‘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.’