Cop to Corpse

by Peter Lovesey

  She still couldn’t rise to a shaft of humour from Diamond. ‘He’s from Shepton Mallet. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He lives in a thatched cottage there. The bike was stolen some time in the last five months from the stone shed at the back, along with his helmet and leathers. Hamish was away in Argentina on an engineering job and didn’t report it missing until he got back a few days ago.’

  ‘Shepton Mallet is right in our territory, right in the sniper’s territory, come to that. How do you start a motorbike without a key?’

  ‘They use pigtail leads to bypass the ignition. It worked well for the thief because the bike was taxed and registered and no one knew it was stolen property.’

  Diamond began fleshing out his theory with this new information. ‘Wells, Radstock, Shepton Mallet — three towns southwest of here and no more than ten miles from each other. This is where our friends the profilers with their criminal maps would be getting excited. He was operating within quite a small area.’

  ‘Avoncliff where he was caught isn’t far off from those places, fifteen miles at most.’

  ‘You’re right, Inge. Bradford on Avon, Becky Addy Wood — all very local. A motorbike would be useful to any criminal. Fast, easy to manoeuvre, even over rough ground, and he was well disguised in the helmet.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Is it obvious he’s a foreigner?’

  ‘Not at all. He could pass for British. You can’t go by appearances.’

  She lifted an eyebrow. ‘But you’re very confident he’s an illegal?’

  ‘From how he reacted when I mentioned a consulate, yes.’

  ‘He won’t be from one of the EU countries, then. Could he have escaped from a detention centre? Some do.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve already been over that with Jack Gull. Everyone who goes into one of those places is photographed and fingerprinted. He’d be in the system and he isn’t.’

  ‘So he probably arrived in a container and is anxious not to be caught. Why start shooting policemen when you want to keep a low profile?’

  ‘I’ll say this. The guy we’re holding appears to be hyped up, angry and fearful at the same time.’

  ‘Angry at being roughed up by Jack Gull?’

  ‘Much more than that.’

  ‘Angry at being reeled in?’

  ‘That’s part of it, I’m sure. And fearful of being sent back. He got very agitated when I said his consulate must be informed. He doesn’t expect sympathy from his own government.’

  ‘Perhaps he committed crimes there.’

  ‘Could be. Or it’s just that they’re repressive. Someone like that, desperate not to be picked up by the police, decides to arm himself. He’s served in the army in his own country and knows how to use a gun, so he buys one from someone in the criminal underworld, in Bristol, say, where we know there’s a trade in weapons. He steals the bike and starts to feel more confident. He’s got wheels and he’s got an assault rifle. It’s a short jump from defending yourself to going on the offensive. He hates the police so he begins murdering us.’

  ‘That’s an awful lot to infer from one angry guy in custody.’

  He gave a smile that admitted as much. ‘Lost faith in my powers of reasoning, have you?’

  ‘I don’t know about reasoning,’ she said. ‘If I put up a theory like that, you’d be saying unkind things about feminine intuition.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘How about the West Country connection?’

  ‘Here’s an idea I’ve been mulling over,’ he said. ‘There was a lot in the papers last year about private colleges that offer a route into Britain for illegal immigrants. I wouldn’t mind checking whether any such colleges exist in and around Bradford on Avon.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that you wouldn’t mind me doing a check,’ she said.

  ‘What a good idea.’

  Three-quarters of an hour later came the call he’d been waiting for — from the forensics company conducting the ballistics tests.

  ‘You wanted the results from the test firing of the G36 rifle found in the river near Avoncliff yesterday.’

  ‘Don’t I just.’

  ‘It’s definitely the murder weapon. The bullets discharged in the test-firing chamber have been examined microscopically now and compared with those found at the crime scenes. As you know, the rifling along the sides of the bullets is like a fingerprint, unique to each weapon. The standard is that at least three identical patterns be found. We have better than that.’

  ‘Nice work.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘There’s always a “but” with you people. Tell me, then.’

  ‘The match is with the used bullets recovered from Wells and Radstock. The bullets from the Bath scene are too deformed to be of any use. However, you did send us a cartridge casing from Bath.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Automatic weapons have mechanisms that eject the spent cartridge case and place the new bullet in the firing chamber. The process leaves scratches and marks on the side of the casing that are just as individual, just as reliable.’

  Why do scientists always insist on telling you more than you need to know? Impatiently, Diamond said, ‘And?’

  ‘The casing found in Bath was ejected from a different weapon.’

  ‘Different? Not a G36?’

  ‘You’re misunderstanding me. Still a G36, but a different G36.’

  ‘Are you certain of this?’

  ‘Totally. We compared the Bath casing with the ones from the test firing and they don’t match. The gun from the river wasn’t used to murder PC Tasker.’

  He didn’t spend long brooding on the results. Surprising as they would seem to most of those working on the case, they chimed in with the hypothesis he’d been working towards: two gunmen. Jack Gull had to be brought up to date and so had the rest of the team.

  He braved the mockers in the incident room.

  Gull’s response was predictable — and satisfying. ‘Why the fuck did they tell you first? I’m the CIO. I’m the head of the Serial Crimes Unit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Jack,’ Diamond said. ‘No one’s after your job, unless Polehampton is, and they didn’t call him, they called me.’

  ‘The custody clock is running down. I’m going to have to ask a magistrate for a warrant of further detention.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t miss out on that.’

  ‘Ballistics must have got it wrong, anyway,’ Gull said. ‘The sniper won’t have used more than one gun. A gunman treats his weapon like another limb. It’s part of him.’

  ‘He slung it in the river.’

  ‘Only when he knew we had him by the short and curlies. It’s got to be the same gun he used for the Walcot Street shooting. Got to be. He’s had it with him ever since.’

  Across the incident room, John Leaman looked up and gave Diamond a slight smile. On the first day he’d cautioned Gull against assuming the same gun had been used for all three shootings.

  ‘Will you take some advice from me?’ Diamond said to Gull.

  ‘Let’s hear it and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Keep things simple. Concentrate on what we know for certain. The gun we found was definitely used for the shootings in Wells and Radstock. It was in the river at Avoncliff where we arrested the guy we’re holding in the cells. We’re confident he’s the sniper.’

  ‘I know all this. All I want is a fucking confession.’

  ‘And you won’t get it until you find what language he speaks. Here’s a tip. When I was with him he clearly didn’t understand what I was saying, but when I used the word “consulate”, he went bananas. Some words are the same in different languages, like “le weekend” in French. I think you should look for a language that has the same word for consulate, or consul.’

  ‘I’m a detective, not a fucking linguist.’

  ‘Ask a fucking linguist, then.’

  Even Jack Gull was forced to grin. ‘It could be one of those words that’s the
same in dozens of languages.’

  Diamond held up a finger. ‘Yes, but I haven’t finished. Like I said, the mention of the word really upset the suspect. My sense is that he comes from a state that treats its people harshly. He doesn’t want his government getting involved. He’d rather answer to our law than his own.’

  ‘Are you thinking of the old Soviet bloc? He looks European.’

  ‘Could be, and I wouldn’t discount the Middle East. Some of those people could easily pass for Europeans.’

  ‘I’ll give it a whirl. What are you doing next?’

  ‘I’ve got a funeral to attend.’

  But the funeral wasn’t until 3 P.M. Diamond had other lines of enquiry he wasn’t revealing to Gull at this juncture.

  ‘Guv.’

  The quiet, yet insistent, call from across the room was timely. A chance to leave Gull to wrestle with the linguistic problem.

  Diamond shimmied between the desks to where Ingeborg was sitting back, adjusting her blonde ponytail, eyes on the computer screen.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You asked me to check private colleges in and around Bradford on Avon. There’s one here known as the West Wiltshire Higher Education Institute. It was under investigation last summer and closed down.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Enrolling more foreign students than they could possibly cater for. It was an immigration scam. They got accepted for courses, obtained student visas and then disappeared into the underground economy. The government has been trying to crack down. Across the country ninety thousand were taken on last year by educational establishments that don’t have the “highly trusted” status the Ministry of Education is trying to insist on.’

  ‘When you say “foreign”, you mean from outside the European Union?’

  ‘Yes. Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Algeria. Shall I go on?’

  ‘Tell me about this college they shut down. Where was it?’

  ‘Off the Bath Road at the top of the town. Just a large house as far as I can make out.’

  ‘You mean Bradford on Avon?’

  She nodded. ‘They had capacity for fifty and they enrolled five times that number over the course of a year. They were crafty. They had what they called an induction course that lasted a couple of weeks and then off-site work experience to acquire better language skills. Many of the students couldn’t speak any English when they arrived.’

  ‘And I suppose the work experience was low-paid casual labour?’

  ‘You bet. In theory they were supposed to return to study full time when they’d got enough language skills, but they wouldn’t learn much English picking fruit and digging potatoes. You can see why the college lost track of most of them. It was a huge turnover.’

  Diamond didn’t need much more persuading. ‘But they’d learn about the local terrain. This is just what I was looking for, Inge, and the best explanation yet for how the sniper might have got to know Becky Addy Wood and Avoncliff. His student visa has no currency any more and he doesn’t have the language skills to integrate into the system. His world has collapsed. He knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s arrested and banged up in one of those removal centres. He’s living rough, stealing stuff to get by, but he has the bike and he has the gun. He’s angry, vulnerable, terrified. He resolves to take the fight to the opposition, take revenge on the police. The rest we know.’

  ‘Want me to do more checking?’ Ingeborg asked.

  ‘It would be nice if there’s a record of the students they took on.’

  ‘I doubt if they kept one. Or if they did, they would have destroyed the evidence.’

  ‘There must have been some evidence of malpractice if the college was closed down. Wiltshire Police may know something. It’s worth trying.’

  ‘I’ll get onto them.’

  ‘Before you do,’ Diamond said, ‘we were talking the other day about the blog you found.’

  She turned to face him, all attentiveness. Clearly she thought he’d dismissed the blog as yet another piece of computer nonsense. ‘I can’t claim credit for that. The barmaid at the Porter found it and told me.’

  ‘Still worth a look?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Could you bring it up on the computer in my office?’

  ‘Not a problem. You’ll have at least four postings to read, but they won’t take long.’

  In front of his screen, working the keyboard, Ingeborg said, ‘This is interesting. There’s a fifth.’

  29

  So much has happened since my last blog that I hardly know where to begin. You remember I risked my job by turning snoop and looking at the order book for the client I recognized as Heathrow man. I was on the point of pulling out of the whole shebang until it became clear how crucially Vicky needed the distraction. Against my better judgment I passed John Smith’s name on to my two friends. Vicky was at breaking point, poor lamb. Her husband Tim has been behaving more oddly than city break man and Heathrow man together. My guess is that his problem stems from the Iraq War. Post-traumatic stress, they call it, don’t they? On top of that came the bad luck of losing his taxi business in such cruel circumstances. Sometimes people just need time and space to get over their troubles and I hope this is the case with Tim. I don’t like to think what he gets up to when he leaves the house at nights. Well, to be honest I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Maybe he just walks the streets to clear his head of depression. I hope that’s all it is, for Vicky’s sake. She’s so certain he isn’t visiting some other woman that I have to believe her. What else can he be doing? When he left the army, did he smuggle out anything as a souvenir? Don’t go there, I keep saying to myself. Don’t go there.

  Now we know where Heathrow man lives we’re better placed to find out more about him. I was willing to do some local research, but this time Vicky volunteered, saying she hadn’t contributed much up to now. Fine, I thought. The more she gets involved the better for her peace of mind. Compared to her difficulties at home this is child’s play. So Anita and I left her to it.

  She delivered.

  We met in the department store the next afternoon and Vicky looked a million times better than when I’d last seen her. For one thing she’d dressed in brighter, trendier clothes with a beautiful blue floaty scarf over a lemon-coloured top that she insisted she’d found in Help the Aged. A tight black skirt and suede boots completed the outfit. With her gorgeous looks and that amazing black hair she was radiant. And eager to tell us what she’d discovered.

  ‘After we spoke yesterday, I went to the house, just to see for myself, thinking John Smith is still away in Amsterdam so it ought to be safe to look round. While I was standing on the opposite side of the street, I had a piece of good luck. A woman drove up in a Volvo and got out with some shopping and went inside number 48, leaving the car on the drive. I don’t think she noticed me.’

  I couldn’t stop myself interrupting. ‘What was she like — dark, shoulder-length hair, grey suit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could so easily be the woman city break man met in the pub. I wonder if they’re married.’

  Vicky nodded. ‘I’ve never seen her before, so I can’t say, but from your description it’s well possible. At the time I was more interested in the car, thinking maybe it belonged to him and his wife was using it while he was away. I crossed the road and took a closer look and found I was right. There was a parking permit next to the tax disc on the windscreen. It said J. Smith.’

  ‘Nice detective work,’ Anita went. ‘A permit for where?’

  ‘The city museum.’

  Anita blinked and pulled a face. ‘He’s a pointy-head? And I thought he looked quite dishy.’

  I gave a shrug. ‘He could be both. Why not?’

  Vicky picked up her story. She was dead keen to tell it. ‘I decided to go up there in the morning and see what else I could find out. I took the whole day off work. I’ve never been in the museum before.’

  ‘I have,’ Anita went. �
�School trip, years ago. Full of bones and fossils. No refreshments. Not my thing at all.’ She was definitely a little jealous of Vicky finding out things.

  ‘That’s what I was expecting, and to tell the truth it is like that, most of it, but there’s a Roman room, as you’d expect, with bits of pottery and some jewellery. I was the only visitor for the first hour and a half.’

  Anita rolled her eyes. ‘You stayed as long as that?’

  ‘I was sleuthing, wasn’t I? I needed to talk to someone and find out for sure if John Smith worked there. In the end I found the word CURATOR on a door upstairs and I was looking at it, trying to think what to do next, when a woman came out of a door opposite and offered to help. I had to think quickly and I put on a foreign accent and asked what a curator does. She was a chatty sort and said it was a fancy name for the head keeper of the museum. He was her boss, but unfortunately he was away for a couple of days.’

  ‘Aha,’ Anita went. ‘Away where?’

  ‘In Cornwall. He has a cottage there and likes to escape sometimes.’

  ‘A bloody long way from Amsterdam.’

  ‘But we kept talking. She said she was the finds liaison officer, another fancy name. She’d put FLO on her door and since that day everyone called her Flo. Her job was set up to deal with all the stuff being found with those metal detector things people use in fields and on beaches. As you know, this area is stuffed with historical remains and the detector brigade are coming into the museum every week with objects they’ve picked up. Anything gold or silver and more than three hundred years old has to be reported because of something called the Treasure Act. She said she thought when she saw me that I might have brought in some artifact.’

  ‘Better than being mistaken for one,’ Anita went. ‘We’re none of us getting any younger. Did you find out if John Smith works there?’

  ‘Yes — and he’s her boss, the curator.’

  We straightened up like meerkats.

  Anita was frowning. ‘But he’s in Cornwall.’

  ‘That’s what he told her. We know better, don’t we?’ Vicky’s eyes were like new minted coins. ‘John Smith doesn’t want it known he’s in Amsterdam.’