Cop to Corpse (6 page)

‘I don’t have to tell you police work is like that a lot of the time,’ Diamond said. ‘Loads of boring stuff you wouldn’t want to hear about.’

‘You don’t get it, do you, bloody man?’ she said, widening her big eyes, ‘Anything is better than silence.’

Lady, you’re going to get a lot of that in the weeks and months to come, he thought. ‘I’m asking these questions because we have to be certain he wasn’t shot by someone he knew.’

‘He was killed by that madman who’s been targeting policemen, wasn’t he?’ she said. ‘I’ve forgotten what they call him.’

‘The Somerset Sniper. That’s a strong possibility. If so, it was almost certainly done because Harry wore the uniform, nothing more. He was a cop, so he was fair game. Doesn’t make it any easier to accept.’

‘To come back to your question, I can’t think of anyone who hated him enough to kill him.’

‘Did he have any interests outside the police?’

‘Fishing.’

He took this as another rebuke. ‘I’m doing my job. We need to know.’

‘I said. He fished, with a rod and line. Is that clear enough for you?’

He gave a faint, embarrassed smile.

She added, ‘He didn’t get much time for it.’

‘You must have gone out together sometimes. Where did you go? A favourite pub?’

‘You’ve got to be joking. If we went out more than twice in the past year I can’t recall it. All he ever wanted was to put his feet up and watch telly. It was the job. It tired him out. If I go out, it has to be with the girls, my buddies. That’s all the excitement I get.’

‘This being a murder enquiry, you’re going to have to put up with any number of questions like these. We’ll need to look at everything connected with Harry, bank statements, phone, address book, diary, computer. It’s a huge invasion of your privacy, but necessary. I’m telling you this so that you’re prepared.’

‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘You’re telling me so that the copper who gets the job doesn’t get the blasting you’ve just had. You’re shell-shocked. You look worse than I do.’

Whatever his condition, he needed to drive into the city again. On the car radio the local news reports were coming in of the fatal shooting of a uniformed policeman in Walcot Street and they were linking it to the two previous shootings. He’d completed his next-of-kin mission in the nick of time, even though it hadn’t been the sympathetic heart-to-heart he’d planned. He’d left Emma Tasker in the care of a policewoman trained in helping the bereaved. She would surely cope better than he had. Next-of-kin interviews were never easy, but that one had shaken his confidence. He didn’t have time dwell on it. Soon the media tsunami would swamp everyone. Good thing Jack Gull was in charge.

In the Paragon, the house-to-house was under way. Keith Halliwell had finished interviewing the close neighbours and nobody had spotted the sniper. Some had reacted to the sound of the shooting by going to their windows. So thick and high had been the crop of weeds that a gang of gunmen could have operated from that garden and not been seen.

‘Getting on for five hours since the shooting,’ Diamond said to Halliwell. ‘If he’s got any sense he’ll be miles away by now.’

‘Unless he lives here.’

‘Right. What’s your take on that civil servant, three-gun Willis on the top floor?’

‘In the clear. His licence has been checked. Each of those rifles is registered. The Devizes Gun Club confirms that all three are in their armoury, secure. There’s no way he could have used one this morning and got it back to Devizes by the time we interviewed him.’

‘An unlicensed gun?’

‘If there is one, we didn’t find it. His flat was well searched.’

‘He wouldn’t have it in his flat after using it, would he? He’s a careful bugger. Willis is still top of my list. That bedroom window.’

Halliwell gave a faint grin. ‘If he’s as careful as you say, he wouldn’t have left the window open. The thing is, he may be nicely placed to have carried out this morning’s shooting from his bedroom, but what about the earlier killings in Wells and Radstock?’

‘Trust you to sabotage a good theory.’

Diamond went through the house to the garden and stopped short of the stinging nettles. ‘Any joy?’ he called to the senior crime scene man.

For an answer, a transparent evidence bag was held up. Whatever was inside was too small to make out.

‘What is it?’

‘A cartridge case. A shot was definitely fired from here.’

‘Only the one?’

‘I’m told two were heard. He could have tidied up the first and missed this one. He’s usually more careful. Now we’re checking the brambles for fibres. It’s going to take some time.’

‘Rather you than me. Good find, though.’ He stared up at the top flat, where Willis lived. A shell case ejected from that height could have dropped anywhere in the small garden. And that window was now closed.

Out in the street, a patrol car joined the row of parked police vehicles just as Diamond emerged from the house. A uniformed sergeant got out, spotted him, and shouted, ‘Mr. Diamond, sir.’

The big man waited with arms folded.

The sergeant looked like a man who has been told he has a terminal illness. ‘Sergeant Stillman, sir.’

‘I know who you are,’ Diamond said. ‘Is there news?’

‘I thought I’d better speak to you. I just heard about Inspector Lockton being injured.’

‘You’re the last, then. We found him all of two hours ago.’

‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’

‘Serious enough to have put him in intensive care. He took a blow to the head. What’s your interest in all this?’

‘I drove him up here.’

‘This morning?’ Diamond’s attention quickened. ‘You must be the second man.’

‘Must I?’

‘A young blonde woman in pyjamas opened the door to Ken Lockton and a mysterious sergeant in uniform. If that was you, you can’t have forgotten.’

‘That was me, yes.’

‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘Asleep in the car, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Sleeping on duty while a full scale alert is going on?’

‘Technically, yes.’

‘What do you mean “technically”?’

‘Ken Lockton dismissed me, so I drove back to Walcot Street and parked by the barrier for a short nap. That was the intention. I was flaked out from night duty.’

‘Let’s re-run this from the start. How come you teamed up with Lockton?’

‘Pure chance, sir. He caught my eye in Walcot Street when he had his idea. He told me to drive him up here because he reckoned the shooting must have come from this direction. We buzzed a couple of doors and he was interested in this house because the basement flat wasn’t occupied. The blonde in pyjamas let us in. He asked me to force the basement door.’

‘That was you?’

‘My big foot. We went through the empty flat and found the rifle in the garden.’

The hairs rose on the back of Diamond’s neck. ‘What rifle?’

‘The sniper rifle propped against the railings at the end. You must have found it by now.’

A slow shake of the head. ‘You’d better describe it.’

‘I don’t know much about them. Black. About this length. Telescopic sight, I think. A box-type magazine that curved a bit. We didn’t touch it, sir. Kept our distance. Ken Lockton was chuffed to find it. I remember saying if I was the gunman I wouldn’t leave it there. I’d come back for it. Ken agreed and said it gave us a chance to nab him. He was raring to go. Then I reminded him that our car was still in the street out front – something he hadn’t thought of.’

‘Advertising your presence?’

‘Exactly. He instructed me to drive back to Walcot Street. I asked if he wanted armed back-up and he said if he did he’d use his own radio.’

‘You didn’t report any of this?’

‘Ken was the SIO at the time – before anyone more senior got there – and he made it very clear he intended to make the arrest himself.’

‘He wanted the glory?’

‘He didn’t use those words.’

‘But that was your understanding?’

Stillman nodded.

‘Is this the first time you’ve mentioned it to anyone? Does Chief Superintendent Gull know any of this?’

‘Not yet.’ He blushed scarlet at the prospect. ‘Should I …?’

‘Get some proper sleep, in a bed. I’ll fill him in.’

Diamond had some sympathy now he’d heard the tale. If anyone was to blame for what had happened, it was Ken Lockton and he’d paid heavily for his overambition. Presumably the gunman had been nearby when the police arrived, hiding in the basement or the garden, and had attacked Lockton from behind. True, it would have been helpful to have known for sure about the gun two hours ago, but in the bigger picture it might not matter.

But give Lockton his due, he thought: his theory had been correct.

Diamond’s own pet theory – that Willis fired the shots from his bedroom window – now felt less appealing than it had a few minutes ago. Maybe the civil servant had preferred a closer range from the end of the garden. The problem with this was that leaving the murder weapon propped against the railing didn’t chime in with Willis’s fastidious character.

The time for theorising ended. Keith Halliwell sprinted towards Diamond. ‘Radio message from Jack Gull. A suspect has been sighted. There’s a stake-out in Becky Addy Wood.’

‘What am I supposed to do about it?’

‘He wants you with him. He’s about to leave.’

5

‘T
his is the breakthrough. I feel it in my bones,’ Jack Gull told Diamond, seated in the back of a BMW response car with lights flashing, siren periodically screaming, as it powered over a mighty hill known as Brassknocker, the quick way out of Bath to Avoncliff and Becky Addy Wood.

‘Bully for you,’ Diamond said. All he could feel in his bones was the lurch of the suspension on the winding roads. What was going on in his stomach mattered more to him. He hated being driven fast. Embarrassing, in his job. A few of his team knew of this frailty. Gull did not.

‘I heard about the cartridge case being recovered,’ Gull said, expecting a businesslike exchange of their findings, even at this speed. ‘And we picked up one of the discharged bullets. Would you believe it was lying in six inches of silt at the bottom of a drain? I guess it bounced off the wall into the gutter and dropped out of sight.’

‘It’s gone for examination, has it?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up. It impacted with stone and is well mangled. If nothing else, ballistics should be able to tell us which kind of rifle he used. It sounds like a semiautomatic again.’

‘The rifle. I must tell you about that,’ Diamond said and was forced to go silent again as a field to his left reared up like a tidal wave, threatening to tip a flock of sheep onto them. Coming down Brassknocker the contours were fearsome.

‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’

By fixing his gaze on the driver’s headrest, he regained a measure
of self-control. Staccato-style, he reported the gist of what he’d heard from Sergeant Stillman. He left out plenty, including how and when the information had reached him.

So when Gull said, ‘What a tosser,’ he meant Ken Lockton.

It seemed fair enough that Lockton took all the blame. His ego trip had ruined a real chance of catching the sniper.

‘Do we have ballistics evidence from the earlier shootings?’ Diamond managed to say.

‘Yep. Some of the bullets hit soft earth and were in good enough shape to check the rifling,’ Gull said. ‘No cartridge cases. Usually he’s careful to pick them up. He uses a Heckler and Koch G36, same as the police-issue weapon.’

‘That’s rich, killing our people with one of our own guns.’

‘There are thousands out there.’

‘As many as that?’

‘They’ve been manufactured since the nineteen-nineties. It’s the frontline assault rifle of the German army and several of the NATO countries. Are you armed?’

‘Right now, you mean?’ Diamond admitted he was not.

Gull shook his head in disbelief that anyone could be so ill-prepared. ‘Bad move. This guy is a cop killer.’

‘Good move actually. No one would be safe if I had a gun in my hand.’

‘Even so, you should be wearing body armour. It’s a good thing I have a spare set in the boot. Pity you’re not armed, though.’

Diamond was starting to wonder if he should have come at all.

‘No sweat,’ Gull added. ‘We’ll have the Wiltshire armed response lads in support.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ Diamond said. The car briefly became airborne going over a hump in the road. ‘Strewth!’ With a supreme effort to sound untroubled, he came out with a question worthy of a job interview. ‘When did you first get involved in this operation?’

‘After the Radstock shooting, when it was obvious we had a serial sniper murdering policemen.’

‘Is the MO similar in each case?’ He had an inbuilt dislike of abbreviations, but at high speed the Latin was too much of a mouthful.

‘Same fucking gun, never mind the MO,’ Gull said. ‘The rifling on the bullets is identical. But, yes, he likes to get to a high position and lie in wait. In Wells, he used a kids’ tree house overlooking
the street. In Radstock, he was on some scaffolding up the side of a new building.’

‘Fingerprints.’

Gull shook his head. ‘He’s a careful bastard.’