Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey

Author:Peter Lovesey [Lovesey, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781569478530
Google: 7K0hvchvrxAC
Amazon: 1569478538
Barnesnoble: 1569478538
Goodreads: 6445698
Publisher: Soho
Published: 2009-08-31T18:30:00+00:00

21

Diamond had been at his lowest point, hunting the murderer of his wife, when he had last seen Louis Voss. His old colleague had managed to trace a crucial contact. If Louis didn’t already know what was happening in London, he would know someone who did. Nobody in the Met was better at working the grapevine. Officially Louis was a civilian now, but still at Fulham nick, managing what he called his team of computer cuties. The loss of CID status hadn’t cramped his style one bit.

This morning he was in the saloon bar of the Fox and Pheasant, off the Fulham Road, when Diamond arrived about eleven with Keith Halliwell. The lop-sided smile was punctuated by a wink. ‘Black Baron, gents? Much needed, I reckon, after the M4. And I bet I know who wasn’t driving.’

‘We’d still be on the road if I was,’ Diamond said.

Louis was right. They’d come in Diamond’s car, now roadworthy again, with Halliwell acting as chauffeur.

‘Keith, meet my old friend Louis, the wizard of ops, as he’s known.’

‘Was,’ Louis said. ‘I’m just a geek now. What’s your part in this, Keith, apart from driving him at forty miles an hour, maximum?’

Diamond said, ‘He’s the main man, the SIO on the case.’

Louis greeted this with a faintly amused look and then went to order the drinks. He could remember every trick Diamond had ever pulled.

‘Nice of him,’ Halliwell said.

‘Don’t be fooled,’ Diamond said. ‘We’ll find he’s started a slate in my name. I know this guy of old.’

‘We can go halves,’ Halliwell offered.

‘That’s all right. We’ll need to fill up with petrol on the way home. You can take care of that.’

One more trick. Unfortunately there was no one Halliwell could clobber.

Louis returned with their pints. ‘Make the most of this,’ he said. ‘You’ll be on straight vodkas later.’

‘Who have you lined up for us?’

‘This hasn’t been easy. There’s a lot of suspicion. The Ukrainians are charming people, but if they once suspect you’re from immigration, you’re as welcome as a bowl of cold borsch.’

‘They can’t all be illegals.’

‘I mean it, Peter. Watch your back.’

‘Nothing new about that.’

‘Don’t make any assumptions. They’ve been through every kind of hardship back home: wretched conditions, ten thousand per cent inflation, rationing, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. When independence came, it didn’t make the difference they hoped for. There was corruption, organised crime, Mafia killings. It took the Orange Revolution to make a real break.’

‘The Ukrainians over here interest me more.’

Louis grinned. ‘Fair enough. And you’ve come to the right place. Waves of them arrived here in the nineties. Life at home was so harsh, particularly for women, that a lot of the young got out. These escapees are mainly the people you’ll meet, in their thirties and forties now.’

‘The woman we’re interested in would have been around twenty when she was killed,’ Halliwell said, impatient to get to the point. ‘We don’t know why she came to Bath.’

‘Nice place. Why shouldn’t she?’ Louis said.

‘We think she could have been trafficked.

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