Peter Diamond

  A Mysterious Profile

  Peter Lovesey

  You cannot imagine how infuriating it is to be a character in a book, let alone a series of books. More than thirty years ago a chancer by the name of Lovesey fastened onto me and has been plundering my personal history ever since. He’s a writer, by which I mean he makes things up and gets them published—except that in this case they’re not made up. He taps into my life for plot ideas. I’m the uncouth Peter Diamond of the Bath police he writes about and I head the murder squad.

  Heaven knows my career deserves to get into print, but not the libellous way Lovesey does it. He didn’t ask permission. He got on with it knowing that as a serving officer I wasn’t free to write up the cases myself. By the time I heard what was happening he was already into his second book and I was going through a rough patch scratching a living in London as a Harrods security guard, having resigned from the force on a point of principle. I was in no position to sue. When I had my old job back and asked the duty solicitor for advice, I was told my case would be difficult to prove. Litigation is complex. When a lawyer says complex, it means expensive. She talked about libel, defamation, breach of copyright, identity theft, impersonation, and the cost of seeking an injunction. Reeling from it all, I decided not to go down that road.

  Lovesey recently announced his twenty-second book about me. Twenty-second! Yes, I’m a series. They are sold as fiction—one of the reasons I can’t touch him. His readers think I’m a figment of his imagination. That’s another pain. Each time I introduce myself to someone new—even fellow-officers—I get the same toe-curling comment: “You’re kidding!” And then: “I thought you were a character in a mystery series.” They say this to my face. They can see I’m flesh and blood. After I convince them I really do exist, I get an even more insulting follow-up: “You’re not much like the Peter Diamond in the books. He’s smart.” (Or good-looking, or witty, or dynamic). If I didn’t have the hide of a rhinoceros, I would have lost all confidence in myself.

  As an example of the indignities I suffer, Lovesey made me middle-aged in the first book, The Last Detective, back in 1991, which is ridiculous. Do the maths. It would make me over eighty by now. I am mature in years, I admit. I could have handed in my warrant card years ago, but I like my job and the people in my team. Here in Avon & Somerset, senior officers can extend their service if they aren’t completely gaga. Insufficient funding for the police has meant numbers are way down. Detectives with experience like mine are desperately needed. But we can’t go on forever. I keep silent about my age in case some jobsworth at headquarters decides to call time on me.

  So why have I chosen this way to rescue my reputation? When people see something in print, they believe it. This little book is my response to the half-truths and distortions. I can hand copies to disbelievers. It’s also an informal record of a long and fascinating career in public service.

  The publisher, Mr. Otto Penzler, President and CEO of The Mysterious Press, has had an illustrious career himself as a reviewer, collector, editor, anthologist, and bookshop owner. He actually published Lovesey’s books for twelve years but I don’t hold that against him. When it finally clicked with him that I was real, he did the decent thing, got in touch with me, and offered to set the record straight.

  Reader, you’re about to get the truth, the inside story, the stuff Peter Lovesey never discovered.

  I was raised in a London suburb called Twickenham, affectionately known as Twickers. If you think that’s a stupid-sounding name, get over it. Twickers is the home of rugby football, the game that made a man of me. For the uninitiated, it’s a contact sport played without helmets or padding in which we beat the living daylights out of each other and then go for a beer.

  All the internationals are played at Twickenham. The rugby ground was a short walk from my house and as a kid I found a way to get in free. I would tell the turnstile man my dad was one of the blokes who had just gone through and he’d forgotten his heart pills. I’d rattle a pillbox. It worked every time. One day the gate operator remembered me and said, “Don’t tell me he’s forgotten them again. Through you go, son.” And then he winked.

  I grew up to be big enough to play as a front-row forward with the Met. I’ll get to that shortly. I must tell you about my childhood, something you won’t read anywhere else, a secret that the rogue author Lovesey would give his back teeth to know about. You may be sure when he finds out, he’ll lift it for his next book.

  I had a hard time in primary school, a problem with words and spelling that was the despair of my teachers and hilarious to all the other kids. “Look what Peter’s written now, Miss. He can’t even spell his own name.” And no wonder. I was always being taken out of lessons to have my eyes tested, or my ears syringed, or for remedial sessions chanting nursery rhymes to old ladies smelling of the onion soup they had for lunch.

  I don’t like being mocked so I got my self-worth by being cheeky to the teachers. I was the class joker. You see, I had the gift of the gab. There was nothing wrong with my vocabulary. I could bandy words with anyone. It was just that I couldn’t write them down. The pesky letters of the alphabet rioted inside my head, undermined me, mocked me, and made me a laughingstock.

  Even if I picked the right ones, my brain wouldn’t put them in the right order. I was bottom of the class at everything except gym, which I spelt jim, or, on a bad day, ijm. I could climb a rope, kick a ball, and leapfrog better than anyone. Jim lesson was payback time. Many a smart-arse who had mocked me in the English lesson ended up with a bloody nose. No one dared say how it had happened.

  Dyslexia was regarded with suspicion when I was growing up, a middle-class invention to explain why your kid was unable to keep up. There was a joke that when you could spell it, you were cured. I was ten when I was given the label. The remedy was extra homework and more sessions with the old ladies, which didn’t work. I could recite Little Miss Muffet better than Laurence Olivier, but I couldn’t spell it to save my life.

  No surprise, then, that I failed the eleven-plus exam. To their eternal credit, my parents thought I deserved another chance. They were always supportive and believed against all indications that I would benefit from a grammar school education. Dad had been labelled a late developer himself and eventually got a degree in fine art and became chief set designer at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, working with the likes of Peter Brook.

  Mum was even more remarkable, a Welsh miner’s daughter partially sighted from birth who was virtually self-taught in mathematics and ultimately graduated with first class honours from Imperial College, London. They weren’t the sort of people who take no for an answer.

  I was assigned to a private mentor called Miss Crook, who turned my life around. With her frizzy brown hair, owlish glasses, ethnic necklaces, and soft voice, she didn’t strike me as inspiring when I first set eyes on her, but that’s what she was.

  Miss Crook treated me like a genius instead of a loser. She called dyslexia a gift and told me some of the greatest thinkers and inventors, businessmen and artists had been lucky enough to have it: Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, Henry Ford. Word-blind early in life, dismissed as illiterates, their brains had developed new systems of coping. Picasso, Rodin, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Roald Dahl, and John Lennon had all found unique creative ways of expressing themselves. Miss Crook’s mission was to help me find my God-given talent and improve the world.

  My life changed. I was now in an exclusive club called Dyslexics United. I stopped messing about in school and fighting other kids. I listened to Miss Crook reading to me about the great names, their early struggles, and their ways of coping. I started reading about them myself, painfully slowly. She showed me films and took me to museums and exhibitions. Each time a dyslexic person had a success she made sure I heard about it. Muhammad Ali, Richard Branson, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Cher. I was among the elite. And I had a quest. Some deep recess in my brain contained my salvation, my inborn talent.

  I learned to believe in my potential and so, apparently, did some other people. I don’t know how it happened, but at thirteen I was spirited out of my comprehensive and into a grammar school. As Miss Crook said at the time, “Don’t be scared, Peter. They are lucky to get you. There isn’t much grammar. It’s only an old-fashioned name for this sort of school. You’ll learn exciting things like playing rugby.”

  “Try and keep me away,” I said.

  I still had trouble writing and still do, but in everything else I caught up with all the bright kids who had passed the eleven-plus and completed two years of this more demanding schooling. In fact, I was ahead in some ways. I paid close attention and forgot very little. My confidence had undergone a transformation. If some concept was difficult, I didn’t hesitate to question the teachers. I got to recognise knowledge worth having.

  Do you see where this is going?

  My special talent is rooting out and weighing information to see if it’s true, the basic requirement of a police officer. While I was going through school, I decided policing would be my career, and not merely as one of the plods, but a detective, a top detective. Higher education for me wasn’t Oxford or Cambridge. It was Hendon Police College. As I saw it, the job would get me out and about meeting people and making sure the law was upheld. I wouldn’t be behind a desk all day, depressed and self-conscious about my wacky spelling. Actually there’s much more sitting and writing in the force th an I expected, but I found ways of coping that I’ll tell you about.

  Somewhere in one of the books, Lovesey talks about my schooling as if I hated it. I don’t know for sure who gives him his information, but I have a strong suspicion it’s one of the few creeps I have come across in the police, a DI called John Wigfull who disliked me from the start. He was my second-in-command when I got the Bath job. Jealous as the green-eyed monster, he took advantage of my effort to be friendly. Confidences meant only for his ears were passed around the station.

  To impress Wigfull, I laid it on thickly about my years at grammar school, saying I was a regular on slackers’ parade, when kids who hadn’t done the work were called into school on a Saturday morning and caned. It happened to me a couple of times, no more, but Lovesey seems to believe I was beaten every week. I can’t recall discussing my schooling with anyone except Wigfull. Possibly Keith Halliwell, who became my deputy when JW was forced to quit after getting a head injury that almost killed him (you can read about the incident in The Vault), but I’m certain Keith isn’t the snitch.

  Hey-ho, you’re thinking, if Wigfull quit after being attacked, where does Lovesey get his current information? The answer is that JW returned to us (See Skeleton Hill) to work as a civilian press officer—a job that gave him the excuse to poke his nose into everyone’s personal files. Maybe I should accuse him face-to-face but the damage is done. Naming him would lead to an ugly situation with all kinds of mud being slung.

  I’d better clear up something else that may have crossed your mind. How can a dyslexic hold down a senior position in the police?

  With a lot of help.

  Over the years I have always been lucky enough to find someone to check and correct my spelling, someone I can trust. In the first years, it was a colleague, a detective inspector called Julie Hargreaves, totally discreet and with a fine command of English. Julie was a huge support in other ways as well. Let’s admit it, I was combustible—still am, to some extent—and she took the heat out of many a flare-up with the team. Unfortunately, it became too much of a strain (entirely my fault) and she put in for a transfer, which you can read about in Upon a Dark Night.

  I’m starting to refer to these damned books as if they are gospel. They’re not and I deplore them but I’m also a realist. The only reason you, my reader, know about me is because you’ve read one or two of them, or, God help you, the whole boiling lot. Although the novels are deeply flawed, I’m bound to admit they follow the facts. Each investigation really happened, but the full stories have never been told and never will. I’m too old to start writing revised versions.

  I was telling you about my secret helpers. After Julie left, I was all at sea for a while. I brought some of my work home and my patient wife Steph helped me write up case histories and do the official reports. But soon another helpmate joined my team. Her name is Ingeborg Smith. She’d been a thorn in my flesh for some time as a journalist who asked penetrating questions. One of the best decisions of my life was to suggest Inge make a career move and become a cop. I have a suspicion she was waiting for me to propose it. She was fast-tracked into criminal investigation and has risen in the ranks to detective inspector.

  I remember tentatively asking for her help in preparing a report. She said, “I can see you’re struggling, guv. You need an amanuensis.”

  A term I’d never come across. Some piece of electronic wizardry, I guessed. I chanced my arm and said, “That’s exactly what I need. Can you get them on Amazon?”

  She creased up. “No, but there’s one on offer here and she’s talking to you.”

  Later, I checked in a dictionary. It turns out that an amanuensis is a writer’s assistant. It’s from the Latin, servus a manu, “handwriting slave.” Inge is nobody’s slave. If she knew the derivation, she’d have a fit. Makes me smile each time I think of it.

  As an ex-journo, Inge has shorthand and typing and a mastery of grammar. My reports to headquarters are faultless.

  If you’re wondering who wrote the words you are reading right now, allow me to introduce yet another amanuensis, Paloma Kean, the lady I live with. Paloma has a successful business (I wanted to write highly successful, but she won’t allow it) providing expert advice and practical assistance to television and theatre producers working on costume dramas. Her collection of historical illustrations and texts is second to none (That gets past her because it’s true). The phones are always ringing, yet she still finds time for me and my problem with words. Thanks to Paloma, the world believes I’m a faultless writer.

  Steph, Julie, Inge, and Paloma. All women, you’ll notice. I’m so lucky to have met them. Modern computers have a voice dictation function. Will I be using it? No chance. My present arrangement is far better. What’s the opposite of a misogynist? Me.

  Somehow, I’ve got ahead of myself. After leaving school, I joined the Metropolitan Police, the London force known affectionately as the Met. This was the 1980s and policing was a lot different from now. I went through police college at Hendon and became a humble copper. We had our “beats” and wore down our boot leather patrolling the streets and responding to emergencies. All we carried were an old-fashioned truncheon, a torch, a radio, a whistle, and a notebook. No tasers or stab-proof vests. There were enough of us to be visible to the public and we made a point of chatting to anyone who could be helpful. We dealt with stuff no modern cop would believe, like traffic duty and sorting out arguments between rival shopkeepers over how far they could extend their shopfronts. Real crime had to be reported to a CID office with about twenty detectives. I set my sights on joining them.

  Why be modest? I’m damned proud of how quickly I added the “D” to my rank and rose to DS, DI, and DCI. If anyone ever managed it faster, I’d like to know. Actually, I wouldn’t, because I like to think I hold the record. But you won’t find any mention of my rocketing success in Lovesey’s books. You won’t find much about my seven years as the mainstay of the Metropolitan Police rugby team. I was known to our supporters as Peter the Great, which was only partly a reference to my size. We didn’t often lose.

  The only thing Lovesey wants you to know from my time in the Met is the big blot on my career, the Missendale case, and the board of inquiry that hung over me for years. I refuse to go over the details here. If you want them in all their sordid entirety you’ll find them in The Last Detective. Broadly what he says is true. We arrested the wrong man and got him sent down for life. Someone else later confessed. Wigfull will have provided Lovesey with a sheaf of clippings from the tabloids.

  My prospects in the Met vanished like eels through mud. Forced to relocate, I applied for a CID job in Bath, a backwater in Somerset I knew little about. More importantly, Bath knew little about me.

  Even that unravelled when I was carpeted by the Assistant Chief Constable for shoving a twelve-year-old against a wall and putting him in hospital. Sounds appalling, doesn’t it? Believe me, there were extenuating circumstances, namely that the kid kicked me where it hurts most, grabbed my leg, and enabled his mother, a crucial suspect, to escape through the back door. After I shoved him to one side, accidentally brushing him against the wall, he got up and ran off. Only later was he taken to the Royal United to be checked for concussion. A stitch-up, for me, not the boy. There wasn’t even a bruise.

  The ACC didn’t see it that way. He told me he was taking me off the case with immediate effect and handing it to—you guessed—a certain John Wigfull with the acting rank of chief inspector.

  I shared my sentiments with the ACC, resigned and stormed out.

  But as an ex-cop with no authority whatsoever, I solved the case. How did I manage that? By befriending young Matthew, the boy who had blighted my career. I’ve always got on well with kids.

  That was my first short flirtation with Bath. Steph and I returned to London to a series of duff jobs in my case, and a short-lived turn as a school meals supervisor in Steph’s. It was a bad time for Britain’s economy—when isn’t?—and the dreaded word was “cuts.” I had spells as a barman, a Father Christmas, a Harrods security guard, helping in a school for the handicapped, delivering newspapers, and collecting supermarket trolleys. I was about to model in the buff at an art college when we were saved. Out of the blue, I was summoned back to Bath police to deal with a major emergency, the kidnap of the assistant chief constable’s daughter by an escaped prisoner, a man I’d put away, as I thought, for a long spell. They needed me urgently and sent a car to fetch me. I got my old job back on my own terms. Ironically enough, the father of the kidnap victim was Mr Tott, the idiot assistant chief constable I’d last told to stuff the job where the sun never shines. Lovesey turned this into a book called The Summons that won him some kind of award. I bet he didn’t give any credit to me in his acceptance speech.

 

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