‘God help us,’ Cat said. ‘I’m getting weary of this Jungle Book stuff.’
‘Yesterday evening you and Anthony shared a taxi home and when it stopped outside Anthony’s lodging you saw Harry’s car there with Harry waiting inside. It was obvious what he intended. He reckoned if he spoke to Anthony about what was going on, he’d get honest answers. Anthony might not be capable of putting two and two together and identifying you as the killer, but Harry was. You had to act quickly.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘You live only two or three minutes away. After the taxi dropped you at your house, you returned to Westmoreland Street to speak to Harry yourself. He was still in his car, waiting. You sat beside him in the passenger seat and listened to his story. To show how desperate he was, he showed you the gun. You seized your chance, grabbed it and shot him dead.’
Cat sighed and shook her head. ‘Are you for real?’
‘It was an impulse killing and a big, big mistake. Suddenly you had a corpse sitting beside you and this time there was no easy way of disposing of it. Panic. The best you could think to do on the spur of the moment was rig it up to look like suicide. You wiped the gun, pressed it into Harry’s hand to get his prints on it and let it drop between the seats. Then you walked home and showered and washed all your clothes. Next morning when the call came through from Anthony’s landlady, you made sure you weren’t the first on the scene. Ivan got there first. By the time I arrived, you were inside the house with the others weeping crocodile tears.’
‘Pardon me,’ she said. ‘The tears were genuine. I was heartbroken Harry was dead.’
‘Heartbroken because you couldn’t put the clock back. What a mess you made of it – a so-called suicide on the left side of the head from a right-handed man.’
‘You keep going on about this as if it was me, but you’re wrong,’ she said, but on a shrill, petulant note. ‘You’re way off the mark and I can sue you for false arrest.’
‘No chance,’ Diamond said. ‘Don’t you know about gunshot residue? When a gun is fired the explosive gases and particles escape and cling to the hands, clothing and hair of the person who fired the gun as well as settling on anything else in the vicinity. While you were cutting your disc this afternoon, a forensic team was going through your flat collecting evidence. Yes, you showered and washed everything, but you can’t prevent these tiny particles being scattered over the floor of your bedroom and bathroom. We have enough to prove you fired the fatal shot.’
‘You’re bluffing,’ she said in a fierce, combative voice.
‘Why do you think I let you go ahead with the recording? We needed time to get a warrant and search your house.’ He reached under the table and held up an evidence bag containing the murder weapon. ‘And if you think you wiped this clean, think again. We’ll be taking your prints and DNA presently after I’ve formally charged you with Harry’s murder.’
‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I’ve admitted nothing, nothing at all.’
‘Doesn’t matter when we’ve got the evidence,’ he said with all the authority he could muster, allowing that forensics would take weeks to produce enough for a prosecution. He was banking on this effusive woman talking her way into proof of guilt. ‘You could say nothing at all and still go down with a recommendation that life means life.’
The solicitor was on her feet. ‘That’s enough. You’re trying to elicit a statement by the use of oppression. You’re in flagrant abuse of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Cat said. ‘I need to know the worst that can happen, don’t I?’
It was a seismic moment.
To Diamond, she said, ‘What are the chances of a lighter sentence if I plead guilty to all three?’
‘It wouldn’t be up to me,’ he said evenly, ‘but an admission of guilt is always taken into account.’
‘I’m up for it, then,’ she said with some of her former bounce. ‘Where shall we start? Vienna, 2008?’
The following weekend, Diamond took Paloma for a candle-lit dinner at the Hole in the Wall in George Street. No awkwardness lingered between them. He felt relaxed after bringing the Staccati case to a successful conclusion. And Paloma had landed a contract to be the costume consultant on a new TV series set in the 1940s.
‘So you obtained a confession?’ she said.
‘We did.’
‘Without violence, I hope.’
‘She sang like a blackbird on the first day of spring.’