Authors: Peter Lovesey
Manvers Street, the home of Bath police, was definitely “beside Bath,” on the wrong side of the walls. In all his time there, Diamond had never had reason to think about the
original layout of the city, but this morning it dawned on him that the Roman heart of the place had once been enclosed by Upper Borough Walls to the north and Lower Borough Walls to the south; street names he’d heard a thousand times without ever realising the significance.
For all its tawdry appearance, a block of lemon-yellow reconstituted stone masquerading as the real thing, the sixties-built police station was where he made his living, and he was comfortable there. Recently he’d been troubled by the Headquarter’s decision to site the custody suite in Keynsham. He could foresee Manvers Street becoming a ghost station. He had long since given up on the decisions coming out of Portishead, known to the lower ranks as ASDA, the Avon & Somerset Dream Academy.
No negative thinking this morning, he told himself. There’s a killer at liberty and it’s my job to find him.
He marched in and greeted the team. It was always good to see the place transformed with the trappings of an incident room: display boards, crime scene photos, extra phones, more civilian staff. The fire service had done their work and he could get into his office—or so he briefly believed. All traces of the shattered VDU, as Leaman had called it, had been removed, but the
Wife of Bath
on her dolly had not, and she remained a hazard. Worse, the room reeked of ammonia or some chemical. Having stepped inside, he came straight out again, forced to slum it with the rest of the team.
He parked himself temporarily at Keith Halliwell’s vacant desk. There was plenty to catch up on. John Leaman with his brain-numbing efficiency had been looking through CCTV footage from a camera in Queen Square in the hope of spotting the silver getaway van. The one-way system round the square meant that there was not much interference in the view of traffic. The imaging was good and the registration numbers showed up well.
“This could be our best chance, guv,” Leaman told him. “I’ve recorded seventeen sightings of silver vans in the two-hour slot.”
“Where’s this camera located?”
He pointed to the map on the whiteboard. “Top corner, where it links with Queen Square Place and Charlotte Street.”
Diamond spotted the snag straight away. “The auction rooms are on the other side of the square, so this would be the second possible exit.”
Leaman reddened. “Actually the third. They could have escaped down Barton Street. But if I was driving a getaway van, this is the way I’d go, heading straight out of the city.”
Diamond wasn’t persuaded. Professional criminals would surely have taken note of where the cameras were sited. “Better trace the owners, then.”
“Do you want me to run the film for you?”
“Of seventeen silver vans? No thanks, John. I’m sure you missed nothing. Why is this desk empty? Where’s Keith?”
“At the autopsy.”
“Right you are.” He wished he’d remembered. It was well known in CID that Halliwell regularly got the grisly job that should, by rights, have been the top man’s. All Diamond could offer as an excuse was that he expected little of interest to emerge from the mortuary. Everyone knew how Gildersleeve had met his death and there was small likelihood that the dissected corpse would yield more information about the killer. Ballistics would specify the bullet used and maybe the type of weapon, and that was it. In a shooting such as this, forensic science was about as helpful as clairvoyancy. The CSI team were unlikely to have recovered any DNA, fingerprints, shoeprints, stray hairs or specks of blood other than those of the victim.
“Has anyone talked yet?” he turned in his chair and asked Ingeborg. He was damned sure the case wouldn’t be cracked without outside help.
“It’s early days, guv.”
“That’s a negative?”
“Well, yes. Making contact can’t be rushed.”
She was right. Meetings with informants generally happened over a few beers at a time and place of their choosing. They couldn’t risk being seen with a detective.
Diamond felt his arm touched lightly. He looked up at Paul Gilbert.
“Guv, could I have a word?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s personal.”
“I see. We can go outside.”
Normally he would have used the office.
The corridor was crowded with uniformed officers just out of their morning briefing. He took the young DC out of the building and across the street to a coffee shop.
“Something up?” he asked when they’d been served and had found a table well away from anyone else.
“No, guv. It’s this. You said yesterday you might need someone to go undercover and find out who fired the shot. I want to volunteer.”
“Really?” He was taken by surprise. “That’s good to hear. Thanks.” Pity he couldn’t have sounded more enthusiastic. Gilbert wasn’t remotely right for the job. The lad had performed well in some tough situations, but this was a totally different assignment calling for guile and coolness under pressure.
“Is that a yes?”
“I’m going to keep it in mind,” he said. “The situation hasn’t yet arisen. I’m bound to say you’re the least experienced member of the team, even if you’re one of the keenest. For one thing this will be bloody dangerous and for another it’s walking a tightrope. Whoever does it needs to get in with the pond life without dirtying his hands.”
“With all due respect, guv, I’m up for it.”
“Right. You’ve made yourself clear.”
Gilbert appeared to sense the barrier coming down. “I’ve been attached to CID for four years now. I’m not the rookie I was when you took me on for the hangman case.”
“As long ago as that, was it? Time flies.”
“I’ll be perfect for this because my face isn’t all that well known locally. Some of the others will be known to the gangs.”
“Did someone put you up to this?”
Gilbert coloured a little and shook his head. “It’s my own idea.”
And he had to be believed. He spoke the truth, which was the quality that barred him from the job.
“I want to get more sand in my boots.”
“You what?”
“Sand in my boots. Experience.”
“Odd turn of phrase for a young guy.”
The blush became more obvious. “It’s something my mum says.”
“So your mum’s been getting at you, has she? You’re still living at home?”
“Can’t afford a place of my own. It’s expensive round here. On a sergeant’s wage I could manage it, but I won’t get the stripes for years and years at the rate I’m going. They still ask me to fetch tea for them.”
“You’re out of uniform. Plenty would swap with you.”
“I know. But mum keeps on—”
Diamond tensed. “Have you talked at home about this case?”
“Christ, no. I wouldn’t do that,” Gilbert said with such a start that he slopped his coffee. “It’s an ongoing gripe of hers. She says I’ve got no ambition.”
“I expect she’s as keen as you are to see you in your own place. What does your dad say?”
“He died when I was eleven. An operation that went wrong. There’s just the two of us.”
Diamond had a rush of sympathy. He could see it all now. “Your mum wants the best for you. It’s understandable. But you can be sure she’d miss you if you moved out.”
“I don’t think so. She’s got a boyfriend.”
He’d
thought
he could see it all. The pressure on young Gilbert wasn’t what he’d imagined. “All I can say is this. In CID, opportunities present themselves sometimes when you least expect them. You may not be right for one job, but there’s always another in the offing.”
Gilbert nodded. He couldn’t hide the disappointment.
“It’s good that you spoke to me,” Diamond said. “Your mum’s wrong about you not having ambition. We’d better drink up and get back to the job.”
Keith Halliwell was back from the autopsy and biting into a doughnut, unaffected by what he had witnessed. He stood beside his desk uncertain how to deal with the large cuckoo in occupation. After yesterday there was still tension between them—not so much over Diamond’s pratfall as the fact that Halliwell had spoken out about the suggestion to send someone undercover.
Diamond showed no sign of moving. “What’s the story?”
“The professor was unlucky. The bullet severed the aorta. That’s the main artery that supplies blood from the heart to the rest of the body.”
“Not much doubt about that, then.”
“But he probably wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway. When Dr. Sealy opened the brain he found a tumour the size of a plum. The medical records made no mention of it. I’m wondering if that helps to explain Gildersleeve’s behaviour at the auction.”
“Erratic, you mean? Taking on the gunmen? Possible, I suppose. On the other hand, you’d expect people to get hyped up when the bidding is going on. We don’t know enough about this guy and what drove him. Want to come with me to Reading and find out?”
6
“Someone has to go undercover,” Diamond said as they headed north to join the motorway.
“You said.” Halliwell took a glance in the mirror as if he needed to check who was following. Out of favour for challenging the idea when the boss had first put it to the team, he had no wish to be drawn into an argument that could last the rest of the journey.
“It’s bloody obvious.”
“If you say so.” There’s no escape when you’re at the wheel and your passenger wants to thrust his opinion on you.
But the force of the last utterance struck home. Bloody obvious? Was it possible Diamond wanted
him
to be the fall guy?
“I see it as an opportunity,” Diamond said. “If I wasn’t running the show, I’d take it on myself. Somebody has to.”
Halliwell stared at the road ahead. He knew better than to show a scintilla of interest after such a statement.
Then Diamond surprised him by saying, “I’ve had an offer already.”
“Oh?”
“Not my number one choice.”
“You don’t say?” The response sounded feeble even to the man who made it.
“I might as well tell you. Young Gilbert.”
“Good lad.”
“Up to a point, but …”
A long pause. Clearly Diamond wasn’t going to complete the statement. He could play this game for as long as both
men were strapped into their car seats. The pressure on Halliwell was unrelenting.
“But what?”
“It’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” Diamond said. “However …”
Halliwell waited yet again, flogging his brain for cast-iron reasons to reject what was coming.
“… he did make one telling point. He’s not known to the local godfathers.”
“Very true.” This could be a lifeline. “You and I have tangled with too many of them, guv. We’d never get away with it.”
“Not in a million years.”
Mightily relieved that he seemed to be off the hook, Halliwell asked, “Who were you thinking of—John? He’s more of a backroom man.”
“Leaman? Too inflexible. He has qualities, certainly. Great in the office beavering away, but I can’t see him rubbing shoulders with crooks.”
“Ingeborg?”
This time Diamond’s silence was as good as a nod.
“She’s the only one I can think of,” Halliwell said with more confidence. “More streetwise than Leaman, for sure.”
“But she hasn’t volunteered. I was hoping she might. I’m not going to pressgang anyone into something as dangerous as this.”
“She’s bright enough to carry it off,” Halliwell said. “I don’t think she’s known to any of the mob. The only one she met was Soldier Nuttall and we put him away last year.”
“What’s going on in her life these days? Is she in a relationship?”
“If she is, she hasn’t spoken about it. Blokes come and go, I think. She lives alone, doesn’t she?”
“A year ago, she would have been the first to volunteer. She’s more cagey since she got to sergeant. Doesn’t need to impress, I suppose.”
“I can sound her out if you like,” Halliwell said. “See what’s holding her back.”
“Would you?”
They ignored the first sign on the M4. Driving anywhere near the centre of Reading is enough to reduce even long-serving policemen to quivering wrecks. Five miles further along the motorway, just when you think you’ve overshot, the next exit brings you without much hassle to the campus at Whiteknights Park, southeast of the town. It wasn’t long before they were seated in the office of the lecturer put up by the university as the colleague Gildersleeve had known best.
“Unfortunate name,” Diamond commented to Halliwell while they waited for Dr. Poke to finish a seminar.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“There was a story at police college about a new instructor on his first day. The old hands on the staff had already looked at the intake and handpicked his class to embarrass him when he first called the register. As far as I remember, it went Adcock, Allcock, Badcock, Balls. At that point he lost control and fled the room.”
Diamond had barely finished the story when Dr. Poke entered his office, a short man with a shock of fine, flame-red hair in a bouffant extravagance. “Don’t get up, gentlemen,” he said in a voice that could only be described as precious. “I’m Archie Poke. I gather you’re here to enquire about the unfortunate John Gildersleeve, late of this parish.”
Diamond wasn’t new to academics. There were plenty in Bath. In their own surroundings their status gave them an air of importance not easily blown away—and their desire to impress could be useful when you wanted inside information. He identified himself and Halliwell. “The professor was a close colleague of yours, I was told.”
“Depends what you mean by close,” Poke said with a sharp glance. “We had adjoining offices with the same entrance, but that wasn’t our doing. They removed his name from the door only this morning. All his things are still in there.”
“We’ll look inside presently, in that case. Is this the Chaucer suite, then? Are you another expert?”
“Not to the extent Gildersleeve was. The Anglo-Saxon language is my specialty, but I do some lecturing in Middle English to take up the slack in the timetable.” He made it sound like slumming.
“Did you know about his trip to Bath for the auction?”
“Everyone in the senior common room knew. He made no secret of his ambition to—how shall I put it?—possess the
Wife of Bath
.” There was a twitch of the lips in case the visitors had missed the innuendo.