‘That’s it, then,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s upped sticks and gone. He’d be a fool to come back.’
‘It’s got to be taped off for checking,’ Gull said. ‘We could get his DNA. This could take some time.’
‘I’m going to have a look,’ Diamond said.
‘We’re not supposed to break rank.’
‘Stuff that.’
He strode off to see what was happening. He hadn’t come here to make up the numbers. If Jack Gull chose to toe the line, that was his loss, Diamond decided. The stride became a swagger, but not for long. The going was rough and made worse because of the downward incline. Soon his steps were more like stumbling. Once he caught his foot in a rabbit hole and landed on all fours. He got up, rubbed his hands and carried on, watched by more of the team waiting compliantly for the order to move on. They didn’t question his insubordination.
Presently the ground dipped and he looked down on a sunken section formed possibly by quarrying and protected on three sides, yet entirely grassed over, a perfect hideaway. The CIO from the Wiltshire force was standing on the opposite bank overseeing police tape being staked around an area where a flattened square was clearly visible, as were the holes made by tent-pegs. The embers of a fire were still giving off faint wisps of smoke.
‘What do you reckon?’ Diamond asked.
The CIO looked up, surprised that someone had left his post. Seeing that it was Diamond he didn’t make an issue of it. ‘Not kids, for sure. No fag-ends, no beer cans. Looks to me like one careful camper was here last night.’
‘Careful in what way?’
‘Not to leave any rubbish behind.’
‘The sniper, sleeping rough?’
‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ The CIO’s beady eyes were more than just hopeful.
‘Why would he have returned to the wood this morning?’
‘To bury the murder weapon is my guess. Easy to cover with leaf mould. Very difficult for anyone else to detect.’
Diamond needed more convincing. ‘Where’s the tree he’s supposed to have used for firing practice?’
‘There’s no “supposed” about it. Someone fired bullets into it. About thirty yards behind us. An oak.’
‘Have you recovered any?’
‘They were all embedded in the tree.’
‘How about the bits the rifle ejects?’
‘The cartridge casings? No, we haven’t found any. He had time to pick them up.’
‘Do you think he’s still about?’
‘We’ve got to assume he is. Our first response car got here within fifteen minutes of the 999 call coming in.’
‘What exactly did the witness see?’
‘A figure running or jogging across the road close to where we all parked. Not much of a description, I’m afraid. Dark clothing, possibly black leather, but — this is the clincher for me — definitely carrying a gun.’
‘A rifle?’
‘Not a handgun, for sure.’
‘Was he aware of being spotted?’
‘She doesn’t think so. The running wasn’t an attempt to get away.’
‘Hair colour? Height? Build?’
‘Uncertain. Difficult to tell under the trees.’
Too vague for Diamond. The tree interested him more. ‘While you’re finishing off here I’ll take a look at that oak.’ He moved off in the direction he’d been told.
This one stood a good thirty feet high and the trunk must have been three feet in diameter. He saw the bullet holes. In its long life this tree had never suffered such injury, nor been given so much attention as a result. Blue and white police tape deterred anyone from approaching within six feet. Even in his present defiant frame of mind, Diamond conformed. Some restrictions had their point. It was likely that the gunman had stepped up to the tree to see the pattern of his firing. Footprints were a real possibility.
The bullet holes had ripped through the grey crevices of the bark at head height. They formed three parallel lines, each formed of about eight shots. Three bursts of rapid fire, he guessed. The depth of penetration was impossible to judge from this distance. Certainly more than a couple of inches and perhaps several times that. Recovering them without further damage would be a challenge for the ballistics team. The striations on the sides would be the key to matching them to a particular weapon. It might be necessary to fell the tree and saw off the section of trunk and remove it to the lab.
Those bullet holes impressed him more than anything he’d seen or heard in this wood. Signs of someone sleeping out could be open to mixed interpretations. This was beyond argument. A gunman had fired at the tree, a gunman who was no beginner.
Chilling.
The link between this and the murders of three policemen was as yet unproved, but what justification would anyone have for using a gun — almost certainly an assault rifle — in a Wiltshire wood?
The line of fire was obvious, the range less so. By standing level with the bullet holes and with his back to the tree Diamond made a significant discovery. In this dense wood the gunman had found just about the only possible sightline of fifty yards or more. Trees and bushes blocked every other angle. He’d found a shaft between them as narrow as a laser beam. It ended at another massive oak maybe sixty yards away, approximately the firing distance of the shot that had killed Harry Tasker in Walcot Street.
Impressed without really wanting to be, Diamond started walking dead straight in that direction, an obstacle course over fallen trees, holly, brambles and springy beds of leaves that were liable to give way and leave him ankle deep in mud. His dogged character wouldn’t allow him to find an easier route. He persevered at some cost to his suit trousers and shoes until he reached the second oak and was able to turn and still have a finger-thin view of the target tree.
This was even more clever than he’d first appreciated, for the second oak had wide-spreading branches low enough to be climbed. It wouldn’t require much athleticism to scale it. From high on an upper bough the gunman could have simulated the angle and distance required to shoot Harry Tasker.
For Diamond, the climb would have to be taken as completed. He was damned if he would attempt it dressed as he was, with the extra burden of the body armour. But he firmly believed that was what had happened. He’d suggest it to the chief inspector. In the upper branches they might well find fibres torn from the killer’s clothing.
Crime scene procedure had not been at the forefront of his thoughts until now. With more consideration for the men in white coats and their painstaking methods he chose a different line back. It really was a path of sorts, perhaps a badger-run.
Progress was easier this way. He stepped out briskly, with more enthusiasm to rejoin the dragnet. They might be moving on by now.
He’d walked not more than twenty yards when he heard a snapping sound.
He halted and listened.
Woods can be like that, silent as the grave and then surprising you. This wasn’t of his own making, he was sure. A dead branch falling off a tree?
Subdued voices carried to him from some distance ahead. The police line, he decided. The sound had been closer. He could just hear the Avon passing over the weir deep in the valley.
There was no wind. Everything around him was still.
He moved on.
Immediately he heard two loud mechanical rasps followed by an engine blast. From the ground in front of him a black dome surfaced. The helmet of a motorcyclist. A crouching, leather-clad rider. A large machine, accelerating and bearing down on him.
How the bike had materialised from the floor of a quiet wood he had no time to discover. It was about to strike him. At this speed there was no escape.
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-f
ast 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 t
here. 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.
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