The Summons Read Online Free PDF Page B

without so much as a look, through the double doors and out into the night air.
    Tott.
    He said aloud, “What kind of plonker do they take me for?”
    He strode up Manvers Street in a state of outrage; a case of rocketing hypertension. Some way up the street he realized that spots before the eyes are not a healthy sign, and he had better talk himself into a calmer frame of mind. At least he’d had the gumption to walk out. He ought to be feeling better for asserting his independence. He would try the Francis Hotel in Queen Square; a congenial place to get his head on a pillow until morning, when he would return home by train. At lunchtimes in the old days when things were quiet at the nick he had sometimes popped into the Roman Bar at the Francis for a beer. In more benevolent moods than this he had basked in the plush ambience suggestive of less stressful times. It was easy to picture city worthies in pinstripes, with waistcoats and watch chains, entertaining flighty young ladies in cloche hats.
    Bath’s city center was safer for walking than London would have been at that hour. The only people he saw were a group of homeless men huddled around the grille behind the Roman Baths where the warm air was emitted. Safe it might be, but the option of spending the rest of the night on the streets had no appeal. If the hotel wouldn’t give him a room at this hour, he’d make his way to the railway station and wait for the first train.
    Ahead was the glass-and-iron portico of the Francis, facing the stately trees and unsightly obelisk of Queen Square. He was within a few paces of the revolving door when a police car with flashing beacon screeched around the corner of Chapel Row toward him, disregarding the one-way route around the square.
    There is nowhere to step out of sight on the south side of Queen Square. No lanes, passages or shop doorways. There are just the railings fronting the hotel. Diamond wasn’t built for running or jumping and he didn’t fancy entering the lobby with policemen in pursuit, so he stepped to the curb and waited.
    The patrol car stopped and someone in a leather jacket and jeans got out of the passenger seat. Diamond registered first that she was female and second that he had recognized her. His memory for names wasn’t so bad as he had feared. Julie Hargreaves had been a sergeant in the CID at Headquarters when last they’d met. She had impressed him as an able and dependable detective.
    Disarmed, he relaxed his posture and grinned. “It’s a fair cop, guv. You’ve got me bang to rights.”
    She smiled back. “I was willing to bet you’d make for the Francis.”
    “My old watering hole.”
    “Smithie’s checking Pratt’s.”
    “It takes one to know one,” he commented. “Are you going to put an armlock on me, Julie?”
    She said, “I ought to. You’re the most wanted man in Bath.”
    Sensing that she might be willing to share some information, he said seriously, “I wish someone would tell me why. Mr. Tott appears to think he still has the right to have me hauled out of bed, driven a hundred and twenty miles and dragged before him in the middle of the night. I foolishly assumed that the Gestapo was a thing of the past.”
    She said, “Pardon me, Mr. Diamond. We’ve got a real emergency on.”
    “So I was told.”
    “It wasn’t Mr. Tott who sent for you.”
    “No, that’s true,” he conceded. “It was the Great White Chief, Farr-Jones.”
    “Mr. Tott isn’t calling the shots. He’s involved, but only as a victim.”
    “A victim?”
    “In a sense. Well, strictly speaking, he isn’t a victim himself.” Floundering, she said finally, “But his daughter is.”
    “Tott’s daughter?”
    “Look, would you forget I told you that?” She glanced over her shoulder toward her driver. He was talking into the intercom, so she added, “They mean to brief you in their own way. They’re counting on your cooperation, absolutely counting on it.”
    “What can I do that other