Cop to Corpse Page 5

  ‘A young blonde woman in pyjamas opened the door to Ken Lockton and a mysterious sergeant in uniform. If that was you, you can’t have forgotten.’

  ‘That was me, yes.’

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  ‘Asleep in the car, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘Sleeping on duty while a full scale alert is going on?’

  ‘Technically, yes.’

  ‘What do you mean “technically”?’

  ‘Ken Lockton dismissed me, so I drove back to Walcot Street and parked by the barrier for a short nap. That was the intention. I was flaked out from night duty.’

  ‘Let’s re-run this from the start. How come you teamed up with Lockton?’

  ‘Pure chance, sir. He caught my eye in Walcot Street when he had his idea. He told me to drive him up here because he reckoned the shooting must have come from this direction. We buzzed a couple of doors and he was interested in this house because the basement flat wasn’t occupied. The blonde in pyjamas let us in. He asked me to force the basement door.’

  ‘That was you?’

  ‘My big foot. We went through the empty flat and found the rifle in the garden.’

  The hairs rose on the back of Diamond’s neck. ‘What rifle?’

  ‘The sniper rifle propped against the railings at the end. You must have found it by now.’

  A slow shake of the head. ‘You’d better describe it.’

  ‘I don’t know much about them. Black. About this length. Telescopic sight, I think. A box-type magazine that curved a bit. We didn’t touch it, sir. Kept our distance. Ken Lockton was chuffed to find it. I remember saying if I was the gunman I wouldn’t leave it there. I’d come back for it. Ken agreed and said it gave us a chance to nab him. He was raring to go. Then I reminded him that our car was still in the street out front — something he hadn’t thought of.’

  ‘Advertising your presence?’

  ‘Exactly. He instructed me to drive back to Walcot Street. I asked if he wanted armed back-up and he said if he did he’d use his own radio.’

  ‘You didn’t report any of this?’

  ‘Ken was the SIO at the time — before anyone more senior got there — and he made it very clear he intended to make the arrest himself.’

  ‘He wanted the glory?’

  ‘He didn’t use those words.’

  ‘But that was your understanding?’

  Stillman nodded.

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve mentioned it to anyone? Does Chief Superintendent Gull know any of this?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He blushed scarlet at the prospect. ‘Should I …?’

  ‘Get some proper sleep, in a bed. I’ll fill him in.’

  Diamond had some sympathy now he’d heard the tale. If anyone was to blame for what had happened, it was Ken Lockton and he’d paid heavily for his overambition. Presumably the gunman had been nearby when the police arrived, hiding in the basement or the garden, and had attacked Lockton from behind. True, it would have been helpful to have known for sure about the gun two hours ago, but in the bigger picture it might not matter.

  But give Lockton his due, he thought: his theory had been correct.

  Diamond’s own pet theory — that Willis fired the shots from his bedroom window — now felt less appealing than it had a few minutes ago. Maybe the civil servant had preferred a closer range from the end of the garden. The problem with this was that leaving the murder weapon propped against the railing didn’t chime in with Willis’s fastidious character.

  The time for theorising ended. Keith Halliwell sprinted towards Diamond. ‘Radio message from Jack Gull. A suspect has been sighted. There’s a stake-out in Becky Addy Wood.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do about it?’

  ‘He wants you with him. He’s about to leave.’

  5

  ‘This is the breakthrough. I feel it in my bones,’ Jack Gull told Diamond, seated in the back of a BMW response car with lights flashing, siren periodically screaming, as it powered over a mighty hill known as Brassknocker, the quick way out of Bath to Avoncliff and Becky Addy Wood.

  ‘Bully for you,’ Diamond said. All he could feel in his bones was the lurch of the suspension on the winding roads. What was going on in his stomach mattered more to him. He hated being driven fast. Embarrassing, in his job. A few of his team knew of this frailty. Gull did not.

  ‘I heard about the cartridge case being recovered,’ Gull said, expecting a businesslike exchange of their findings, even at this speed. ‘And we picked up one of the discharged bullets. Would you believe it was lying in six inches of silt at the bottom of a drain? I guess it bounced off the wall into the gutter and dropped out of sight.’

  ‘It’s gone for examination, has it?’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It impacted with stone and is well mangled. If nothing else, ballistics should be able to tell us which kind of rifle he used. It sounds like a semiautomatic again.’

  ‘The rifle. I must tell you about that,’ Diamond said and was forced to go silent again as a field to his left reared up like a tidal wave, threatening to tip a flock of sheep onto them. Coming down Brassknocker the contours were fearsome.

  ‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’

  By fixing his gaze on the driver’s headrest, he regained a measure of self-control. Staccato-style, he reported the gist of what he’d heard from Sergeant Stillman. He left out plenty, including how and when the information had reached him.

  So when Gull said, ‘What a tosser,’ he meant Ken Lockton.

  It seemed fair enough that Lockton took all the blame. His ego trip had ruined a real chance of catching the sniper.

  ‘Do we have ballistics evidence from the earlier shootings?’ Diamond managed to say.

  ‘Yep. Some of the bullets hit soft earth and were in good enough shape to check the rifling,’ Gull said. ‘No cartridge cases. Usually he’s careful to pick them up. He uses a Heckler and Koch G36, same as the police-issue weapon.’

  ‘That’s rich, killing our people with one of our own guns.’

  ‘There are thousands out there.’

  ‘As many as that?’

  ‘They’ve been manufactured since the nineteen-nineties. It’s the frontline assault rifle of the German army and several of the NATO countries. Are you armed?’

  ‘Right now, you mean?’ Diamond admitted he was not.

  Gull shook his head in disbelief that anyone could be so ill-prepared. ‘Bad move. This guy is a cop killer.’

  ‘Good move actually. No one would be safe if I had a gun in my hand.’

  ‘Even so, you should be wearing body armour. It’s a good thing I have a spare set in the boot. Pity you’re not armed, though.’

  Diamond was starting to wonder if he should have come at all.

  ‘No sweat,’ Gull added. ‘We’ll have the Wiltshire armed response lads in support.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Diamond said. The car briefly became airborne going over a hump in the road. ‘Strewth!’ With a supreme effort to sound untroubled, he came out with a question worthy of a job interview. ‘When did you first get involved in this operation?’

  ‘After the Radstock shooting, when it was obvious we had a serial sniper murdering policemen.’

  ‘Is the MO similar in each case?’ He had an inbuilt dislike of abbreviations, but at high speed the Latin was too much of a mouthful.

  ‘Same fucking gun, never mind the MO,’ Gull said. ‘The rifling on the bullets is identical. But, yes, he likes to get to a high position and lie in wait. In Wells, he used a kids’ tree house overlooking the street. In Radstock, he was on some scaffolding up the side of a new building.’

  ‘Fingerprints.’

  Gull shook his head. ‘He’s a careful bastard.’

  ‘Obviously a planner.’

  ‘Has to be. Not only does he find a good vantage point, it must be a street where one of our boys is on foot patrol. He must suss out the location days if not weeks ahead.’

&
nbsp; ‘But any copper will do as the target?’

  ‘That’s become obvious. We researched the backgrounds of PCs Hart and Richmond, the first two victims, and there’s no reason anyone would want to kill them for who they were.’

  ‘No connection between them?’

  Gull shook his head. ‘It’s mindless carnage, no different really from IEDs.’

  After the mention of the MO, Gull must have thought Diamond was up with all abbreviations.

  ‘IEDs?’

  ‘Roadside bombs.’

  ‘Got you.’

  They’d almost finished the rollercoaster descent down Brassknocker. The traffic lights ahead for the A36 were on red. Their driver gave a blast on the siren, veered into the oncoming lane, swung right and joined the main road.

  The straight stretch ahead was no relief for frazzled nerves, just a chance to pick up speed.

  ‘So what’s the thinking?’ Diamond asked over the surge in revs.

  ‘About the killer?’

  ‘His motive.’

  ‘He must hate us. Some bad experience in the past.’

  ‘I expect you checked recent releases from prison.’

  ‘You bet. And not just Erlestoke, Pucklechurch and Horfield. The whole goddamn country. An embittered ex-con would be the prime suspect. Too bad no one fits.’

  ‘Unless he got out years ago and it was festering all this time.’

  Gull looked away, out of the window. ‘You’re a real comfort. How could we possibly know that?’

  The road ahead was mercifully free of traffic, a steep climb up a stretch overhung with tall trees. The engine needed a lower gear and Diamond recovered enough to say, ‘Another angle would be the trigger-happy young hoodlum out to impress his mates.’

  ‘You’re not telling me anything.’

  ‘I’ll save my breath, then.’

  ‘Trust me, some good minds are working on this. We’re using a profiler.’

  ‘What for?’ He’d had enough of Gull’s put downs.

  ‘Don’t you believe in them?’

  ‘I believe in them. I’ve met them.’

  ‘This one is on the Home Office list. He’s good. He suggested possible areas where the sniper might live.’

  ‘Like midway between Wells and Radstock? Say, Chilcompton?’

  Jack Gull turned to glare at Diamond. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You only have to look at a map. I’m not a big fan of geographical profiling. I was reading about a serial killer in America who had the profilers going spare. Each time they settled on a location, he popped up somewhere they hadn’t thought of. Turned out he had a motor home.’

  Gull wasn’t amused. ‘I believe in using all the help going. If you can come up with a theory, I’ll even listen to you.’

  ‘What if the killer was one of our own, then?’

  Another glare. ‘A cop, you mean?’

  ‘A bad apple. I’ve met a few.’

  ‘He’d have to be psychotic.’

  ‘Are you saying the sniper isn’t? An evil cop would know how to get hold of that police-issue sniper rifle you mentioned. And he’d have inside knowledge of local foot patrols.’

  They were still climbing steadily, and now overtaking all the way. Diamond was thinking it only wanted one dozy truck driver coming towards them and three more of Avon and Somerset’s finest would join the list of dead.

  ‘The bad cop theory was raised at one of our brainstorming sessions,’ Gull said. ‘Personally, I don’t buy it. If he was picking off hard bastards like you and me, maybe, but these were foot soldiers killed because of where they were, not who.’

  ‘All right,’ Diamond said. ‘Try this for size. It’s rare, but not unknown: the guy fixated on guns and killing.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘He isn’t content with bagging rabbits and pheasants. He kills with the indifference of a marksman hitting clay pigeons. It’s his sport. He’s out of his mind, but that’s how he sees it, picking off policemen.’

  After a pause, Gull said, ‘Wild.’

  ‘Too wild?’

  Gull shrugged. ‘It’s one we haven’t talked about, I’ll give you.’

  They left the A36 at the top of the hill and swung left. In a few hundred yards it was white-knuckle time again, one of those West Country lanes no wider than the car and without passing spaces. High hedges added to the claustrophobia. On went the siren.

  Soon after, the lane opened up to a street with terraced cottages and a few parked cars.

  The driver said, ‘Almost there, gentlemen. Hold on. It gets a little hairy going down to Avoncliff. They use it for motocross.’

  A bend that was a virtual hairpin started them down the scarp of the Limpley Stoke Valley and into Becky Addy Wood. Grit-bins at intervals testified to the steepness. The road surface was potholed and the wood so dense that headlights were needed. Mercifully they didn’t have far to go before reaching a glade where a number of police vehicles were parked.

  It was bliss to get out. Diamond’s legs felt unsteady, his arms ached from being flexed, but his stomach rejoiced.

  Someone yelled, ‘Why isn’t that man wearing body armour?’

  ‘Does he mean me?’

  Jack Gull opened the car boot and handed Diamond the protective jacket and helmet. ‘As you’re not armed you’d better not get close to the action.’

  ‘Are we expecting some?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here. Shots were heard from the woods over the last couple of days. Not unusual in these parts, but this isn’t shotgun fire. This scumbag uses bullets. A tree was used for target practice.’

  Two people-carriers delivered more coppers for the stake-out, all in their protective Kevlar jackets. Most were from the Wiltshire force, for the wood was just across the county border, a remnant of the ancient Selwood Forest which had stretched from Chippenham to Cerne Abbas, fifty miles south on the Dorset Downs. The air of excitement was tempered by the sight of the terrain, dark and difficult to penetrate. This would be no walk in the park.

  Gull made himself known to the local chief inspector directing the operation and made it clear he wasn’t aiming to take over. ‘Treat Mr. Diamond and me the same as any other members of your team.’

  Diamond doubted if that was a wise offer.

  In a few minutes the small army, about forty of them, drew close to get instructions. Barely forty minutes ago, the chief inspector told them, an Avoncliff resident walking her dog had seen a figure in black running through the wood with a rifle. In view of the reports of gunfire in recent days and bullets embedded in trees she’d phoned the police. Becky Addy Wood had good possibilities as a hideout for the Somerset Sniper.

  A few officers had gone ahead to scout the area where the gunman had been seen. Cordons had been set up at the obvious escape points. The entire wood was not large — barely two hundred yards across and half a mile in length — but difficult. For a start, it was on a steep escarpment of the Avon valley. Little had been done to manage the dense woodland except clearing the rutted motocross tracks. Thick scrub and fallen and rotting timber was everywhere. In places the search party would be knee deep in leaf mould. As if that were not enough, the remains of a stone quarry were sited at the near end. A tramway had once delivered the precious limestone blocks down the steep gradient and across the Avoncliff aqueduct to a wharf where they were dressed and loaded onto barges and transported along the Kennet and Avon Canal. Little of this industrial history was visible any longer. The trees, blackthorn and nettles had taken over. But hidden blocks of stone and open mine workings presented extra hazards.

  The searchers were to spread out across the strip and advance slowly from west to east looking for signs of recent activity, in particular small fires, encampments and evidence of shooting. At any point if they sighted the suspect, they were to take cover at the nearest available place.

  ‘No problem,’ Gull said to Diamond.

  ‘Hitting the ground, you mean?’

  ‘Finding some c
over. All these fucking trees.’

  ‘It is a wood,’ Diamond said.

  ‘I hate them. I could take a chainsaw to them.’

  Diamond quite liked trees usually and they were here in variety, oak, beech, larch, fir, pine and spruce. Unfortunately many were dead. The place had a neglected look. Maybe Gull was right and some felling was wanted.

  Staying upright would be a challenge. The body armour made him top-heavy, a novel experience for him. The ceramic shield inside the Kevlar padding was like a ton weight. Still, it could be a life-saver. The pockets at the front contained helpful items including a torch, a taser and, not to be thought about, a personal first aid kit, for use by medics if he were injured.

  He and Gull were side by side, twenty feet apart, in the line that presently started a slow rake through the wood. He had mixed feelings about this search. It was difficult to understand why the sniper would have thought it necessary to hide in Becky Addy Wood when no one knew what he looked like. Instead of skulking in this godforsaken place, he could have taken tea in the Pump Room without any risk of being recognized provided he tucked the gun out of sight.

  ‘Where’s the tree?’ he called to Jack Gull.

  ‘What do you mean — “the tree”?’

  He’d touched that raw nerve again. ‘The tree he’s supposed to have used for target practice.’

  ‘Why ask me? They must know.’

  The voice of the chief inspector told them to shut their faces. A reasonable request in the circumstances, if crudely expressed. They’d asked to be treated like everyone else. Or Gull had. But there were respectful ways of saying it.

  Five minutes in, and Diamond was ready to defect. He’d twice tripped over roots and once nearly lost his shoe in thick mud. Everyone else was in boots or heavy duty trainers. If he’d known how this morning would turn out, he’d have dressed for a hike through the woods. He was still in the oxfords he wore for the office. And his second best suit. He’d sometimes remarked to friends that his job was never boring. You couldn’t predict from one day to the next where you would be and what you would investigate.

  Suddenly the people on the left stopped and gestured along the line for everyone to halt. They’d reached a thickly wooded stretch where it was impossible to see more than two of the searchers to right or left. The rule of silence now was too much to hope for. The news of a find was soon passed along. There was evidence of a tent being pitched and the ashes of a wood fire.