Peter Lovesey: Cop to Corpse

‘You okay?’ he asked Ingeborg.

‘I think so.’ She hauled herself up and tightened the blonde ponytail. ‘You know who this is?’

‘Never seen him before.’

‘Soldier Nuttall’s son, Royston — and that’s a real G36, not one of their plastic jobs.’

‘Don’t handle it, then.’ Halliwell took a pen from his pocket and looped it under the skeletonized frame of the stock. ‘Let’s get him back to the car.’

Royston wasn’t the menacing figure he’d seemed when he arrived. He was shivering like a nervous pup. They walked him back and retrieved the helmet on the way.

‘The guv’nor was expecting him to break in, I reckon,’ Gilbert said.

‘If he did, he could have warned us about the gun,’ Halliwell said.

In the car, Royston was still shaking. ‘Are you going to bang me up in the cells?’

‘That isn’t up to us,’ Halliwell said.

‘I don’t mind if you do,’ he said.

Halliwell pretended not to be baffled by this reaction. ‘That’s all right, then.’

‘Long as you don’t tell my old man.’

So that was the reason for the panic.

‘I expect we will,’ Halliwell said. ‘He’s very concerned about you. He was in this morning asking us to find you.’

In what came out sounding like a whimper, Royston said, ‘I want protection from him. I don’t want to go home.’

‘Right now, son, you’re in no position to dictate terms.’

Halliwell decided he’d better report the arrest to Diamond. He stepped out of the car and used his mobile. ‘Guv.’

‘Yep.’

‘Is this a good moment?’

‘Not bad. I’m in the Hop Pole with a glass in my hand.’

‘We pinched Royston Nuttall coming out of the Tasker house.’

Diamond didn’t sound unduly surprised. ‘Nice work. He was sure to surface at some time. No one got hurt, I hope.’

‘We’re okay. He was carrying a rifle.’ Halliwell felt like adding, ‘And you could have warned us what to expect.’ Only he wasn’t totally certain Diamond had known in advance.

‘That’ll be the murder weapon.’

‘I thought we already found the murder weapon in the river.’

‘This is the one that did for Harry Tasker. Treat it carefully. I expect it’s been wiped of prints, but you never know.’

‘I don’t think I follow you.’

‘It’s a G36 assault rifle, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was hidden inside the house and the funeral was Royston’s chance to get it back.’

‘Get it back?’

‘It belongs to his father. That’s why Soldier Nuttall was round at the station this morning. He wasn’t worried about Royston. He wanted the gun back.’

‘I thought all his guns were imitation.’

‘A major player like Nuttall isn’t satisfied with plastic. He has some of the real things squirreled away inside that house. Okay, the search squad didn’t find anything when they raided the place, but that was because Royston had borrowed the G36 some time ago. What better to raise a tough teenager’s street cred than a genuine firearm? He took it into Walcot to impress his friends around the pubs. Unluckily for him, Harry Tasker got to hear about this gun being shown to all and sundry. Harry caught up with the kid and took it off him. In the words of Anderson Jakes, Harry practised what he like doing best — confiscation. He took charge of the gun. But Harry didn’t bring it back to the station. He took it home.’

‘I’m with you now, guv. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, least of all today, but we all knew Harry was working some kind of racket.’

‘Yes, and he knew Soldier Nuttall would throw a fit if he found out, so he had Royston by the short and curlies. He could demand money whenever he ran into him, the same as he collected hush money from other kids he’d caught misbehaving. It’s not surprising Harry was so insistent that no one else walked that beat.’

‘I guess the raid alerted Nuttall and made him check his personal firearms.’

‘For sure. Royston panicked and fled the house. He’d already got the idea that with Harry dead he might have a chance to get the gun back. He was watching the Tasker house the other day when I visited Emma. I was almost knocked over by a motorbike revving up and racing away.’

‘For a second time.’

‘Right, but different bike and different rider. It had to be Royston this time and he was bound to work out that the funeral — with Emma out of the way — was the ideal time to get inside and collect his dad’s property.’

‘You don’t think he’s Harry’s killer?’

‘Royston? No, I don’t. Tell me something. You said you pinched Royston, but you didn’t say where. Did you go inside the house?’

‘No. We waited for him to come out. He didn’t break in, you see. The key was under the doormat.’

‘Handy.’

‘Stupid, we thought. Asking for trouble.’

Diamond didn’t want to get into that kind of debate. ‘Look, I’ve got to go now. Keep the kid under arrest. He won’t object. He’s safer with us than he is if we let him go.’

Halliwell had discovered that much from Royston himself. He was still listening to Diamond, but his attention had been drawn across the street, to Emma’s house. ‘Hold on, guv. Something’s happening here. A bloke just walked up the path to the house. He seems to have a key and he’s letting himself in.’

‘D’you know him?’

‘Christ, yes, I do. We interviewed him at the Paragon. It’s Sean Willis, the smart-arse civil servant in the top flat who belongs to the gun club.’

The Hop Pole, Emma’s choice for the refreshments after the funeral, was only a few hundred yards along the Upper Bristol Road from Onega Terrace. It was her local, and she couldn’t have found a better one. The dark-panelled bar was Victorian in style, comfortable and not noisy. From there you moved through a restaurant created out of a skittle alley to the real glory of the place, a secluded beer garden ideal for summer drinking, with vines around the perimeter and threading upwards into well-placed gazebos. This was where the mourners had gathered in sunshine, becoming relaxed by the minute as the more formal part of the day became a memory.

Diamond pocketed his phone and helped himself to a warm sausage roll. The business end of the investigation was working out as he had expected, some compensation for his wrong assumptions earlier. Royston had surfaced at the Tasker house while the funeral was in progress. The murder weapon was now in police hands. It could be test-fired and used in evidence. Sean Willis had declared his intent by arriving at the house with a key. He’d always seemed a character with a secret.

The family member who was acting as host appeared with a plate of sandwiches. ‘You know it’s a free bar?’

‘I do,’ Diamond said, ‘but I’m limiting myself.’

‘Diet?’

‘Duty, actually.’

‘But you’ll have a sandwich?’

‘Thanks.’ He took two. ‘Are you related to Harry?’

‘I’m Gordon, married to one of his sisters, Agnes — going round with the spring rolls. Sad occasion. I believe you caught the son of a bitch who did this.’

‘Not yet.’ Diamond said.

‘Oh?’ Gordon’s eyebrows popped up. ‘I heard he was in the cells. Some foreigner shooting you chaps more or less at random, just because you represent law and order.’

‘He shot the other two, not Harry.’

Gordon almost dropped the sandwiches. ‘How on earth can that be?’

‘Everyone assumed all three crimes were by the same hand, me included, for a time. It’s what we were meant to think, that the so-called Somerset Sniper shot Harry as well. Harry wasn’t shot at random. It was deliberate.’