It didn’t happen.
Instead, there was the rasp of an indrawn breath and then he was hit with the full force of a falling body. He’d felt nothing like it since his days playing rugby, and rugby wasn’t played on mounds of railway ballast. He was crushed, winded, pained. This wasn’t an accident. It was an attack.
His face was hard against the sharp points of stone and his attacker had a hand on his head, forcing it further in. A weight heavier than his own was bearing down on his upper body. The assault was so sudden that he was virtually overpowered before he could fight back. He tried turning more to the right to shift the weight and succeeded only in scraping his ribs against the gravel.
Excruciating.
This was no place for a wrestling match. The stones shifted when he tried bracing his legs to get some leverage. Immediately he was trapped under the weight of his attacker’s thighs. A pathetically uneven contest. Surprise had done for him. He tried wriggling and squirming, yet each movement brought a counter-move that locked him down, denying another attempt. He was wasting the little strength he had left.
What next?
The bullet in the head?
The fractured skull?
He could do nothing to avert either. He was down and out.
Incapable of moving, he could only wonder how this had happened. The sniper must have spotted the stake- out when returning towards the pillbox and decided to take out one more of the cops he despised. An easy target, an unarmed man, face down, defenceless.
He felt movement again. His right arm was grasped above the elbow and twisted behind his back and in the same action his neck was grabbed, the classic half-nelson, as good a way as any of disabling a man.
But it didn’t end there. His attacker forced him further over to his right and groped for the other arm. Diamond at first trapped it under his own body. When that didn’t succeed, he tried stretching it beyond reach.
No use. A longer arm than his own found his wrist and tugged it inwards and against his back.
Something odd happened then. Something very odd indeed. He was handcuffed.
First he felt the enclosing steel as his right wrist was clamped. Then the left was pulled across and applied to the second cuff. These were rigid cuffs, the sort the police themselves use, simple to operate with one hand.
Hot breath gusted into his right ear and a voice started speaking familiar words. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
He’d been arrested.
20
‘On your feet.’
‘You’re joking, of course,’ Diamond said, still face down on the gravel heap.
‘That’s an order. Do it now.’
‘What do you think this walking stick is for?’
A moment for thought. ‘Sit up, then,’ his attacker said. ‘You can do that.’
Manacled as he was, he rolled over and succeeded in raising his back from the stones. He had difficulty seeing in this poor light. The voice had sounded strangely familiar, though, and the height of the standing figure silhouetted against the night sky confirmed the galling truth. ‘Oh, Christ almighty!’
DI Polehampton of the serial crimes unit was no less appalled. ‘Stone the crows, I thought you were the sniper.’
‘You thought wrong. Get me out of these cuffs, you wally.’
Polehampton was in full body armour, black coveralls with pockets galore. Diamond’s confidence of an early release faded when he saw the man starting to frisk himself.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost the key.’
‘It’s here somewhere.’ He kept locating new pockets and patting them. ‘What were you doing lying there in your ordinary clothes?’
‘I’m CID. That’s what I wear, plain clothes.’
‘I was expecting a man in combat gear. I was told one of the Wiltshire firearms team was here, not you.’
‘Sergeant Gillibrand. He’s on a comfort break.’
‘Look, I’m frightfully sorry.’
‘Save it, man. Just find the key and unlock the cuffs.’
Polehampton was round to his thigh pockets now in a process that was getting frantic, ripping Velcro apart with sounds that must have carried all the way to Avoncliff station. ‘The view I had of you, lying face down, I just couldn’t take a chance. I know the key is on me somewhere.’
‘It had better be.’
‘I hope I didn’t hurt you.’
‘Apart from causing facial scars that could be permanent, pushing my head against the gravel and destroying my sciatic nerve with some item of equipment you’re wearing on your belt, you didn’t trouble me in the least. Have you tried the back pockets?’
More ripping sounds ensued.
‘Got it.’
‘Thank God for that.’
Polehampton knelt behind Diamond and got to work on the handcuffs. ‘I didn’t know you were here. I thought Superintendent Gull was in charge.’
‘He was until an hour ago. What’s holding you up? My wrists are giving hell.’
‘Done.’
The cuffs snapped open. Diamond massaged his chafed flesh.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d better move on,’ Polehampton said. ‘There’s more liaising to be done.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
The irony was lost on Polehampton. ‘Are you able to move?’
‘No thanks to you.’
Left alone, Diamond checked for blood where his face had been forced against the gravel. To his surprise there didn’t seem to be any. His wife Steph had once told him he had a tendency to over-dramatise injuries and ailments. He’d denied this, of course, while admitting to himself that there was a germ of truth there. Now he could almost see her smiling at this latest non-injury. A comforting thought. He massaged his bad leg. Pins and needles had set in. As the blood flow returned he expected the steady ache to come back, but it didn’t. Was it possible that the wrestling match had effected a cure?
The gravel crunched again and Sergeant Gillibrand reappeared.
‘I thought I heard sounds,’ he said.
‘More wildlife,’ Diamond said.
In Walcot Street, Ingeborg and Paul Gilbert had reached the Bell, one of Bath’s oldest pubs at some two hundred and fifty years, renowned for real ale and live music, and close to the point where Harry Tasker had been shot. They had spoken to a few more of Bath’s night owls along the way without adding anything to the dossier on their dead colleague.
‘Going in?’ Gilbert said.
‘What’s on?’ Inbeborg asked.
‘Getting choosy, are we?’
‘Jerk. Is it Anderson’s kind of music is what I’m asking. It doesn’t sound like hip-hop to me.’
‘I’m starting to think Anderson is a red herring. And I need a drink.’
‘We’re not here to enjoy ourselves, DC Gilbert.’
