Bristol is a recurring point of connection between police work, an unexpected emergency, and an earlier unsolved crime. The city is where Peter Diamond has given evidence in court, where an indirect police tip originates, and where he recalls a remarkably elusive theft from a Southmead boutique.

Court, journey, and emergency

After giving evidence in court at Bristol, Peter Diamond asks his driver for a lift back to Bath. He is therefore in the car by chance rather than responding to a planned assignment when an emergency call comes over the radio soon after they set off. The call concerns a bank, abruptly turning the journey away from an ordinary return trip and into police business.

A tip passed through Bristol

Bristol also figures in the uncertain chain by which information reaches the police. The ACC explains that the tip has travelled indirectly: Sergeant Plant, a CID officer in Bristol seeking information on another matter, picked it up from one of his informants. The account establishes Bristol as a link in the information network, while emphasizing that the source is not direct or fully certain.

The Southmead shoplifting case

In conversation, Diamond recalls a professional shoplifting case from his own patch in Bristol. The target was a boutique in Southmead, and the theft was a night job involving thousands of pounds' worth of designer gowns. The thieves neither broke in nor damaged anything; they left no fingerprints and, as Diamond stresses, did not even set foot on the premises. The police never caught them, and it took a long time to work out how the theft had been carried out. The anecdote presents Bristol not only as the setting for current police activity but as the site of an earlier crime whose method resisted investigation.