Cop to Corpse

by Peter Lovesey

  I’m glad we had a good laugh. I could see Vicky was a bit down when we started, but by the end of that story she was fine.

  Now you know the good guys in this blog, Vicky, Anita and me, and you’ll be wanting to find out who the baddies are. There’s only one so far and, natch, he’s a bloke. Maybe it’s jumping the gun to call him an out-and-out baddie. We need to know more about his shady activities before hanging him out to dry. That’s our mission, to uncover the truth.

  And hang him out to dry.

  We first got onto him through Anita. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ she goes with a giggle, ‘but there’s a client — head office insists we don’t call them customers any more — who’s a real puzzle to me. I call him my city break man. He’s always making short trips, mostly to Europe, and sometimes to America. When I say always, that’s an exaggeration. I mean about five times altogether. I shouldn’t complain. It’s good business for us. He pays cash, which is unusual, and the banknotes all pass the test. He buys some of the local currency from our foreign exchange, not a huge amount, about two hundred pounds worth, and he stays in middle bracket hotels for a couple of nights. He doesn’t want to be friendly with any of my staff. They’re company-trained to remember clients and greet them by name, but I can tell he doesn’t like that at all so I told them to ease up. I’ve never seen him smile. He’s usually wearing a dark suit and boring tie. He’s about forty, I would guess. We’re supposed to have a contact address and phone number and all he’s willing to give is a box number and a mobile number.’

  ‘He must have given you a name.’

  She shrugs and smiles. ‘Smith. John Smith. That’s the name we use for the bookings. I don’t believe it.’

  Vicky makes one of her solemn remarks. ‘There are plenty of John Smiths. On the law of averages, he’s more likely to be John Smith than William Shakespeare or Albert Einstein. Perhaps it’s true.’

  ‘Darling, it’s precisely because there are so many that he chose it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it need to match his passport?’

  ‘It’s not difficult getting a false passport.’

  Vicky nods. ‘He’s into something dodgy, that’s for sure.’

  I’m like, ‘Drugs?’

  Anita goes, ‘I hope not. My company wouldn’t want to get involved with anything like that.’

  And Vicky is like, ‘Two hundred quid wouldn’t buy much hard stuff. It’s not even worth the trip.’

  How does she know about such things? I wonder.

  ‘Trafficking?’

  ‘He’s not the sort. The guys who go in for that are sexy foreign brutes, and they’re not going to use a travel agency.’

  ‘A spy? Using an agency would be a good cover.’

  Anita pipes up, ‘You girls are getting carried away and I haven’t told you the strangest bit. At lunchtime when it’s nice I sometimes buy a sandwich and go for a walk in the park. Just across the street from the sandwich shop is the job centre and a couple of weeks ago I saw some guy in tattered old jeans and a hoodie coming out of there obviously having just collected his social and — get this darlings — it was city break man. I swear it was him. I know the walk. Two days later he’s in my shop wearing his suit and tie and booking two nights in Rome and buying his two hundred pounds worth of Euros. Unemployed, funded by the taxpayer, and off on another trip.’

  Vicky tut-tuts at such behaviour. ‘He’s a benefits cheat.’

  And I’m like, ‘Are you sure it was him, Anita? Hundred per cent?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Does he know you saw him?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have used my agency again if he did. The way I see it, cheating the taxpayer is one thing, and someone ought to report him, but all these trips abroad make me think he’s up to something bigger.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I sure as hell want to find out.’

  Then I hear myself saying, ‘The three of us ought to be up to it.’

  ‘Finding out, you mean?’

  ‘Combining our skills and talents to discover the truth.’

  ‘The three snoops.’

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Sleuths.’

  Suddenly it sounds like an adventure. We’ve been friends up to now, giggly, on the same wave-length, whiling away our spare time, but aimless. This is something more, a project, a bonding exercise. I can tell we all fancy it.

  Vicky claps her hands. ‘I’ve got it. Next time he books a trip, you can book places for all of us to tail him and find out what he does.’

  ‘Too expensive,’ Anita says. ‘The company runs a tight ship.’

  ‘Send one of us, then: Ishtar.’

  And I’m, ‘What do you take me for? I can’t go jetting off to foreign places like James Bond. I’ve got my job to do, delivering flowers.’

  Anita shies away, too. ‘And I couldn’t fund it. That’s not on. But I tell you what, Ish. We could do some sleuthing at a local level. Next time he comes in, why don’t I give you a call and get you to follow him in your van, see where he goes, and at least we’ll find out where he lives.’

  ‘How would that help?’ I’m backtracking fast, wishing I hadn’t suggested this sleuthing game.

  ‘We’d get to know more about him, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Going to the police might be a better idea.’

  So Anita does some backtracking of her own. ‘And you know what they’ll say? It’s all suspicion so far. Besides, I don’t want it known that I’m snitching on my own customers.’

  I’m happy to agree. ‘You’d lose most of your business. Anyone who can afford a foreign holiday these days must be on the take.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  We bang on for some time like this, but deep down I’m hooked. I want to find out what city break man’s game is. After we’ve caught him out, who knows, we could go on to bigger things and get on the trail of the Somerset Sniper. Just joking.

  The truth is we’re all turned on by this adventure. Vicky’s eyes are shining. Anita is practically purring. The three snoops. Sorry, sleuths. And guess who’s standing by, waiting for that call from the travel agency?

  I’ll report what happens in my next blog — if I’m not dead meat already.

  8

  Jack Gull said without a scrap of sympathy, ‘Shouldn’t you be at home?’

  Diamond widened his eyes. ‘With one of our guys dead and the other fighting for life? I’ll see the day out.’

  They were back in Manvers Street police station in the incident room freshly created by DI John Leaman as office manager. Give Leaman a job and he delivered. Display boards were in place with photos from the scene and details of principal witnesses, the morning’s statements already on computer, civilian support staff installed as receiver, indexer, action allocator and statement readers.

  Calls were coming in steadily from the public. The standard request for information had already been broadcast. A team of trained staff were noting everything. Ninety per cent of what came in would be of no use, but every snippet of information had to be recorded and prioritised. Later Diamond would make a personal TV appeal for assistance.

  Gull was forced to admit that everything was in place. His only grudging comment — in case his own empire should be undermined — was that this had to be a temporary arrangement, which prompted Diamond to say that if an incident room ever got to be permanent they’d better resign, all of them.

  Photos of Harry Tasker’s corpse and the wound to Ken Lockton’s head dominated one end of the room, a reproach to everyone who entered. On another board were grim close-ups of the two previous victims of the sniper. In each case shots to the head had caused death.

  Leaving Gull to check the displays, Diamond went across to Leaman and asked what news there was from the hospital.

  ‘No change, guv. He’s in a coma and they say it could be for weeks.’

  ‘Are his people with him?’

  ‘His wife and son.’

  ‘Someone
is with them, I hope.’

  ‘Christina, one of the PCSOs, drove them in. She has a good way with people.’

  ‘Good choice, then. And who have we got supporting Harry Tasker’s widow?’

  ‘PC Dawn Reed volunteered. She worked with Harry.’

  ‘I know Dawn. She’ll cope if anyone can. Emma Tasker isn’t easy to help. So what do we have that’s new?’

  Leaman produced the preliminary report from ballistics. The misshapen bullet and the cartridge case were now confirmed as from a.45 round.

  ‘Same fucking gun as he used in Wells and Radstock, as if we hadn’t twigged,’ Jack Gull’s voice boomed from the other side of the room.

  ‘We’d better wait for their final report before we say that for sure, sir. It may be a G36 like the others, but we can’t say for certain it was the same G36,’ Leaman said in his matter-of-fact manner. He yielded to no one in the pursuit of accuracy.

  ‘I said it, chum, and you heard me,’ Gull responded. ‘I’m the CIO here and we’re proceeding on the basis that these killings are the work of one individual with one gun.’

  Even John Leaman appreciated that you don’t argue with a chief superintendent who skews a point of information into a test of authority.

  Typical of Gull, Diamond thought, shouting over the heads of civilian staff as if they didn’t exist. Curbing himself from making something of it, he fixed his mind on the investigation.

  ‘What I want to know is whether today’s events have told us any more about the suspect.’

  ‘Plenty,’ Gull said, turning away from the display board. ‘He’s familiar with your routines here in Bath. He must be, to have known PC Tasker was walking that beat in the small hours of Sunday morning. He got into the garden in the Paragon, so either he lived there or knew the place well enough to con his way in. And obviously he’d sussed it out as a perfect place to shoot from. That’s one of his hallmarks, doing his homework before he carries out the killing.’

  ‘Are you thinking he’s a local?’ Diamond said.

  ‘Got to be.’

  ‘Local to Wells and Radstock, too?’ Leaman got in, still smarting from the putdown.

  ‘And Becky Addy Wood,’ Diamond said. ‘Unless we’re mistaken about the motorcyclist and it was someone else.’

  ‘No chance,’ Gull said. ‘That was our man. The practice shots in the tree. The hideout. The way he hightailed it when we got near. Obviously he used the wood as his base.’

  ‘If he’s local,’ Leaman said, ‘why hide in a wood? Why not work from home?’ His dogged logic was starting to sound insubordinate.

  Diamond headed off another dustup. ‘Because he doesn’t want to appear suspicious. He may be living with someone else who doesn’t know he owns a gun.’

  Gull nodded. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Diamond said. ‘Do we have any fingerprints from the previous shootings?’

  ‘No fingerprints,’ Gull said. ‘He’s too smart to leave any. Shoe prints. A nice clean set from the tree house he used as a hide in Wells.’

  ‘But they’re on file here, are they?’ Diamond’s thoughts were still with Willis, the clever-dick civil servant. ‘So at least we have something to compare with, if we come up with a suspect?’

  ‘If he always wears the same pair of trainers, yes.’

  Moving on, Diamond asked, ‘Did you find anything more after I was taken to hospital?’

  ‘In the woods, you mean? Less than I hoped for. Some boot prints, a few tyre prints, no use until we find the boots and a bike that match them. I’m assuming he buried the rifle somewhere in the wood, but you saw what the ground is like. We could have fingertip searches for a month and still not find it.’

  ‘He may be back to collect the gun.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ Gull said. ‘Told the Wiltshire guys to keep a twenty-four watch for the whole of next week. They’re not happy. The chief inspector talks about resources and calls it an Avon and Somerset crime, as if his county has no stake in it. The point is that the sniper isn’t fucking interested in who polices what. He’s as likely to strike next in Wilts as he is here.’

  ‘That’s if he spots a copper on the beat at night,’ Diamond said. ‘What are we going to do about that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are we going to send out more guys to be shot at?’

  Gull frowned. ‘We can’t abandon the streets. The public wouldn’t stand for it.’

  ‘The public isn’t risking its life. The public can lock its doors and go to bed in safety.’

  This flew in the face of modern police procedure. After a pause, Gull said, ‘I don’t know if I’m hearing right. It’s your job and mine to keep the streets safe at night.’

  ‘We can do that in patrol cars,’ Diamond said. ‘Personally, I’ve never been all that impressed by foot patrols.’

  ‘You’re on a loser there. Community policing. It’s government policy. Every politician who gets elected calls for a bigger police presence on the streets. The papers scream for it. The public wants it. That’s democracy.’

  ‘This argument was going on when I first joined the police. Joe Public may feel comforted by the sight of a bobby walking up the high street, but what happens when a crime is committed? They call 999 and expect quick action. That guy on the beat isn’t there before a response car.’

  ‘Yes, but we can’t measure the deterrent effect. You can’t say how many villains were put off robbing old ladies by the sight of bobbies on the streets.’

  ‘Not many,’ Diamond said. ‘When old ladies are robbed, it’s in their homes mostly, not outside.’

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ Gull said. ‘The public sleeps easier at nights knowing we’re out there.’

  ‘And up and down this country a police officer is assaulted on the streets every twenty minutes.’

  ‘Don’t quote stats at me, Diamond. Up and down this country includes the West Midlands, Strathclyde and the Met. We’re Avon and Somerset, remember.’

  ‘Peaceful old Avon and Somerset where upwards of a hundred and fifty officers have been victims of assault over the last year. And what is more — ’

  ‘A hundred and fifty-one.’

  Diamond was halted in mid-flow, but not by Gull. John Leaman had spoken again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A hundred and fifty-one, guv. We’ve got to add you to the list.’

  Without intending to, Leaman had defused the argument.

  Gull gave a rare smile. ‘He’s right. Some people will do anything to prove a point, even flinging themselves under fucking motorbikes.’

  ‘In point of fact, gentlemen,’ Diamond said with all the dignity he could muster, ‘I wasn’t in Avon and Somerset at the time. I was in Wiltshire.’

  The neighbourhood policing debate stopped there. Fortunately the adrenalin rush of clashing with Gull had stopped Diamond thinking about his injuries. His brain was functioning again.

  ‘Look at this from the sniper’s point of view,’ he said, getting back to the issue that mattered. ‘The first two shootings, in Wells and Radstock, appear to have been carried out without a hitch. He gave nothing away except a few shoe prints and the inevitable, the calibre of the bullets he used. Today was different. He managed the killing okay, except for losing a cartridge case in the undergrowth, but after that things went belly up. For some reason he got trapped in that garden and could have been caught by Lockton and Stillman. He got lucky when Lockton thought he could act alone, but he was forced to clobber Lockton, which was never in the plan.’

  Gull took up the narrative. ‘Yes, and after that, he gets on his bike and drives off to the woods and has another close call. He didn’t reckon on us getting onto him so soon.’

  ‘By his high standards, today was a mess,’ Diamond summed up. ‘He won’t be feeling so chipper. If, as we believe, he hid the gun in Becky Addy Wood, he’ll be worried that we’ll make a search and find it. He knows that’s difficult, but not impossible. With metal detecto
rs we may locate it. And if he intends to carry out more shootings, he’ll need that gun.’

  Gull wasn’t comfortable when Diamond was doing the talking. ‘He’s an expert marksman. He may well have other guns. If so, he could afford to leave it buried, rather than risk going back.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Jack. That rifle has served him well. Gunmen get attached to their weapons like snooker players with their cues. Bearing in mind that it’s a tell-tale piece of evidence with his prints and his DNA and maybe some of Ken Lockton’s blood and hair adhering to the stock, plus the fact that he wants to use it again, I’m sure he’ll run the risk of going back for it.’

  ‘If he does, we’ll collar him.’

  ‘You’re talking about the stake-out?’