Bloodhounds

Chapter Three

"Come in, Peter, we're waiting with bated breath," said the Assistant Chief Constable.

"What for, sir?"

"You don't know?"

With distrust, Diamond eyed the amused faces around the oval table in the conference room. This was the evening when the ACC's monthly meeting of high fliers took place upstairs in the "eagle's nest" in Bath Central Police Station.

"For the story of your latest arrest. How you nicked the Saltford bank clerk."

"Am I being ever so gently sent up?"

"Good Lord, no. We want to share in your satisfaction. You let it be known in no uncertain terms that a decent murder hadn't come your way since you were reinstated as head of the squad. Now this falls into your lap."

"I wouldn't call it a decent murder," said Diamond. "Two little men in a bank. One gets on the other's wick, so he shoots him. It isn't worth the paperwork."

"Has he confessed?"

"In seventeen pages-so far."

The ACC commented, "That is some paperwork. It isn't so straightforward, then."

"He has a list of grievances going back six years."

Several sets of eyes met in amusement across the table. No one said it, but Diamond was well known for having grievances of his own, and one of them was the amount of form-filling in modern police work.

"Where did he get the gun?" someone asked.

"Right between the eyes," said Diamond.

"I meant where-"

"We haven't got to that yet. About page twenty-five, I should think."

"Don't despair, Peter," said the ACC-a relative newcomer who hadn't really earned the right to call anyone by his first name yet. "Keep taking the statement. Your bank clerk may turn out to have been a serial murderer."

Polite smiles all around.

Diamond shook his head and said, "A good old-fashioned mystery will do me. I don't ask for bodies at every turn. Just one will do if it presents a challenge. Is that too much to ask in Bath?"

"Anytime you feel like giving up…" murmured John Wigfull, head of the murder squad until Diamond's recall. Wigfull now functioned as head of CID operations, and he wasn't a happy man either.

The ACC sensed that it was time to get down to business, and for the next hour Wigfull, rather than Diamond, was in the hot seat. The main item on the agenda was crime prevention and Wigfull had taken over Operation Bumblebee, the publicity campaign against burglary. It was a new baby for him, but he'd done his homework, and he managed to talk convincingly about the reduction in the crime figures. "It's an outstanding success however you measure it, sir," he summed up. "And of course all the break-ins reported go straight into the hive."

"The what?" said the ACC.

"The hive, sir. The computer system operated by the Bumblebee team. We analyze the results and decide on initiatives to sting the villains."

"So computer technology has a major role here?" said the ACC, worthily trying to head off a veritable swarm of bee references.

Diamond stifled a yawn. He wasn't in sympathy with computers any more than he was with bee-based PR campaigns. His thoughts turned to poetry, of all things. This was totally unlike him. He hadn't read a line of verse in years. Yet a phrase mugged up years ago for a school exam was stirring in his memory. What the devil was it? An illustration of some figure of speech?

The discussion of Operation Bumblebee persisted for another twenty minutes. Everyone else around the table seemed to feel it was a chance to make an impression on the new boss, and the squirm factor steadily increased, with talk of getting the buzz on burglars and how the entire station was humming.

Then that elusive phrase surfaced clear and sonorous in Diamond's mind. He spoke it aloud. "The murmur of innumerable bees."

The room went silent.

"Onomatopoeia."

"I suppose it is time we brought this to a close," the ACC said, after a long, baffled stare at Diamond.