If anyone actually clapped it wasn’t heard because a volley of mortar blasts got the French programme under way. Finally all attention focused on the fireworks. Patriotic red, white and blue in cascades lit up the night, multiplied into millions of sparks curving outwards over the crescent. The crowd responded with the obligatory oooooghs and aaaaaghs. There was stirring synchronised music from Bizet as well, but the real treats were in the sky.
‘Worth coming for?’ Diamond said.
If Paloma answered it was lost in the next explosions.
The French display took almost half an hour, but seemed longer, such was the intensity. Everyone seemed to agree the show was worthy of the finale and better than anything seen on previous nights.
Smoke could be seen along the length of the lawn and teams were at work rigging the next display. The smell of sulphur spread across the park.
The interval was welcome and the drinks vendors did a good trade.
‘The Chinese should give us something special considering they invented fireworks,’ Diamond said. ‘Are you up for it?’
‘I am, but my ears aren’t,’ Paloma said. ‘I think I’ll be deaf for the next twenty-four hours.’
At the front, Perry was working the crowd, asking them how amazing the French display had been and whether China could top it.
‘He’s good at this,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s a rare talent.’
Paloma didn’t seem to have heard. He took out a tube of mints and handed it to her.
Huge aerial shells announced the start of China’s effort. This time the sky turned red as lithium atoms showered over the crescent. What followed was exceptional. How the effect of a silver brocade waterfall was achieved was a mystery and that was just the start of a programme that had the crowd gasping between cries of appreciation. When it finished there was little doubt that China was the winner, but the announcement was delayed. Instead, ‘Greensleeves’ suddenly boomed from the public address system. Could there be a dispute over the result? Perry the Pyro was nowhere to be seen. It transpired that in the hiatus the city of Bath was about to make its own contribution to the evening.
‘Can your eardrums stand any more?’ Diamond asked Paloma.
‘If we start walking now, we might escape the worst of it,’ she said.
‘Good idea.’
But they hadn’t got far before a fusillade of mortars shook the ground. Diamond looked over his shoulder. ‘How do they follow that?’
‘With an anticlimax,’ she said. ‘Just look at it.’
Somewhere in front of the scaffolding, a set-piece tableau outlined in fizzing light had appeared. The figure of a woman in Georgian costume appeared to be curtsying to a bowing man in frock coat and wig.
‘If I’m not mistaken that’s Jane Austen and bloody Beau Nash,’ he said. ‘The bugger follows me everywhere.’
17
Diamond had uncorked a French wine in Paloma’s sitting room and was pouring it when his phone buzzed.
‘At this hour?’
‘Better answer it,’ Paloma said.
‘Ten to one it’s a cold call.’ But he recognised the number on the display.
Ingeborg’s voice was charged with tension. ‘Guv, where are you exactly?’
‘Paloma’s house. Why?’
‘You’d better get back to the crescent. There was a shooting. A man is dead.’
‘What?’ Stupid reaction. He’d heard what she said. Troubling images invaded his brain. The size of that crowd at the show. Some idiot loosing off a gun. Panic and mayhem. It was likely others had been injured as well. He needed to get there fast. ‘Are you there now, Inge?’
‘On the residents’ lawn where the fireworks were. The show finished a while ago. We’ve sealed it off. There’s no shortage of manpower.’
That was a first. On reflection, most of Bath Central had been on duty.
‘Well, you know the drill. Witnesses. Detain anyone who saw anything. Call the police surgeon, scene of crime unit and pathologist. I’ll see if I can get to you before they do.’
He told Paloma and apologised. ‘God knows what can be done at this time of night, but it must be dealt with.’ He thought of the difficulty of a crime scene littered with firework debris and witnesses who spoke Chinese and French. Don’t meet trouble halfway, he told himself.
His preference was always to drive well inside the speed limit, but this called for a change in behaviour. He put his foot down. Not much was moving into town, but unending headlights dazzled him, almost certainly people coming away from the fireworks.
He parked behind a police minivan on the cobbles in front of the Royal Crescent. Some of the lights at the windows were now turned off. At ground level a few of the inevitable gawpers watched from behind the railings, but everyone else seemed to have left except the display teams and the strong contingent of police in their high-visibility jackets.
He crossed the lawn to where he was confident he would find Ingeborg with Keith Halliwell. Fireworks require darkness, so the building’s floodlighting had been turned off. Shadowy figures were moving about with flashlights and hand torches, their voices raised as if to compensate for the difficulty of seeing.
Compelled to take notice of things he’d not really taken in during the show, he made out from the languages being loudly used that the rival teams from France and China had worked from separate ends of the crescent lawn. The standing structures erected for Bath’s rather cheesy effort occupied the no-man’s land in the middle.
Bits of both figures were still smouldering. The fumes of burnt chemicals made his nostrils tingle.
A flashlight had been lashed to the railings with the beam showing the reason for all the extra activity — the victim of the shooting, face down behind the charred remains of the Beau Nash figure. It seemed only one person had been hit.
‘Are we certain he’s had it?’ Diamond asked no one in particular.
A voice in a French accent said, ‘’Ad it?’
‘Is that you, guv?’ Ingeborg came from nowhere and shone a torch at him. ‘You got here fast. Yes, no question he’s dead.’
‘Any witnesses?’
‘If there were, we haven’t found them yet.’
‘In all that crowd? Tens of thousands. Surely when the gun was fired...’ He stopped. Common sense kicked in. ‘The sound was masked by the bloody fireworks.’
‘Seems so.’
‘Where was he hit? Head? Chest?’
‘Both. He took several shots.’
‘Anyone know who he is?’
‘Didn’t I say? It’s Perry the Pyro.’
Spikes thrust through his veins.
‘Give me the torch.’
Suddenly ice-cold, he confirmed what she’d said. Death is difficult to accept at any time. Here the shock was extreme. The go-getting young guy had been the personification of vitality. Only a short time earlier he had been the main man of the entire show, working the crowd like an evangelist preacher raising the expectations of everyone present. Now the long, dark hair was fanned across the turf, almost covering that white hat, except that there was more red than white. Some of the badges glinted moistly.
Speculating why the killing had taken place was pointless when so little was known about the man and his contacts, but Diamond’s job was to go beyond speculation and find logical reasons. People like Perry, the movers and shakers of this world, can be ruthless in getting what they want. Witness that ‘D’you mind, dude?’ moment. Who could say what enemies he’d made on the journey here?
Another car bumped over the cobbles. The police surgeon. All he would do would be to declare life to be extinct. Most times it’s screamingly obvious, as now. Nice little earner for a local GP. But of course it can involve unsocial hours.