Killing with Confetti

38

‘What sort of stunt is this?’ Leaman complained. ‘In all the years I’ve endured in CID I can’t remember him doing such a thing. It’s like the last chapter of an old-fashioned detective story.’

‘Detective stories are the new cool,’ Ingeborg said. ‘I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. I’ve been given my instructions and I expect you’ve got yours.’

They were in the palatial entrance hall of the Roman Baths, where the wedding guests had been received on Saturday evening. The gathering wasn’t as big as before. Diamond hadn’t brought in the string quartet, or the champagne and canapés, but there was likely to be a speech. All of CID had turned up, even Paul Gilbert, no longer sporting a surgical dressing but with three stitches visible in his head wound. Georgina, frowning a lot and clearly of the same mind as Leaman about this jamboree, was watching from the side with George Brace, who appeared more forgiving and willing to see what emerged. Both were still in uniform. The two armed policemen who had patrolled the building before the reception were present with their Heckler & Koch assault rifles across their chests, trigger fingers poised, no doubt conscious that they were under the scrutiny of the top brass and trying hard to appear reassuring rather than threatening. They still got some uneasy looks.

Maurice the photographer and Dixie, his fixer, were looking lost without a camera and groups to organise. Diamond had asked them to attend in case this re-enactment triggered a helpful memory. They had been closer than anyone to the scene of the killing at the time it was supposed to have happened.

George’s wife, Leticia, was the only other one of the principal guests able (and more than willing) to attend. Her outfit in shocking pink was as dressy as the one she’d worn for the wedding, even running to another spectacular hat. She was treating the occasion as if she attended crime reconstructions every week, mingling and chatting animatedly to everyone.

‘Where’s your sexy superintendent?’ she asked Ingeborg, who couldn’t at first think who was meant. ‘Peter Diamond, my dear.’

‘Oh.’ Lost for words, Ingeborg could only assume Leticia was using irony.

‘You’re lucky enough to be on his team, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be here presently with Mr. Irving.’

‘Joe, you mean, the father of the bride? A dark horse, that one. Surprised us all.’

‘How was that?’

‘His speech. Perfect for the occasion. Witty and wise and so sincere. He had us eating out of his hand.’

Difficult to picture, but Ingeborg knew what was meant. She’d heard about Irving’s speech from Diamond, her sexy boss. Sexy? She couldn’t wait to share that titbit with the rest of CID.

‘I thought Joe Irving was a man of few words.’

‘So did we all until he opened his mouth.’ Leticia’s grasshopper mind hopped to another subject. ‘And are you the young lady looking after the kitten?’

‘For the time being.’ Ingeborg switched her own thought to the furry visitor currently installed at home in her bedroom with a good supply of kitten food, a catnip toy and a litter tray. He ought to be all right for an hour or so.

‘From all I hear, you could be its permanent owner soon.’

‘I don’t think so. Claude belongs to Caroline. She’ll get him back after the honeymoon.’

Leticia’s attention had moved on again. ‘Who’s the woman with artificial legs who just came in?’

‘Miss Lyle. She was governor of the prison where Joe Irving and Jack Peace did time together.’

‘Thought so. My husband told me about her. Got the OBE, and deserved it. Strictly between ourselves, there are some sour grapes. George would dearly love to get an honour himself. It’s not for want of trying. I must meet her.’ To Leticia this was a networking exercise no different from a cocktail party. She moved off in Magda’s direction.

Finally Diamond arrived with Joe Irving. Big Joe wasn’t in handcuffs any longer. His body language — head bowed and shoulders sagging as if he was trying not to stand out as the tallest man in the room — suggested he was unlikely to make a dash for freedom. The spirit that had fuelled the best speech at the wedding had drained from him.

Diamond did the right thing and spoke briefly to George and Georgina before calling everyone to order by rapping the black case he had brought in with him. It was about the size of a large book and the thermo-moulded plastic made an arresting sound.

‘Thank you, good people,’ he said. ‘I’m Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, and I’ve just been asked to make clear that this get-together is entirely unofficial. Avon and Somerset Police are not responsible for anything that happens. Guns are present, as you may have noticed. We’re in the business of law and order. But you are free to leave at any time unless you work for me or commit a crime in the next ten minutes.’

Some nervous laughter greeted this.

‘Some of you — not all — were present in this building on Saturday night when a fatality occurred downstairs in a part of the baths called the hypocaust. Not everyone knew at the time that a man’s body was discovered late in the evening. He’d died from a head wound inflicted with a handgun at point-blank range. There was some question whether he committed suicide or was murdered. Suicide was hard to explain in the circumstances, but then so was murder. Presently we’ll all go down to the hypocaust and I’ll point out the difficulty we have.

‘I want to tell you about this unfortunate man. I say “unfortunate” and you’re probably thinking anyone who ends up dead is unfortunate. Actually, Jack Peace was also a villain, an armed gunman intent on committing murder at an event that should be entirely joyful. He’d recently been released from prison and he had a massive grudge. Three years had been added to his sentence for organising a prison riot in 2015 that resulted in serious damage and minor injuries to prison officers. Two people also died outside the prison gates, but Peace couldn’t be held responsible for their deaths, or he would have faced a charge of manslaughter at the least. The inquiry into the incident took evidence from several of the prison inmates and they named Jack Peace as the main man. I can tell you tonight that those convicts lied to the inquiry. There was a conspiracy to get Peace blamed. I have it on the best possible evidence.’ He turned towards Joe Irving. ‘Shall I tell them or will you?’

Joe shook his head slowly, eyes as animated as crushed beetles.

‘In fact,’ Diamond resumed, ‘Jack Peace played no part at all in the violence at the prison. He was coming to the end of his term and was due to be released. The others were so angry when he refused to join in that they left him and another man locked in a cell throughout the riot. Peace had good reason to be bitter.’

Diamond paused and looked around the room, assessing the response. ‘You’re wondering who was really behind the riot and I can tell you now. He’s standing here beside me and his name is Joe Irving. He was the father of the bride and he’s well known to us in Bath Police. Whether inside jail or out, he runs various rackets in the city. He’s a crook, powerful and dangerous.’

Joe’s bowed head showed no reaction. He must have been warned what to expect.

‘I can tell you he was the organiser because he confessed to me under questioning this afternoon. The whole point of the disturbance at the prison was to create a diversion so that his lordship Joe Irving could make an escape bid. There’s never any shortage of prisoners willing to join in a riot and he ruled the wing with a group of thugs who made sure his orders were carried out. Anyone brave enough or reckless enough to refuse could expect trouble — and that’s what happened to the unfortunate Jack Peace and his cellmate, a mentally challenged man known as Muscles. They were left in their cell and they could have died there if the flames had really taken hold on the middle landing.’

Someone called out, ‘Shame!’

Diamond said, ‘Am I telling it right, Joe?’

Irving was a spent force, like some captive chief being paraded and goaded in the Colosseum.

Leaman said in a muttered aside to Ingeborg, ‘What’s got into the boss? Why is he doing this?’

‘There’s got to be a good reason,’ she said, but her loyalty was under strain. She didn’t like the way this seemed to be heading. Playing on people’s emotions wasn’t Diamond’s style.

‘No wonder Peace was an angry man,’ Diamond went on. ‘No one can justify what he did next, but I can understand why he did it, and perhaps you can as well. Not long after he was released, he heard about the forthcoming wedding here in Bath of Joe Irving’s daughter, Caroline, to Ben Brace, the son of the Deputy Chief Constable, and he saw it as the perfect opportunity to right the injustice he’d suffered. Two charming and innocent young people prepared for their big day with no inkling of what was being planned. Peace went to someone who traded in illegal weapons and armed himself with an assault rifle and a handgun. He scouted the abbey and its surroundings for a place to use as a sniper’s vantage point and chose one on the roof of this building, just above where I’m standing. It overlooked the abbey front, where the wedding guests would arrive and emerge and pose for photographs. He climbed the side of the building after dark the night before and set up the gun.’

His audience would know that Jack Peace’s plan hadn’t succeeded, but they hadn’t been aware until now how close it came to success, and the thought of what might have happened was obvious in their faces.

‘You’d expect some level of security at a wedding involving the families of a senior police officer and a gang leader and that’s how I came to be involved. I was asked to be present as a precaution. Of course we had no inkling at that stage of what Jack Peace was planning, but we had to be ready in case some rival crime baron decided to make an attack. On the day, a number of officers in uniform and plain clothes were posted at key points near the abbey. I myself attended the wedding and the reception. Unknown to any of us, the young officer posted on the Roman Baths roof was attacked by Peace, beaten with the butt of the rifle and knocked unconscious. He was tied up and gagged and he’s lucky to have escaped with his life. He almost drowned at one stage, lying in a gutter.’

Keith Halliwell nudged Paul Gilbert and said, ‘Take a bow.’

Gilbert reddened and did a fair imitation of a tortoise retreating under its shell.

Diamond had moved on. ‘Well, anyone who was at the wedding will know it was held in a rainstorm, a right cloudburst, in fact. Your typical British summer afternoon. Umbrellas were out and nobody lingered outside the west door — which was fortunate, because the would-be killer couldn’t get an accurate shot in, before or after the service. The photography was postponed, but we make the best of a weather crisis, don’t we, and it was decided to have a photo session instead at the evening reception here at the baths.

‘What does Jack Peace do about that? He isn’t going to be beaten by the weather. After all the trouble he’s gone to, he won’t give up now. The bloodlust hasn’t gone away. He knows there is sure to be another opportunity if he can find a way inside this building and he has a few hours to plan his next move. There’s a ten-foot wall that separates the roof above us from the Great Bath. If he can climb that, he’ll be inside the baths and have the run of the place. He leaves the assault rifle and most of his equipment behind. A single handgun will do the job. He waits for the baths to close, when not many people are about, and climbs over.’

Diamond paused. He’d picked this moment to leave them in suspense. ‘And now I’d like to show you where he got in. The best view is from the side of the Great Bath. Follow me down there, but please go carefully on the stairs — especially you guys with your fingers on the triggers.’

The joke fell flat, judged by the response. There was some hesitation before anyone moved, but once a few had gone, the others followed.

The giant manta that was Leticia’s latest hat flapped into Ingeborg’s field of vision. ‘Isn’t he a star?’ the smitten lady said, still bedazzled. ‘He makes it all so real. I was at the wedding and I hadn’t the foggiest a gunman was stalking us and we were in danger of our lives. None of us would have guessed. And to think we worried about nothing more than getting a few spots of rain on our clothes.’

‘Puts it in perspective,’ Ingeborg said, consumed with her own concerns about the wisdom of what Diamond was doing.

Keith Halliwell passed them on the stairs at a speed of knots. He was under instructions to move ahead and take up a position in the hypocaust.

Beside the Great Bath, the gas flares had been turned on and were mirrored in the water. Here at the Roman level it required no imagination to travel two thousand years into the past. The attendees clustered around three sides of the end where Diamond positioned himself.

‘This was where everyone assembled for the delayed photo session,’ he resumed, resolved to keep the minds of his audience on the recent past. ‘The obligatory picture of all the guests first, followed by family groups and finally the bride and groom themselves. You will understand how anxious I was feeling in my role as security adviser. The armed police had made their check of the building and left. We didn’t want them standing around all evening frightening everyone. But take a glance behind you and you’ll see any number of shadowy places where some evil-minded person could be hiding. Where are our photographers, Maurice and Dixie?’

Two hands went up on the left side.

‘You may remember trying to bring me into line for the group picture, calling my name through the loud-hailer when I was skulking in the background. Now you know why I was camera-shy. You never did get me in the photo. Mr. Irving here came to my rescue and announced in colourful terms that I was indisposed, isn’t that so, Joe?’

Irving, still at his side, managed a nod, no more at ease than he had been at the beginning. Diamond was keeping him in the spotlight at every opportunity.

‘I had the same misgivings through the wedding breakfast and the disco. Little did I realise that the emergency was over and the only person who presented any danger was already dead. As I told you upstairs, he climbed over the wall from outside. If you look above the arched windows where I’m pointing you can see the slope of a tiled roof. That’s where Jack Peace got in. He will have climbed down the drainpipe at the far end and then used the stairs. This happened shortly after six when the last of the afternoon visitors had left. At this stage he was looking for a place to lie up and wait. He may have thought about hiding here, behind the masonry at the back, but he will have changed his mind when he saw our friends Maurice and Dixie setting up their tripod for the photos. Did you happen to notice anyone lurking in the shadows, Dixie?’

‘Only you, Peter,’ Dixie called across the water and got a laugh. In case he took it badly, she added, ‘Sorry, but we had our minds on the job.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry. Our gunman was a pro as well, used to staying out of view. Best to find a place well away from you two, he thought, so he went through the open doorway at the end to explore the west baths, by now deserted and in darkness. He’d wait there until all the guests were in and settled, either for the photographs or the meal. Then he’d sneak in and get close and fire the fatal shot. In the confusion he’d have a good chance of escaping. Let’s move on to the hypocaust and see what really happened.’

Ingeborg stood back with Paul, letting the others file through.

Leticia said, ‘Aren’t you coming in for the final bit?’

‘We have to make sure no one trips over,’ Ingeborg improvised. In truth they were acting as sheepdogs.

‘Is it really dark in there? Where’s my better half? I’m getting nervous.’

George Brace heard, left Georgina’s side, and came over.

‘Take my arm, dear,’ he told her. ‘I’m sure there’s some form of lighting.’

‘If anyone jumps out from behind a pillar I’ll scream.’

The last of the party took the paved way through the next room and past the thirty-foot-wide circular bath where the Romans once cooled off after a dip in the thermal water.

John Leaman was acting as marshal in the viewing area that overlooked the hypocaust, urging the early arrivals to move along and make room for the rest. Once in, they were distributed comfortably along the Plexiglass barrier. Just as George had promised his wife, there was subdued lighting, yet the stacks of terracotta tiles in the large space below still cast shadows that made it an eerie place to be after the violent death a few days before.

Diamond stood among his listeners with the sombre Joe Irving still so close that they might have been handcuffed together, his height a help to anyone wanting to know where Diamond was standing.

‘Everyone in? Welcome to the tepidarium, to use its proper name, a little chilly this evening, but warm when the Romans were here because of the underfloor heating. You modern visitors will have to rely on the hot air I’m giving out.’

Another joke bombed.

‘It must be the way I tell them. Joe made a better fist of it at the wedding. His speech had them rolling in the aisles, didn’t it, my friend?’

The curl of Irving’s lip wasn’t the response of a friend.

Diamond motored on. ‘So this was the place Jack Peace chose to hide in. It was supposed to be off limits after six P.M., and it would have been deserted and in semi-darkness when he found it. He hunkered down in one of the rows between the stacks.’ He took a torch from his pocket. ‘I’ll show you exactly where.’

Some shocked cries were heard when the beam picked out a crouching human form three-quarters of the way back.

‘No cause for alarm. That’s one of my team, DCI Halliwell. For this demonstration he’s standing in for Mr. Peace, who can’t be with us. Show us you’re alive, Keith.’

Halliwell’s hand appeared above the stacks and waved.

‘The question we had to ask ourselves was this: did Peace commit suicide or was he murdered? We can discount an accident. People don’t hold a gun to their heads and pull the trigger by mistake. If he shot himself, why, for heaven’s sake? He was on a mission and he’d found a good hiding place. He’d had some setbacks, but he was still well-placed to get revenge for those lost years in prison.

‘No, it was murder. Jack Peace had to be stopped. He was bent on committing murder himself, creating mayhem at the wedding. He couldn’t be allowed to do it. This was clear to me from early on. What I couldn’t understand was how it was done.’

Diamond swung the torch beam slowly across the hypocaust revealing the narrow spaces where the heated air had circulated. The stacks of square tiles, ten or twelve high, some cracked and broken, some clearly rebuilt from the debris found in the excavation, were about as sturdy as towers of playing cards. Too slender to provide cover, they were too close to move through with any confidence. ‘Peace was well-defended here. He had sightlines all around him, the full 360 degrees. Getting close to him without making a sound and giving yourself away, knocking down a tile, crunching on stone, tripping on the uneven floor, was impossible. I’ve tried crossing that floor and, believe me, you can’t do it unseen and unheard. I couldn’t do it. A man Joe’s size certainly couldn’t. I doubt if a cat could.

‘So how did it happen? I’ll demonstrate. The killer enters just as we did a moment ago except he creeps in unnoticed. That’s possible in the viewing gallery here. Not down among the tiles. He’s on the lookout for a gunman, so he’s ultra-careful. He senses this is a likely hiding-place and he catches sight of Peace’s dark form skulking among the stacks. He’s come prepared.’

With the flourish of a magician performing his best trick, Diamond raised his arm and held high the black plastic case he’d been carrying from the beginning, turning each way so that everyone had a sight of it. ‘Any guesses?’

‘A gun,’ someone said.

‘Correct.’ He lowered the case and placed it in the hands of the main suspect, the man who’d been shadowing him throughout, Joe Irving.

There were gasps.

‘Open it, please.’

Joe unfastened the double-throw latch and raised the lid. Diamond reached in and took out a black pistol. ‘A Glock 17, the weapon of choice for law enforcement around the world, including our own police authority. And, regrettably, the criminal world. Peace’s handgun was also a Glock 17. But this little beauty in my hand has an extra attachment I learned to use recently on the firearms course, a laser sight. It projects a laser beam that shows on the target as a red or green spot. With a laser, even a cack-handed shooter like me can’t miss.’

He aimed the gun into the hypocaust and instantly a red spot found Halliwell and glowed on his shirt.

‘Relax, everybody. This isn’t loaded, but if it was, I’d know I could hit Keith from here. And he’d know, too. If he looked down and saw the red spot on his shirt, he’d better do as I say, or else.

‘And that, ladies and gents, solves the first mystery of what happened here on Saturday night. Jack Peace sees the laser spot on his body and knows it will be curtains if he even thinks about reaching for his own gun. Simple as that. He may even have the Glock in his hand, but it’s too late to aim and fire. He’s told to drop the gun and stand up straight with his hands held high. He obeys. That’s your cue, Keith.’

The sound of a gun clattering on the floor was audible in the viewing area. Halliwell surfaced with hands up. He was wearing a black balaclava.

‘But you’re thinking Peace was shot at close range, and you’re right. Still pointing the laser, the killer mounts the barrier and lets himself down into the hypocaust. That isn’t easy one-handed for a man of my girth. I’ll try and show you how it was done.’

He gripped the top of the Plexiglass barrier, hauled himself up and swung his left leg over, then his right. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but he managed, still in control of the gun. From a sitting position he was able to lower himself to the top bricks of the original Roman wall and step down the damaged part to floor level.

The bright red spot had remained on Halliwell’s shirt front throughout.

‘Can you still hear me?’ The sound quality of Diamond’s voice had changed, but it carried easily to his rapt audience. ‘You may be wondering why he doesn’t shoot Peace from here when the aim is so accurate. He’s already decided to stage a suicide and he needs to hold the gun to his victim’s head. So he threads his way like this.’

Moving at a steady rate that enabled him to keep the laser spot on Halliwell’s chest, he crossed the floor and closed in.

Standing beside Halliwell, he said, ‘I can’t tell you what was said. Very little, I suspect. Poor Jack Peace was expecting to be taken prisoner. Instead, his balaclava was tugged down, unsighting him. He felt the gun jammed to the side of his head, like so...’

Leticia said, ‘Oh my God,’ and covered her eyes.

The gun clicked.

‘...and that was all he knew of it.’

Halliwell was no actor, but sudden deaths in shootouts are familiar to us all from gangster films and westerns. He played the scene with gusto, yelled in pain, dived to his right, twitched and lay still.

Diamond allowed that part of the reconstruction to speak for itself. ‘This is when the crime scene needs fixing to confuse the forensic scientists. The killer unclips the laser sight from his gun and pockets it.’ He wasn’t slick at separating the two, but he managed it. ‘He wipes his weapon clean’ — he produced a cloth and performed the action — ‘and then presses it into the dead man’s hand with the fingers turned around the grip and trigger before letting it rest on the ground nearby.’ He stooped beside Halliwell’s fine imitation of a corpse, but he knew he couldn’t be seen, so he used the moment to feel inside his own jacket for another item he’d brought with him, a taser. When he stood up again, he kept his grip on this unseen weapon, looking rather like Napoleon. And his commentary continued smoothly. ‘He remembers to pick up the victim’s own gun and hide it in his pocket. He’s cool. Got to be.

‘But three things are wrong. First, he’s shot Peace in the left temple and made him left-handed. Mistake. He was right-handed. Okay, I’ve been told right-handers have been known to shoot themselves with their left, but that’s unusual, an indication, if not proof.

‘Second, we traced the supplier of Jack Peace’s handgun. He told us the weapon Peace was carrying was a Glock 17, the same as he was shot with, but it wasn’t the latest model, like the one found by his body. It was generation three, a type used in the late 1990s. Still popular, still lethal, but different in several details from the gen five found at the scene.

‘The gun I brought here today is a gen five, a police-issue weapon on loan from the firearms training unit at Black Rock. We use the latest models. The guns in circulation among criminals like Peace tend to be older. I have to tell you that the murder weapon was a police-issue gun held and fired by’ — a pause — ‘one of our own.’

Watching his audience keenly, he took a couple of steps towards them.

‘When I said Jack Peace expected to be taken prisoner it was because his pursuer was a police officer in uniform. And now—’

A voice from the viewing gallery yelled, ‘No you don’t.’

George Brace had produced a gun.

But in the same split-second, Diamond whipped out the taser and fired it. Like the handgun he’d demonstrated, the electroshock weapon had a laser sight. The barbed electrodes on conductive wires hit Brace in the chest and delivered fifty thousand volts.

He screamed and keeled over.

He wasn’t the only one who screamed.

In the ensuing panic, Georgina’s voice was clearest. ‘Oh my sainted aunt! What’s he done now? He’s tasered the Deputy Chief Constable.’

A taser incapacitates the person targeted for about five seconds. In that time, Ingeborg and John Leaman knelt on George Brace and disarmed him. Others reverted to type. Leticia hyperventilated. Joe looked faintly bored. Georgina vowed to murder Peter Diamond. Maurice took out his smartphone and photographed the scene. Dixie attempted to salvage some order from the chaos.

Explanations would have to wait.