The Diamond Cat Read online

  “I’ve told you I won’t let Adolf out.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I mean … Mrs. Rome was alone in her house when she was attacked. And now you’re going to be alone in our house … Be careful. Lock the doors.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Vivien said blithely. “Don’t worry. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”

  “Yes, but this is the place next door.” But Vivien had gunned the motor and driven off.

  Bettina looked after her unhappily. Should she have denied her access to the house? Too many inexplicable things were going on in the formerly quiet neighbourhood. Or was Vivien so deeply involved that she was perfectly safe?

  And why had Graeme been prowling about in the back garden with that stupid excuse about a cat crying? Had he any reason to suspect that Sylvia had never left for Edinburgh at all? Did he think she might have been the first to encounter the man who had killed Mrs. Rome? Was her body lying somewhere in the bushes awaiting discovery? But the police had gone over the area thoroughly when the workman’s body had been found. Had that been the accident it seemed?

  And why was she standing here outside the hospital asking herself all these questions? She knew the answer to that one: because it was easier than going through those doors to face whatever was awaiting her. She took a deep breath and started forward.

  Then Zoe was coming to meet her. Zoe, with an expression on her face Bettina had never seen before.

  “Sorry, Bettina,” Zoe said. “She really did have a bad heart, after all.”

  After the car had swerved for the third time, Bettina’s nerve snapped, her mother’s grim foreboding echoing at the back of her mind.

  “Be careful! You almost hit that tree.” Perhaps it had been ill-considered to begin telling Zoe the story of the Bank Holiday weekend while she was driving.

  “Sorry about that.” Zoe pulled over to the kerb. “You now have my undivided attention. Keep talking.

  “Actually, that’s about all there is to it.” Bettina found that she had run out of words. She didn’t want Zoe’s undivided attention; it was too much like a dress rehearsal for the talk she would have to have with Inspector Hughes. He seemed a pleasant, mild-mannered man, but the thought of his undivided attention suddenly terrified her.

  “Oh, is that all?” Zoe was heavily sarcastic. “Hardly worth bothering to mention, was it?”

  “I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you since you got back,” Bettina defended. “Someone was always around.”

  “Well, they won’t be now,” Zoe said bleakly.

  “No.” The tears were perilously close again. “Do you—Do you think it was my fault? What happened to your mother? To my mother?”

  “Not in the way you mean it,” Zoe said. “I think you’re the classic case of the innocent bystander, minding your own business and suddenly pitched into a situation not of your making which you couldn’t begin to understand. The best thing to do was keep quiet. If you’d started shouting about it, you might have got us all killed. I mean—”

  “They’ve been killed anyway.” Bettina stared blankly out of the window, she couldn’t look at Zoe. Her hands suddenly felt very cold; she began rubbing them. Her feet were freezing, too.

  “That’s enough for now.” Zoe started the car again, took an unexpected turn and they rolled off in the opposite direction.

  “Aren’t we going home?”

  “Not quite yet.” Zoe made another turn; the lights of a late-night shopping centre loomed ahead. “We have one little errand to do first.”

  When Zoe came out of the off-licence, she was carrying two clanking bags. “Scotch, gin and brandy,” she announced. “With a few mixers. That should see us through the night.”

  “More than one night,” Bettina said.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Zoe dumped her shopping in the back. “From what you’ve been telling me, I have the feeling we might have company.”

  “That policewoman did say someone would be along to question us again.” Bettina felt almost proud of herself for being able to remember anything at this stage. “Because it’s a murder case now. But the police aren’t allowed to drink on duty.” She looked at Zoe in sudden confusion. “Are they?”

  “You’re not trying to confuse the issue,” Zoe assured her. “You’re just in a state of shock.”

  Shock. Bettina closed her eyes and a wave of red seemed to pass across them. The red of the Romes’ floor. But Zoe wouldn’t have that much of a shock because Mother had gone in and thoughtfully cleaned up the kitchen. It was Mother who had had the worst shock—and it had killed her.

  The murderer had killed both mothers—but the policewoman had said that Mrs. Bilby wouldn’t count, strictly speaking. The killer hadn’t laid a finger on her. Indirect killing couldn’t be prosecuted. No one could have known how weak Mrs. Bilby’s heart was—or how fatally her friend’s death would affect her.

  Someone gave a sob—and Bettina realized it was herself.

  “Easy,” Zoe said. “We’re almost there.”

  “Stay together!” Zoe said as Bettina veered off towards her own gate. “We want to put the supplies in my house—and then I want to take a good look at that pigeon.”

  “Adolf—”

  “Forget about Adolf!” Zoe could say that. She didn’t know. Bettina had not quite got round to explaining about Adolf and his appetite yet.

  “The cats are safer than we are!” And that was no lie. “Take one of these bags.”

  Bettina complied and followed Zoe into the Rome house. It seemed strangely cold and empty. With a great deal of trepidation, she trailed Zoe into the kitchen.

  Mrs. Bilby had done a good job. Only someone who had seen the room in its original state could know how good.

  Fortunately, Zoe had no idea. She hesitated in the doorway then, seeing nothing out of place, marched forward to deposit her bag on the kitchen table and began unloading it.

  It took Bettina rather longer to move forward and join Zoe. A helpless, trancelike state seemed to have descended upon her. She could move and observe, perhaps even talk if the impetus were strong enough, but for all the reality she was feeling she might well be in the midst of an out-of-body experience.

  Shock, of course. Shock was the answer to everything these days. Shock and stress. Heaven knew there had been plenty of stress over the past few days.

  “Put the ginger ale and tonic in the fridge,” Zoe directed, dealing with her own problems by trying to convince herself that she was in command of the situation.

  Bettina obeyed Zoe’s orders. It was easier than arguing. And what was there to argue about? Like an automaton, she moved the contents of her bag onto the shelves of Zoe’s refrigerator, recklessly shoving the other items aside to make room for the bottles. Surely, Zoe had overbought; but that was probably the measure of her shock.

  Bettina felt a great longing for her own bed. To sink down into it, pull the pillow over her head—no! Not that! She straightened up, eyes wide, gasping for air, fighting for control. The simplest cliché was fraught with menace at this point. A pillow was only comforting when it could be tossed aside at will. The vision of it being pushed down relentlessly, blocking air passages … held tight by an unseen enemy …

  “Bettina!” The exasperation was worthy of Mrs. Bilby. “Shut the fridge door and come over here.”

  Bettina turned—and quailed. Zoe was brandishing a large knife with a long, broad, sharp serrated edge.

  “Now …” Zoe set the knife down on the table. “Sit down and let me see those diamonds!”

  Numbly, Bettina reached into her pocket, brought out the cylinder and balanced it on the table between them.

  Zoe reached for it, twisted off the cap and spilled out the diamonds in a bright glittering arrow across the table. After one dismissive glance, she ignored them to concentrate on the little cylinder.

  “Handmade,” Zoe decided, examining it closely, turning it round and round. “Beaten out thin like pewter work. You can
see the little flat surfaces where the hammer has hit. They needed it as thin as possible to reduce the weight so that the bird could carry more gems.”

  “Yes,” Bettina said faintly. That made sense. It was not something she had thought about; she had been too stunned by the sight of the diamonds themselves.

  “It’s just a shell, practically an eggshell.” Zoe frowned down at it. “Far too light to hold anything else.”

  “That’s right.” Bettina nodded. Now that the extreme fragility of the cylinder had been pointed out, she could see it. She had not noticed it before. She still could not see that the fact added to the sum of their knowledge. It was not as if the craftsman had signed his work.

  “That leaves the bird itself.” Zoe pushed back her chair and strode towards the larder. “Let’s see what that can tell us.”

  “No more than the message tube,” Bettina said. “I looked.”

  “Ah!” Zoe said. “But did you look inside?”

  “Inside what?”

  “Inside …” Zoe gestured over her shoulder to the knife on the table inside the bird.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Oh, I think I can.” Zoe’s voice was muffled as she bent over the freezer chest, rummaging in its depths. “That knife is specially made for cutting frozen food. It ought to be sharp enough.”

  “I mean—” Bettina winced away as Zoe brought the frozen pigeon over and slammed it down on the table, tearing away the shroud of paper towels. It seemed to have shrunk a bit and looked terribly forlorn. Once it had been somebody’s pet.

  Zoe seemed to feel it, too. She picked up the knife, then stood hovering over the pigeon irresolutely, not quite sure where to start. After a moment, she turned it over, beak down, but that wasn’t a great improvement. Bits of frost glittered in the crevices of its feathers.

  “But why do you want to do this?” Bettina grimaced with distaste. “What are you looking for?”

  “The bug, of course,” Zoe said. “There has to be one.”

  “Bug?” Bettina recoiled.

  “Not that sort of bug,” Zoe said impatiently. “The tracing sort. The kind you hide under the dashboard or somewhere on a car and it gives out a location signal so that you can follow it. How else do you think those people knew where to start looking?”

  “You think someone got some kind of electronic device into the pigeon?” The idea made a certain sense. “But how?”

  “How do I know? Maybe they rammed it down his craw. Maybe they had a vet do it, the way they implant microchips in dogs or cats so that they can always be identified. All I know is I sure as hell wouldn’t load up a bird with a fortune in diamonds and send it winging off into the night without making damn sure I knew I could keep track of it. Would you?”

  “No,” Bettina said slowly. All sorts of odd happenings could be explained if that were the case. “Then all those people running around after the storm weren’t trying to unblock drains, they were looking for the pigeon’s body. They knew it had been last heard from in this general area, but they couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. There must have been electrical interference from the storm disrupting the signalling; they might have thought their bug had short-circuited or something. Then I hid the pigeon in the deepfreeze—and that would have cut off any signals being emitted.”

  “Exactly.” Zoe half closed her eyes and chopped downwards with the knife. It rebounded off the carapace of ice and feathers.

  “When the transmitter stopped signalling, they thought the pigeon had been brought down in the storm and perhaps been swept into a gutter blocking a drain. That was why they were probing all the drains, they were desperate to find it before it went into the sewer and was carried out to sea. They were just giving up when—” She broke off as she remembered what had set them all off again.

  “They must have gone mad thinking they’d lost all those diamonds.” Zoe was following her own train of thought. She attacked the bird with a sawing motion now and distressing crunching noises began filling the air. She appeared to be making some headway.

  “Put it back!” Bettina caught at Zoe’s arm. “Put it back in the freezer. Quickly!”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Zoe gave her a distracted look. “I’ve almost—”

  “When you took it out of the freezer before …” Bettina said. “That’s when they came back. It’s still transmitting signals. They’ll be able to pinpoint us if you keep it out any longer. Put it back!”

  “What makes you think they’ll still be around?” Zoe was reluctant to stop, the pigeon was almost cut in half.

  “They’ve never gone very far away. And Vivien is in my house with the cats. I’m sure she’s one of them.”

  “Oh, very well.” Zoe seemed only half convinced. She picked up the pigeon and, still holding the knife, started for the larder. “Perhaps I can put it inside the freezer and keep working on it. The insulated sides and the electric current ought to muffle any signals.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” a man’s voice said behind them. “It’s too late. I’m afraid you’ve been caught redhanded.”

  Chapter 17

  “Graeme!” Bettina found that she was not really surprised. There had always been a little too much unexplained about Graeme Martin. Yes, and Sylvia, too.

  Zoe glanced down at her hands where tiny red crystals were liquidizing, literally turning her red-handed.

  “Just put the knife down on the floor,” Graeme said, “and bring the bird back to the table.”

  “If I do,” Zoe tried to bargain, “will you put that gun away?”

  “Ah, no. I’m afraid that isn’t part of the deal.”

  “Are we going to have a deal then?” Zoe looked cheered.

  “Perhaps.” Graeme gestured with the gun. “First, the knife. On the floor. Slowly. No sudden moves.”

  Zoe crouched, not taking her gaze from his face, and set the knife down at her feet. He nodded.

  “Now over to the table,” he directed. “Put the bird down. Carefully. Not near the—” His voice changed, possessiveness and avarice colouring it. “Not near my diamonds.”

  “Your diamonds?” That did surprise Bettina; her mother had been so sure that the Martins were on the verge of bankruptcy. Was this another of Sylvia’s get-rich-quick schemes, like the art collection and the plan to breed Pasha?

  “Did you buy them in Brussels?” Not too legally, perhaps, especially if he had had to smuggle them into this country by way of the carrier pigeon.

  “Brussels?” He looked startled for a moment, then gave a short, mirthless laugh. “No, I earned them. Here. Don’t worry, they’re mine, all right.”

  “Is the pigeon yours, too?” Zoe laid the bird gently on the table, well away from the gems.

  “Only in the family sense,” Graeme said. “It belongs—belonged—to Sylvia’s father. Pigeons are his hobby.” He glanced at the bird. “Pity you felt it necessary to mutilate the thing. We’ll have to tell him it got thrown away. Can’t let the old boy see it like that. Ah, well, he has a loft full of the dreary blighters. No accounting for taste.”

  “I gather you found it useful,” Zoe said.

  “I thought it might be,” Graeme admitted. “The most difficult part of this sort of procedure is collecting the ransom. That’s where they have the best chance of catching you. I read about the carrier pigeon method in an old American true crime book. It was tried a few times in the 1920s and ’30s. Now I can see why it didn’t catch on.” He looked down at the bird distastefully.

  “Even then, the main problem was that the pigeons were too easily distracted and didn’t always fly straight home. It must have been unnerving to have a certified cheque—encashable by anyone who found it—or a small roll of high-denomination banknotes flying around out there somewhere and have to wonder, for perhaps days, whether your bird had been blown off course and lost at sea or been killed by some bloody cat when it landed for food.”

  “They didn’t do it,” Bettina defended automatical
ly. “The bird was dead of a broken neck when they found it.

  “I thought modern technology had overcome that problem.” He ignored her protestations. “I planted a directional signal in the bird before Alf delivered it to, er, the people who were going to pay the ransom in nice unidentifiable diamonds. The theory was promising, but the execution left something to be desired. However”—he advanced on the table—“all’s well that ends well—and here are my diamonds.” He frowned down at them. “Is this all of them?”

  It was the question Bettina had been dreading. It came so suddenly she could not check the telltale movement of her hand towards her pocket.

  “All right.” Graeme had not missed it. “Let’s have the rest of them. Slowly. No sudden moves.” He was more on edge than he looked. What was he planning to do with them?

  Bettina slowly drew the large round brilliant-cut diamond from her pocket and set it on the table beside the others. Then, even more slowly, she brought out the large pear-shaped stone.

  “Is that all?” Graeme was still suspicious. How much did he know?

  “That’s all,” Bettina said firmly. She could not let him know about Adolf. He had no feeling for cats at the best of times and poor Adolf wouldn’t stand a chance against this man’s greed.

  “I’ll just make sure of that.” Graeme moved in closer.

  “Keep your hands up.” The gun was unnervingly pushed against her throat, tilted up towards her chin. Graeme groped in her pocket, bringing out and discarding with disgust the crumpled paper handkerchief.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Zoe pleaded.

  “I have no intention of hurting anyone.” Graeme checked Bettina’s other pocket and stepped back.

  “Nice try.” He grinned at her cheekily. “A little bit of larceny in every soul, eh?”

  “It wasn’t that.” Bettina felt herself flushing. “They wouldn’t fit back in the cylinder, that’s all.” Indignantly, she wondered how she had suddenly been put in the wrong when it was Graeme who—

  “I notice you kept the two largest ones.” Graeme gathered up the diamonds from the table and transferred them to one of his own pockets. “Just get a bag for that damned pigeon,” he said to Zoe. “I’ll take it along with me and dispose of it.”