A Death in Diamonds полностью

Perhaps he hadn’t judged her harshly as she’d left the flat this evening, after all, Joan thought. She had the impression that, sweetly, he would have liked to have ridden in on his charger and rescued her from Tony’s evil clutches. Instead, he’d made her cocoa.

Then she thought of something else.

‘You said you knew Tony at university. Was he the person who told you I was looking for somewhere to live?’

‘Yes, that’s right. I’d mentioned at the club that I was thinking of getting rid of the flat. A few days later he rang me up and told me about Sir Hugh’s predicament, and you.’

‘Mmm.’

But he hadn’t told Hector about Joan McGraw – he’d mentioned John. And ‘John’ was somebody that Hector would be happy to share a flat with, occasionally. He might have said no to a ‘Joan’, but now that she was here . . . and given the kind of low-class girl she was . . . who knew what might ensue?

Joan was either very paranoid about Tony Radnor-Milne, or she was right.

Darbishire put his empty glass down on the gingham-covered table.

‘Another one?’

The inspector definitely didn’t want a top-up of whatever gloopy green liqueur he was being offered. The first had been bad enough.

‘Yeah, thanks,’ he said. ‘That’d be nice.’

‘I thought you’d like it,’ Jimmy Broad said with a grin. ‘Got a bit of an edge. Unusual.’

Darbishire couldn’t tell if the other man was teasing him or telling it straight. Either way, it didn’t matter. One of Billy Hill’s most trusted henchmen was talking to him face to face, and right now, he’d down a pint glass of that foul liquid if it helped.

Jimmy was solicitous. ‘I ’ear you’ve been ’aving some trouble,’ he said, filling his own tumbler with water from a rustic jug. ‘With this little strangling case of yours. ’Ow can I ’elp?’

‘It’s kind of you to offer.’

‘Anytime. You only ’ave to ask.’

Jimmy sat back and smiled from across the table. The besuited man sitting beside him in the dingy Notting Hill restaurant smiled too. So did the gorilla at the door, who made sure nobody else was getting in or out.

Darbishire did not only have to ask. The men of the Billy Hill gang didn’t normally try to assist the police in any way – except by providing work for them to do. Everything about this situation was unusual, including the fact that the inspector was not tucked up in bed at this very late hour. His wife would be worrying about him. He was worried about himself.

‘It’s about Dino Perez,’ he said, knowing Jimmy already knew this part. ‘Or Nico Rodriguez, as I should call him. Known to the police in Argentina. Arms dealer. Fixer. International man of mystery, you might say.’

It had taken a while to find out Perez’s real identity. He had no known friends and family either here or in Argentina, his forged papers were designed to be confusing, and the bloating and discolouration of his face when he was found hadn’t helped at all. However, Buenos Aires eventually came up with a match, and now the information was flooding in. Rodriguez was of interest to police forces in four continents.

Jimmy nodded and said nothing.

‘Quite the globe-trotter,’ Darbishire went on. ‘Contacts in the Middle East, North Africa. The man who could get you whatever you wanted. He liked to dabble in cocaine.’

At this, Jimmy raised a hand. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

Darbishire took this little denial on board. ‘He had a taste for the high life, let’s say. Gambling in Monaco and Morocco. Putting a packet on the horses over here. He was seen in the company of one or two of your associates, Jimmy, before he died. So, perhaps that’s what you can help me with.’ God help me, he added, privately. These encounters always looked so smooth in the movies, but he was sweating in his shoes.

‘I’m not sure I can, entirely,’ Jimmy answered. ‘Not with what Rodriguez was up to in London, at any rate. What a man does with his leisure time is up to ’im, isn’t it? It’s a free country.’

Darbishire didn’t bother to argue. ‘Then why am I here?’

‘It’s what ’e didn’t do,’ Jimmy said.

‘OK.’

‘And what ’e didn’t do, is rattle the boss. In fact, they were friends.’

‘Your boss has been known to do a bit of damage to his friends,’ Darbishire pointed out. Billy Hill was famous for it. Sudden, vicious violence. Plentiful blood and scarring. He enjoyed it, and it was the main reason he’d been the top dog in the London underworld for ten years and counting.

Jimmy assented. ‘Ah, well, that’s the thing. You know Mister ’Ill. ’Ow ’e likes to operate.’

‘I do. He likes a knife. And one was found in Rodriguez’s eye,’ Darbishire added. Jimmy clearly knew it already and had something to tell.

‘But what kind of knife?’ Jimmy asked. ‘That’s the thing. The one in the eye was a flick knife, wasn’t it? From America, or Italy?’

‘Germany, in fact.’