That, thought Jury, was the word.
SIXTY
Still with his coat on, Jury stood against the wall in one of the interview rooms of the Cambridge station, looking at Roy Diamond. DCI Greene sat at the table across from Diamond.
“Six witnesses. We have you for both murder and attempted murder. You’ll never talk your way out of this; it just won’t happen.”
Diamond had regained his cool manner, and said, “If that’s the case, why are we talking?”
Greene tipped his chair back, looked at Jury. He had told Jury he was welcome to sit in on the questioning of Roy Diamond. Diamond’s smooth manner grated on Jury’s nerves, but he said nothing.
“I can tell you one thing, Inspector,” said Diamond. “I’m putting in a complaint to the chief constable about being roughed up.” He nodded his head toward Jury.
“Pity,” said Greene, tonelessly.
“And the commissioner,” Diamond added, “is a friend of mine.”
Jury thought that if the bastard was playing the friends-in-high-places card, Diamond wasn’t as sure of his “self-defense” defense as he wanted them to think. He came away from the wall and moved closer to the table. Diamond inadvertently tilted backward.
“Why are we talking? That was your question, wasn’t it?” Jury put his hands on the table, leaned toward Diamond and said, in a voice he managed to keep soft, “We’re talking because we want to know the rest of it.”
Roy Diamond’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “All I know is what I’ve already told you. All I know is what happened two hours ago: Nell Ryder jumped her horse over the fence at my training track and launched herself at me. That horse came toward me like an express train. Then the car comes at me, then the second horse. What choice did I have? I can only say I’m lucky to have had the hand-gun with me. It was clearly self-defense.”
Jury’s laugh was a bark. Of course, Diamond’s solicitor would take that tack, unless he flew a kite of diminished responsibility.
Greene said, “We’ve got Billy Finn in another room, Roy. We’ll have the motive sorted, no sweat.”
Diamond said, “Well, you can ascribe any motive you want to what I’ve allegedly done; the trouble is that you don’t have any evidence”-he leaned over the table-“because there isn’t any.”
“There will be,” said Jury. “And another thing, what about this sideline of yours, the mares Valerie Hobbs kept on her farm? That is your operation, isn’t it?”
“Yes. The operation is not illegal, as you very well know. Those mares belong to me, Superintendent. They’re my property.”
“Not any longer, they’re not. You’ll be compensated, not to worry. But I’d really like to know where you were going with this. Because it’s my understanding an American pharmaceutical company named Wyeth has a patent on this mare’s-urine estrogen drug.”
“They won’t have it forever. The patent is going to run out some time around the turn of the century, 2001 or 2. No, my operation is by way of being experimental. I want to see if a drug can be produced that doesn’t have to go through a hundred steps to get that end product. Be cheaper to market it.”
“How? How are you-or were you-going to see this?”
“I’ve several chemists working for me. I’ve a small plant in the Marquesas. It’s temporary, of course. But I have three chemists, an accountant, an investment banker and a lawyer assigned exclusively to this operation. To actually grab some of the market we’d need thousands of horses, such as are on those farms in Canada. And I could hardly organize that in this country, could I? Not on my land, certainly. No place secluded enough.”
“Accountant, banker, lawyer. Sounds like paradise, take away the island,” said Barry Greene.
“What the hell are you holding over these people’s heads, Roy? What do you know about Valerie Hobbs to have made her implicate herself?”
Roy expelled a narrow stream of smoke. “Enough.”
Wiggins had been dispatched in the company of the crime-scene fingerprint expert to examine the room at the top of the stairs used by Nell Ryder.
“They covered all that pretty thoroughly,” said Wiggins, “when they took Valerie Hobbs into custody. Certainly went over it for prints.”
“I know,” said Jury. “I’ve seen the results. But I’m especially interested in the bed. They lifted prints from the bed frame and the head. But since it’s an old brass bed, it has metal bars. I don’t think they lifted any from the bars. It’s those I’m interested in, not just the single print, either; there should be an entire set”-Jury’s fingers moved as if they were locking around a bar-“and I think you’ll find them.”
That had been an hour ago.
Jury wished he had a cigarette; all he had was a pack of gum. He was standing with his back against the wall again (and recognizing the aptness of that metaphor), listening to Roy Diamond smoothly answering the questions of Barry Greene. Where was the man’s lawyer? Hadn’t Diamond said he wouldn’t answer any more questions without the solicitor’s being present? The man was so sure he could sidestep any trap that the police might set that he kept right on going.
“Billy Finn doesn’t know anything. He’s my best jockey. What has he allegedly done?”
“Allegedly,” said Greene, “abducted Nell Ryder twenty months ago and dropped her off at Hobbs stud.”
Diamond snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”
Jury excused himself.
Roy Diamond said again he would answer no more questions.
Detective Sergeant Styles, marginally less frosty toward Jury given the events of that afternoon, in response to Jury’s asking if he could speak to Billy Finn, turned up his hands and said, “If Greene says yes, be my guest. I’m getting sod-all from him. I’m going for a cuppa, me.” He left.
Jury had watched Billy Finn when they brought him in on the heels of Roy Diamond. He’d heard Billy being questioned. He did not himself think Billy had been the one to take Nell from the stable that May night.
Since he had no cigarettes, Jury offered Billy Finn a stick of gum. Billy took it.
“Look, Billy, no one in bloody hell could remember where he was on a night in May twenty months ago. I’m not setting any store by an alibi. The reason for pulling you in is that shirt, the silks, the colors of Diamond’s stables. Your silks being what Nell Ryder took a knife to.”
Billy half rose in protest. Jury waved him down. “I know-there are a half dozen jockeys who might have worn those colors over the time they rode for Diamond. It’s not necessarily the shirt itself. It’s the pattern, Billy. The diamond pattern that sent Nell ballistic. That must be what she remembered, what suddenly came into her mind. Now, there were two things she was sure of: that the person who took her was small and that he took her by way of those walls. You’re a flat racer, aren’t you, Billy?”
Billy nodded, intrigued in spite of himself, Jury’s manner having enough of a calming effect that he could forget why he was there long enough to be interested in the story.
“I think what we’re looking for is a jump jockey. Those walls aren’t easy; I don’t think a rider would choose those walls to get himself over unless he knew he was a damned good jumper.
“Strictly speaking, of course, the fellow doesn’t even have to be someone who rides for Diamond. It just seems more likely that it would be. To narrow it down even more, someone who is enough of a low-life to abduct a girl for pay, or someone who’s into Roy Diamond for a lot. Someone who owes him. You know what I mean.”