‘That was you?’
‘My big foot. We went through the empty flat and found the rifle in the garden.’
The hairs rose on the back of Diamond’s neck. ‘What rifle?’
‘The sniper rifle propped against the railings at the end. You must have found it by now.’
A slow shake of the head. ‘You’d better describe it.’
‘I don’t know much about them. Black. About this length. Telescopic sight, I think. A box-type magazine that curved a bit. We didn’t touch it, sir. Kept our distance. Ken Lockton was chuffed to find it. I remember saying if I was the gunman I wouldn’t leave it there. I’d come back for it. Ken agreed and said it gave us a chance to nab him. He was raring to go. Then I reminded him that our car was still in the street out front — something he hadn’t thought of.’
‘Advertising your presence?’
‘Exactly. He instructed me to drive back to Walcot Street. I asked if he wanted armed back-up and he said if he did he’d use his own radio.’
‘You didn’t report any of this?’
‘Ken was the SIO at the time — before anyone more senior got there — and he made it very clear he intended to make the arrest himself.’
‘He wanted the glory?’
‘He didn’t use those words.’
‘But that was your understanding?’
Stillman nodded.
‘Is this the first time you’ve mentioned it to anyone? Does Chief Superintendent Gull know any of this?’
‘Not yet.’ He blushed scarlet at the prospect. ‘Should I …?’
‘Get some proper sleep, in a bed. I’ll fill him in.’
Diamond had some sympathy now he’d heard the tale. If anyone was to blame for what had happened, it was Ken Lockton and he’d paid heavily for his overambition. Presumably the gunman had been nearby when the police arrived, hiding in the basement or the garden, and had attacked Lockton from behind. True, it would have been helpful to have known for sure about the gun two hours ago, but in the bigger picture it might not matter.
But give Lockton his due, he thought: his theory had been correct.
Diamond’s own pet theory — that Willis fired the shots from his bedroom window — now felt less appealing than it had a few minutes ago. Maybe the civil servant had preferred a closer range from the end of the garden. The problem with this was that leaving the murder weapon propped against the railing didn’t chime in with Willis’s fastidious character.
The time for theorising ended. Keith Halliwell sprinted towards Diamond. ‘Radio message from Jack Gull. A suspect has been sighted. There’s a stake-out in Becky Addy Wood.’
‘What am I supposed to do about it?’
‘He wants you with him. He’s about to leave.’
5
‘This is the breakthrough. I feel it in my bones,’ Jack Gull told Diamond, seated in the back of a BMW response car with lights flashing, siren periodically screaming, as it powered over a mighty hill known as Brassknocker, the quick way out of Bath to Avoncliff and Becky Addy Wood.
‘Bully for you,’ Diamond said. All he could feel in his bones was the lurch of the suspension on the winding roads. What was going on in his stomach mattered more to him. He hated being driven fast. Embarrassing, in his job. A few of his team knew of this frailty. Gull did not.
‘I heard about the cartridge case being recovered,’ Gull said, expecting a businesslike exchange of their findings, even at this speed. ‘And we picked up one of the discharged bullets. Would you believe it was lying in six inches of silt at the bottom of a drain? I guess it bounced off the wall into the gutter and dropped out of sight.’
‘It’s gone for examination, has it?’
‘Don’t get your hopes up. It impacted with stone and is well mangled. If nothing else, ballistics should be able to tell us which kind of rifle he used. It sounds like a semiautomatic again.’
‘The rifle. I must tell you about that,’ Diamond said and was forced to go silent again as a field to his left reared up like a tidal wave, threatening to tip a flock of sheep onto them. Coming down Brassknocker the contours were fearsome.
‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’
By fixing his gaze on the driver’s headrest, he regained a measure of self-control. Staccato-style, he reported the gist of what he’d heard from Sergeant Stillman. He left out plenty, including how and when the information had reached him.
So when Gull said, ‘What a tosser,’ he meant Ken Lockton.
It seemed fair enough that Lockton took all the blame. His ego trip had ruined a real chance of catching the sniper.
‘Do we have ballistics evidence from the earlier shootings?’ Diamond managed to say.
‘Yep. Some of the bullets hit soft earth and were in good enough shape to check the rifling,’ Gull said. ‘No cartridge cases. Usually he’s careful to pick them up. He uses a Heckler and Koch G36, same as the police-issue weapon.’
‘That’s rich, killing our people with one of our own guns.’
‘There are thousands out there.’
‘As many as that?’
‘They’ve been manufactured since the nineteen-nineties. It’s the frontline assault rifle of the German army and several of the NATO countries. Are you armed?’
‘Right now, you mean?’ Diamond admitted he was not.
Gull shook his head in disbelief that anyone could be so ill-prepared. ‘Bad move. This guy is a cop killer.’
‘Good move actually. No one would be safe if I had a gun in my hand.’
‘Even so, you should be wearing body armour. It’s a good thing I have a spare set in the boot. Pity you’re not armed, though.’
Diamond was starting to wonder if he should have come at all.
‘No sweat,’ Gull added. ‘We’ll have the Wiltshire armed response lads in support.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ Diamond said. The car briefly became airborne going over a hump in the road. ‘Strewth!’ With a supreme effort to sound untroubled, he came out with a question worthy of a job interview. ‘When did you first get involved in this operation?’
‘After the Radstock shooting, when it was obvious we had a serial sniper murdering policemen.’
‘Is the MO similar in each case?’ He had an inbuilt dislike of abbreviations, but at high speed the Latin was too much of a mouthful.
‘Same fucking gun, never mind the MO,’ Gull said. ‘The rifling on the bullets is identical. But, yes, he likes to get to a high position and lie in wait. In Wells, he used a kids’ tree house overlooking the street. In Radstock, he was on some scaffolding up the side of a new building.’
‘Fingerprints.’
Gull shook his head. ‘He’s a careful bastard.’
‘Obviously a planner.’
‘Has to be. Not only does he find a good vantage point, it must be a street where one of our boys is on foot patrol. He must suss out the location days if not weeks ahead.’
‘But any copper will do as the target?’
‘That’s become obvious. We researched the backgrounds of PCs Hart and Richmond, the first two victims, and there’s no reason anyone would want to kill them for who they were.’
‘No connection between them?’
Gull shook his head. ‘It’s mindless carnage, no different really from IEDs.’
After the mention of the MO, Gull must have thought Diamond was up with all abbreviations.
‘IEDs?’
‘Roadside bombs.’
‘Got you.’
They’d almost finished the rollercoaster descent down Brassknocker. The traffic lights ahead for the A36 were on red. Their driver gave a blast on the siren, veered into the oncoming lane, swung right and joined the main road.
The straight stretch ahead was no relief for frazzled nerves, just a chance to pick up speed.
‘So what’s the thinking?’ Diamond asked over the surge in revs.
‘About the killer?’
‘His motive.’
‘He must hate us. Some bad experience in the past.’