Cop to Corpse

by Peter Lovesey

  A sudden piercing shriek drilled a shock through him. Close, frighteningly close. He halted, tense, alert for danger.

  Blood-curdling — but was it human in origin?

  Then a skittering in the water told him he must have stepped close to a coot or a moorhen.

  Better not stay so close to the bank, he told himself. There are sure to be other waterfowl and the screech must have been audible for some distance around. Advertising his presence wasn’t in the plan. He veered left, around some reeds and found more of a path. He would follow it in confidence that the river ran parallel with the railway. Keep going for ten minutes or so and he should find himself reasonably close to Avoncliff Station without disturbing the firearms teams.

  That waterbird had shaken his nerves. All the pleasure of being on the move had gone. He was tense, primed for more disturbances. A mass of cloud had crossed the moon again. He was forced to take shorter steps, even though the path was clear of hazards.

  He could definitely hear the faint swish of falling water now. The weir was some distance beyond the station, so he was making good progress. He stopped and listened. He didn’t need to walk too far.

  Then he heard a loud splash to his right.

  Something pretty big had entered the water. More wild life? The sound had been heavier than a bird would make. What else could have made it? Were there otters along this stretch of the Avon? He wasn’t aware of any. Actually it had sounded heavier than an otter.

  If the cause of the splash wasn’t natural, what was it?

  His heart thumped.

  He hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps when there was another sound, more alarming still, a grunt as of effort, chesty, heavy, close at hand. Some living creature far larger than an otter was nearby.

  Maybe the splash had disturbed some mammal, a fox or a deer. Or was it the mammal that had leapt into the water?

  Animal or human?

  He soon knew.

  The cloud cover shifted from the moon. A man with a backpack was up and running, not more than ten yards ahead of him.

  ‘Hey, you!’ Diamond yelled.

  The runaway figure didn’t react, except to go faster.

  He shouted a time-honoured warning: ‘Stop, police.’

  This didn’t work either.

  More from instinct than good sense, Diamond started running too. He was back in rugby-playing mode, a Met Police wing forward doing his damnedest to catch an opposition three-quarter in full flight. He’d never been the fastest man on the pitch. Power had been his forte more than speed and he’d added much weight since his playing days, so this couldn’t last long.

  In the urgency of the chase, his leg was functioning as it should. The problem was that the opposition was faster on its feet. There was no way of catching up. Nor could he get a decent view of the guy, who was little more than a black smudge now, fast disappearing.

  Diamond stopped running and gulped in some air. Felt twinges in his thigh. A few visits to the fitness centre would have helped.

  Up ahead, a gasp and a thud sounded across the landscape. Had someone else joined in?

  Heavy-legged, he forced himself into a semblance of motion again, heading towards the source. It was impossible in the moonlight to make out precisely where the fugitive had got to. Not where Diamond expected. He appeared to have got clean away.

  But he hadn’t. The man was grounded, and suddenly Diamond could see him, in the act of getting up. He must have tripped and fallen.

  When you get lucky, you need to make the most of it. He bore down on the runaway, who was now upright and starting to move off again, but with less agility. The tumble must have winded him, or caused an injury.

  Diamond realised as he belted across the spongy turf that, ridiculously, he was still holding his walking stick. He was about to toss it aside when he had a thought that it could yet come in useful. He was definitely catching up, starting to move with more freedom, accelerating again. He urged himself on and reached a point a few yards short of his quarry.

  Now use the bloody stick, he told himself.

  His grip was halfway up the shaft. Still at full pelt, he extended his arm, dipped forward, and managed to hook the curved handle around the man’s left leg above the ankle.

  The man went over for a second time with another bellow of pain, or frustration. And this time, Diamond’s full weight followed, a dive so committed that it absolutely required a soft landing. For a split second he was airborne. Then his shoulder crunched against firm flesh. He grasped for something to hold and found what must have been one of the shoulder straps of the backpack. The main thing now was to stay on top and let his body mass work for him.

  The guy was wriggling like a beached fish. He couldn’t escape from the middle-aged spread bearing down on him.

  ‘I told you to stop,’ Diamond said breathlessly into his ear. ‘You’re nicked.’

  No response.

  For the next minute or so, the struggle was frenzied. By degrees the resistance became intermittent. The trapped man would let up for a few seconds before making another attempt. He was strong, no question, and quite a bit younger than Diamond. But he was exhausting himself.

  The main problem in Diamond’s mind — apart from staying on top — was what to do next. The advantage was his for the present. He could hold this position for some time and he would need to, because he wasn’t carrying handcuffs. He hadn’t expected to make an arrest tonight. He didn’t even have a personal radio on him. All those young policemen in full kit had cuffs with them, but were they within hailing distance?

  Doubtful. And he didn’t want to give encouragement to his prisoner at this stage of the arrest.

  He took stock.

  If he allowed the man to stand up, the balance of power changed. He could be up and running again, with a good chance of getting clean away.

  Another bout of wriggling came to an end.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Diamond asked.

  Silence.

  ‘Suit yourself. This can’t be comfortable and it could go on some time.’

  He was talking to himself as much as the prisoner. There was no logical reason why anyone should come to his assistance. The firearms team were intent on watching the footpath leading to the pillbox. They wouldn’t even give a glance in this direction. And he doubted if he could make them hear.

  There were arm-locks he could try, but he hadn’t much confidence he could keep a man under arrest who was so evidently fitter and younger. He didn’t even know if he could still get upright. The chase may have finally done for his dodgy leg. Just about every fibre of his body was aching.

  Yet he had a duty to hold out. This squirming piece of bone and muscle could be a triple killer.

  Help was urgently needed. He took a deep breath and shouted with all the voice he could raise, ‘Over here! By the river!’ But he was so low to the turf that he knew the sound hadn’t carried any distance at all.

  Of course no one shouted back. Anyway, they were in whispering mode, like Sergeant Gillibrand.

  ‘Diamond here,’ he yelled. ‘Someone get over here, for God’s sake!’

  The only immediate result was a heave from the prisoner that almost toppled him. The guy was strong.

  A doubt crept into Diamond’s mind. What if this was not the sniper, but some hapless person who had happened to be out late walking by the river? He’d run away when challenged and tried to break free when arrested, but that was the only sure thing against him. Alone in the dark, pursued by someone in plain clothes purporting to be a police officer, mightn’t anyone have made a run for it?

  And what if he actually was the lowlife who had been sleeping in the pillbox? Was that the clincher? Plenty of people lived and slept rough through choice or circumstance. Diamond hadn’t ever been fully convinced by Jack Gull’s theory that the killer was at large in Avoncliff.

  Gull would point out that the shoeprints collected from the pillbox matched the prints found in Wells. He’d need mor
e than that to get a conviction. He hadn’t yet found the murder weapon.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’ he asked again.

  An unshaven cheek rasped Diamond’s face as the head jerked away, the closest thing to an answer he’d got so far.

  ‘What were you doing out here at night?’

  Not a murmur.

  You do not have to say anything, Diamond mentally intoned to himself from the official caution, and added his own corollary: but what’s stopping you if you’re innocent?

  More minutes passed.

  If nothing else, the bouts of struggling had stopped. Maybe the guy had exhausted himself. Or was he preparing for one almighty push for freedom?

  Diamond tightened his grip, just in case.

  He couldn’t be sure how much more time passed before he thought he heard a movement nearby, no more, perhaps, than a rustle in the reeds. More of that wildlife? He wasn’t certain. He strained to pick up another sound.

  Getting nothing, he lifted his head and said, ‘Anyone there?’

  Amazingly, there was.

  Brilliant lights dazzled him, and a voice blared through a loudhailer, ‘Armed police! Don’t move.’

  22

  ‘Is that it?’ Jack Gull said.

  In the yard at Bath Central police station, a van used for transporting prisoners had backed up to the entrance. The rear doors were open, but the grille remained in place. Alone inside, a slight, scruffy man, his clothes coated in mud, sat with his hands cuffed behind him. He looked dirtier, but otherwise no different from the drunks who are brought in any night of the week. Red-eyed, unshaven, not much over twenty, he stared past Gull as if he didn’t exist. His expression wasn’t defiant, or angry, or resigned. It was indifferent.

  Anticlimax was about to ruin the night.

  Gull had come in specially for his moment of triumph. Fireworks and a fanfare were in order. For while it was Peter Diamond who had detained the man, the major credit had to be chalked up to Supergull for setting up the operation. All the planning was down to the Serial Crimes Unit. As for Diamond, he’d been called in only as a stopgap. He wouldn’t have played any part if Gull hadn’t needed a break after five hours on watch. The silly arse hadn’t even armed himself, or the arrest would have been routine instead of the pantomime it had become.

  The tacky circumstances of the arrest did take a little of the glory away. One of the firearms team had gone to relieve himself behind the police line and thought he heard a distant voice down by the river. A small detachment had been sent to investigate and found a large man face down on the river bank. Only after a minute or so did someone spot the second man underneath. His struggles had turned the spongy turf into a mudbath and it was difficult to see where the mud ended and the man began. One man face down can be assumed to be blind drunk, ill or dead; two, in that position, looked like consenting adults. Only on close examination had it been discovered that this was a senior police officer in charge of a suspect.

  ‘Who is he?’ Gull asked the sergeant who had come in with the van.

  ‘He hasn’t said.’

  ‘What did he say when we nicked him?’

  ‘Nothing, guv. He hasn’t spoken a word yet.’

  ‘We’ll soon alter that. Didn’t Diamond get anything out of him?’

  ‘He said not.’

  ‘Prick.’ It wasn’t clear whether Gull was speaking of the prisoner or his esteemed colleague. ‘Bring him in, then. Let’s see what the custody sergeant gets out of him.’

  He stood well back while the grille was unlocked. The suspect was plucked from the van by a couple of PCs not over-concerned about his safe progress down the steps and into the bowels of Manvers Street. As every prisoner discovers, descending from a police van while handcuffed isn’t easy. He stumbled more than once on his way to the desk where a sergeant waited who had seen it all so many times that boredom had set in.

  ‘Hold it. I don’t want your filth all over my desk. Name?’

  The prisoner said nothing.

  ‘I need your name, sunshine.’

  He wasn’t even making eye contact.

  ‘Do you hear what I’m saying? Give him a prod. See if he’s awake.’

  The prod had no result.

  ‘You’re not going to be difficult, are you?’ the custody sergeant said. ‘If I decide you’re not in a fit state to be dealt with, I’m within my rights to put you in a cell until such time as you start acting sensibly. Let’s try again.’

  The try was unsuccessful.

  ‘Has he been searched? Anything on him with his name on it?’

  The sergeant who had brought the man in said no form of ID had been found.

  All this procedure was too much for Jack Gull. His patience snapped. ‘Take his fucking prints and get them checked. And we’ll need his shoes as well, for forensics. What’s he wearing? Are they trainers, or what?’

  The prisoner’s footwear was so covered in mud it was impossible to tell.

  While the man was hustled away to have his shoes removed and hands washed for the fingerprinting, Gull said to the custody sergeant, ‘I’m not taking any more shit from this fuckhead. He’s given us enough already.’

  ‘Leave it to me, guv. I’ll deal with him.’

  ‘Okay, I take the hint.’

  ‘Will you tell the press we’ve nicked him?’

  ‘You bet — and rub their noses in it. All the bollocks they’ve given us about no progress.’

  ‘They’re sure to ask who he is.’

  ‘No problem. They won’t expect to be told his fucking name, not until we’ve charged him. There’s a man helping us with our inquiries, period.’

  23

  This morning I picked a moment to look through the invoice book. Every transaction is there, names and addresses of sender and recipient, the messages that go on the little cards, and how much the client paid and whether it was cash or card. Sally sometimes asks me to mind the shop while she slips out for ten minutes to buy two takeout cappuccinos at the shop up the street.

  This was my opportunity.

  It’s stuffed with famous names and intimate messages, that little book. You could sell it to one of the Sunday papers for a small fortune. ‘Forgive me, angel, the blonde bitch is history now.’ ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, Billy is hot and he’s lusting for you.’ ‘See you — all of you — in the penthouse tonight.’

  I won’t reveal the senders’ names, but you’ll have heard of them, believe me. I was dying to read on, but if I got too interested, Sally would be back with the cappuccinos before I found what I wanted. I was looking for one delivery on a particular Saturday in June because I remembered it was my birthday and I had a date that evening and wanted to get the job done in time to get to the hairdresser’s.

  I thumbed through the pages and found it. ‘26 June. Corsage, pink rose. Buttonhole, red car. To Mr. John Smith, 48 Blahblah Avenue.?5.50 paid cash. ’

  John Smith?

  The others were going to jump all over me.

  I was so blown away that this was his real name that I still had the book open in my hands when Sally came back holding two coffees.

  I froze.

  She was like, ‘Have you taken an order?’

  I snapped the book shut and felt myself go bright red. ‘No, I was trying to remember the name of one of our clients in Blahblah Avenue.’

  ‘John Smith?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  Sally, bless her, was as calm as a midwife. ‘Nice man. Always buys his wife something to pin on her frock. Well, I assume they’re married. They act as if they are.’

  And I’m, ‘You know them, then?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Do they come in together?’

  ‘Not in the shop. I’ve seen them somewhere. Where was it? A Christmas concert in the Guildhall, I think. She’s rather gorgeous, tall, dark-haired, in her thirties.’

  Sounds awfully like the go-between I watched in the pub, I was thinking.

&nb
sp; And Sally went, ‘What’s your interest in them?’

  I dug deep and made up an answer. ‘A friend happened to mention a charming couple she knows who live in Blahblah Avenue and I was curious to know if the man was our client. Stupid of me. I couldn’t remember his name.’

  ‘It’s forgettable, being so common.’

  ‘How right you are.’

  ‘If you’ve finished with the book, would you put it back in the drawer?’

  This is as near as Sally has ever got to a rebuke.

  ‘Of course.’

  My insides clenched with shame. I couldn’t wish for a sweeter, more considerate boss and I’d disappointed her.

  And now I’ve fallen out with my friends as well. My shameful scene with the invoice book troubled me more than I can say. I spent most of today wrestling with my conscience, asking myself what could have possessed me to be so sneaky. It was like reading someone else’s diary.

  When we met this evening in one of the city’s many pubs I bought the drinks and then told the other two I wanted out.

  Anita was onto me at once. ‘Out from what?’

  ‘The sleuthing thing. It started as a game, but it’s got too serious for me. The fun has gone out of it.’

  ‘Because you recognized my picture of Heathrow man?’

  ‘Actually, yes.’

  ‘You know exactly who he is, don’t you?’ She was in my face and looked ready to scratch it. The jolliest people can turn into monsters very quickly. ‘That stuff about not knowing his name isn’t true.’

  ‘Hold on, Anita,’ I went. ‘I’m not dishonest. If I’d remembered the name I’d have told you at once. What I’m saying is that now I know he uses the shop I’m not willing to put my job at risk.’

  ‘Yet you were happy enough to go along with the game when it was my job on the line.’

  ‘You volunteered the story. We’d never have heard about city break man if you hadn’t told us.’