Polehampton said, ‘He heads the special team co-ordinating the hunt for the Somerset Sniper.’
‘Special I’ll give you,’ Diamond said.
‘I hope you’re not being sarcastic.’
‘It’s just that I find you hard to believe, Inspector Hampton.’
‘Polehampton. You can speak to Headquarters if you want.’
‘Too busy,’ Diamond said. ‘You speak to them. They’ll tell you this is my patch. The men you see around you are my people and they were first on the scene — fact. They’ve been here since first thing dealing with the murder of a close colleague. None of us are walking away from that.’
‘I can understand that. If you want to stay and observe, you’re welcome, but kindly update me first.’
There was a pause while Diamond reined himself in. Far more was at issue this morning than a spat over who was running the show.
‘Here’s your update,’ he said. ‘Two officers attacked, men we work with every day. One dead and the other may not survive.’
‘Two?’ Polehampton blinked. ‘Nobody reported a second attack.’
‘He’s just been found, that’s why. Ken Lockton, a uniformed inspector with a serious head injury.’
‘God Almighty — another shooting?’
‘Bludgeoned, they’re saying. The ambulance is on its way. I’m cordoning the area in hope of snaring the skunk who did this.’
‘You’d better carry on, then.’
Diamond walked away, speaking into his personal radio, with far more on his mind than Inspector Polehampton. ‘It is secured? … And the garden? … Is there any hope he’s still alive? … Don’t move him. Make sure his airways are clear and wait for the paramedics.’
At times like this, the basics of first aid leave you feeling more helpless than the victim.
He sprinted up the flight of steps to see for himself. Sprinted up the first ten or eleven, anyway. There were fifty-six and he felt about fifty-six pounds overweight. After emerging at the top, gasping, he turned right, towards a cluster of police vehicles. This second crime scene was in the garden of a house in the Paragon, a mid-eighteenth century terrace where in less dangerous times Jane Austen had stayed on her first visits to the city.
Just as he arrived at the house, so did the ambulance, siren blaring.
He stepped aside for the two paramedics and their stretcher and followed them through the unlit basement flat to the back. You couldn’t call it a garden. There wasn’t a flower in sight, just a mass of weeds, much trampled. Near the front a huddle of armed police stood over a dark shape.
Lockton was face down in nettles.
All Diamond could see of the injury was a matted mess of blood and hair. It was obvious the man was out to the world, but the gravity of his condition was impossible to tell.
Suffocation is the commonest cause of death after a head injury. If the victim is unconscious his tongue relaxes and may block his throat. The paramedics checked this, even though the firearms team said they had already done so, putting two fingers at the angle of the jaw and two at the point and opening the mouth.
They went systematically through the standard tests for signs of life. There seemed to be hope. They applied a mask, lifted him onto the stretcher and carried him through the house to the ambulance.
For everyone left in the garden it was like the hiatus after a funeral. Some of the gun team had removed their helmets and goggles. These men who thrived on action seemed uncertain what to do next until Diamond broke the troubled silence. ‘It’s up to the doctors now. If there’s a chance of saving Ken, they will. The rest of us have work to do. It’s just possible there’s evidence here that hasn’t already been trampled over, so watch where you walk. Leave by the same route. Step one by one towards the wall and go through the house and return to your duties.’
His own duties kept him in the garden longer, assessing. The plot was roughly square, not more than ten metres by ten. Some overgrown roses along the side walls were the only indication that this had once been cultivated. He edged around to the iron railing at the end to check how much he could see of the scene below. From this height everything was scaled down. A diminished Polehampton was in the middle of Walcot Street gesturing to other people, looking about him, trying to appear as if he were in charge. More interesting to Diamond was the clear view of the forensic tent directly across the street. No question: the shooting could have been done from up here.
So many had invaded the small plot, crushing the crop of weeds, that it was impossible to work out where the gunman might have taken aim. Nothing so helpful as an empty cartridge case was visible.
He walked through the musty flat and told the constable on duty at the front to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the building except the crime scene investigation team.
‘Including the residents, sir?’
‘Especially the residents. Are they getting stroppy?’
‘Some are. The armed response lads went through all the flats searching for the sniper.’
‘People don’t take well to that sort of invasion. Okay, if anyone wants to know, we’ll be interviewing them all shortly. Do you know the injured man, Inspector Lockton?’
The constable nodded. ‘Quite well, sir.’ A pause. ‘D’you think he’ll pull through?’
‘We can hope. Popular with the lads, is he?’
‘He got promoted recently.’
‘That isn’t the same thing.’
A faint smile.
‘He’s mustard keen,’ the constable said in an effort to be fair. ‘He does a good job. He was here first thing, sir, in charge of it all. I mean down in Walcot Street where the shooting happened.’
‘How did that come about — a newly promoted man in charge?’
‘As duty inspector, on the night shift.’
‘I get you.’ The lowest in the pecking order gets the leavings. ‘If he was directing the operation, what induced him to come up here?’
‘I couldn’t tell you, sir.’
‘You were down there, weren’t you?’
‘All I know is he was there one minute and gone the next. Someone else took over.’
Diamond radioed for CID assistance and got his deputy, DI Halliwell, the man he trusted and relied on. ‘Keith, I’m at the house in the Paragon. I want the people who live here turned inside out as possible witnesses. It seems likely the sniper fired from this garden and Lockton worked it out and came up here to investigate and was knocked cold. Someone let him in, someone clobbered him. And someone may have seen the attack.’
‘I’ll sort it, guv,’ Halliwell said. ‘Was Lockton working alone, then?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Strange.’
Diamond took the fifty-six steps down and was approached by a crop-headed muscleman he knew to be Supergull, Jack Gull, head honcho of the Serial Crimes Unit. Exactly how Gull, who wasn’t much over forty and looked as if he chewed car tyres, had made it to chief superintendent was an unsolved mystery. A show of civility was inescapable.
‘How you doing, Jack?’
‘We’re taking over,’ Gull said.
‘Fine.’ Diamond refused to rise to the bait. He had his own way of dealing with situations like this.
‘Fine’ wasn’t the reaction Gull had prepared for. ‘Polehampton tells me you’re pissed off about it.’
‘Did he get that impression from me?’ Diamond said. ‘He’s no mind-reader. What’s the plan, then? Do I stand my people down and leave it to you guys?’
‘You know that’s not the way it works. We need them and we need you.’
‘Some of them are still here from the night turn. They can’t stay on their feet much longer.’
Gull wasn’t interested in human frailty. ‘What did you find up those steps?’
Diamond told him and played the trump card he’d saved for this. ‘So we’ve got two crime scenes. Who do you want up there?’
Gull hesitated.
‘Between ourselves,’ Diamond said, ‘Polehampton doesn’t fill me with confidence. I already have a top detective at the scene briefed to interview possible witnesses.’
‘Who’s that?’