A Woman Unknown Page 0,96

King was trying to confide in me but lost his nerve.

I wanted to kick myself for not being more perceptive.

It was several hours before more information emerged regarding the seventy-five pounds in fivers found in Leonard Diamond’s locker. Marcus ordered that fingerprints be checked. He sent his sergeant to interview King.

There were three sets of dabs on the notes: the cashier’s, King’s and Diamond’s. On the envelope that contained the money were two sets of dabs: King’s and Diamond’s.

I could imagine King’s nervousness at being asked to explain how his money came to be in Leonard Diamond’s locker. Even with the evidence staring me in the face, I hoped there would be some innocent explanation.

Duffield had voiced his suspicions of his old friend when he produced the photographs of unlikely couples. But several of the photographs were so innocuous as to raise my doubts. I wanted to believe that this was simply part of Len’s interest in candid shots, human interest pictures.

I had shared my conclusion with Mr Duffield: blackmailer, but still searched for another explanation, not wanting to believe the worst. Grasping for other possibilities, I came up with the mad hope that Len Diamond was in the process of exposing a wrongdoer. The hope did not last long.

As the minutes and hours ticked by, I saw the photographs again in my mind’s eye, especially the ones of people I knew: Deirdre with Joseph Barnard on Leeds Bridge, Philippa Runcie with the groping Lord Fotheringham, and Gideon King with one of the beaters at the shoot. And the anonymous couples caught in unguarded moments.

Some pictures were innocuous, perhaps, but may make a guilty person worry that something worse might be known about them. What I found so difficult to grasp was that a talented, gifted man such as Diamond could have stooped to blackmail.

Given my part in gathering this evidence, I hoped that Marcus might include me in the investigation that followed. Some hopes!

Yet he did have the courtesy to speak to me privately about the outcome of his sergeant’s investigation. We were in the hotel room. Marcus sat at his desk, King’s statement in front of him. ‘Mr King admits to withdrawing the money from his bank on Tuesday, 28th August, the day before the Ebor Handicap. He says the money was in his wallet and was stolen.’

This seemed to me unbelievable. ‘Why was it in an envelope?’

‘He said he was keeping separate his gambling money and what he wanted to hold onto, what he had withdrawn for his own expenses.’

‘Did he report the theft?’

‘No. He claims to have felt foolish.’ Marcus looked at King’s statement, and read part of it to me. ‘King says, “What sort of idiot lets himself be pickpocketed? It’s not as if there are no warnings. One should be very careful at a racecourse.” He says that he did not mention the loss to others in his party because he did not want to spoil the day. Someone jostled him on his way into the grandstand.’

‘Did he mention Leonard Diamond?’

‘Oh yes, though he pretends not to know the man’s name. He says he had a bit of an altercation with a photographer, that he pushed the man away, to try and stop him photographing Mr and Mrs Runcie and Miss Windham.’

It struck me that King could hardly have denied that, given the number of witnesses who saw him elbow Diamond aside. That contact between King and Diamond could have been engineered: the moment when money changed hands.

Marcus pushed the photograph of King and the young beater at the shoot across the desk. It was not a very good photograph, falling short of Diamond’s standard in terms of composition and lighting, but then one would hardly have expected the two fellows to pose for him.

I faced up to the fact, and made myself say it aloud: ‘Len Diamond was a blackmailer. He was blackmailing King, and King paid up.’

Marcus stared glumly at the photograph. ‘So it would seem. And perhaps King did not pay enough, and decided to end your photographer friend’s life. He may have done a lot of people a favour, but if that proves to be the case, the noose dangles perilously close for Mrs Runcie’s private secretary.’

‘Have you arrested him?’

‘No. There’ll be more digging before we get to that stage. King thinks he will be getting his pickpocketed money back, and that the fingerprinting was for purposes of elimination. He won’t be going anywhere. I have his passport, and have