‘The bloke doesn’t even know I’m here.’
‘She wouldn’t have asked you to come if it was only about linking up with a former boyfriend. There’s got to be more to it.’
‘I should find out later. She wants to see me in her room when she gets back.’
‘What for? The woman’s insatiable.’
He let it pass. If Paloma had heard some of the stuff that had been said in the car she wouldn’t be joking. ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll keep my distance.’
His room had a view across the roofs to the cathedral spire, floodlit by night. After an hour or so of reality television he sat by the window looking at pigeons and waiting for the call from Georgina. He assumed it would come about ten.
He was still there at eleven. The pigeons were all roosting.
At eleven thirty he decided she’d forgotten. The reunion with her old college friend must have put everything else out of her mind. No point in waiting up indefinitely.
He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when the call came at twenty to midnight. He let it ring. The ringing continued. He pictured Georgina, phone in hand, cursing him. He could lift the phone and cut the call, but she wouldn’t give up. She’d ring again. In time she would come knocking on his door.
This time he picked the thing up.
‘Peter?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a little later than I intended. Archie wouldn’t tell me anything over dinner because it was too public, so we went for a drive to West Wittering and had a moonlit stroll along the beach. There was a lot to catch up on. Are you decent?’
‘Am I ever? Depends what you mean.’
‘Dressed.’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Slight change of plan, then. Don’t come to my room. We’re making a six-thirty start in the morning. Off to the Isle of Wight.’
‘What for?’
‘Tell you tomorrow, I’ll arrange for an early call for us both, but set your alarm as well, just in case. The sea air seems to have made me drowsy — or perhaps it was the wine. I’ll sleep like a baby.’
Bully for you, Diamond thought. Personally, he was now anything but drowsy. His brain was hyperactive, trying to find some reason for visiting the Isle of Wight. All he could bring to mind was a childhood trip to Carisbrooke Castle where a donkey on a treadmill turned the wheel that worked the well mechanism. There had to be more to the place than that. Forced to dredge deeper, he was reminded of a postcard from someone on holiday depicting the so-called wonders of the island: Needles you can’t thread; Ryde where you walk; Cowes you can’t milk; Newport you can’t bottle. And there was another wonder and annoyingly his brain wouldn’t supply it. Repeatedly he went over the names: the Needles, Ryde, Cowes and Newport. Mentally, he did tours of the island: Bembridge, Shanklin, Sandown, Ventnor and Yarmouth. Then he was back to Cowes and Ryde. Infuriating. Relax, man, it doesn’t matter, he told himself. But by now his brain was turning the treadmill like the bloody donkey.
He put the light on and watched a documentary about the Titanic disaster. Made himself tea. Went to the bathroom. Tried to sleep again.
Seaview was somewhere on the island, but that wasn’t it. Seaview had a sea view. He was back on the treadmill.
At what hour of the morning he was spared and allowed to sleep he didn’t want to know. Ten minutes after, it seemed, came the wake-up call. He heaved himself out of bed, tottered to the shower, failed — as he always did in hotels — to master the controls, got a burst of cold water, and remembered.
Freshwater you can’t drink.
Two black coffees later he was downstairs, propped against the wall at the hotel entrance. Georgina appeared, spry and animated. It took a while for him to work out that she was in a black suit, the first time he could remember seeing her out of uniform. Apart from the silver buttons and insignia the look was the same.
‘Archie arranged for a car,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘It should be here by now.’
‘Is he coming?’
‘Absolutely not. Get this into your head, Peter. We’re free agents, independent of his lot.’
‘But using one of his cars.’
‘It was either that or hiring one and I don’t believe in burdening the taxpayer.’
The blue and yellow livery of the Sussex police car was too much for Diamond’s tired eyes. He sank into the back seat, thankful he didn’t have to drive and hoping the caffeine would soon take effect. Georgina got in from the other side, planted the seat buckle in his lap and said, ‘I don’t want you falling asleep and crushing me.’
They started the drive to the Portsmouth car ferry.
‘You look queasy,’ Georgina told him before they’d gone far.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Something you ate last night? If so, a sea crossing isn’t going to help you. Personally, I had a wonderful meal.’
He hoped she would leave it at that.
She didn’t. ‘New season turbot and spring vegetables followed by baked Alaska, which comes as a dish for two.’
He thought for the first time that it was possible the Double Whopper burger he’d eaten may have had something to do with his sleepless night.
Georgina hadn’t finished. ‘Archie had the dressed Cornish crab and said it was excellent. Oh, and I forgot the starter. We both had the Burgundian snails. I don’t suppose you’re a snail person, but with the garlic herb butter they’re as good a mouthful as you could wish. Do you eat snails, Peter?’
‘Can we talk about what we’re doing today?’
‘By all means. We’re going to meet a guest of Her Majesty.’
‘A prisoner?’
‘We’re not visiting the island to make sandcastles.’
He should have remembered that Parkhurst and Albany were located there. For years they had been the ‘places of dispersal’ for dangerous convicts such as the Krays and the Yorkshire Ripper. A few years ago, the two prisons had been downgraded and treated as one, relabelled HM Prison Isle of Wight, a category B lock-up, which meant it housed prisoners ‘for whom maximum security is not thought to be necessary, but for whom escape needs to be made very difficult.’ Someone with a nice sense of irony thought that up.
‘Anyone I know?’
‘I doubt it,’ Georgina said.
‘Not someone I put away?’
‘No, he was from here on the coast, a lifer by the name of Stapleton.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He claims he was wrongly convicted.’
‘Don’t they all?’
‘This one could be telling the truth, and the truth he has to tell has come as a shock to certain people.’
‘Your friend Archie?’
‘Archie has an executive role. He isn’t personally involved.’
‘What’s it all about, then?’
Georgina pumped herself up with one of those immense intakes of breath that meant she was about to say something that couldn’t be questioned. ‘If I were to tell you, it would only be hearsay. Better you learn the facts from the prisoner himself.’
‘Can’t wait.’
By the time they drove on to the car ferry, Diamond decided he’d need to be positive about the state of his stomach. This stretch of sea was Spithead, supposedly protected from strong winds and therefore a safe anchorage for the navy. Even so, the ferry passed close enough to a passing battleship to catch the slipstream and he felt his insides rebelling. Just as well he hadn’t eaten breakfast. It was a forty-minute crossing to Fishbourne.
Promenading along the deck with Georgina (their driver was leaning over the side having a smoke), he concentrated on the view, wishing the blue haze of the island would become more solid.
‘You’re not much of a sailor, then?’ Georgina said.
‘Why do you say that?’