Peter Lovesey: Cop to Corpse

He had spotted a movement near the base. A small figure in black was on the lowest section of the iron surround moving up a diagonal traverse that was evidently a set of steps.

He broke into a stiff-legged run again, powered by the knowledge that this was the end of the line for Emma, She had trapped herself. He would catch her now.

Then his confidence plunged again. The yard containing the gasholder and some brick buildings was enclosed by yet more metal fencing. So much security. How the hell had she got through? As he got closer he saw the gate open to admit the same silver van that had passed through the other entrance. Gratefully he hobbled through.

At the base of the gasholder steps, he took out his phone.

John Leaman answered.

‘Emma Tasker is climbing up the gasholder in Twerton. Don’t ask. Get a patrol here fast.’

He grasped the hand-rail and looked up. She had already scaled the first level and was on the narrow landing staring down at him.

‘It’s all over, Emma,’ he shouted up. ‘Better come down.’

Her response was to run to the next staircase and start on the next set of steps. What was she thinking of?

With a chilling certainty, he knew. She meant to throw herself off.

He had no other choice than to follow, if only to reason with her. The steps were a severe test for his knees after all the running. He toiled upwards to the first landing.

‘Emma, this is crazy,’ he yelled. ‘You’re going nowhere.’

Altogether there were four staircases and three landings. She stopped halfway up and turned again to watch him.

He continued upwards. And so did Emma. She made it to the second landing and dashed straight to the next staircase.

Soon she would reach the exposed section above the top tier of the great metal cylinder. The gasholder itself was about one-third below capacity. The supporting framework rose much higher, into space.

And she was still climbing.

Far from certain if he had a head for heights like this, Diamond continued to mount the steps, even when he could only see daylight instead of solid metal through the spaces between. Three landings up, he gripped the handrail and drew breath. She was about to go up the final set of steps. No doubt there was a panoramic view of Bath from up here. He didn’t care to see it. He tried to focus on what his feet were doing.

There came a point more than a hundred feet up when even Emma sensed that this ascent was finite. A few steps short of the crown of the entire structure, she came to a halt. Diamond was following slowly now and he hadn’t faltered, but he made sure he stopped a safe distance from her feet.

Down at ground level he hadn’t been conscious of any wind at all. Up here, it tugged at his clothes and rasped his face.

Even with the rushing in his eardrums, he thought it possible to exchange words, extraordinary as the situation would be. He needed to get his breath first, and find a way of keeping Emma from panicking.

No threat. No confrontation. Get her talking.

Finally he managed to say, ‘You should have brought the three sleuths up here.’

‘I didn’t think of it,’ she said.

He was encouraged that she was willing to speak at all.

‘You read the blog, then?’ she said. ‘Someone told you about it?’

‘They did.’

‘What do you think?’ She was keen to get an opinion on her imaginative effort. She wanted praise.

‘Compulsive reading once I got into it,’ he said. ‘You must have started writing it some time before Harry was shot.’

‘At least a week.’

Which left no question that the murder was premeditated, but he chose not to say so at this juncture. ‘You’ve got a lively imagination. It was clever, the way you wove in the clues about Bath and Wells and Radstock towards the end. I soon cottoned on that the real story you wanted to get across was about Tim, pointing the finger at a fictitious man.’

‘He wasn’t entirely fiction,’ she said.

‘All right, there were elements of Harry in the character, the non-communication and so on, but Harry wasn’t ex-army and the only outings he had at night were when he was on beat duty. You wanted us to read the blog and think Tim was the Somerset Sniper.’

‘Did I?’

How bizarre is this? he thought, trying to analyse a work of fiction on a rusty old staircase a hundred feet off the ground. But his show of interest seemed to be working. She’d invested a lot in the blog and this was her chance to find out how well she’d succeeded. Keep talking, he told himself. Pitch it calmly and she may not think about jumping.

‘So let’s sum up the real situation. When we first met and I informed you Harry was dead, you were straight with me, remarkably straight. You let me know it was a failed marriage. He was a non-communicator with no ambition and when he was off work he slumped in front of the telly or went fishing. You convinced me you were an honest, hard-done-by woman. It didn’t cross my mind that you had a lover, not until much later. I only twigged when I spoke to one of his neighbours, the blonde on the ground floor. She told me Sean Willis had a night visitor sometimes. Was that while Harry was on the night shift?’

After he’d spoken, he knew it sounded a cheap remark. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer.

A huge flock of starlings was spiralling just a short way off in the flat, grey sky. They twisted into the shape of an hour-glass.

He tried again. ‘You wanted an escape from Harry and when you started seeing Willis, your home life seemed even more pointless. You’re not going to deny the affair? Only a short while ago I was told by my team that he called at your house.’

She said, ‘Sean? You’re bluffing.’

‘To comfort you after the funeral, I guess. Obviously he couldn’t be there at your side in front of everyone, so he waited for it to be over. He let himself in with his own key.’

‘He didn’t!’ Her voice piped in disapproval.

‘And if he had a key to your place, it’s reasonable to assume you have a key to his — the house in the Paragon. Where did you first meet him — at the rifle range in Devizes?’

She said, ‘Let’s get one thing clear. Sean had nothing to do with Harry’s death.’

‘But that’s how you met?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d learned to shoot when you served in the police. In those days it was a five-day course to get qualified as a firearms officer and lots of us did it.’

She snapped, ‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s listed. You know what the police are like. Everything goes on record. I asked for the list of firearms officers at Helston while you were on the strength. It said PC Tasker, which at first I took to be Harry. That’s the sort of sexist I am, assuming only men are interested in using guns.’

‘Harry’s sport was fishing, not shooting,’ she said, as good as admitting she’d done the course. She was proud of her skill with the rifle.

‘After leaving the police, you had a less adventurous life teaching infants. Harry had his own hobby at the weekends, so you went back to shooting at targets and found a new friend as well. You were keen, keen enough to make trips all the way to Devizes.’

‘There’s no gun club in Bath.’

‘How did you get there? Not on your pushbike?’

‘Other people offered me lifts. Several came from Bath.’

‘Including Willis?’

‘He was one of them, yes. Sean knows nothing about any of this,’ she insisted.

‘I’m not suggesting he does. Let’s talk about Harry. He had his own way of controlling youth crime. Confiscation, as one of our sources put it. He’d take away illegal goods and demand hush money. Did you know about that?’

She shrugged. ‘Make a guess.’