Free Cop to Corpse by Peter Lovesey

of the Wiltshire firearms officers.
    ‘You OK?’
    He released a shaky breath. ‘Don’t know till I get up.’
    ‘Stay still. Don’t try and move. What happened?’
    ‘Must have been the sniper. He came from nowhere.’
    Others in their body armour surrounded him. ‘Call an ambulance,’ someone said.
    ‘No need for that,’ Diamond told them. ‘I can feel my legs.’ He tried to move them and gasped as pain shot up his left thigh.
    Jack Gull forced himself to the front and leaned over. No sympathy given or expected. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’
    ‘Walking through the wood, that’s what. I was on my way back to the search party when this motorbike appeared from nowhere, coming straight for me.’
    ‘What do you mean, “from nowhere”?’
    ‘Out of the ground. Straight ahead.’ He tried to point and felt a stab of pain in his shoulder.
    Disbelief personified, Jack Gull stepped over to check. He thrashed around in the bracken.
    ‘Well, fuck me.’
    ‘What? What is it?’
    ‘Where he came from. You wouldn’t know it was here. Watch me.’ Gull took a step forward and dropped out of sight. ‘Impressive?’ His head and shoulders reappeared. ‘It’s a bloody great hole in the ground.’
    ‘I saw nothing.’
    ‘It’s overgrown, isn’t it?’ Now that he’d made this discovery, Gull wanted all the credit he could extract. ‘Looks to me like part of the quarry workings, squared off neatly inside.’
    Some of the others moved closer to take a look. The injured Diamond was only a sideshow now.
    Gull said from inside the hole, ‘A bloody great chunk of limestone has been taken out of the ground. He’d get a motorcycle in here, no problem, and it’s got a natural ramp with some purchase where they cut into the open face. He’d found his own hidden parking spot. The scumbag was in here waiting for the right moment to get the hell out.’
    ‘Neat,’ someone said.
    ‘No question. He planned it for an emergency getaway.’
    ‘Will he get stopped?’ Diamond said.
    ‘He’d better.’ From his sunken position Gull swept some bracken aside and addressed the man in charge. ‘You sealed the area, right?’
    ‘The roads, yes, but –’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘On a bike he can use the footpaths and this whole area is riddled with them.’
    ‘Give me strength. He’ll be clean away. Did you radio all units?’
    ‘We’re not total idiots.’ There was some cross-border rivalry here. Wiltshire wasn’t part of Gull’s empire.
    Gull climbed out of the dugout and went over to Diamond. ‘What did this dickhead look like?’
    ‘Helmet and visor. Leathers. That’s as much as I saw.’
    ‘Come on. You saw the bike.’
    ‘Black, with a windshield. I’m not into motorbikes.’
    ‘Fat lot of use that is. This is the fucking sniper. He comes so close he knocks you down and that’s all you remember.’
    The chief inspector said, ‘I think we should lay off. The man’s obviously in pain.’
    ‘He’s in pain?’ Gull said. ‘I’m in bloody torment. The tosser was under our fucking noses and he escaped.’
    The ambulance arrived and got as close as it could. Diamond insisted on trying to walk and had to admit he needed the stretcher. They removed the protective jacket and he was made sharply awareof how much his ribs hurt. He was hauled inside and driven to the Royal United Hospital.
    In Accident and Emergency, he was checked by a doctor, put in a wheelchair and taken away for X-rays to his left leg, shoulder and ribcage.
    ‘What happens now?’ he asked the staff nurse in the radiography department.
    ‘You wait your turn.’
    ‘I don’t have time to wait. I’m a police officer on a manhunt.’
    The nurse gave a smile that said she’d heard every story going and this was a nice try. ‘You won’t be hunting anyone today. We take patients strictly in order. It shouldn’t take long.’
    ‘Nothing is broken. It’s bruising or a sprain. Find me a pair of crutches and I’ll save you the