Cop to Corpse (33 page)

You’d think the policeman would have picked her up.’

‘He was on duty. Anyway, soon after the inquest was in the papers, Tim started getting stopped by the police for things they never usually check, tyres, emissions, a dodgy brake light, mud covering the number-plate, so-called speeding when he was just on the limit. It became obvious it was a campaign to get his licence taken away. And that’s what happened in quite a short time. We can’t say for certain that some of the things that went wrong – like low tyre pressures – were caused deliberately, but we’re very suspicious. He got in trouble several times over and in the end he lost his licence to drive a taxi.’

‘That’s so unfair. Him an ex-soldier, too.’

‘And people treated us like shit – neighbours, shopkeepers. They’d all read the papers. The only ones who were sympathetic
were other cabdrivers. They know it could easily have been them. But they couldn’t do anything to help. We decided to leave. That’s why we moved here.’

‘And he’s been unemployed since?’

‘He had to sell the car, so he can’t do taxi work. He rides a motorbike now.’

Anita gave me a Mother Superior look. ‘Hearing what Vicky goes through puts our little enterprise into perspective.’ She turned back to Vicky. ‘It’s light relief, isn’t it, my pet?’

There was no response from Vicky. I could see it had been a huge effort for her to talk about her problem.

The tension between us was unbearable. I felt it was up to me to end it and I knew how. ‘All right, I’ll tell you the name of Heathrow man. It’s John Smith. And now you know as much as I do.’

Anita began to laugh. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘I checked the invoice book this morning.’

Vicky blinked several times, as if snapping out of a trance. ‘John Smith? That’s amazing. So what are we going to do about him?’

24

I
n the morning Peter Diamond put in a later appearance than usual. The word had spread in CID that he’d personally arrested the Somerset Sniper overnight, but it hadn’t been the triumph it might have been. At the scene, the capture had been messy. Back at the nick, he owed the team an apology. Almost every line of enquiry he’d initiated had been shown as mistaken. No one was going to forget that his focus had been closer to home. They hadn’t missed the irony that he, of all people, had nicked a man who by all accounts wasn’t a serving officer, an ex-officer or even a civilian employed by the police.

So it wasn’t going to be a case of round to the pub, lads, we nailed this together. No one knew what the big man’s mood would be.

He looked none the worse for his wrestling match on the riverbank – except for what he was wearing: a houndstooth sports jacket with leather elbow patches, grey flannel trousers and crepe-soled canvas shoes. God only knew where he stored such relics. There was a distinct smell of mothballs. His movement was ponderous, as if every muscle was stiff, yet he wasn’t carrying the stick and the limp had gone as he passed through the CID room on the way to his office.

Actually he sounded energized. ‘Morning, people. Ingeborg and Paul, I need to hear from you about last night.’ He left the door open.

Looks were exchanged. It seemed to be business as usual, regardless that the main suspect was under arrest in the cells downstairs.

‘What did you come up with?’

In his office, Ingeborg played along, assisted by Paul Gilbert, with a short account of their walkthrough of Harry Tasker’s beat, how they’d got the tip that Anderson Jakes might have information and where they’d tracked him down and what he had to tell them about Harry’s possible dealings with Soldier Nuttall’s son, Royston.

‘It’s all academic now,’ she added. ‘In view of the arrest last night, we don’t need to pursue this.’

‘Why not?’ Diamond said.

‘It’s dirty linen, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t talk to me about dirty linen. Both my suits are at the cleaner’s.’

‘Guv, no one wants bad stuff like this to come out, even if it’s true. Harry’s funeral is on Thursday.’

‘I thought I made myself clear at the meeting the other day. If Harry was up to no good, it has to come out. Nothing is off limits.’

‘But we’ve got a man in custody.’

‘Has he confessed, then?’

‘Not yet. I don’t think they’ve got much out of him.’

Paul Gilbert added, ‘He seems to be claiming the right to silence. But they’ve sent his shoes to forensics and taken his prints and we’ll soon know if he’s the killer.’

‘Shows how much you know about forensics,’ Diamond said. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

Gilbert gave a queasy smile.

‘He’s within his rights not to say anything.’ Diamond’s mouth curved in a way that wasn’t charitable. ‘He’s Jack Gull’s catch. Well, more or less. Jack always believed the guy in the woods is the killer and that’s who we nicked and now he can go to town on him. We’re pursuing our own line of enquiry. This Royston sounds like someone we should speak to. Where does he hang out?’

Suppressing a sharp, intolerant sigh, Ingeborg said, ‘Claverton Down. He lives with his father.’

‘Soldier Nuttall?’

‘Right.’ The triple nod she gave said it all about Nuttall’s reputation.

‘Is the kid employed?’

‘It seems not. He’s a young man of independent means, thanks to his father. A bit of a wheeler-dealer, according to Anderson.
What he deals in wasn’t made clear, except it’s a cut above what most of the others handle.’

‘Sounds like hard drugs. And he’s a night bird, obviously. This morning might be a good time to find him at home.’

A little of the colour drained from Ingeborg’s cheeks. ‘You want us to go to the house?’

‘It’s a lot easier than trailing around the streets at night. I’d better come with you.’

‘I can handle it,’ she said quickly.

‘Put it another way. I need to come with you. When there’s a suspicion a police officer was corrupt, I have a duty to get involved.’

She eyed him warily, suspicious that he was being over-protective. ‘What about Paul?’

‘It won’t take three of us.’ He turned to Gilbert. ‘Have a quiet word with the PCSOs who share that city beat with Harry Tasker. If he was on the take as we now suspect, they’ll surely have heard a whisper.’

Before leaving the office, he eyed the overflowing in-tray. The morning’s mail had been heaped on top of yesterday’s. With care, so as not to spill everything on the floor, he extracted those sheets listing the personnel at Wells, Radstock and Bath. He held them over the waste-paper bin. And then some inner prompting made him hesitate. He stuffed them into his top drawer. On the way out, he turned to Keith Halliwell and casually asked him to deal with the mail. Opening letters was all too boring for a man of action.

Down at Avoncliff, three of Avon and Somerset’s underwater search unit were following up Diamond’s report of a loud splash in the river. A rigid inflatable boat was secured with lines from the bank and the first diver and his attendant were aboard and ready to start.

‘What exactly are we looking for here?’ the constable in the scuba diving suit asked before taking the plunge.

‘Mr. Diamond said it was heavier than a bird and lighter than a body,’ the sergeant in charge said from the riverbank. ‘Think of it as a lucky dip,’

‘If it was a branch off a tree it would have floated away.’

‘And we wouldn’t want to find it, would we? He thinks it was an object slung in the water by the guy they arrested last night.’

‘The sniper? Maybe it’s his gun.’

‘That would be the top result. I suggest you stop going on about it and go down and have a look.’

The diver nodded, adjusted his mask and tipped off the side of the dinghy.

He wasn’t down for long.

He bobbed to the surface and gave a thumb-down sign.

‘What’s wrong?’ the sergeant asked.

The diver pushed up his visor. ‘Visibility almost nil. Do we have the sonar equipment?’

Their grey USU van was nearby. The operation was halted for a while.

Even with sonar, and after several dives, nothing seemed to be down there.

The sergeant studied his map and said to the diver’s assistant, ‘I hope this is the right stretch of river. They could have left a cone here to help us.’

‘They like to test us out.’

The diver submerged again. He took much longer.

‘Not a bad spot,’ the sergeant said, looking at the wooded hills surrounding them. ‘There’s a good pub a short walk from here. Do you know the Inn at Freshford? Nice old place with a packhorse bridge. If he doesn’t surface soon, I’ll be off there for a pint.’

Then the water churned and the diver’s head and shoulders came to the surface.

‘Got something?’ the sergeant said.

He poured the water from his find and held it up: a motorcycle helmet, black and shiny. ‘Hasn’t been down there long,’ he said. ‘It’s in good nick. Why would anyone want to chuck this away?’

Diamond continued to function as if he were high on caffeine. ‘Jack’s done us a bloody good turn,’ he said to Ingeborg as she drove out of the police station in her shiny Ford Ka. ‘All the media interest is going to be on the man he’s holding. We can come and go as we like.’

‘Isn’t he the sniper, then?’

‘I honestly don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is he tried damned hard to get away.’

‘Wasn’t he armed?’

‘They looked in the rucksack and all he was carrying were a few apples and a cut loaf.’

‘Money?’

‘A few quid in his trouser pocket.’

‘What was he doing by the river?’

‘Same as me, I expect. Trying to avoid being picked off by one of Jack’s sharpshooters.’

‘So you think he knew the stakeout was in place?’

‘Most likely. If he is the sniper, he’s been smart avoiding arrest all these weeks. He’s not going to blow it by being too obvious.’

‘And if it isn’t him?’ Ingeborg said as she steered left and they crossed the Avon at Churchill Bridge and approached one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s oddest indulgences, his railway viaduct disguised as a castle wall.

‘It will have been some ne’er-do-well out late. Didn’t stop him spotting one or other of the firearms team and steering a wide berth. Do you know where Soldier Nuttall lives?’

‘I must have passed the gate a hundred times,’ she said, not wanting to be patronised. She moved out to overtake a farm vehicle. ‘There’s something else I ought to tell you, guv. Last night when we were doing the rounds and questioning people, someone told me about a blog she’d been looking at. Sounds as if it’s posted by some woman who reckons a friend’s partner has been acting suspiciously.’

‘In what way?’

‘Staying out all night, secretive, refusing to answer questions.’

‘Male?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not uncommon,’ he said. ‘It’s known as playing away.’

She gave him a world-weary look. ‘How does it help us?’ he asked.

‘It appears they live in Bath. The blog never says so, but when you read it carefully, there’s enough to tell you she’s located here. I visited the site this morning and I’m satisfied it can’t be anywhere else. This guy is obviously up to no good and the woman is terrified.’

‘Not just a wandering husband?’

‘It’s got the feel of something much more serious.’

‘Get in touch with the blogger, then.’

‘I wish we could. She’s taken good care she can’t be traced. I guess she feels freer to write whatever she likes.’

‘Can’t be traced? I don’t follow you. We’ve got hackers who can break into anything.’

‘Not this. It’s a site that uses an elaborate relay system, bouncing anything that’s posted on it from point to point until no one can get back to the source. Intelligence agencies use it to disseminate their own information, but they’ve never succeeded in cracking it.’

He gave a nod of approval. ‘In a way it’s heartening to hear there’s something computers can’t do – until you realise it’s been set up by a bloody computer.’

‘People are involved as well. Do you want to look at it when we get back?’

‘I’d better. We can’t neglect anything.’ His head turned. ‘Hey, did you notice that – an old-fashioned sweetshop with big glass jars in the window?’ He’d spotted the display in Widcombe Parade, along Claverton Street, in a row of shops with traditional fronts that supposedly imparted a ‘village’ feel to them.

After a pause, Ingeborg said, ‘You don’t do much shopping, do you, guv?’

‘Why?’

‘They’re opening everywhere, old sweetshops, every town on the tourist map, anyway. Don’t ask me why. I don’t bother with them.’

‘Sweet enough?’

She didn’t say so, but she found the comment about as cringe-making as the outfit he was wearing.

Widcombe Hill morphs into Claverton Down Road a mile out of the city and then loops around the contour and doubles back. At almost the farthest point out, Ingeborg swung the little car into a space in front of a set of closed iron gates.

‘This is it.’

A straight drive between lawns led to a large three-storey building. Block-like in shape, the house had an institutional look, rows of windows as regular as a prison. But it was heavily clad in some climbing plant like wisteria that had established such a good hold that it reached to the eaves.

‘Wouldn’t be my choice,’ Diamond said.

She shrugged. ‘Up here, the air’s easier to breathe than it is in Bath through most of the summer. Prime location and plenty of land. I bet you wouldn’t get much change out of ten million.’

‘Let’s see how we get in.’

A notice on the gatepost informed them:
Callers strictly by appointment. Video surveillance in operation. High voltage protection. Guard dogs patrolling
.

‘And a hundred thousand welcomes,’ Diamond said. He pressed the entryphone button and put his head close to the mesh. Nothing happened and the gates stayed shut.

‘Maybe you should say something into it,’ Ingeborg suggested.

‘Like: open up, it’s the Old Bill?’

‘I was thinking more along the lines of: special call for Mr. Royston Nuttall with something to his advantage.’

‘You try, then. You’ve obviously got the patter and you’ll look better on the video.’

She tried and those assets made no difference.