Peter Lovesey: Cop to Corpse

‘What woke you — a noise?’

‘If you really want to know, I needed a pee. Then I was awake, so I started to work. Ten or twenty minutes after, I heard the shooting.’

‘Where were you when you heard it?’

‘I told you. At my desk. Over there by the window.’

The room is typical of early nineteenth century Bath houses, high-ceilinged, corniced, spacious. And typical of the twenty-first century, it is in use as a bedsit, crammed with self-assembly furniture. The desk is hard against the sash window and books are stacked on it. One book is open and there is a notepad beside it.

‘With the curtain drawn?’

‘Yes. I heard the gunfire and didn’t know what it was so I pulled back the curtain and saw the guy lying there. He wasn’t moving. That’s when I phoned. I didn’t go out to him because I was scared, to be honest. Is he dead?’

‘You heard more than one shot?’

‘I think so.’

‘What do you mean — “think so”? You’d know if there was more than one.’

‘There could have been an echo.’

‘Do you have any sense of where the shooting came from? Was it close?’

‘It sounded bloody close to me. Other people must have heard it.’

‘The difference is that you were already awake. Was the gunfire from out in the street, would you say?’

‘Well, obviously.’

‘As distinct from one of these houses?’

‘I get you. I couldn’t say that. How could I tell?’

‘Do you remember if there was a vehicle nearby?’

‘There are some parking spaces that get filled up quickly. Otherwise it’s double yellow lines all the way.’

‘I’m not talking about parked cars, for God’s sake. Did you hear anything after the shots, like a car or a motorbike moving off?’

‘I don’t remember any. I could be wrong. I was in shock, to be honest.’

‘You keep saying “to be honest”. You’d better be honest with me, young man. We’ll need a written statement from you. Everything you remember.’ Lockton nods to the constable and leaves her to start the paperwork.

It is still before 4:30 A.M.

Reinforcements are arriving all the time. Lockton knows he could find himself replaced any minute as the Senior Investigating Officer. He needs to make his opportunity count, and soon. He moved over to where the police surgeon has now stepped back from the body.

The shooting fits the pattern of the previous attacks. The entry wound is above the right ear. The bullet must have fragmented inside the skull, shattering much of the opposite side of the head. It’s not a sight you want to linger over.

‘Nothing I can tell you that isn’t obvious. A single bullet wound.’

‘We think there may have been more than one shot,’ Lockton says.

‘Have you found other bullets, then?’

‘Not yet. Other priorities. Is there any way of telling the direction of the shots?’

‘Depends where he was when he was hit. The bullet entered here, quite high up on the right temple, and you can see that most of the tissue damage is lower down on the opposite side. That could be an angle for you to work with.’

‘You’re talking about the trajectory?’

‘That’s for you to work out. I’m only here to examine the body.’

‘A high velocity bullet?’

‘I’m a doctor, not a gun expert.’

Ken Lockton goes into deduction mode. ‘It’s unlikely the shooting was from ground level, so it’s a good bet he fired from above us, like a window over one of the shops.’ He’s pleased with that. CID would approve.

‘In that case, he would have been walking away from the town centre, towards Walcot.’

Lockton isn’t sure now. He betrays some of the tension he feels by chewing his thumbnail. ‘The right side, you say.’

‘You can see for yourself.’

Actually he’s seen more than he wants to. He doesn’t need to look again to know where the bullet entered. He gives a nervous laugh. ‘His shift was nearly over. He should have been heading the opposite way, back towards Manvers Street nick.’

‘So?’

‘If you’re right, the killer wasn’t on the shop side. He must have been somewhere behind us.’ He turns to look again at that massive brick rampart along the west side of the street, a far cry from the cleaned-up stone structures that grace most of the city. Blackened by two centuries of pollution, the wall is tall enough and grim enough to enclose a prison.

A disused Victorian fountain is recessed into the brickwork under an arch flanked by granite columns. When the market across the street thrived, the trough must have been a place where thirsty horses were watered after delivering goods. Its modern use is as a flowerbed — with insufficient cover for a gunman to crouch in.

‘I’m leaving,’ the police surgeon says. ‘I’ve pronounced him dead. There’s nothing more to keep me here.’

Lockton is too absorbed to answer.

Left of the fountain his eyes light on an ancient flight of steps leading up to Bladud Buildings. Is that where the shot was fired from? The gunman could have made his escape up there and be in a different street.

His heart-rate quickening, Lockton crosses for a closer inspection, runs halfway up the steps and at once discovers a difficulty. It is far too narrow. To have fired from a height the sniper needs to have been at least this far up, but the tall sides mask the view. You can’t see the fallen man from here. The sniper would have needed to wait for his victim to draw level across the street. The shooting from the steps didn’t happen.

Cursing, Lockton descends, returns to the middle of the street, stares at that long expanse of wall and gets a better idea. Up to now he has accepted the structure without fully taking it in. Now he can see that the brickwork isn’t entirely solid. At intervals there are cavities where entire bricks are missing. Maybe they are meant for drainage. They look like spy-holes.

Or sniper points.

The holes go in a long way. Beer cans have been stuffed into some within reach. You could put your whole arm into them. It’s hard to tell how far back they go.

He has assumed up to now that solid earth is behind the wall. Still thinking about the possibility, he steps back for a longer look and some way to the right of the fountain notices a door and window spaces.

A lock-up. It belongs to a local firm that salvages and retails masonry and statuary.

His spirits surge.

Padlocks and hasps would be no great problem for a committed assassin.

He orders two pairs of armed officers to force the lock-up door.

The window spaces would be ideal sniper-points, allowing a clear view of the street and a human target walking by.

Overhead, the police helicopter hovers, more proof of the seriousness of this operation. This is the biggest moment of Ken Lockton’s career. All of this is under his command, the chopper, the cars, the bobbies stepping down from minibuses, the gun team yelling, ‘Armed police,’ as they storm the lock-up.

The doors are kicked in and the interior searched by flashlight. In a situation as tense as this, violent action is welcomed by the team. Inside are large chunks of masonry and statuary harvested from old buildings all over Somerset, griffins, dragons and hounds. Several are large enough to hide behind.

But it ends in anticlimax. There’s nothing to show that the lock-up was entered recently. The team steps out, deflated.

4:40 A.M.

Lockton feels the pressure. For all he knows, the sniper could be inside one of the shops or flats holding people hostage. Each dwelling will need to be checked, every resident questioned as a possible witness, but unless something happens quickly this will have to be a later phase in the operation, after he hands over responsibility. Headquarters have already radioed to say CID are on their way and will take over.