Free Cop to Corpse by Peter Lovesey Page B

and took his first step.
    ‘The gents isn’t that way,’ his well-meaning adviser called out. ‘It’s the other direction.’
    Diamond didn’t answer. He was back on the sniper’s trail.
    By the time he’d made it through the corridors to the main exit, his conscience had been touched by small examples of members of the public behaving as one should do in hospitals, disinfecting their hands before entering the wards, sitting in waiting areas without complaining and holding doors open for a man on crutches. Before phoning for a taxi, he called at the reception desk and asked them to inform the radiology unit that Peter Diamond would not, after all, require X-rays. Then he was off before anyone tried to stop him.
    Keith Halliwell was open-mouthed. ‘Guv, what on earth?’
    The taxi had put Diamond down at the foot of the eighteenth century flight of steps in Walcot street. He made quite a performance of positioning the crutches and getting himself out of the back seat. ‘Have you got a tenner on you? I can’t manage these and reach my wallet at the same time.’
    Halliwell shared a long-suffering look with the driver and settled the fare.
    Diamond said, ‘Don’t let me forget.’
    Halliwell let that pass. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Tell you later. This is urgent. Have any of the people in the Paragon house been allowed out yet?’
    Halliwell nodded. ‘We’d already detained them for a couple of hours. They weren’t best pleased.’
    ‘They wanted to leave?’
    ‘It’s natural. When you’re treated like a caged beast you want your freedom.’
    ‘Did they all go out?’
    ‘Not together, but yes.’
    ‘The blonde, the old couple and the civil servant? Anyone check where they were going?’
    ‘Not our business. Actually, the old people said something about going for a coffee.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘While you were breaking the news to Mrs. Tasker. We’d already questioned them all and turned their flats upside down. Is there a problem?’
    ‘Tell me this, Keith: is there anything to suggest that Willis, the civil servant, rides a motorbike? While we were inside his place, did you notice leathers anywhere, or a helmet?’
    ‘He’s a car owner.’
    ‘Doesn’t stop him having a bike as well.’
    Halliwell frowned as he cast his mind back. ‘I didn’t see any of the gear, but then I wasn’t looking for it. I was interested in a gun.’
    ‘Is he back yet?’
    ‘Don’t know. I can check with the guy on the door.’ Halliwell had a personal radio attached to his belt. ‘Still out somewhere,’ he presently reported.
    ‘I want to know the minute he gets back.’
    Diamond demanded and was given an update on the investigation. It was now beyond dispute that the sniper had fired the fatal shot from the overgrown garden in the Paragon. Every resident living close enough to have witnessed the shooting had been questioned. The bullet found in the drain and the single cartridge case from the garden had gone to be ballistically tested and compared with the ammunition used in the previous shootings. Although damaged and compressed, the fragments were believed by firearms officers to be from a .45 round used with the Heckler and Koch G36 rifle, the type of weapon they carried themselves.
    ‘Which tells us something, if true,’ Halliwell added. ‘But are we any closer to catching this guy?’
    ‘Only an hour ago we were as close as it gets. He ran me down and left me like this,’ Diamond said, and told his story.
    Halliwell made the right sympathetic sounds. ‘Nothing else you could have done, guv.’
    ‘That isn’t the view of Supergull. He reckons if he’d been there he’d have spotted the make of the bike, got the license number and a detailed description of the suspect.’
    ‘Yeah, the colour of his eyes, size of his collar.’
    ‘And which aftershave he uses. Then he’d have stretched his arms, got airborne and chased the sniper all the way down the valley and wrestled him off the bike and