“I’ve usually sussed it out already.”
“Clever old you. What’s bugging you tonight?”
“A blast from the past.” He didn’t often talk about work issues, but the Pinto case was done and dusted. No harm in sharing it with Paloma. It had made the headlines before he knew her.
After she’d listened, she said, “You let him get under your skin.”
“He got under Bryony Lancaster’s skin with a Stanley knife.”
“But it wasn’t murder, Peter. They’re not going to lock him away for life. Sometimes we all have to move on.”
“The girl still has her scars.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not for a long time.”
“She could have had cosmetic surgery.”
“She’ll carry the mental scars for the rest of her life.”
“You can say that about anyone touched by a serious crime.” She took a deeper breath and released it before adding, “Admit it, you’re scarred mentally and so am I. There are times when it still hurts badly, but we don’t dwell on the past and I daresay Bryony doesn’t.”
He knew exactly what she meant. Her son was still serving a life sentence for murder. She visited him regularly and never spoke of what was said between them, if anything. The strain showed for days afterwards. “Do you think I should warn her Pinto is out of prison?”
“Why?”
“It could come as a horrible shock. It shocked me.”
“I wouldn’t. He’s not a threat anymore. He’s probably more scared of meeting her than she will be of him.”
“He didn’t look scared in that race today. He was as cocksure as ever.”
“Are you a hundred per cent certain it was Pinto?”
“Ninety-nine and counting. Most of us have a double somewhere in the world, I’ve heard.” He hesitated and grinned. He’d seen a chance to lighten the mood. “All right, I’ll say it for you. Two of me would be hard to take.”
“Doesn’t bear thinking about.”
The commercials had ended. Diamond watched the screen to the end of the show without taking anything in. He couldn’t shift Tony Pinto from his thoughts. “Why do people do it?” he asked Paloma when she’d switched off the TV.
“Do what?”
“Run. I can’t see the attraction.”
“All sorts of reasons. It’s the most basic of actions. Cavemen had to run to survive. If you’re the right shape and good at it, you’ll probably feel the urge to show your paces.”
“Me?”
“Not you specially. You have other talents.”
He lifted his glass. “Here’s to those, whatever they are. What I’m getting at is Pinto’s reason for doing the Other Half. Was he in it for the glory of sport or to pull girls?”
“From all you’ve told me, it was the latter.”
“In which case, he didn’t need to complete the run if he made a hit already.”
“I see what you’re getting at. They may have quit the race for a bit of how’s your father. Does it really matter?”
He ducked that question. “She didn’t look as if she was enjoying his company.”
“The woman he was running with? What age would she be?” Paloma was a couple of moves ahead in this verbal chess game.
“I’m not much use at ages. Thirties, maybe.”
“And how old is Pinto?”
“Forties.”
“Old enough to know what they’re doing, both of them.”
“Agreed.” By now he knew what was coming.
“So they’re grown-ups. Forget them.”
“I can’t forget he’s violent.”
“Did the woman finish the race?”
“I didn’t see her — but there were hundreds in British Heart Foundation shirts and I wasn’t looking for her particularly.”
“You won’t know her name, so you can’t check whether she finished.”
“She’ll have been wearing a number. There’s such a thing as CCTV.”
“And who’s going to scroll through hours and hours of video? You fall asleep in twenty minutes watching Midsomer Murders.”
He didn’t answer. She was right. He ought to let go.
After a pause, Paloma signalled a personal announcement by steepling her hands in front of her chin. “I’d better own up. I’ve taken up running myself.”
He jerked forward and stared at her, fully alert now. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I was getting breathless walking up the hill from the station. I decided to do something about it, so I bought myself some trainers and now I pound the streets of Lyncombe Vale every other day. It’s doing me good. An inch off my waistline. Haven’t you noticed?”
“What time do you do this?”
“After I finish work and before I cook the meal. It’s a fascinating time. People are turning on the lights but they haven’t pulled the curtains. I see inside front rooms I’ll never visit. You’d never believe what some folk get up to at five in the afternoon.”
She was making light of this, but he disapproved and needed to let her know without getting heavy about it. “You want to be careful.”
“Looking in people’s windows?”
“No. Running through dark streets.”
She laughed. “Don’t go all protective on me, Peter Diamond, or I’ll throw you out. I don’t need looking after. If you want to join me, that’s another thing, but a moment ago you made your views on running very clear.”
“Can’t you do Pilates or something?”
Paloma’s steely look left him in no doubt he was out of order. “This is my choice, Peter. I enjoy it. Don’t glare at me like that. I won’t be entering marathons in the hope of meeting some sex-starved guy just out of prison.”
“If you mean Pinto I should bloody hope not.”
“He doesn’t sound like any girl’s dream date.”
“I’ve looked into that man’s eyes and seen something I never want to see again.”
“I’m forewarned, then. But the chance of him ever crossing my path is remote.”
Unusually for him, Murat was bragging. “I could have filled a sack with all the goodies I was offered. It was like Christmas Day. You should have been there.” He tipped the contents of one of the bags on the ground between his own blow-up bed and Spiro’s. “Help yourself.”
“I’m not hungry.”
They were at their latest sleeping quarters in the Parade Gardens under the colonnade that stands below the busy street known as Grand Parade. This prime location had become their private shelter after they had discovered a simple way into the gardens when the main entrance was locked. The inflatable beds had come from Argos, nine pounds ninety-nine each (the cash donated by a German tourist who took pity on them and may not have appreciated the value of a twenty-pound note) and the blankets from a stack left out for the refuse collectors by an old people’s home — courtesy of something overheard by Murat in the queue for charity bread and soup.
“Don’t be so sniffy, just because you were wrong,” Murat said. “I can’t eat them all. At least have some of the water.”
“I’ve got my own fucking water.”
“Be like that, then.”
After a pained pause, Murat started up again. “I know you didn’t like me taking the risk, but honestly, Spiro, if you’d been there you would have seen how safe it was. They’d finished their race and they wanted to talk about it to anyone who would listen. Real excitement. Sweaty people with smiles on their faces. Long time since I’ve seen anywhere as noisy as that.”
Spiro wasn’t listening. Murat’s experiences at the recreation ground were of little interest to him and he had no intention of sharing the trauma of his own terrifying showdown with the Finisher. Nothing could be the same again. What was done was done.