Peter Lovesey - Cop to Corpse

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.’

‘This 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?’