‘Doesn’t sound like an asylum seeker.’ His mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Unless he escaped from Scotland.’
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.’