Peter Lovesey - Cop to Corpse

The covered stand where the shooting was done had a gate on a latch and a safety notice. Diamond and Ingeborg let themselves in. It was wide enough to take up to ten guns. The flooring was coconut matting on Astroturf over what felt like a concrete base. Clearly it was well maintained. They weren’t stepping on used cartridge casings. Diamond paced the length of it, weighing the significance of the find. You didn’t expect a military-style range in private grounds. As far as he was aware, it was legal provided that the weapons were licensed, but he doubted if anyone except the owner and his private army knew the scale of this place. The remote location meant no neighbour was likely to be disturbed by the gunfire.

‘Guv, have you seen these?’

Ingeborg had been rummaging at the back of the stand. She picked up a large cardboard target with the usual black circles on a white background — usual, except that this one was mounted on a lifesize silhouette of a police officer with helmet.

His blood ran cold for a moment. ‘Nasty.’

He knew you could buy targets of hate figures like Bin Laden. This was a variation he hadn’t seen. And he doubted if it could be prosecuted.

Turning away, he stared into the distance, imagining the sight of up to ten of the target figures spread across the landscape at six hundred metres. If it wasn’t so sinister in the light of the recent killings, the sight of all those helmets might seem comical. He could imagine Soldier Nuttall’s recruits thinking it funny.

Silent now, he moved forward a short way. Beyond the matting the Astroturf extended for about thirty metres before the real grass took over. When he stepped on it there was a difference in sound, a drumming effect. He brought his foot down more heavily. ‘Must be hollow underneath. Give me a hand,’ he said to Ingeborg.

They found the edge and rolled the Astroturf back like a carpet to reveal some board panels. ‘Let’s have one of these up.’

The panel was about two metres square and took some lifting, but Diamond was insistent and they prised it up and hefted it aside. Below was a deep cavity.

‘Storage space?’ Ingeborg said.

‘I wonder how deep it is.’ He squatted, perched himself on the edge and dangled his legs. ‘I can see a wall ladder here. I’m going down.’

‘Careful,’ Ingeborg said. ‘You could get injured again.’

He turned, got a foot on one of the rungs, and started to descend. ‘A torch would be useful.’

‘Don’t know where we’ll get one unless I go back to the car,’ Ingeborg said.

‘I’d rather you kept guard. There was a time when I’d have carried a cigarette lighter.’

He continued down until his head was below the opening. ‘Strange. I’ve come to the bottom of the ladder and it hasn’t connected with the floor.’ Then the explanation dawned. ‘I know what this is. The walls are tiled. It’s another swimming pool — empty fortunately — and this must be the deep end.’

‘Better leave it,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Can’t be all that deep. They don’t make private pools really deep.’ He began lowering his handhold until he was in a crouched position on the lowest rung. Then he hung his right leg below the ladder and just made contact with the floor. ‘As I thought. Not so far down.’ He let himself down completely. It was a relief to stand upright. His suspect leg had started aching. ‘Could you roll back the turf a little more and give me some extra light?’

‘It’s back as far as it will go,’ she called down.

‘Hold on. There’s some flex hanging here. I think I’ve found a light switch.’ He pressed it and got the flicker of strip lighting that presently came on fully and showed him the entire area. ‘Would you believe it?’

‘What’s down there?’ Ingeborg asked.

‘This is the armoury.’

He’d not seen so much weaponry in one place. There must have been fifteen purpose-built wooden racks ranged across the width of the pool, each stacked with rifles and sub-machine-guns. He was no expert, but everyone has seen the ubiquitous Kalashnikov on film and in print and he was pretty certain there were military weapons from other East European countries and Germany, all systematically clipped into place and grouped by type. It had the look of an efficient, well-maintained arsenal.

He was staggered by the find, here in Claverton, less than a mile from Manvers Street. No private citizen should own a sub-machine-gun. Plenty did illegally, of course. The international trade was huge. At one time the KGB was giving them away to foment terrorism. But he’d always thought Bath was the most unlikely place to attract illicit arms. He didn’t doubt that it was shotgun territory. Countrymen liked their sport. Weapons like these were something else.

‘Guv, are you coming up?’ Ingeborg called down.

‘Give me a moment more.’ He was checking the extent of the collection, pacing between the racks and counting. He also needed time to think how to deal with this. There were new priorities now. What had started as a house-call to speak to a seventeen-year-old about suspected drug-dealing had turned into a major illegal arms find that could see Soldier Nuttall put away for years.

‘Guv, time’s going on.’

Finally he returned to the ladder and switched out the light. As he hauled himself up the rungs he said to Ingeborg, ‘You should see it. Mind-blowing.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. We’re over-running.’

‘I know. If this was James Bond, you can bet someone would have crept up on us by now with a gun and caught us red-handed.’

‘Why do you think I was calling out?’

‘There isn’t anyone, is there?’

‘It could still happen. We’re not equipped for heroics.’

‘Looking at what’s down there, we’ll need the SAS to raid this place. It’s huge. More than seventy high velocity rifles, and they’re not for shooting grouse, believe me.’ He climbed out of the space and with Ingeborg’s assistance replaced the board and rolled the Astroturf into place. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Exactly as we found it. Bond could learn a thing or two from me.’

The motorbike in the river had been a rewarding discovery in more ways than one, for it made a break necessary while a truck with a lifting mechanism was called out from Bath. The underwater searchers had now returned from their late pub lunch and were filling the time making a further survey of the stretch where all the action had taken place the previous night. Besides the motorcycle helmet and the bike they’d found some rusty farm tools, a bucket and some bottles.

The staff in the incident room at Bath sounded excited about the bike. They informed the search party about the motorcyclist in Becky Addy Wood who had almost run over Peter Diamond. The evidence was stacking up nicely, according to Jack Gull, the head of the Serial Crimes Unit, although he put it in more colourful language.

Gull was lost for words of any description when they called him twenty minutes later. One of the search teams had just emerged from the water holding the day’s star discovery, a Heckler and Koch G36 assault rifle.

‘Shall we get out while we can?’ Ingeborg said.

‘Why?’

She looked at Diamond as if the reason was all too obvious. ‘We’ve stepped into something really big, that’s why.’

‘Have we?’ He tilted his canvas shoe and looked down. ‘The revenge of the Dobermann?’ Even when faced with this urgent decision he couldn’t resist a poke at Ingeborg’s intensity.

‘You know what I mean, guv. We’re courting disaster here.’

‘We came to meet Royston, in case you’re forgetting.’

Trying to stay patient with her boss, but showing the effort, she said, ‘We’ve got nothing for certain on him. It’s all hearsay up to now. After what you just discovered under the firing range, shouldn’t we change plans and get the hell out?’