Peter Lovesey - Cop to Corpse

Total silence.

Ingeborg was the first to speak. ‘That sounds to me like a witch-hunt.’

‘And that’s a comment that does you no credit, Inge,’ he said. ‘This is a murder enquiry, remember? “You’re next” — right? If we take it seriously — and I’m telling you that’s our duty — Harry was picked out to be shot. We must assume the others were picked, too, all serving policemen. If they were lorry-drivers or construction workers, you wouldn’t think twice about checking the career records of people who served with them. I’ve been around long enough to know that not all police officers are angels. In fact I could name several who committed murder. This may go against the grain, but it has to be done.’

Ingeborg shook her head and went silent.

You could have built a wall from the antagonism in the room. Still, he wasn’t backing off.

‘Keith, you can take this on,’ he told Halliwell.

‘Do I have to?’

‘What?’ This time the shock was on Diamond’s side and it was like being hit by a demolition ball. For his oldest colleague to question an order, this had to be a full-blown revolt. ‘It’s a routine job, for pity’s sake. Someone in personnel will press a computer key and the names will roll out at your end.’

Halliwell had turned crimson. ‘I’m not happy with it, guv. It seems disloyal.’

‘Not to me, it isn’t.’

‘You’re putting me in an impossible position. We’re being asked to investigate hundreds of brother officers for murder. I’ve never done that before.’

‘If we had a union,’ Ingeborg started up again, ‘it would be a strike issue.’

She earned sounds of support for saying that.

‘But we don’t,’ Diamond said, ‘and our job is to uncover the truth. I don’t like what I’m hearing. All I want at this stage is that list of names. No one is being fingered. We’ll eliminate most of them straight away.’

‘And finger the ones who are left,’ Ingeborg said.

He was incensed. ‘That’s out of order.’

Flushing all over her blonde skin, Ingeborg paused before saying, ‘Guv, have you any idea what this kind of shakeout is going to do for everyone’s confidence, morale, team spirit — all those things we pay lip service to.’

He hadn’t expected this degree of opposition. No one was siding with him and neither could he expect them to now that Keith Halliwell had dug his heels in. Ingeborg sounding off was one thing, but Keith wasn’t a hothead. He carried the respect of the entire team.

It came down to a test of Diamond’s own self-belief. He’d been arguing that the killer’s knowledge of police duty rosters made it inevitable that the crimes were internal. Was there a flaw in his logic?

There was. He had been expecting someone on the team to nail him.

In their stroppy mood they had failed to see that if the sniper was a policeman targeting specific victims he had to know the beat rosters at three different stations over a period of twelve weeks.

Just about impossible.

So there was still a chance that the “You’re next” note was a joke, as Halliwell had first suggested, unrelated to Harry Tasker’s shooting and not connected to the crime. If so, then Gull, blast him, could be right in his assumption that the choice of victims was random.

I’m losing my authority here, he thought, and my case isn’t watertight. I’ve failed to convince my team. Usually I have a sense of what is solid evidence, but have I been too hasty here?

He had a nagging suspicion that he was motivated by the rivalry with Jack Gull. Had he let the man get under his skin to that degree?

Uncharacteristically, he backed down.

‘I’m not going to make an insubordination issue out of this,’ he told them, making it sound as much like a smooth transition as he could. ‘We’ve been together too long to allow a difference of opinion to stop us from functioning. I don’t mind admitting that what I suggested takes some swallowing. I’ve had longer than you to think it over. Keith …’

Halliwell did a fair impersonation of a rabbit in headlights. ‘Guv?’

‘You can disregard that order I just gave you. I’ll re-examine everything I just said. In return I’m asking you — all of you — to reflect further. If you have any better ideas, then for God’s sake make them known to me.’

This, from their shit-or-bust leader, created as big a sensation as the issue itself.

In the Wife of Bath (a Pierrepont Street restaurant renowned for its generous portions) that evening with Paloma Kean, his friend and occasional partner, the shit-or-bust leader confessed to bust. ‘I boxed myself in. Messed up totally. I could feel the ground crumbling under me and there was nothing I could do. Even as I was speaking I knew if I were one of them I’d feel just as angry.’

‘But if you believe a policeman is involved in the crimes, it has to be faced,’ she said.

‘Only if it’s true. The question is whether the evidence stacks up, and it does — but not enough.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t work out how he knew so much about the day-to-day running of three different police stations.’

‘Was he transferred? That happens, doesn’t it?’

‘Not twice in three months.’

‘Are the beat duties notified to your headquarters?’

‘Good thinking, but no. It’s decided at the local level. There’s enough form-filling without that.’

‘I’ve run out of ideas, then.’

‘Me, too, more’s the pity.’

‘There’s another thing I can’t understand,’ Paloma said. ‘Why would the sniper send a note like that? What’s the point?’

His eyes widened. This was a different angle. ‘Bragging, I suppose.’

‘It conflicts with everything else he does. He’s secretive, stealthy, keeps his distance. Why risk sending a note and potentially revealing information about himself?’

He started thinking aloud. ‘Maybe all the secrecy doesn’t satisfy him. He wanted Harry Tasker to know he was next for execution.’ He leaned back in his chair and rested the knife and fork on the plate. ‘You’re onto something here. The note doesn’t have much point unless there’s some history behind it. I wonder if Harry himself knew why the others had been murdered. There could have been bad blood that involved all three — and the killer. Then the note makes sense. It was sent out of malice. Harry received it and knew his turn had come. For the sniper, that brought satisfaction.’

‘Sadistic.’

‘That’s my reading, anyway.’

‘If I received a note like that and knew what it meant, I wouldn’t agree to walk the beat at night,’ Paloma said. ‘I’d find any excuse to save my skin.’

‘Fair point, but where would you be safe? This is a clinical killer. You’d have to resign your job and never leave your home. And would you feel any safer in there? I doubt it.’

‘So you’re saying each of the victims knew who their killer was?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Couldn’t they have informed on him?’

‘If they all got death notes, you mean? It depends what motivated the murders. I’m speculating now, but it could have been some bad business they didn’t want made public at any cost.’

‘Bad business?’

‘Some kind of scam.’

‘But they were police officers.’

‘We’re not all angels, as I had to remind the team. Corruption gets exposed once in a while, and some goes undetected.’

‘I thought you said the three victims never served together.’

‘Yes, but the sniper could have served with all three at different times. That’s why I’m so committed to getting staff lists and going through the names.’

‘You’re sticking with that?’

‘Definitely, but as a solo effort. My team is dead against it.’