Cop to Corpse

6

Diamond could do nothing to save himself. There wasn’t the split second needed to leap clear of the oncoming motorcycle. An Olympic athlete wouldn’t have managed it, let alone a portly middle-aged detective. Yet there was time enough to know his number was up. The body may be slow to react, but the brain is super-fast in life-threatening moments.

A massive impact.

For a moment he was airborne and then he hit the ground like a tenpin, spinning with the force of the contact. No way out of this, the brain insisted. Fatal, such force, such weight. He resigned to being run over by bike and rider.

Lying helpless on his back, eardrums at bursting point, he glimpsed the black network of branches swaying high overhead against the grey of the sky. The last image he would ever see.

Not so.

The killer crunch from the bike didn’t happen. The roar of the engine continued some seconds and then reduced. The note changed from a blare to a wail to a buzz. He heard it recede down the valley.

The branches overhead continued to stir in the wind.

Spared, then?

He didn’t know how.

Every part of his frame felt numb. Impossible to tell the extent of his injuries. Unwise to investigate yet. He lay motionless until the engine sound was a hiss that merged with the distant swish of water from Avoncliff weir. Only then did he truly believe he might be safe.

The motorcyclist must have made a last-second decision to swerve, catching him on the shoulder instead of mowing him down. Flesh and bone had impacted with flesh and bone, destructive enough, but not lethal. Dead leaves had cushioned his fall. He was conscious of the not unpleasant smell of moulding vegetation. Scrabbling with his fingers he felt the damp layer below the dry ones on the surface.

Tentatively, he moved his right hand down his side, checking that he still had a ribcage, hip and thigh. All present. All in place.

That settled, his brain struggled to account for what had happened. He’d been upright, fit and striding through the wood to return to his place in the dragnet. It was a mystery where the bike had come from. How could it have sprung from the solid earth in front of him?

People came running. The first to reach him was one of the Wiltshire firearms officers.

‘You OK?’

He released a shaky breath. ‘Don’t know till I get up.’

‘Stay still. Don’t try and move. What happened?’

‘Must have been the sniper. He came from nowhere.’

Others in their body armour surrounded him. ‘Call an ambulance,’ someone said.

‘No need for that,’ Diamond told them. ‘I can feel my legs.’ He tried to move them and gasped as pain shot up his left thigh.

Jack Gull forced himself to the front and leaned over. No sympathy given or expected. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’

‘Walking through the wood, that’s what. I was on my way back to the search party when this motorbike appeared from nowhere, coming straight for me.’

‘What do you mean, “from nowhere”?’

‘Out of the ground. Straight ahead.’ He tried to point and felt a stab of pain in his shoulder.

Disbelief personified, Jack Gull stepped over to check. He thrashed around in the bracken.

‘Well, fuck me.’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Where he came from. You wouldn’t know it was here. Watch me.’ Gull took a step forward and dropped out of sight. ‘Impressive?’ His head and shoulders reappeared. ‘It’s a bloody great hole in the ground.’

‘I saw nothing.’

‘It’s overgrown, isn’t it?’ Now that he’d made this discovery, Gull wanted all the credit he could extract. ‘Looks to me like part of the quarry workings, squared off neatly inside.’

Some of the others moved closer to take a look. The injured Diamond was only a sideshow now.

Gull said from inside the hole, ‘A bloody great chunk of limestone has been taken out of the ground. He’d get a motorcycle in here, no problem, and it’s got a natural ramp with some purchase where they cut into the open face. He’d found his own hidden parking spot. The scumbag was in here waiting for the right moment to get the hell out.’

‘Neat,’ someone said.

‘No question. He planned it for an emergency getaway.’

‘Will he get stopped?’ Diamond said.

‘He’d better.’ From his sunken position Gull swept some bracken aside and addressed the man in charge. ‘You sealed the area, right?’

‘The roads, yes, but — ’

‘But what?’

‘On a bike he can use the footpaths and this whole area is riddled with them.’

‘Give me strength. He’ll be clean away. Did you radio all units?’

‘We’re not total idiots.’ There was some cross-border rivalry here. Wiltshire wasn’t part of Gull’s empire.

Gull climbed out of the dugout and went over to Diamond. ‘What did this dickhead look like?’

‘Helmet and visor. Leathers. That’s as much as I saw.’

‘Come on. You saw the bike.’

‘Black, with a windshield. I’m not into motorbikes.’

‘Fat lot of use that is. This is the fucking sniper. He comes so close he knocks you down and that’s all you remember.’

The chief inspector said, ‘I think we should lay off. The man’s obviously in pain.’

‘He’s in pain?’ Gull said. ‘I’m in bloody torment. The tosser was under our fucking noses and he escaped.’

The ambulance arrived and got as close as it could. Diamond insisted on trying to walk and had to admit he needed the stretcher. They removed the protective jacket and he was made sharply aware of how much his ribs hurt. He was hauled inside and driven to the Royal United Hospital.

In Accident and Emergency, he was checked by a doctor, put in a wheelchair and taken away for X-rays to his left leg, shoulder and ribcage.

‘What happens now?’ he asked the staff nurse in the radiography department.

‘You wait your turn.’

‘I don’t have time to wait. I’m a police officer on a manhunt.’

The nurse gave a smile that said she’d heard every story going and this was a nice try. ‘You won’t be hunting anyone today. We take patients strictly in order. It shouldn’t take long.’

‘Nothing is broken. It’s bruising or a sprain. Find me a pair of crutches and I’ll save you the trouble.’

‘This is radiography, Mr. Diamond. We don’t supply crutches.’

‘There’s a man over there with them.’

‘He’ll have a good reason.’

‘And you think I don’t? I tried standing up and it’s obvious what’s wrong. My ankle can’t take my weight. If that doesn’t justify crutches, I don’t know what does.’ He knew as he spoke the words that he’d just undermined two of his arguments: that no X-ray was necessary and that he was essential to the manhunt.

The staff were too busy to listen any more. He was left to see out time in the wheelchair, more at risk from soaring blood pressure than recent injuries.

Patients were being taken in for X-ray, not at the speed Diamond would have liked. He took out his mobile to check what was happening at the murder scene in Walcot Street.

‘Can’t you read?’ the man with the crutches said. He pointed to the poster on the wall showing mobiles were prohibited.

Even Diamond knew there were practical reasons for the ban. He sighed and returned the phone to his pocket.

His thoughts turned to what was happening in Becky Addy Wood. The place where the motorcycle had been hidden ought to be taped off by now and the scene-of-crime team collecting evidence. The searchers would be combing the area in hope that the murder weapon was hidden there. What an anticlimax. Through his own failure to think ahead, a marvellous chance of an arrest had gone begging. If he’d had the wit to visualise the killer using a bike, they might have focused the hunt and got a result.

Instead, it was back to the tedious step-by-step search. Those lads had every right to curse him.

He’d spent the morning reacting to events instead of anticipating the gunman’s next move. This wasn’t the sort of case where you follow up clues and piece together what happened. Three police officers had been murdered and there was no reason to believe it had stopped there. Someone needed to look ahead. He hadn’t much confidence in Jack Gull’s foresight.

‘Clarence Perkins,’ the voice came over the tannoy. Once it would have been Mr. Perkins, Diamond reflected. We’re all overgrown children in the modern health service.

‘That’s me.’ Clarence was the possessor of the crutches. They’d been resting against his wheelchair while he waited.

A nurse came over to collect him. ‘You won’t need these inside,’ she told him. Watched particularly by Diamond, she placed the crutches along three of the steel chairs reserved for the walking wounded and wheeled Clarence around a partition and into the X-ray room.

Diamond looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes of precious time had gone by. The temptation to leave was overwhelming. His wheelchair was parked at the end of the row of linked chairs. He tugged at the wheels. The brake was on. He was no expert at manoeuvring one of these things. No use trying to get it moving without help. He shifted his legs and got his good foot to the floor. Rising from the chair was going to hurt, but it was the only way. By twisting and shuffling he managed to get half of his backside clear of the seat and this enabled him to put the other foot to the floor.

At great discomfort.

‘What are you trying to do?’ one of the other patients asked.

‘I need a leak,’ he lied.

‘Call the nurse. That’s what they’re here for.’

‘A nurse taking me for a jimmy? I don’t think so,’ he said. By force of will he heaved himself upright, taking the weight on the right leg. The left one was far too sore. He was thinking maybe his own diagnosis was wrong and he really had broken it.

With his left hand as support, he started hopping towards the crutches, holding onto to the next chair. And the next.

‘I’m borrowing these,’ he said to the man who had spoken. He grabbed one of the crutches and attached the support to his upper arm. The second was more of a challenge while standing on one leg. He got it on the third attempt, slotted in his arm and took his first step.

‘The gents isn’t that way,’ his well-meaning adviser called out. ‘It’s the other direction.’

Diamond didn’t answer. He was back on the sniper’s trail.

By the time he’d made it through the corridors to the main exit, his conscience had been touched by small examples of members of the public behaving as one should do in hospitals, disinfecting their hands before entering the wards, sitting in waiting areas without complaining and holding doors open for a man on crutches. Before phoning for a taxi, he called at the reception desk and asked them to inform the radiology unit that Peter Diamond would not, after all, require X-rays. Then he was off before anyone tried to stop him.

Keith Halliwell was open-mouthed. ‘Guv, what on earth?’

The taxi had put Diamond down at the foot of the eighteenth century flight of steps in Walcot street. He made quite a performance of positioning the crutches and getting himself out of the back seat. ‘Have you got a tenner on you? I can’t manage these and reach my wallet at the same time.’

Halliwell shared a long-suffering look with the driver and settled the fare.

Diamond said, ‘Don’t let me forget.’

Halliwell let that pass. ‘What happened?’

‘Tell you later. This is urgent. Have any of the people in the Paragon house been allowed out yet?’

Halliwell nodded. ‘We’d already detained them for a couple of hours. They weren’t best pleased.’

‘They wanted to leave?’

‘It’s natural. When you’re treated like a caged beast you want your freedom.’

‘Did they all go out?’

‘Not together, but yes.’

‘The blonde, the old couple and the civil servant? Anyone check where they were going?’

‘Not our business. Actually, the old people said something about going for a coffee.’

‘When was this?’

‘While you were breaking the news to Mrs. Tasker. We’d already questioned them all and turned their flats upside down. Is there a problem?’

‘Tell me this, Keith: is there anything to suggest that Willis, the civil servant, rides a motorbike? While we were inside his place, did you notice leathers anywhere, or a helmet?’

‘He’s a car owner.’

‘Doesn’t stop him having a bike as well.’

Halliwell frowned as he cast his mind back. ‘I didn’t see any of the gear, but then I wasn’t looking for it. I was interested in a gun.’

‘Is he back yet?’

‘Don’t know. I can check with the guy on the door.’ Halliwell had a personal radio attached to his belt. ‘Still out somewhere,’ he presently reported.

‘I want to know the minute he gets back.’

Diamond demanded and was given an update on the investigation. It was now beyond dispute that the sniper had fired the fatal shot from the overgrown garden in the Paragon. Every resident living close enough to have witnessed the shooting had been questioned. The bullet found in the drain and the single cartridge case from the garden had gone to be ballistically tested and compared with the ammunition used in the previous shootings. Although damaged and compressed, the fragments were believed by firearms officers to be from a.45 round used with the Heckler and Koch G36 rifle, the type of weapon they carried themselves.

‘Which tells us something, if true,’ Halliwell added. ‘But are we any closer to catching this guy?’

‘Only an hour ago we were as close as it gets. He ran me down and left me like this,’ Diamond said, and told his story.

Halliwell made the right sympathetic sounds. ‘Nothing else you could have done, guv.’

‘That isn’t the view of Supergull. He reckons if he’d been there he’d have spotted the make of the bike, got the license number and a detailed description of the suspect.’

‘Yeah, the colour of his eyes, size of his collar.’

‘And which aftershave he uses. Then he’d have stretched his arms, got airborne and chased the sniper all the way down the valley and wrestled him off the bike and pinched him.’

‘Why wasn’t Gull with you?’

‘He stayed in line, obeying orders.’

‘Orders from a chief inspector?’

‘He’s more of a team player than I am. I wanted to see the tree the sniper used for target practice. This guy is good, Keith. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘They have these holographic sights, guv. You see a little red spot instead of crosshairs. You can’t miss.’

‘Three parallel lines. That’s class, holograph or not.’

‘The shooting of Harry Tasker told us that. A moving target, side on.’

The crutches were getting uncomfortable. Diamond perched himself on the bowl of the Ladymead fountain and propped them against one of the pink granite columns. ‘Sitting in the hospital I was going over stuff in my mind. Are we a hundred per cent sure that Willis is in the clear?’

‘This guy has really got to you,’ Halliwell said. ‘His guns are locked up at Devizes.’

‘Never mind the guns. What about the man himself? Does he have an alibi? No. He lives above the garden the shot was fired from.’

‘None of them in the house have an alibi. They were all at home overnight. Any one of them could have gone down to the end of the garden and pulled the trigger.’

‘I may be wrong, but I don’t see the old couple or the dizzy blonde knowing which end of a gun to hold. Willis does.’

‘If it’s him, he’s got front,’ Halliwell said. ‘He didn’t exactly go out of his way to please us.’

‘He’s smart enough to know where to hide a rifle from a search party. Who’s to say he doesn’t have one he keeps at home?’

‘Unlicensed?’

A nod.

‘The sniper used a military assault rifle for the killings in Wells and Radstock.’

‘Does that make any difference?’

‘It’s not the sort of weapon they use in rifle clubs. It’s illegal.’

‘We’re not dealing with an amateur, Keith. If he wanted to get hold of a military weapon, he’d find a dealer.’

‘Is this a hunch, guv, or something stronger?’

‘Call it an informed guess. Check with the DVLC to see if he owns a motorbike.’

‘As well as the car, you mean? Now?’

Halliwell was treated to one of Diamond’s looks.

But the call to Swansea proved negative.

Diamond swore, sighed and shook his head.

‘I know we’ve got Willis in the frame,’ Halliwell said, ‘but shouldn’t we widen this?’

‘Meaning?’

‘What if the killer wasn’t living in the house. He sneaks in the evening before, breaks into the basement and passes the night there.’

‘Sneaks in through the front door?’

‘When someone else is coming or going, using the entry system. If, say, the Murphys had a visitor who was leaving, all it needs is for the killer to choose his moment and slip through the open door.’

‘Okay, an outsider is a possibility. Is there any evidence of someone having hidden in the basement flat?’

‘Nothing obvious.’

‘I wasn’t expecting an overnight bag and a toothbrush. It’s a dusty flat that’s been empty some time. Forensics can tell if someone went through.’

‘Most of Manvers Street went through this morning, guv. Well, that’s an exaggeration. Ken Lockton and Sergeant Stillman and the armed response team. That’s a lot of disturbance. The scene-of-crime team spent a couple of hours taking samples. They promised to let us know.’

‘Forensics.’ Diamond rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Did they manage to work out the sequence of events in the garden?’

‘Before the shooting?’

‘After.’

‘We all assume the sniper was still in the garden when Lockton and Stillman turned up.’

‘How soon did they get there?’

‘Around 4:40 A.M.’

‘The 999 call was 4:09. Heck of a long time for the killer to be still at the scene.’

‘The theory is that he meant to leave immediately after firing the shot and something went wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like his escape plan. Maybe he hadn’t bargained for the shop alarm going off and waking people. Or it could be as simple as the basement door shutting behind him. He’d be stuck there until someone came.’

‘He’d break a window or go over the wall. None of this chimes in with what we know about the sniper. He’s a planner. He leaves nothing to chance.’

‘Chance can bugger up the best of plans, guv.’

‘Agreed.’ Diamond looked down at his injured leg. ‘Go on, then. He remains in the garden for some reason yet to be revealed. What happens next?’

‘He hears Lockton and Stillman coming and decides to hide.’

‘Leaving his rifle propped against the railing? That’s another eccentric action. Wouldn’t he hide the gun as well?’

‘I would.’

‘Me, too. Is it left there deliberately as a distraction? They spot the gun and go towards it, thinking he’s long gone.’

‘That’s what they thought according to Sergeant Stillman.’

‘But in reality he’s still in the garden.’

‘Or the house.’

‘And after Stillman has left, the sniper picks up the gun and clobbers Ken Lockton from behind with the butt and makes his escape. Presumably the motorbike was parked somewhere near. What’s that side street opposite the Paragon?’

‘Hay Hill.’

‘That’s where I’d keep the bike for a swift getaway. Up the top to Lansdown Road and you’re laughing. You wouldn’t meet any of the response vehicles coming to the scene. We need to know, regardless of whether it belonged to Willis. Check the houses in Hay Hill and see if anyone saw a bike parked there overnight.’

While Halliwell went off, Diamond fingered his leg. There was swelling around the ankle and soreness, if not acute pain. His ribs hurt, too. Maybe he should have waited for those X-rays.

He spotted a familiar, lanky figure folding and unfolding his arms, trying to appear important.

‘Mr. Polehampton.’

The early bird of the Serial Crimes Unit turned, saw who had spoken and came over. He eyed the crutches and made no comment.

‘You’ve been here a few hours now,’ Diamond said. ‘Is the crime scene still under your control?’

Polehampton gave a cautious nod.

‘I expect you’ve got to know the area pretty well.’

Another nod.

‘Have you sussed out the shops?’

‘I know what’s there, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Polehampton said.

‘Good. All I can see from here are places that sell sofas, sewing machines and bikes. There’s a charity shop and a couple of eating places. What’s up the street beyond the night club?’

‘A stationer’s, more eating places, a fancy dress shop.’

‘Nothing so useful as a pharmacy?’

‘Further along, maybe.’

‘You’re not certain?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Better ask one of the locals, hadn’t you? Then nip along there and get me some extra strong painkillers. I’ll take over your job.’