day to the next where you would be and what you would investigate.
Suddenly the people on the left stopped and gestured along the line for everyone to halt. They’d reached a thickly wooded stretch where it was impossible to see more than two of the searchers to right or left. The rule of silence now was too much to hope for. The news of a find was soon passed along. There was evidence of a tent being pitched and the ashes of a wood fire.
‘That’s it, then,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s upped sticks and gone. He’d be a fool to come back.’
‘It’s got to be taped off for checking,’ Gull said. ‘We could get his DNA. This could take some time.’
‘I’m going to have a look,’ Diamond said.
‘We’re not supposed to break rank.’
‘Stuff that.’
He strode off to see what was happening. He hadn’t come here to make up the numbers. If Jack Gull chose to toe the line, that was his loss, Diamond decided. The stride became a swagger, but not for long. The going was rough and made worse because of the downward incline. Soon his steps were more like stumbling. Once he caught his foot in a rabbit hole and landed on all fours. He got up, rubbed his hands and carried on, watched by more of the team waiting compliantly for the order to move on. They didn’t question his insubordination.
Presently the ground dipped and he looked down on a sunken section formed possibly by quarrying and protected on three sides, yet entirely grassed over, a perfect hideaway. The CIO from the Wiltshire force was standing on the opposite bank overseeing police tape being staked around an area where a flattened square was clearly visible, as were the holes made by tent-pegs. The embers of a fire were still giving off faint wisps of smoke.
‘What do you reckon?’ Diamond asked.
The CIO looked up, surprised that someone had left his post. Seeing that it was Diamond he didn’t make an issue of it. ‘Not kids, for sure. No fag-ends, no beer cans. Looks to me like one careful camper was here last night.’
‘Careful in what way?’
‘Not to leave any rubbish behind.’
‘The sniper, sleeping rough?’
‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ The CIO’s beady eyes were more than just hopeful.
‘Why would he have returned to the wood this morning?’
‘To bury the murder weapon is my guess. Easy to cover with leaf mould. Very difficult for anyone else to detect.’
Diamond needed more convincing. ‘Where’s the tree he’s supposed to have used for firing practice?’
‘There’s no “supposed” about it. Someone fired bullets into it. About thirty yards behind us. An oak.’
‘Have you recovered any?’
‘They were all embedded in the tree.’
‘How about the bits the rifle ejects?’
‘The cartridge casings? No, we haven’t found any. He had time to pick them up.’
‘Do you think he’s still about?’
‘We’ve got to assume he is. Our first response car got here within fifteen minutes of the 999 call coming in.’
‘What exactly did the witness see?’
‘A figure running or jogging across the road close to where we all parked. Not much of a description, I’m afraid. Dark clothing, possibly black leather, but — this is the clincher for me — definitely carrying a gun.’
‘A rifle?’
‘Not a handgun, for sure.’
‘Was he aware of being spotted?’
‘She doesn’t think so. The running wasn’t an attempt to get away.’
‘Hair colour? Height? Build?’
‘Uncertain. Difficult to tell under the trees.’
Too vague for Diamond. The tree interested him more. ‘While you’re finishing off here I’ll take a look at that oak.’ He moved off in the direction he’d been told.
This one stood a good thirty feet high and the trunk must have been three feet in diameter. He saw the bullet holes. In its long life this tree had never suffered such injury, nor been given so much attention as a result. Blue and white police tape deterred anyone from approaching within six feet. Even in his present defiant frame of mind, Diamond conformed. Some restrictions had their point. It was likely that the gunman had stepped up to the tree to see the pattern of his firing. Footprints were a real possibility.
The bullet holes had ripped through the grey crevices of the bark at head height. They formed three parallel lines, each formed of about eight shots. Three bursts of rapid fire, he guessed. The depth of penetration was impossible to judge from this distance. Certainly more than a couple of inches and perhaps several times that. Recovering them without further damage would be a challenge for the ballistics team. The striations on the sides would be the key to matching them to a particular weapon. It might be necessary to fell the tree and saw off the section of trunk and remove it to the lab.
Those bullet holes impressed him more than anything he’d seen or heard in this wood. Signs of someone sleeping out could be open to mixed interpretations. This was beyond argument. A gunman had fired at the tree, a gunman who was no beginner.
Chilling.
The link between this and the murders of three policemen was as yet unproved, but what justification would anyone have for using a gun — almost certainly an assault rifle — in a Wiltshire wood?
The line of fire was obvious, the range less so. By standing level with the bullet holes and with his back to the tree Diamond made a significant discovery. In this dense wood the gunman had found just about the only possible sightline of fifty yards or more. Trees and bushes blocked every other angle. He’d found a shaft between them as narrow as a laser beam. It ended at another massive oak maybe sixty yards away, approximately the firing distance of the shot that had killed Harry Tasker in Walcot Street.
Impressed without really wanting to be, Diamond started walking dead straight in that direction, an obstacle course over fallen trees, holly, brambles and springy beds of leaves that were liable to give way and leave him ankle deep in mud. His dogged character wouldn’t allow him to find an easier route. He persevered at some cost to his suit trousers and shoes until he reached the second oak and was able to turn and still have a finger-thin view of the target tree.
This was even more clever than he’d first appreciated, for the second oak had wide-spreading branches low enough to be climbed. It wouldn’t require much athleticism to scale it. From high on an upper bough the gunman could have simulated the angle and distance required to shoot Harry Tasker.
For Diamond, the climb would have to be taken as completed. He was damned if he would attempt it dressed as he was, with the extra burden of the body armour. But he firmly believed that was what had happened. He’d suggest it to the chief inspector. In the upper branches they might well find fibres torn from the killer’s clothing.
Crime scene procedure had not been at the forefront of his thoughts until now. With more consideration for the men in white coats and their painstaking methods he chose a different line back. It really was a path of sorts, perhaps a badger-run.
Progress was easier this way. He stepped out briskly, with more enthusiasm to rejoin the dragnet. They might be moving on by now.
He’d walked not more than twenty yards when he heard a snapping sound.
He halted and listened.
Woods can be like that, silent as the grave and then surprising you. This wasn’t of his own making, he was sure. A dead branch falling off a tree?
Subdued voices carried to him from some distance ahead. The police line, he decided. The sound had been closer. He could just hear the Avon passing over the weir deep in the valley.
There was no wind. Everything around him was still.
He moved on.
Immediately he heard two loud mechanical rasps followed by an engine blast. From the ground in front of him
