Cop to Corpse (38 page)

‘Off-hand, I can’t say. It’s been a heavy day. Do me a favour, Keith.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Don’t mention this to John Leaman. Or Ingeborg.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘I’m bushed. With the killer under lock and key, I think we can safely get an early night.’

‘I’ll second that.’ Halliwell switched his computer to the sleep function. ‘There was good news from the hospital this afternoon. Ken Lockton has recovered consciousness. They think he’ll make a full recovery.’

‘Thank God for that.’ Diamond hesitated. ‘I hardly dare ask.’

‘Does he remember what happened? No, guv. No memory at all. Concussion does that sometimes.’

‘Too much to expect. We don’t get many breaks, do we, Keith?’

‘There is one thing before you go. I dealt with the mail as you asked.’

‘What do you want – a pat on the back?’

Halliwell grinned. That would be a rare event.

‘I haven’t looked into my office,’ Diamond said. ‘No problems, I hope.’

‘All very straightforward, guv. Three quarters of it was junk, and the rest I could cope with.’

‘What’s the thing you wanted to mention, then?’

‘It’s on your desk. An envelope marked “personal”. I didn’t like to open it.’

‘In case it was from an old flame of mine? More junk, I expect. Or someone wanting money.’ He remembered seeing the envelope the previous day. ‘I’ll pick it up, then.’

He went through to the office.

His desk hadn’t looked so tidy for at least a week. Just that one letter remained in the in-tray. He picked it up.
Detective Diamond
–
PERSONAL
. The sender didn’t seem to know his rank or initials. The white self-seal envelope had obviously been put through a printer.

He opened it and withdrew the slip of paper it contained.

Short and to the point:
YOU’RE NEXT
.

27

H
e invited Paloma over. If he didn’t speak to someone outside the CID fishbowl, he wouldn’t get much sleep. In case she got the idea that romance was in prospect, he warned her it was cheese and cream crackers and there was a reason why he didn’t want to go out for a meal.

She arrived with a bottle of kaolin and morphine. ‘I heard what you were saying, and I think I know what this is about,’ she told him. ‘This is an old-fashioned remedy and really effective.’

‘I don’t have diarrhoea,’ he said. ‘I prefer to eat in tonight, that’s all. I’ve opened a bottle of Merlot. I’m touched by your kind thought, but mine has a better flavour than yours.’

‘Mine may have a better kick,’ she said.

‘And it could still come in useful,’ he said.

She had also called at the cleaner’s and collected the first of his two suits. He was going to need it in the morning.

He showed her the ‘You’re Next’ note and a shiver went through her. She didn’t need telling about the similar one found in Harry Tasker’s card-wallet. They’d discussed it when he was feeling bruised after the team meeting a couple of days before.

‘But I heard on the car radio that you arrested someone.’

‘We have,’ he said, ‘and all the evidence shows he’s the sniper. This looks to me like a practical joke.’

She was appalled. ‘Joke?’

‘Black humour. It’s a police thing. No one is immune from it. I dish it out sometimes and I must expect it back.’

‘Well, I don’t remotely understand what’s funny about it,’ Paloma said, ‘but if that’s all it is, some kind of joke, can’t you make a show of laughing it off?’

‘That was my first reaction.’

‘And?’

‘And I’d like to. The difficulty is that there’s a small chance it’s genuine, sent by the same individual who sent the note Harry Tasker received. As the SIO, I’m bound to take it seriously and treat it as evidence.’

‘That’s what your joker intends.’

‘Probably.’

‘Does it look the same as the first note?’

‘Just about identical. The only difference is that there was no envelope with Harry’s note. He may have destroyed it. The slip of paper is the same size, the wording is the same and so is the font. Easy to copy, of course. They’ve all seen it.’

‘If it’s meant as a joke, can you be certain it came from inside the police station? Calling you Detective Diamond instead of your proper rank is odd. Would one of your own team address you like that?’

‘Normally, no. As a way of bamboozling me, I wouldn’t put it past them.’

‘Could some bloody-minded member of the public have sent it?’

‘The first note hasn’t been made public – except to you.’

She smiled faintly. ‘I’m innocent. I have better ways of winding you up. Why is it being kept a secret?’

‘Sometimes we keep information back so as to have something known only to the killer and ourselves. My team has seen the first note and so have Jack Gull and his deputy, a mental giant called Polehampton. The “Detective Diamond” bit looks like an attempt to divert suspicion – as if it must be from the killer himself, always assuming the killer is an outsider.’

‘And it can’t be from the killer because he’s in custody.’

‘Since early this morning, yes.’ He felt his skin flush as he revealed the flaw in his logic. ‘But I have to tell you that the letter was on my desk unopened for most of yesterday. I saw it myself and didn’t open it. The last forty-eight hours are a blur.’

Paloma took a moment for thought. ‘He was still at liberty when the letter arrived on your desk?’

‘He knew we were on his trail by then. It’s hard to believe he
would have come to Bath Central police station and delivered a death threat by hand. I’m ninety-nine per cent certain it’s a hoax.’

‘The first note wasn’t a hoax,’ she said. ‘The threat was carried out.’

He remained sceptical. ‘I’m not even sure if that first note was what it seemed. There may have been some innocent explanation for those two words, like a reminder to Harry from his mates to stand a round of drinks. We talked about this in CID. This was the team meeting I told you about. Made me about as popular as a birdwatcher on a nudist beach.’

‘Haven’t they got over that by now?’

‘I still sense some soreness. You see, it was the note that acted as the catalyst, my suspicion that some police officer could have written it. If they’re taking revenge, this is a neat way of doing it.’

‘ “Neat” is not the word I’d use.’ She took a sip of the wine. ‘Bear with me, Peter, and please look at this another way – the one per cent chance that the note isn’t a hoax. Have you spoken yet to the man you arrested?’

‘Plenty. The problem is he’s saying nothing in return. We suspect he’s a foreigner with a poor command of English.’

‘I doubt if he wrote the note, then. You need to be up with the language to use the apostrophe correctly. Plenty of native speakers get it wrong. Your average foreigner would leave it out altogether and spell it Y-O-U-R.’

He raised his thumb. ‘Good thinking. You’ve disposed of the one per cent. It looks certain this is just to teach me a lesson.’

‘Do they know you’ve opened it?’

‘The team? They will now. Keith Halliwell made sure I looked at it before I left the office.’

She tilted her head in surprise. ‘You’ve often said Keith is your main support. Would he play a mean trick on you?’

He weighed the question. Already he was thankful he’d invited her over to help him get the incident into perspective. ‘Put like that, I’m less sure. I’ve known Keith longer than anyone. I’d say it’s unlikely – except …’ He stopped and cast his mind back. ‘Except that he was leading the protest at the meeting, that is until Ingeborg took over and said I was ordering a witch-hunt. It was an issue of principle for Keith, standing up for his colleagues. Right at the end I asked him to supply me with a list of police personnel
from the three stations and he virtually refused, said I was putting him in an impossible position. I backed down and said I’d do it myself. In all our years together I’ve never known him to defy me. I could see how deep it went.’

‘If it affected him like that,’ Paloma said, ‘I can’t believe for a moment he’d take revenge with a practical joke. He’ll be as bruised as you are. It’s obvious he has a high regard for you.’

‘I’ve always thought of him as rock solid.’

‘And he is. You’ve got to see that, Peter. He was right. You did put him in an impossible position. It’s a good thing you had the sense to climb down. Things have improved since, haven’t they?’

‘By degrees. We’re back to normal, just about.’

‘Did he actually watch you in the act of opening the envelope?’

Diamond shook his head. ‘I was alone in my office. He didn’t see my reaction and neither did anyone else.’

‘You said Ingeborg was angry. Is she capable of setting you up?’

‘Well capable. She knows my weak points.’

‘The female of the species …’

He shook his head. ‘But I can’t see her doing it. She’ll criticise me openly, tell me I’m off message, but there’s a tipping point and Ingeborg has never gone past it. I trust her. I trust them all, or they wouldn’t be in the team.’

‘John Leaman?’

‘He’s a one-track man, incapable of twisted thinking.’

‘Twisted it certainly is,’ Paloma said. ‘And cruel. What’s it meant to achieve?’

‘At the very least, me dosing myself with kaolin and morphine.’

She wasn’t letting him laugh off the danger. ‘Have you ever thought why the first note was sent to Harry Tasker?’

‘It’s a kind of bravado on the part of the killer. Serial killers sometimes get an extra kick from announcing their crimes in advance. Jack the Ripper is supposed to have done it.’

‘I thought most of the Jack the Ripper letters were sent by people cashing in on the publicity, like the man who sent the Yorkshire Ripper tape.’

He was impressed. ‘You’ve done your homework on serial killers.’ Another remark he wished he could take back.

A silence developed between them.

Finally Paloma looked at his plate. ‘I don’t think you’ve eaten any of the cheese and biscuits yet.’

‘Not much appetite.’

‘Peter, you
are
worried by this.’

He made a sweeping gesture in dismissal and then thought better of it, deciding he owed her an honest answer. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. I’m not entirely sure that the man we are holding killed all three of the victims. The case has had huge publicity. Any police killing does. I’ve had a suspicion all week that the shootings weren’t random. Now I believe Harry Tasker may have been shot by someone else, a killer who wants his crime to be lumped in with the Somerset sniper.’

‘But it’s the same gun for all three, isn’t it?’

‘The same kind of gun, same kind of ammunition. A Heckler and Koch G36, firing 45mm cartridges. They’re standard issue in the police. See the way my mind is working?’

‘Someone in the police had a grudge against Harry and saw this as an opportunity to kill him and have the crime credited to someone else?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is this G36 a prohibited weapon?’

‘God, yes.’

‘You’d have to be a firearms officer to own one?’

‘You wouldn’t own it. They’re police property.’

‘Does anyone else use them? What about the army?’

‘No, but they’re widely used in Europe. It’s the standard service rifle of the German army, among others.’

‘Do you see what I’m getting at?’ she said. ‘There must be some being traded in the criminal world.’

‘That goes without saying. The G36 has been around since the early nineties. Not as long as the Kalashnikov, the AK47, but you can get them illegally. I’ve seen one that was used in an armed hold-up in Bristol. I didn’t think they were knocking around in Bath until today, when I visited a house and found a whole secret armoury of AK47s, G36s and much more. Big shock.’

Her eyes widened. ‘In Bath? Where was that?’

‘I’d better not say. We haven’t recovered them yet.’

‘Not a policeman’s house?’

He smiled. ‘No.’

‘The guns are out there, then,’ Paloma said. ‘That’s all I’m saying – that the weapon used to kill Harry Tasker may not have been a police weapon.’

‘We’ll know shortly. A G36 was recovered this afternoon from the river close to where our suspect was arrested.’

She brought her hands together in approval. ‘Can it be identified as the gun that killed all three?’

‘When it’s cleaned up. The ballistics experts will do a test firing, discharging bullets into a test-firing chamber. The rifling inside the gun creates marks called striations along the side that are as good as fingerprints. Under a microscope they can be compared with the bullets found at the murder scenes.’

‘You said we’ll know shortly. How soon is shortly?’

‘Always longer than you hope for.’

‘And then you can be certain?’

A silence followed. Diamond was pondering new possibilities.

Paloma gave a sudden cry of surprise. Raffles the cat had crept into the room and jumped on her lap. He’d belonged to Stephanie and enjoyed female company. After letting her feel the weight of his paws on her thighs, he settled into a comfortable position, anticipating he wouldn’t be disturbed for some time.

Diamond was so deep in thought he hadn’t heard Paloma’s cry or noticed the cat. ‘I may have made a wrong assumption about the gun.’

Paloma frowned. ‘Go on.’

‘Everything happened in a matter of hours, the shooting of Harry followed by the report of a gunman in Becky Addy Wood. It was easy to assume that the two incidents were related and the gun being carried in Becky Addy belonged to Harry’s murderer. But if my theory is right, and Harry was shot by whoever wrote that note, this is going to need a rethink.’

‘Can’t you tell your forensics people this is an emergency?’

‘They still take the same amount of time.’

‘Meanwhile, you’re at risk of being killed.’

‘That’s why we’re eating in tonight.’

‘Peter, you shouldn’t make light of it. I don’t think you should leave the house until these tests are confirmed one way or the other.’

‘I can’t take time off.’

‘How will you travel to work tomorrow?’

‘Car, as usual.’

‘That’s crazy. He could be lying in wait. We’ll go in my car, with you out of sight, lying on the back seat.’