Peter Lovesey - Cop to Corpse

Doubtful. And he didn’t want to give encouragement to his prisoner at this stage of the arrest.

He took stock.

If he allowed the man to stand up, the balance of power changed. He could be up and running again, with a good chance of getting clean away.

Another bout of wriggling came to an end.

‘What’s your name?’ Diamond asked.

Silence.

‘Suit yourself. This can’t be comfortable and it could go on some time.’

He was talking to himself as much as the prisoner. There was no logical reason why anyone should come to his assistance. The firearms team were intent on watching the footpath leading to the pillbox. They wouldn’t even give a glance in this direction. And he doubted if he could make them hear.

There were arm-locks he could try, but he hadn’t much confidence he could keep a man under arrest who was so evidently fitter and younger. He didn’t even know if he could still get upright. The chase may have finally done for his dodgy leg. Just about every fibre of his body was aching.

Yet he had a duty to hold out. This squirming piece of bone and muscle could be a triple killer.

Help was urgently needed. He took a deep breath and shouted with all the voice he could raise, ‘Over here! By the river!’ But he was so low to the turf that he knew the sound hadn’t carried any distance at all.

Of course no one shouted back. Anyway, they were in whispering mode, like Sergeant Gillibrand.

‘Diamond here,’ he yelled. ‘Someone get over here, for God’s sake!’

The only immediate result was a heave from the prisoner that almost toppled him. The guy was strong.

A doubt crept into Diamond’s mind. What if this was not the sniper, but some hapless person who had happened to be out late walking by the river? He’d run away when challenged and tried to break free when arrested, but that was the only sure thing against him. Alone in the dark, pursued by someone in plain clothes purporting to be a police officer, mightn’t anyone have made a run for it?

And what if he actually was the lowlife who had been sleeping in the pillbox? Was that the clincher? Plenty of people lived and slept rough through choice or circumstance. Diamond hadn’t ever been fully convinced by Jack Gull’s theory that the killer was at large in Avoncliff.

Gull would point out that the shoeprints collected from the pillbox matched the prints found in Wells. He’d need more than that to get a conviction. He hadn’t yet found the murder weapon.

‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’ he asked again.

An unshaven cheek rasped Diamond’s face as the head jerked away, the closest thing to an answer he’d got so far.

‘What were you doing out here at night?’

Not a murmur.

You do not have to say anything, Diamond mentally intoned to himself from the official caution, and added his own corollary: but what’s stopping you if you’re innocent?

More minutes passed.

If nothing else, the bouts of struggling had stopped. Maybe the guy had exhausted himself. Or was he preparing for one almighty push for freedom?

Diamond tightened his grip, just in case.

He couldn’t be sure how much more time passed before he thought he heard a movement nearby, no more, perhaps, than a rustle in the reeds. More of that wildlife? He wasn’t certain. He strained to pick up another sound.

Getting nothing, he lifted his head and said, ‘Anyone there?’

Amazingly, there was.

Brilliant lights dazzled him, and a voice blared through a loudhailer, ‘Armed police! Don’t move.’

‘Is that it?’ Jack Gull said.

In the yard at Bath Central police station, a van used for transporting prisoners had backed up to the entrance. The rear doors were open, but the grille remained in place. Alone inside, a slight, scruffy man, his clothes coated in mud, sat with his hands cuffed behind him. He looked dirtier, but otherwise no different from the drunks who are brought in any night of the week. Red-eyed, unshaven, not much over twenty, he stared past Gull as if he didn’t exist. His expression wasn’t defiant, or angry, or resigned. It was indifferent.

Anticlimax was about to ruin the night.

Gull had come in specially for his moment of triumph. Fireworks and a fanfare were in order. For while it was Peter Diamond who had detained the man, the major credit had to be chalked up to Supergull for setting up the operation. All the planning was down to the Serial Crimes Unit. As for Diamond, he’d been called in only as a stopgap. He wouldn’t have played any part if Gull hadn’t needed a break after five hours on watch. The silly arse hadn’t even armed himself, or the arrest would have been routine instead of the pantomime it had become.

The tacky circumstances of the arrest did take a little of the glory away. One of the firearms team had gone to relieve himself behind the police line and thought he heard a distant voice down by the river. A small detachment had been sent to investigate and found a large man face down on the river bank. Only after a minute or so did someone spot the second man underneath. His struggles had turned the spongy turf into a mudbath and it was difficult to see where the mud ended and the man began. One man face down can be assumed to be blind drunk, ill or dead; two, in that position, looked like consenting adults. Only on close examination had it been discovered that this was a senior police officer in charge of a suspect.

‘Who is he?’ Gull asked the sergeant who had come in with the van.

‘He hasn’t said.’

‘What did he say when we nicked him?’

‘Nothing, guv. He hasn’t spoken a word yet.’

‘We’ll soon alter that. Didn’t Diamond get anything out of him?’

‘He said not.’

‘Prick.’ It wasn’t clear whether Gull was speaking of the prisoner or his esteemed colleague. ‘Bring him in, then. Let’s see what the custody sergeant gets out of him.’

He stood well back while the grille was unlocked. The suspect was plucked from the van by a couple of PCs not over-concerned about his safe progress down the steps and into the bowels of Manvers Street. As every prisoner discovers, descending from a police van while handcuffed isn’t easy. He stumbled more than once on his way to the desk where a sergeant waited who had seen it all so many times that boredom had set in.

‘Hold it. I don’t want your filth all over my desk. Name?’

The prisoner said nothing.

‘I need your name, sunshine.’

He wasn’t even making eye contact.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying? Give him a prod. See if he’s awake.’

The prod had no result.

‘You’re not going to be difficult, are you?’ the custody sergeant said. ‘If I decide you’re not in a fit state to be dealt with, I’m within my rights to put you in a cell until such time as you start acting sensibly. Let’s try again.’

The try was unsuccessful.

‘Has he been searched? Anything on him with his name on it?’

The sergeant who had brought the man in said no form of ID had been found.

All this procedure was too much for Jack Gull. His patience snapped. ‘Take his fucking prints and get them checked. And we’ll need his shoes as well, for forensics. What’s he wearing? Are they trainers, or what?’

The prisoner’s footwear was so covered in mud it was impossible to tell.

While the man was hustled away to have his shoes removed and hands washed for the fingerprinting, Gull said to the custody sergeant, ‘I’m not taking any more shit from this fuckhead. He’s given us enough already.’

‘Leave it to me, guv. I’ll deal with him.’

‘Okay, I take the hint.’

‘Will you tell the press we’ve nicked him?’

‘You bet — and rub their noses in it. All the bollocks they’ve given us about no progress.’