Cop to Corpse

28

‘I don’t want anyone to see me like this,’ Diamond said from his position lying along the back seat.

‘They won’t. That’s why we’re doing it,’ Paloma said as she drove down the Lower Bristol Road into Bath. She knew when to be firm with him. ‘Last night you were perfectly okay with it.’

‘Yes, but this is now.’

‘We’re just passing another cemetery on our right.’

‘Point taken.’ He was dressed for a funeral, but not his own. They had discussed whether he should take the risk of attending Harry Tasker’s funeral. Diamond had insisted he would be there, after giving his word to Harry’s widow. It wasn’t as if he’d be standing in the open around a grave. The cremation would be in a small indoor chapel, surely too enclosed for a sniper to take a shot at him and escape.

He had decided to treat the latest ‘You’re next’ note seriously and take care, but say nothing about it until the ballistic test results came in. Then he would be better placed to judge whether the note was a hoax. He’d know for sure if the rifle recovered from the river had been used for any or all of the shootings. Then it would become clear whether the killer of all three victims was in custody.

‘Crossing the river now,’ Paloma continued her commentary. ‘Soon be in Manvers Street.’

‘I may sound ungrateful,’ he said. ‘I want you to know I appreciate this. You don’t have to drive right inside the nick. Just drop me in the street.’

Paloma smiled to herself. The police parking area was a yard at the heart of the building enclosed by walls several storeys high and scores of windows. ‘Fine. We’ll do as you say.’ Her voice softened. ‘Please take extra care today. It matters to me, you know.’

He thanked her. The car halted and he got out and was crossing the pavement without appearing to hurry when she surprised him by sounding the horn twice as she rejoined the traffic. He tensed, looked round and wagged a finger. But she was already gone.

Inside on the stairs, he met John Wigfull, a blast from the past. Now a civilian responsible for publicity and press relations, Wigfull had once been his deputy and they had never got on. JW was someone well capable of setting him up. Diamond wondered how much he knew about the present investigation. ‘Morning, John.’

The cordialities had to be exchanged, whatever each was thinking. Wigfull’s Lord Kitchener moustache had always masked his true sentiments. ‘Morning, Peter. You’re looking sombre.’

‘Harry’s funeral later,’ Diamond said.

‘I thought his widow didn’t want us there.’

‘She made an exception of me.’

‘You? I can’t think why. He wasn’t CID.’

‘I’m the man on the case, that’s why.’

‘Better stick to the case and keep your head down, then.’

Diamond grasped Wigfull’s sleeve before he moved on. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You’ll find out. I think some heavy artillery is coming your way.’

Keep calm, Diamond told himself. It’s an expression of speech. It doesn’t have to mean that he knows anything about the note. ‘Artillery who from?’

‘The Assistant Chief Constable, no less.’ With that, Wigfull moved on, leaving Diamond reassured that Wigfull wasn’t talking about gunfire, but wondering what new infliction to expect from Georgina. If the ACC was on the warpath, it was serious. She’d kept her distance all week.

Keith Halliwell gave his usual warm, ‘How you doing, guv?’ in the incident room and confirmed that Diamond was summoned upstairs. There was no indication what it was about.

He found Georgina staring out of her top floor window, hands behind her back wringing the neck of an invisible chicken, an ominous sign. The window looked out onto Manvers Street, where he’d stepped out of the car. As usual Georgina was in uniform. She was one of the few female officers who always wore a skirt. Without turning to face him, she said, ‘Is your mobile switched off?’

He delved into his pocket. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘It won’t go off.’

‘I guessed as much. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.’

‘I just got in.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Is something the matter with your car?’

‘A friend gave me a lift in.’

She about-turned and practically clicked her heels. Her look travelled up and down his clothes. ‘Why are you dressed like that?’

‘Harry Tasker’s funeral this afternoon, ma’am.’

‘I thought it was a family affair, with none of us invited.’

‘Mrs. Tasker made an exception in my case. Some lads from uniform are going as well, I believe.’

‘It seems to me,’ Georgina said with a sniff, ‘that I’m the last to be informed about anything in this place.’

He still wasn’t sure what could have triggered this hostility. His mind raced through the possibilities. Clearly she was in a state about something he’d kept from her.

She gestured to him to sit in the upright chair facing her. Then she lowered herself into a swivel armchair. Having checked that the hem of the skirt was as close to her knees as possible, she started. ‘Yesterday afternoon, you phoned Headquarters.’

The light dawned. A large bee called Protocol lived in Georgina’s bonnet. ‘Correct, ma’am.’

‘Without a word to me.’

His confidence returned. He was at an advantage here. Play this straight, he thought, and I’m on a winner. She doesn’t know the full story of the secret gunroom. ‘It was a matter of some urgency, ma’am. As you know, I’ve been working closely with a Headquarters man, Detective Superintendent Jack Gull, head of the Serial Crimes Unit. I informed him about the call and he was in agreement, so I got on with it. Should have notified you as well, I see that now.’

‘The first I heard of it was a call from Headquarters relayed to me at home this morning before eight o’clock.’

‘At home before eight? That’s a liberty,’ Diamond said with an effort to sound compassionate.

‘They referred to a tip-off you gave them. I knew nothing of this.’

He heaped more sympathy on her. ‘Lines of communication loused up again. I’m sorry if I’m to blame, ma’am. My enquiries into the sniper case took me to Soldier Nuttall’s property on Claverton Down. He’s the nutcase with the private army, Fight for Freedom.’

Georgina said in a frigid tone, ‘You don’t have to tell me about Cyril Nuttall. I know him, and “nutcase” isn’t a word I’d use.’

A warning light went on in Diamond’s head. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

‘Hardly. He owns the property I lease.’

Wheels within wheels, Diamond thought. She’s worried about her tenure. Well, Georgina, my dear, some things have to take priority over your living arrangements. Prepare to hit the ceiling when you hear what your head of CID discovered here in cosy old Bath. ‘His son Royston showed up on the radar. I visited the house with one of my team with the intention of interviewing the lad. No one was about when we arrived so I took the opportunity to look around. There was a rifle range, which didn’t surprise me, knowing Nuttall’s reputation, and below it — hidden under boards in a former swimming pool — I discovered a secret armoury. A large collection of assault rifles. These weren’t sporting guns, ma’am, they were high-velocity killing machines, AK47s, G36s and MP5s. It was obvious they had to be reported at the first opportunity.’ He paused for effect and folded his arms. ‘That was my tip-off to HQ.’

‘So they informed me at 7:55 this morning,’ she said in a voice every bit as measured as his. ‘Acting on this tip-off of yours, a major operation was mounted, a pre-dawn raid on Mr. Nuttall’s house and grounds.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Diamond said, but that inner voice was telling him not to celebrate yet. Georgina wasn’t as impressed as she should have been. Something must have gone wrong with the raid. Had some idiot fired a live round?

Georgina was telling the story now. ‘Thirty trained officers from Bristol in full body armour with dogs. Once inside, they split into two groups. Half of them stormed the main house while the other half located the swimming pool and took it over. Cyril Nuttall and his son were roused at gunpoint.’

‘The guns were still there, weren’t they?’ Diamond said, baffled by the strong tone of disapproval in Georgina’s account.

‘Oh, yes, just as you described.’

‘At least seventy assault rifles of various makes?’

‘Yes,’ Georgina said. She made a long, alarming pause before adding, ‘And no.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Seventy replica assault rifles. They’re fakes, made in China. Not one of them is capable of being fired.’

It Georgina had leapt over her desk and gone for his throat he couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘Never.’

‘You’d better believe it, Peter. This is a major cock-up. I’ve had my ear chewed by the Head of Operations. A raid like this doesn’t come cheap, you know, and highly trained officers aren’t amused at being bussed to Claverton in the small hours to pick up a load of plastic toys.’

‘They looked real to me.’

Georgina exhaled sharply. ‘The whole point of replicas is that they’re made to look real. They’re constructed with minute attention to detail. Even the weight and balance match the original. But the fact remains that they are not the genuine article. It was a wild-goose chase, a total shambles.’

‘Aren’t imitation guns still illegal?’ he said, clutching at straws.

‘Not on private property they’re not. Brandish one in the street and you’re committing an offence, but these are strictly for use in war games within the walls of Mr. Nuttall’s estate. He’s entitled to own them and play soldiers with them and so are his members, so long as they don’t venture outside.’

He clutched the back of his neck in despair. Nothing was going right.

Georgina was relentless. ‘Because of you, I’ve spent most of the morning grovelling. Headquarters are incandescent. Cyril Nuttall has been onto me several times threatening legal action for invasion of privacy, damage to property and wrongful arrest.’

‘Damage? What damage?’

‘His wrought-iron gates were bulldozed and his front door was battered in. He puts the cost at over two thousand pounds.’

‘Didn’t they find anything incriminating? He must have some real guns on the premises to use on the range.’

‘All legal and licensed and properly stored. He’s squeaky clean and we’re up to our necks in ordure. Thank you very much, Peter.’

An embarrassing story can’t be suppressed. All of Manvers Street knew of it. Downstairs in the incident room, everyone was waiting for Diamond to show his face again. Jack Gull was grinning from ear to ear.

‘Here comes the man of the moment. Looking for a new job, Peter? Something in plastics?’

Ignoring them all, Diamond stepped across the room to his office and closed the door, careful not to slam it and let them know how he felt. The only way he knew of surmounting the ridicule was to apply himself to the unanswered questions that remained. He reached for the phone and got the number of the forensic science company who were examining the rifle recovered from the river.

‘Any results on the G36 yet?’

‘Who is this?’ the voice on the line asked.

‘Peter Diamond, Bath CID. I’m the SIO on the sniper enquiry.’

‘Diamond. Aren’t you the chap who set up the dawn raid on Soldier Nuttall’s plastic gun collection?’

His knuckles went white squeezing the phone. ‘How the hell did you hear about that?’

‘I had Jack Gull pestering me for results only ten minutes ago. Amusing story. Look, we’ve worked miracles already cleaning up the gun and we’ve done some test firings, but we haven’t finished analysing them. We understand the urgency, the custody clock ticking and all that. We’ll let you know as soon as we have anything definite. You’ll be pleased to hear one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a real gun. Not one of your plastic jobs.’

He could hear faint giggling before he ended the call.

Stay positive.

He opened the door and asked Ingeborg to come in.

‘What’s happening with the man in custody?’ he asked her. He wasn’t going to ask Gull and present him with the opening for yet another clever dick remark.

At least Ingeborg was straight-faced. ‘He still hasn’t said a word yet. Your theory that he’s an illegal immigrant is looking good.’

‘There must be a link with Westwood or Avoncliff or Bradford on Avon. Else why would he have holed up there?’

‘Jack Gull says it was close to Bath and handy for the third shooting.’

‘I don’t buy that,’ Diamond said. ‘Have they traced the owner of the motorcycle?’

Alert as always, Ingeborg had already checked with the DVLC at Swansea. ‘His name is Hamish Macintosh.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an asylum seeker.’ His mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Unless he escaped from Scotland.’

She still couldn’t rise to a shaft of humour from Diamond. ‘He’s from Shepton Mallet. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He lives in a thatched cottage there. The bike was stolen some time in the last five months from the stone shed at the back, along with his helmet and leathers. Hamish was away in Argentina on an engineering job and didn’t report it missing until he got back a few days ago.’

‘Shepton Mallet is right in our territory, right in the sniper’s territory, come to that. How do you start a motorbike without a key?’

‘They use pigtail leads to bypass the ignition. It worked well for the thief because the bike was taxed and registered and no one knew it was stolen property.’

Diamond began fleshing out his theory with this new information. ‘Wells, Radstock, Shepton Mallet — three towns southwest of here and no more than ten miles from each other. This is where our friends the profilers with their criminal maps would be getting excited. He was operating within quite a small area.’

‘Avoncliff where he was caught isn’t far off from those places, fifteen miles at most.’

‘You’re right, Inge. Bradford on Avon, Becky Addy Wood — all very local. A motorbike would be useful to any criminal. Fast, easy to manoeuvre, even over rough ground, and he was well disguised in the helmet.’

‘I haven’t seen him,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Is it obvious he’s a foreigner?’

‘Not at all. He could pass for British. You can’t go by appearances.’

She lifted an eyebrow. ‘But you’re very confident he’s an illegal?’

‘From how he reacted when I mentioned a consulate, yes.’

‘He won’t be from one of the EU countries, then. Could he have escaped from a detention centre? Some do.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve already been over that with Jack Gull. Everyone who goes into one of those places is photographed and fingerprinted. He’d be in the system and he isn’t.’

‘So he probably arrived in a container and is anxious not to be caught. Why start shooting policemen when you want to keep a low profile?’

‘I’ll say this. The guy we’re holding appears to be hyped up, angry and fearful at the same time.’

‘Angry at being roughed up by Jack Gull?’

‘Much more than that.’

‘Angry at being reeled in?’

‘That’s part of it, I’m sure. And fearful of being sent back. He got very agitated when I said his consulate must be informed. He doesn’t expect sympathy from his own government.’

‘Perhaps he committed crimes there.’

‘Could be. Or it’s just that they’re repressive. Someone like that, desperate not to be picked up by the police, decides to arm himself. He’s served in the army in his own country and knows how to use a gun, so he buys one from someone in the criminal underworld, in Bristol, say, where we know there’s a trade in weapons. He steals the bike and starts to feel more confident. He’s got wheels and he’s got an assault rifle. It’s a short jump from defending yourself to going on the offensive. He hates the police so he begins murdering us.’

‘That’s an awful lot to infer from one angry guy in custody.’

He gave a smile that admitted as much. ‘Lost faith in my powers of reasoning, have you?’

‘I don’t know about reasoning,’ she said. ‘If I put up a theory like that, you’d be saying unkind things about feminine intuition.’

‘Never.’

‘How about the West Country connection?’

‘Here’s an idea I’ve been mulling over,’ he said. ‘There was a lot in the papers last year about private colleges that offer a route into Britain for illegal immigrants. I wouldn’t mind checking whether any such colleges exist in and around Bradford on Avon.’

‘What you’re saying is that you wouldn’t mind me doing a check,’ she said.

‘What a good idea.’

Three-quarters of an hour later came the call he’d been waiting for — from the forensics company conducting the ballistics tests.

‘You wanted the results from the test firing of the G36 rifle found in the river near Avoncliff yesterday.’

‘Don’t I just.’

‘It’s definitely the murder weapon. The bullets discharged in the test-firing chamber have been examined microscopically now and compared with those found at the crime scenes. As you know, the rifling along the sides of the bullets is like a fingerprint, unique to each weapon. The standard is that at least three identical patterns be found. We have better than that.’

‘Nice work.’

‘But …’

‘There’s always a “but” with you people. Tell me, then.’

‘The match is with the used bullets recovered from Wells and Radstock. The bullets from the Bath scene are too deformed to be of any use. However, you did send us a cartridge casing from Bath.’

‘Correct.’

‘Automatic weapons have mechanisms that eject the spent cartridge case and place the new bullet in the firing chamber. The process leaves scratches and marks on the side of the casing that are just as individual, just as reliable.’

Why do scientists always insist on telling you more than you need to know? Impatiently, Diamond said, ‘And?’

‘The casing found in Bath was ejected from a different weapon.’

‘Different? Not a G36?’

‘You’re misunderstanding me. Still a G36, but a different G36.’

‘Are you certain of this?’

‘Totally. We compared the Bath casing with the ones from the test firing and they don’t match. The gun from the river wasn’t used to murder PC Tasker.’

He didn’t spend long brooding on the results. Surprising as they would seem to most of those working on the case, they chimed in with the hypothesis he’d been working towards: two gunmen. Jack Gull had to be brought up to date and so had the rest of the team.

He braved the mockers in the incident room.

Gull’s response was predictable — and satisfying. ‘Why the fuck did they tell you first? I’m the CIO. I’m the head of the Serial Crimes Unit.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Jack,’ Diamond said. ‘No one’s after your job, unless Polehampton is, and they didn’t call him, they called me.’

‘The custody clock is running down. I’m going to have to ask a magistrate for a warrant of further detention.’

‘Yes. Don’t miss out on that.’

‘Ballistics must have got it wrong, anyway,’ Gull said. ‘The sniper won’t have used more than one gun. A gunman treats his weapon like another limb. It’s part of him.’

‘He slung it in the river.’

‘Only when he knew we had him by the short and curlies. It’s got to be the same gun he used for the Walcot Street shooting. Got to be. He’s had it with him ever since.’

Across the incident room, John Leaman looked up and gave Diamond a slight smile. On the first day he’d cautioned Gull against assuming the same gun had been used for all three shootings.

‘Will you take some advice from me?’ Diamond said to Gull.

‘Let’s hear it and I’ll tell you.’

‘Keep things simple. Concentrate on what we know for certain. The gun we found was definitely used for the shootings in Wells and Radstock. It was in the river at Avoncliff where we arrested the guy we’re holding in the cells. We’re confident he’s the sniper.’

‘I know all this. All I want is a fucking confession.’

‘And you won’t get it until you find what language he speaks. Here’s a tip. When I was with him he clearly didn’t understand what I was saying, but when I used the word “consulate”, he went bananas. Some words are the same in different languages, like “le weekend” in French. I think you should look for a language that has the same word for consulate, or consul.’

‘I’m a detective, not a fucking linguist.’

‘Ask a fucking linguist, then.’

Even Jack Gull was forced to grin. ‘It could be one of those words that’s the same in dozens of languages.’

Diamond held up a finger. ‘Yes, but I haven’t finished. Like I said, the mention of the word really upset the suspect. My sense is that he comes from a state that treats its people harshly. He doesn’t want his government getting involved. He’d rather answer to our law than his own.’

‘Are you thinking of the old Soviet bloc? He looks European.’

‘Could be, and I wouldn’t discount the Middle East. Some of those people could easily pass for Europeans.’

‘I’ll give it a whirl. What are you doing next?’

‘I’ve got a funeral to attend.’

But the funeral wasn’t until 3 P.M. Diamond had other lines of enquiry he wasn’t revealing to Gull at this juncture.

‘Guv.’

The quiet, yet insistent, call from across the room was timely. A chance to leave Gull to wrestle with the linguistic problem.

Diamond shimmied between the desks to where Ingeborg was sitting back, adjusting her blonde ponytail, eyes on the computer screen.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘You asked me to check private colleges in and around Bradford on Avon. There’s one here known as the West Wiltshire Higher Education Institute. It was under investigation last summer and closed down.’

‘What for?’

‘Enrolling more foreign students than they could possibly cater for. It was an immigration scam. They got accepted for courses, obtained student visas and then disappeared into the underground economy. The government has been trying to crack down. Across the country ninety thousand were taken on last year by educational establishments that don’t have the “highly trusted” status the Ministry of Education is trying to insist on.’

‘When you say “foreign”, you mean from outside the European Union?’

‘Yes. Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Algeria. Shall I go on?’

‘Tell me about this college they shut down. Where was it?’

‘Off the Bath Road at the top of the town. Just a large house as far as I can make out.’

‘You mean Bradford on Avon?’

She nodded. ‘They had capacity for fifty and they enrolled five times that number over the course of a year. They were crafty. They had what they called an induction course that lasted a couple of weeks and then off-site work experience to acquire better language skills. Many of the students couldn’t speak any English when they arrived.’

‘And I suppose the work experience was low-paid casual labour?’

‘You bet. In theory they were supposed to return to study full time when they’d got enough language skills, but they wouldn’t learn much English picking fruit and digging potatoes. You can see why the college lost track of most of them. It was a huge turnover.’

Diamond didn’t need much more persuading. ‘But they’d learn about the local terrain. This is just what I was looking for, Inge, and the best explanation yet for how the sniper might have got to know Becky Addy Wood and Avoncliff. His student visa has no currency any more and he doesn’t have the language skills to integrate into the system. His world has collapsed. He knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s arrested and banged up in one of those removal centres. He’s living rough, stealing stuff to get by, but he has the bike and he has the gun. He’s angry, vulnerable, terrified. He resolves to take the fight to the opposition, take revenge on the police. The rest we know.’

‘Want me to do more checking?’ Ingeborg asked.

‘It would be nice if there’s a record of the students they took on.’

‘I doubt if they kept one. Or if they did, they would have destroyed the evidence.’

‘There must have been some evidence of malpractice if the college was closed down. Wiltshire Police may know something. It’s worth trying.’

‘I’ll get onto them.’

‘Before you do,’ Diamond said, ‘we were talking the other day about the blog you found.’

She turned to face him, all attentiveness. Clearly she thought he’d dismissed the blog as yet another piece of computer nonsense. ‘I can’t claim credit for that. The barmaid at the Porter found it and told me.’

‘Still worth a look?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Could you bring it up on the computer in my office?’

‘Not a problem. You’ll have at least four postings to read, but they won’t take long.’

In front of his screen, working the keyboard, Ingeborg said, ‘This is interesting. There’s a fifth.’