lying in. He rang twice and stepped back to see if the bedroom curtains moved.
He rang again.
Nothing.
He put his ear against the door and couldn’t hear anything from inside.
If Cat wasn’t at home, who was Mel visiting?
Another of the quartet – Anthony, the second violin – was in lodgings a short walk away. As the member most in need of day-to-day assistance he’d doubtless been housed close to Cat so that she could keep a sisterly eye on him. His digs were at the bottom of Westmoreland Street, parallel with Sydenham Buildings.
Still seized with the urgency he’d got from Mrs. Carlyle, Diamond drove the car round there instead of walking.
His ring was answered and it was Cat who opened the door. She was looking distressed. Faint lines of mascara marked the paths of tears down her cheeks. ‘Man, do we need you!’ she said, opening her arms. ‘Come in. They’re all inside.’
He sidestepped her embrace.
The other three members of the quartet were standing in the living room facing the window as if something of surpassing interest was happening in the street.
‘Relax, guys. The Old Bill are on the case,’ Cat told them with an effort to be cheerful.
When the three musicians turned, it was obvious they were anything but relaxed. Anthony had the shakes. Mel looked ten years older. Ivan could have passed for Hamlet’s father.
‘What’s up?’ Diamond asked.
‘What’s up?’ Cat said. ‘Harry’s out there in a car with a bullet through his head, that’s what’s up.’
She was a natural jester, and you couldn’t take much she said at face value.
‘Oh, yes?’ Diamond said, preparing to grin.
‘Fact,’ she said and took a big tearful sniff. The men weren’t smiling either.
He was forced to accept that she probably meant what she’d said. ‘Where exactly?’
‘The other side of the street, opposite your car.’
He went to the window. Some detective I am, he thought. Drove up and never noticed.
Harry’s black Megane was out there with a man slumped over the wheel.
‘Anthony found him, poor lad,’ Cat said. ‘Imagine the shock.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘Of course.’ She gave Diamond as disbelieving a look as he’d just given her. ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t get the shout. They must be on their way. Stay here, all of you. Don’t leave this room.’
Harry dead, when everyone had barely adjusted to the surprise that he was alive.
When Diamond opened the front door, the two-tone wail of the first response car soared above the growl of morning traffic. His grasp of events could be faulted, but his timing couldn’t. He’d beaten the emergency service.
He ran across the road.
The man with his head flat to the steering wheel was unmistakably dead, with a neat, star-shaped red hole below his right ear. Hardly any blood had been shed. Never having got a full sight of Harry Cornell, Diamond couldn’t identify him except from a general likeness to photos he’d seen. But the jacket was similar to the one the runaway had been wearing in Sydney Gardens except that the hood was now drawn back from the head.