“Round here, pubs are changing their clientele in the evenings,” Julie remarked. “There’s more money to be made from running them as restaurants.”
“Everything’s changing,” Diamond complained, mounting one of his favorite hobbyhorses. “Look at Bath. Carwar- dine’s gone now, a coffee shop of character. Owen, Owen, that nice big department store in Stall Street where I used to buy my socks and shirts. What do I see there now-a Walt Disney shop. That’s American. Just down the street there used to be a Woolworth’s. Gone. My earliest memory is being lost in Woolworth’s. Not in Bath, I mean. Another town. Woolie’s is part of our heritage, Julie.”
“It’s American,” she said. “Woolworth was an American.”
He said huffily, “You don’t need to tell me that.” With a shift of thought that was quite reasonable in his own mind, but he couldn’t expect Julie to understand, he asked, “Is there a phone here? I can call my wife while the food is coming.”
In their basement in West Kensington, Steph had been watching an Australian soap. The theme tune was going in the background. “I was wondering if we were still talking,” she remarked. “What’s the state of play? Shall I see you tonight?”
“Doubtful,” he answered. “Tomorrow looks more likely. However, I think I’m about to button up the case.”
“So long as you don’t stitch it up.”
She couldn’t know how wounding that remark was.
She said, “Are you still there? I hope they appreciate what you’re doing.”
He laughed cynically. “Some hope of that!”
She said, “Because I’m not sure if I do. I’ve had the supermarket on the phone this evening, wanting to know why you missed two days of work. What could I say, except that you got called away suddenly?”
“You could say the police came for me.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Joke.”
She said, “Speaking of jokes, it looks to me as if you might be modeling for the art class after all.”
This time his laugh was more hollow. It came home to him how much better he had felt doing police work again, even when it turned up old mistakes.
And Steph, with her well-practiced capacity to read his thoughts, said in all seriousness, “Why don’t you stay there as long as they need you? They may come to their senses and want you back-even that man you had the row with. Tott.”
He said, “I got stung this morning.”
“By Mr. Tott?”
“By a bee. On my hand.”
“That’s all right, then.”
“What?”
“I said, are you all right, then? Did you put something on it? “
Yes. I survived.”
“Teach you to be careful where you put your hands.”
He used this as the cue to say something personal that may not entirely have made up for his delay in phoning, but definitely pleased Steph. They exchanged some frivolous and private remarks before he hung up.
More mellow than he had felt all day, he went back to where Julie was sitting and said, “Don’t you have a phone call to make?”
She shook her head.
He was sorry, because she wore a wedding ring.
“Separated?”
She smiled and shook her head. “He’ll be at work. He’s in the police.”
The jacket potatoes arrived and Diamond tested one of his, risking the heat on his fingertips to feel for the cracking of rusty skin. “I like them baked the old-fashioned way, not turned into mush in a microwave,” he explained. “These will do. A well-cooked potato beats pasta or rice or anything. I was once told that if you had to survive on only one food, you’d better choose potatoes, because they contain some of all the nutrients we need. What is more, they aren’t fattening.”
“The butter is,” said Julie, noting the large chunk he was slotting between the halves.
“Don’t lecture me on diet,” he said as if she were the one holding forth about potatoes. “This is better for me than chips. When I was younger, I practically lived on chips, but then I was burning up the calories playing rugby.”
“You were a rugby player?”
“Played prop.”
“Who for?”
“The Met.”
“Metropolitan Police. That’s a good team, isn’t it?”
“It was. These days they’re languishing in Division Five South.” He sprinkled chopped ham over the potato and tried some. “I needed this. Do you want to hear a rugby story? In the mid-seventies, we were drawn away against a Welsh team in the cup. Swansea, I think it was. We had a South African playing in the second row for us. He was on attachment to the Met for six months, doing some sort of course on dog training. An enormous fellow. Bit of a bullshit artist actually. Played a lot of rugby in South Africa. Bruce was his name. Can’t remember the surname. Something Afrikaans that didn’t sound the way it was spelt. Anyway, four of us were driving to Wales in a Ford Anglia. No team buses then.”
“Including Bruce?”
“Including Bruce. He was a pain about his rugby. He reckoned the standard of play was much higher in South Africa and he couldn’t wait to get started and show us how brilliant he was. Now, the guys in our team were great practical jokers and when we were getting close to Wales on the M4 one of them had the lovely idea of asking Bruce if he’d brought his passport with him. You should have seen his face. He said he didn’t know it would be needed. Of course we wound him up then, saying how strict the Welsh were at the border crossing point and that he should forget about playing rugby that afternoon. We’d better drop him off on the English side of the Severn Bridge and pick him up on the way home. He was shattered, totally taken in by all this.
“Then someone suggested that we put Bruce into the boot and cover him over with tracksuits and shirts and things and drive across the bridge. He was touchingly grateful. So we stopped at Aust services on the English side and watched this massive South African climb in and try and make himself inconspicuous.”
“Rotten lot!”
“We closed the thing and drove across and stopped the car just beyond the tolls and walked around it pretending to be a border patrol, tapping on the bodywork.”
“Then did you let him out?”
“Not until we’d driven another ten miles. And then nobody let on, because when the match was over and we were driving back, we did the whole thing again.” He shook with laughter, remembering it. “Well, he had scored a couple of jammy tries.”
Julie said, “That’s so mean! Men’s humor is a mystery to me.”
One of the first people they saw on returning to Manvers Street was Chief Inspector John Wigfull, officious as usual, issuing orders along the corridor to some hapless civilian clerk who had rashly stepped out of her office.
“There you are,” he said when he’d done with her, pointing toward Diamond and Julie as if they needed to account for themselves. “Can I have a word?”
“What about?” asked Diamond.
“Mrs. Violet Billington. You interviewed her this morning, I believe.” The tone was definitely accusing.
“I did.”
“Alone?”
Diamond said, “Yes,” trying to sound unflustered while his thoughts careered both backward and forward seizing on alarming possibilities. Surely the old biddy hadn’t made a complaint. He’d treated her fairly, for pity’s sake. Once before in this place where protocol was holy writ he’d been carpeted on a trumped-up charge of assault. That was the occasion when he’d thrown up the job.
“How was she?” asked Wigfull.
“What’s this about?”
“Mrs. Billington. I’m asking how she was.”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “All right.”
Wigfull said, “Because we’ve got her downstairs. She’s battered her husband senseless. Any idea why?”
Diamond shook his head, lost for words.
Wigfull went on to explain that less than an hour ago an emergency call had come in from the house in Larkhall. The student lodger had returned from college to discover her landlord, Winston Billington, lying unconscious in the hall bleeding from head wounds. Assuming that someone had broken in, the student had rushed through to the kitchen to see whether Mrs. Billington had also been attacked. She had not. She had been sitting at the table drinking vodka. She had admitted to the student that she was responsible for the assault and had agreed that as her husband still appeared to be breathing they had better call an ambulance.