Peter Lovesey: Cop to Corpse

Hero to zero.

Cop to corpse.

One minute PC Harry Tasker is strolling up Walcot Street, Bath, on foot patrol. The next he is shot through the head. No scream, no struggle, no last words. He is picked off, felled, dead.

The shooting activates an alarm over one of the shops nearby, an ear-splitting ring certain to wake everyone.

Normally at this time on a Sunday morning — around 4 A.M. — the streets of Bath are silent. The nightclubs close officially at three. The last of the revellers have dispersed. PC Tasker was on his way back to the police station after checking that Club XL was quiet.

His body lies in a bow shape under the light of a street lamp on the flagstone pavement, a small puddle of blood forming under the head. His chequered cap is upturned nearby.

Harry Tasker is the third police officer murdered in Avon and Somerset in twelve weeks. The others, like him, were shot while on foot patrol. A huge operation to identify the sniper has come to nothing. All the police know for certain is that the victims were shot by someone using a high velocity assault rifle that fires 5.56? 45mm cartridges. The killings and the hunt for the so-called Somerset Sniper have been splashed in headlines across the nation.

Nobody else is on the street at this hour. This is the pattern. The killing is done at night. The victims are discovered eventually by some early riser, a milkman, a dog owner.

But today there is a difference. In a flat above one of the shops in Walcot Street, a hand grabs a phone.

The 999 call is taken at the communications centre in Portishead, logged at 4.09 A.M.

‘Which service do you need: police, fire or ambulance?’

‘Ambulance, for sure. And police. There’s a guy lying in the street here. I heard this sound like a gunshot a minute ago and looked out and there he was. He’s not moving. I think he’s a policeman.’

Another police officer. The operator is trained to assess critical information and act on it calmly, yet even she takes a sharp breath. ‘Where are you speaking from?’

The caller gives the address and his name and in the emergency room the location is flashed on screen. An all-units call. Within minutes all available response cars and an ambulance are heading for the stretch of Walcot Street near Beehive Yard.

A new shooting is terrible news, but the speed of this alert gives the police the best chance yet of detaining the sniper.

Walcot Street was created by the Romans. It is believed to have formed a small section of the Fosse Way, the unswerving road that linked the West Country to the Midlands. It runs north to south for a third of a mile, parallel to the River Avon, from St. Swithin’s Church — where Jane Austen’s parents were married in 1764 — to St. Michael’s, where it morphs into Northgate Street. Located outside the old city walls, Walcot was once a village independent of Bath and still has the feel of a place apart. It was always the city’s lumber room, housing, in its time, tram sheds, a flea market, slaughterhouses, a foundry, a women’s prison and an isolation hospital for venereal diseases. Now it goes in for shops of character and variable charm such as Jack and Danny’s Fancy Dress Hire; Bath Sewing Machine Service; Yummy House; Bath Aqua Theatre of Glass; and Appy Daze, Bath’s Premium Hemporium.

The first police car powers up the street, blues and twos going. By now some local people in nightclothes are grouped around the body. Two officers fling open their car doors and dash over to their shot colleague as more cars arrive from the other direction. The ambulance snakes through and the paramedics take over, but anyone can see Harry Tasker is beyond help. His personal radio, attached to his tunic, eerily emits someone else’s voice relaying information about his shooting.

A real voice cuts in: ‘Let’s have some order here. For a start, will somebody stop that fucking alarm.’

Ken Lockton is the senior man at the scene and must direct the operation. ‘Senior’ is a contradiction in terms. Inspector Lockton is not yet thirty, came quickly through the ranks and passed his promotion exam at the end of last year. He wouldn’t be the first choice to deal with a major incident, or the second, or even the tenth, but he’s the man on duty. As the uniformed inspector lowest in the pecking order he gets more night shifts than anyone else. He knew Harry Tasker well and is shocked by the killing, yet can’t let that affect his handling of the incident. Lockton knows he must suppress all emotion, lead by example, and set the right procedures in motion. Inside him, every pulse is throbbing, and not just because another policeman has been shot. His strap-brown eyes are wide, eager. He doesn’t mind anyone knowing he’s a career man, a high flyer aiming for executive rank. This is a thumping great chance for glory, the best chance anyone has had to bag the sniper. And he hasn’t got long. As soon as Headquarters get their act together they will send some hotshot detective to take over.

The men available to Lockton aren’t exactly the A team. Like him, they happen to be on the night shift, almost at the end of it, ready for sleep, stumbling bleary-eyed out of patrol cars and minibuses uncertain what their duties will be. He must make effective use of them.

He gets one success. The jangling alarm is silenced.

He grabs a loud-hailer and begins issuing orders. No one must be in any doubt who is in charge

The first imperative is to seal the crime scene. A stretch of the street for about a hundred yards is closed to traffic by police cars parked laterally at either end. Cones and police tape reinforce the cordon. While this is being done, Lockton assesses the location. If the sniper is still in the area the local geography will hamper him. Behind the row of small shops on the side where PC Tasker lies is the river, deep and steeply banked. Not much chance of escape there. On the other side of Walcot Street is a twenty-foot high retaining wall. Above it, on massive foundations, are the backs of Bladud Buildings and the Paragon, grand terraces from the mid-eighteenth century sited at the top of a steep escarpment.

The armed response team arrives by van. They were sent automatically when the seriousness of the alert was known and they are here in their black body armour and bearing their Heckler amp; Koch G36 subcarbines. Ken Lockton, glowing with importance, tells the senior man he wants stop points on all conceivable escape routes from the sectioned-off area.

He also has work for his sleep-deprived army of unarmed men and women. Residents disturbed by the noise and coming to their front doors will find officers standing guard. They will be told to lock up and stay inside.

Another group is sent to make a search of Beehive Yard, on the river side.

Do Not Cross tape is used to enclose the area around the body. Later a crime scene tent will be erected. The police surgeon is already examining the body, a necessary formality. He’s a local GP. The forensic pathologist will follow.

The 999 call originated from a flat above a charity shop and Lockton goes in with a female officer to question the informant, a first year undergraduate.

Ponytail, glasses, pale, spotty face and a wisp of beard fit the student stereotype. The young guy, who gives his name as Damon Richards, is in a black dressing gown. The questioning is sharp considering that he raised the alert. Lockton knows that people who call the emergency number are not always public-spirited. They may well be implicated in what happened.

‘Take me through it. You heard gunfire, right? Where were you — in bed?’

‘Actually, no. I was at my desk, studying. If I wake early, that’s what I do. I had a book open and I was making notes.’ He is tiresomely slow of speech.