Peter Lovesey: Cop to Corpse

The old couple could be ruled out as principal witnesses, but they had intriguing information about the civil servant who lived above them. Sean Willis had occupied the top flat for two years He worked in the Ministry of Defence and belonged to a gun club in Devizes.

This had to be followed up fast.

‘We’ll see him together,’ Diamond told Halliwell.

They marched straight into Willis’s flat. There was splintered wood where the door had been forced. ‘Anyone about?’

The tenant was slow in answering and when he did he was unwelcoming. ‘Who do you think you are, invading my home?’ Thirtyish, tall, lean, tanned, and with a black ponytail, Sean Willis wasn’t the popular image of a civil servant. Sunday gear for him was a sleeveless black top and matching chinos.

Diamond told him who they were.

‘That doesn’t give you the right to walk in here without so much as a by your leave. I’ve taken photos.’

‘Of what?’ Diamond asked.

‘The evidence.’

‘Are you telling us you have evidence in here?’

‘Of the wreckage after your heavy mob went through my flat.’

Diamond said in a few sharp words that a police officer had been murdered and he was making no apologies for the armed search. ‘For all we knew, the killer could have been in here with a gun at your head.’

‘In which case, I’d be dead by now,’ Willis said. ‘Your people weren’t exactly subtle. The way they burst in would put the frighteners on anyone.’

‘Leave it,’ Diamond said through his teeth. ‘We’ve work to do. I’d like to see the view from the back of the flat.’

‘And I’d like you to witness the damage they did, because I fully intend to sue.’

Inside, the reason for Willis’s outrage became more clear. He was a compulsive personality. The place was tidy to the point of obsession. It would have been immaculate before the armed response unit went through. Pictures and mirrors shone. Books were displayed according to size and colour, magazines stacked like a deck of playing cards on a shining glass table. The carpets must have been vacuumed the previous evening. All this made the open cupboards and their avalanche of contents spread across the floor, clearly dragged out by the gun team searching for the sniper or his weapon, look more of an outrage than it was.

Diamond wasn’t being sidetracked. The windows that interested him were at the back of the house, with original sash frames, two in the sitting room and one in the bedroom. All three would provide a direct line of sight to the stretch of Walcot Street where Harry Tasker had been shot. He checked the sitting room windows and — as you would expect with such a fastidious owner — each moved so well it could be raised with one finger on the brass fitting.

The bedroom looked like a hotel room after the maid had been through, everything folded and in place. Except that the lower section of the window was pushed up.

‘Why is this open?’

Willis said as if to a child, ‘Airing the room.’

‘Anyone airing the room would pull the top window down. You were watching what was going on.’

‘That’s no crime.’

‘Did you hear the shooting?’

‘I’m a heavy sleeper. The first I knew was all the sirens going. Shops, ambulance, police cars. They’d have woken anybody.’

‘Were you conscious at any time of other people in the house?’

Willis rolled his eyes upwards. ‘These are apartments. Other people live here.’

‘Unusual sounds?’

‘No.’

‘You’re a marksman, I heard.’

He hesitated. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Is it true?’

‘Shooting is a hobby of mine, yes. Competition shooting.’

‘What are we talking here — a rifle?’

‘Mainly.’

‘So you own one?’

‘Three, in point of fact.’

Diamond kept the same even tone of voice. ‘Where do you keep them?’

‘Not here. That would really play into the hands of you people wanting a quick arrest.’

‘I’m ignoring that remark,’ Diamond said. ‘Answer my question, please.’

‘Under lock and key in my club at Devizes, twenty miles’ drive, whichever route you choose.’

Keep the pressure on, Diamond decided. This man isn’t as calm as he wants to appear. ‘You have a car, then? Where is it?’

‘Where I left it, I hope, in Beehive Yard.’

‘Key, please.’

‘I don’t think you have the right.’

‘If we aren’t given the key, Mr. Willis, I’ll tell you what we do have — a small spring-loaded device that smashes car windows.’

The threat of more damage to his property was too much for the overparticular civil servant. He handed across the key and volunteered the make, colour and registration.

As a gun owner living in this house with a sight of the street, Willis had to be treated as a suspect. If he had the means and opportunity, his motives could be probed later. Who could say what was motivating the Somerset Sniper to pick off his victims? Contempt for the police? A personal grudge? The power thing you get from handling a precision weapon? Or was it just boredom from shooting on a range? A live quarry was a different challenge from paper targets.

‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Just over two years.’

‘And you’re in the civil service, I was told. Ministry of Defence.’

He glared. ‘You’ve been talking to my neighbours.’

‘Is it top secret, then, your work?’

‘Not at all. I’m an office worker. I don’t like being talked about, that’s all.’

‘Do the talking yourself, then. You’re single?’

‘Yes. It is allowed.’

Diamond waited for more, and eventually got it.

‘In case you’re wondering, I do have women friends, and they sometimes stay the night, and that’s allowed too, even in the Paragon.’

‘Were you sleeping alone last night?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. But I expect you got that already from my talkative neighbours.’

‘Actually, no. There was no gossip.’

‘Otherwise I’m a model of respectability, educated at Sherborne and Oxford, a non-smoker, vegetarian, church-goer and I serve the community as a teller at elections.’

‘Where did you learn to shoot?’

‘The school rifle club, along with most of my contemporaries. It’s not unusual in public schools.’

‘He’s smooth and he’s smart,’ Diamond said to Halliwell on the way down the stone steps. ‘I don’t expect to find anything in the car, but some of his prints will come in useful.’

Any policeman will tell you the worst duty of all is informing the next of kin. Traditionally the young bobby straight out of training gets the job and his more experienced colleagues tell themselves they had their turn when they were recruits and can delegate with clear consciences.

Peter Diamond bucked the tradition. Years ago as a fresh-faced rookie in the Met he’d served his rites of passage, knocking on a door in Hammersmith to inform an elderly couple that their only son had been killed in a hit and run. In those days you were given no advice how to break the news. You improvised as well as you could. With mixed results. He’d done it ineptly. The parents had assumed the worst when they saw him in uniform solemn-faced at the door, yet, after repeatedly rehearsing what he would say, he’d stumbled over the words and — sin of sins — got the name of the deceased wrong, calling him Mike when he should have said Mark. ‘That isn’t our son,’ the man had said, clutching at any straw. Diamond had been forced to stumble through his piece again, causing even more distress. That night he’d drunk himself legless. The memory was still vivid and painful. He’d resolved never to ask an inexperienced officer to do the job.