‘Well, they’d start off at the Old Ship Aground on April 30th, known as Show Night, or Warning Eve, doing the rounds of the pubs, rattling the tins. Then, like I just said, he had to be up early next morning and in costume bowing three times to salute the sunrise at a crossroads. May Day was really quite a marathon. He’d dance all around Minehead seeing off the other horses and chasing the kids and scaring me silly by dancing ever so close to the water’s edge at the harbour. The whole thing would go on like that each evening until May 3rd, visiting all the outlying places, including Dunster Castle, except if he was lucky and there was a Sunday in between, when the Sabbath had to be observed.’
‘Hard work.’
‘He was knackered by the end.’
‘From what you say, it sounds as if he did it more than once.’
‘He became the regular Sailor’s Horse for two or three years before we left Minehead and they would have had him back even after we moved here, but he decided it wouldn’t be the thing for a policeman to be demanding money with menaces and chasing women and children, even for a good cause.’
Diamond smiled. ‘He had a point.’
‘People were sorry when he gave it up.’
‘I expect you’ve got photos.’
‘You can find them on the internet if you want.’
‘Don’t you have any yourself?’
‘Ossy had a scrapbook with lots of pictures and cuttings, but it was borrowed a couple of months ago and I haven’t got it back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Some American wanted it. He was talking big about filming the whole thing for a scene in a Hollywood action movie.’
He leaned forward. ‘Who was this?’
‘I don’t think I discovered his real name. Ossy called him Cubby.’
‘Not that Cubby?’
A giggle. ‘No, he’s dead, isn’t he? That was Ossy’s sense of humour. We took everything this man said with a large pinch of salt. I mean he was offering silly money, thousands of dollars, if Ossy would go back to Minehead and wear the costume and do the dance.’
‘Wasn’t he tempted?’
‘He didn’t believe it would happen. He said — pardon my language — these film people are bullshit artists. And he wouldn’t risk losing his stripes through becoming a laughing-stock.’
‘So he turned it down?’
She paused as if choosing her words. ‘He didn’t sign anything or get paid any money for sure, but the door wasn’t entirely closed. Cubby suggested using a stage name to protect his identity. They were really keen to get Ossy. He was the best Sailor’s Horse for years, everyone said.’
‘And this all happened recently, you said?’
‘Just a few weeks before Ossy died.’
‘Did Cubby say if he was talking to other people?’
‘I got the impression he’d already been to Minehead to look at the location, as he called it.’
‘Presumably the Minehead people put him in touch with Ossy?’
‘Must have.’
‘Ossy obviously had some faith in the man or he wouldn’t have trusted him with his scrapbook.’
‘He was like that, generous.’ For the first time, her face betrayed a hint of emotion, a faint watering of the eyes. She took a sharp breath and said, ‘I expect I’ll get his book back. It will be nice for the children to have as they get older.’
‘You didn’t meet this Cubby yourself?’
‘No, I simply heard Ossy’s stories of him. We had a good laugh about it. What we’d wear for the premiere and the Oscars night. That kind of thing.’
‘Would you have his address anywhere? People like that usually give out business cards.’
She shook her head. ‘I went through his papers looking. I’d like to get the scrapbook back. There was nothing.’ Then she said, ‘I don’t see how any of this affects the investigation.’
In his eagerness he’d failed to keep in mind her belief that the shootings were random killings of the first policemen who came within range. He didn’t wish to cause more distress. He suspected her bravery was wafer thin. ‘We look at everything, however remote.’
How feeble was that?
‘Clutching at straws?’ she said.
‘It’s a matter of being thorough. We owe it to Ossy and the others to look at every possibility.’ His words struck home with himself as he spoke them. This was pussyfooting and it wasn’t going to succeed. He had a duty to press her for more information, even if it pained her. ‘Do you happen to remember if he had any kind of warning that something bad was going to happen to him?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Why?’
After wavering too long between honesty and altruism, he was now forced to speak the truth. ‘Our man in Bath was carrying a note that could have been from the sniper himself.’
‘What did it say?’
No way out of this now. ‘Only two words — “You’re next.” ’
She gasped.
Diamond added at once, ‘We don’t know for sure if it refers to the shooting.’
‘How could it?’ Her eyes threatened panic at the possibility and Diamond wished he could have spared her this. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m certain Ossy would have told me if he was sent anything like that. Anyway, he was the first to be shot. He wouldn’t have been sent a note like that.’
‘Not those words.’
She was far from satisfied. ‘Did the other man, the one who was shot in Radstock, receive a note?’
‘If he did, it hasn’t been found. Like I said, we follow up every lead, however unpromising.’ He backtracked again, shamelessly. ‘One note out of three isn’t significant. Don’t let anything I’ve said undermine you. You’re doing brilliantly. Ossy would be proud.’
Hollow words.
He left soon after. He’d learned things he hadn’t expected, potentially crucial, but he felt only contempt for himself. Behind her brave stance, Juliet Hart had been rocked by what she’d just learnt, and he was responsible. He’d messed up big time with Emma Tasker and this hadn’t gone any better.
A widow too far?
Right. So right.
17
His phone went, offering him a choice of traffic offences: use the mobile while driving or stop and block a passing-point in the narrow Somerset lane. He pulled over. He’d met nothing for some way, so he reckoned this was the better option.
‘Yes?’
‘Diamond, where the fuck are you?’
‘Is that you, Jack?’ As if anyone else spoke to him like that.
‘I said — ’
‘Heard you. I’m on the way in.’ True. He was more than halfway back from Wells.
‘Do you know what time it is? I’ve been trying to reach you at Manvers Street. Some of us are at work this morning and we’ve struck gold.’
He yawned. He wasn’t in gold rush mode. ‘Tell me more.’
‘I can do better. Meet me in twenty minutes at Avoncliff railway station and I’ll show you.’
‘Can we make that forty?’
‘Are you still in your fucking pit?’
‘Would I tell you if I was? See you at twelve-thirty.’ He switched off.
Whatever Gull had discovered it would need to be good to outweigh this morning’s find. Ossy Hart and Stan Richmond both involved in folklore and with a prospect of film money in the offing. True, Ossy had by then retired from his role as the Sailor’s Horse, but the lure of thousands of dollars had revived his interest, even if he’d dismissed it as bullshit.
Big money brings its own temptations.
Next question: did Harry Tasker, boring old Harry who did nothing but pound the beat and go fishing according to his wife, get a sniff of the money? Did he have a passing interest in local customs that Emma had failed to mention?
And if any of this were true, why did all three get murdered?
Another session with Emma Tasker beckoned, and Diamond didn’t relish it. Good thing Stan Richmond hadn’t also left a widow to be interviewed. Be thank
ful for small mercies.
He looked in at the incident room and was told three times over that Jack Gull had been trying to reach him.
‘Don’t suppose he told you what it was about,’ he said to Ingeborg.
‘No, guv, except it was urgent.’
‘Always is with Jack. Makes him feel important.’
The tension from yesterday’s team meeting hadn’t all evaporated, but at least they were on speaking terms.
‘Did he ask where I was?’
‘We didn’t know,’ Keith Halliwell said, and it felt like a dig.
‘I was in Wells.’ He gave them the gist of what Juliet Hart had told him about the Minehead May Day ritual, adding only one comment. ‘And that, my friends, is how Martin Hart came to be known as Ossy.’
Usually the idea of one of the force up to something eccentric was sure to provoke some laughs. This morning’s response was a few bemused looks.
‘Does it make any difference?’ John Leaman asked in his habitual downbeat tone. ‘This all happened before he joined the police.’
‘The film offer was the new factor,’ Ingeborg said, sharp to the point as always. ‘And he was tempted, by the sound of things.’
Leaman was unmoved. ‘But it didn’t come to anything.’
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘It came up shortly before he was shot and it was big bucks. We all know about trying to survive on a police salary.’
‘Are you saying this led to him being murdered?’
She turned to Diamond. ‘Is that what you’re thinking, guv?’
After yesterday’s dust-up, Diamond wasn’t being drawn. ‘It’s a new angle, that’s all.’
Ingeborg wouldn’t leave it. ‘Okay, let’s talk about Stan Richmond. He was into folklore, too. He’d written articles. Do you think the film man went to him for advice?’
‘I simply don’t know.’
‘It’s worth checking if he ever wrote anything on the Minehead hobby horses.’
‘Could be.’
‘Shall I?’
‘If you want.’ He couldn’t have sounded more neutral. Secretly, he was pleased. ‘Has anything else come up that I should know about?’
‘On your desk, from personnel,’ Leaman said with a look laden with reproach. ‘About thirty pages of names … including all of ours.’
That explained the coolness. Yesterday evening he’d gone ahead and asked Headquarters for the printout. No one here would have printed it for him.
He opened the office door and glanced at his in-tray. The paperwork was spilling out of it. Most would be junk. Headquarters had a whole department called Communications and they justified their existence by making sure everyone was made to feel wanted on an hourly basis. They’d found out he didn’t bother much with emails, so they deluged him with paper. Georgina the ACC (who had probably arranged it) was always leaving him memos. As well as all of that, there were the usual letters the postman had brought, bunched and held in place with an elastic band. Another with no stamp and just Detective Diamond — PERSONAL on the envelope must have been delivered by hand. And there was the sheaf of A4 sheets listing all those names. Thanks to Jack Gull he didn’t have time to start on any of it.
Avoncliff station, Gull’s choice of meeting place, hardly deserved its name. It was that rare thing on the railways, a request stop on the main line between Southampton and Bristol. If you wanted to board a train you were instructed to put out your hand and wave at the driver. There were no train announcements, no display boards and no staff. But it had existed for over a century and the locals would make sure it continued.
One useful facility the station did have was a small car park and Gull was waiting there when Diamond drove in ten minutes late.
‘This had better be good,’ he said as he reached for the walking stick and heaved himself out. ‘The drive down was hairy.’
‘Sod that,’ Gull said. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Not a problem.’ He looked around. ‘Where to? Are you keeping me in suspense?’
‘Not for long. We’re going to follow the railway for a few hundred yards. Are you up for it?’
‘I just said.’ Much more of this and he would be peppering his own speech with obscenities.
‘Let’s go, then.’ Gull had got to know this little area pretty well, taking the soft option last night while Diamond had been overseeing the hunt for the sniper between Westwood and Bradford on Avon. All action now, he headed under the massive Victorian aqueduct that carried the canal over the railway and also served as a passenger bridge. ‘Keep up,’ he called back. ‘It isn’t far.’
Sandwiched between the River Avon and the railway was an overgrown, uneven footpath, not easy to manage with a dodgy leg. Gull was already some distance ahead. Diamond had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘So you took a stroll while you were guarding the aqueduct?’
‘I sent one of the plods on a recce. He made the find. It was too dark to check out yesterday. I had a look for myself this morning.’
Diamond plodded on, managing with the help of the stick. The leg was on the mend, he decided.
Gull stopped to wait for him. ‘This stretch is known as Melancholy Walk. I think I know why.’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘If you’re feeling sorry for yourself you’ve got the choice of lying on the railway or jumping in the river.’
‘Charming.’
He pointed. ‘You can see it up ahead. That stone building half-covered in creepers.’
They walked the last stretch in silence and up to a solid, squat concrete block on the railway side of the path.
‘Christ knows what it’s for,’ Gull said.
‘It’s a World War II pillbox,’ Diamond told him, looking at the narrow, elongated space in the front wall, about chest-high, meant for aiming guns. ‘They built hundreds of these in 1940, when the German invasion was expected.’
‘Before my time.’
Before Diamond’s, too, but suddenly the roles were reversed and he was enjoying himself as the one in the know. ‘All along here was the stop-line, the most important one in Britain. Churchill wanted a way of slowing up the panzer tanks, so he asked General Ironside — nice name, that — to build a series of defensive lines northwards from the coast. Pillboxes, stone bollards, trenches, barbed wire. Ironside made good use of what was already in place, and this stretch was perfect: the river and the canal are barriers for miles. The GHQ line, as it was known, ran all the way from Bristol to Kent. There are pillboxes at regular intervals.’
‘How do you know this stuff?’
‘I live nearby. You find things out.’
‘Well, clever-clogs, you don’t know what’s inside. Be my guest.’
Diamond walked around to the back, found the narrow, open doorway, stooped and went in. The light wasn’t good and the smell reminded him of a rugby changing-room after a match. He could make out the dark shape of a bedroll stretched across the end, with a six-pack of beer beside it and some empty cans. There was food also, a half-eaten loaf, apples and the remains of a cooked chicken. A newspaper was tucked between the wall and the bedroll.
‘Yesterday’s Mirror,’ Gull said, coming in behind him. ‘He was here as recently as that.’
‘You think it’s our man?’
‘Someone sleeping rough, isn’t it? We’ve left it like this for when he comes back. I’ve taken one of the empties to get some prints.’
‘No gun.’
‘He’s smart, isn’t he? Either he’s got it with him or it’s somewhere nearby.’
‘The motorbike as well?’
Gull preferred not to think about the motorbike. In truth, it was probably parked in a street somewhere.
Diamond glanced at the folded newspaper. Part of a banner headline was visible: SNIPER: NOW IT’S — . Every national daily was reporting the shootings. Because the paper happened to be face up, nothing could be assumed about the recent inmate of the pillbox.
‘These places get used sometimes by people
sleeping rough.’
‘Rough is what he is,’ Gull said. ‘We know he passed at least one night in Becky Addy Wood. The bugger’s on the run and dossing down wherever he can.’
‘You think he’s moved on, do you?’
‘He wouldn’t leave his bedding here, or the food. He’ll be back and I’m laying on a welcome.’
‘If you’re right and he’s got the gun with him, that may not be such a good idea.’
‘Get real, Diamond. I’ve got armed police in hiding all around us. You wouldn’t have noticed.’
True. He hadn’t spotted them.
‘With orders to shoot on sight?’
‘No, they’ll close in after he comes back.’
‘Is that wise? This thing was purpose-built for defence. From in here he could take out several more coppers.’
Gull thought about that, obviously decided it was true and then glared back. ‘What’s your suggestion, then?’
‘Ambush him before he can get inside. He’ll be trapped between the railway and the river.’
This silenced the head of the Serial Crimes Unit.
‘Or you could let him go in and then bung in some tear gas. By the sound of it, you need a better game plan. If I were you, I’d think it over, but not in here. I’m getting out in case he’s on his way.’
In truth, Diamond found it hard to believe that the sniper — if that was who had spent the night here — would return in broad daylight. But he’d satisfied his curiosity. He limped back to the car park, leaving Gull to work out the new strategy with his shock troops.
Back with CID, he asked for the latest on Ken Lockton. No change, the hospital had told Keith Halliwell. The patient remained unconscious, in the critical care unit. Christina, the sympathetic PCSO, was still with the family.
Diamond had never known such an atmosphere in his workplace. Bath CID had become the Slough of Despond. A lot of it was down to him and his inept performance yesterday, but there was still a pervading air of gloom. The murder of a colleague on duty and the near-murder of another had poleaxed everyone. The angry mood of the first day had given way to this grim resignation. Generally humour has a way of breaking through the most harrowing of investigations, if only for sanity’s sake. Right now, a light remark seemed like a betrayal. The usual currency of so-called wit was unfit for use.
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