with Harry Tasker. If he was on the take as we now suspect, they’ll surely have heard a whisper.’
Before leaving the office, he eyed the overflowing in-tray. The morning’s mail had been heaped on top of yesterday’s. With care, so as not to spill everything on the floor, he extracted those sheets listing the personnel at Wells, Radstock and Bath. He held them over the waste-paper bin. And then some inner prompting made him hesitate. He stuffed them into his top drawer. On the way out, he turned to Keith Halliwell and casually asked him to deal with the mail. Opening letters was all too boring for a man of action.
Down at Avoncliff, three of Avon and Somerset’s underwater search unit were following up Diamond’s report of a loud splash in the river. A rigid inflatable boat was secured with lines from the bank and the first diver and his attendant were aboard and ready to start.
‘What exactly are we looking for here?’ the constable in the scuba diving suit asked before taking the plunge.
‘Mr. Diamond said it was heavier than a bird and lighter than a body,’ the sergeant in charge said from the riverbank. ‘Think of it as a lucky dip,’
‘If it was a branch off a tree it would have floated away.’
‘And we wouldn’t want to find it, would we? He thinks it was an object slung in the water by the guy they arrested last night.’
‘The sniper? Maybe it’s his gun.’
‘That would be the top result. I suggest you stop going on about it and go down and have a look.’
The diver nodded, adjusted his mask and tipped off the side of the dinghy.
He wasn’t down for long.
He bobbed to the surface and gave a thumb-down sign.
‘What’s wrong?’ the sergeant asked.
The diver pushed up his visor. ‘Visibility almost nil. Do we have the sonar equipment?’
Their grey USU van was nearby. The operation was halted for a while.
Even with sonar, and after several dives, nothing seemed to be down there.
The sergeant studied his map and said to the diver’s assistant, ‘I hope this is the right stretch of river. They could have left a cone here to help us.’
‘They like to test us out.’
The diver submerged again. He took much longer.
‘Not a bad spot,’ the sergeant said, looking at the wooded hills surrounding them. ‘There’s a good pub a short walk from here. Do you know the Inn at Freshford? Nice old place with a packhorse bridge. If he doesn’t surface soon, I’ll be off there for a pint.’
Then the water churned and the diver’s head and shoulders came to the surface.
‘Got something?’ the sergeant said.
He poured the water from his find and held it up: a motorcycle helmet, black and shiny. ‘Hasn’t been down there long,’ he said. ‘It’s in good nick. Why would anyone want to chuck this away?’
Diamond continued to function as if he were high on caffeine. ‘Jack’s done us a bloody good turn,’ he said to Ingeborg as she drove out of the police station in her shiny Ford Ka. ‘All the media interest is going to be on the man he’s holding. We can come and go as we like.’
‘Isn’t he the sniper, then?’
‘I honestly don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is he tried damned hard to get away.’
‘Wasn’t he armed?’
‘They looked in the rucksack and all he was carrying were a few apples and a cut loaf.’
‘Money?’
‘A few quid in his trouser pocket.’
‘What was he doing by the river?’
‘Same as me, I expect. Trying to avoid being picked off by one of Jack’s sharpshooters.’
‘So you think he knew the stakeout was in place?’
‘Most likely. If he is the sniper, he’s been smart avoiding arrest all these weeks. He’s not going to blow it by being too obvious.’
‘And if it isn’t him?’ Ingeborg said as she steered left and they crossed the Avon at Churchill Bridge and approached one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s oddest indulgences, his railway viaduct disguised as a castle wall.
‘It will have been some ne’er-do-well out late. Didn’t stop him spotting one or other of the firearms team and steering a wide berth. Do you know where Soldier Nuttall lives?’
‘I must have passed the gate a hundred times,’ she said, not wanting to be patronised. She moved out to overtake a farm vehicle. ‘There’s something else I ought to tell you, guv. Last night when we were doing the rounds and questioning people, someone told me about a blog she’d been looking at. Sounds as if it’s posted by some woman who reckons a friend’s partner has been acting suspiciously.’
‘In what way?’
‘Staying out all night, secretive, refusing to answer questions.’
‘Male?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not uncommon,’ he said. ‘It’s known as playing away.’
She gave him a world-weary look. ‘How does it help us?’ he asked.
‘It appears they live in Bath. The blog never says so, but when you read it carefully, there’s enough to tell you she’s located here. I visited the site this morning and I’m satisfied it can’t be anywhere else. This guy is obviously up to no good and the woman is terrified.’
‘Not just a wandering husband?’
‘It’s got the feel of something much more serious.’
‘Get in touch with the blogger, then.’
‘I wish we could. She’s taken good care she can’t be traced. I guess she feels freer to write whatever she likes.’
‘Can’t be traced? I don’t follow you. We’ve got hackers who can break into anything.’
‘Not this. It’s a site that uses an elaborate relay system, bouncing anything that’s posted on it from point to point until no one can get back to the source. Intelligence agencies use it to disseminate their own information, but they’ve never succeeded in cracking it.’
He gave a nod of approval. ‘In a way it’s heartening to hear there’s something computers can’t do — until you realise it’s been set up by a bloody computer.’
‘People are involved as well. Do you want to look at it when we get back?’
‘I’d better. We can’t neglect anything.’ His head turned. ‘Hey, did you notice that — an old-fashioned sweetshop with big glass jars in the window?’ He’d spotted the display in Widcombe Parade, along Claverton Street, in a row of shops with traditional fronts that supposedly imparted a ‘village’ feel to them.
After a pause, Ingeborg said, ‘You don’t do much shopping, do you, guv?’
‘Why?’
‘They’re opening everywhere, old sweetshops, every town on the tourist map, anyway. Don’t ask me why. I don’t bother with them.’
‘Sweet enough?’
She didn’t say so, but she found the comment about as cringe-making as the outfit he was wearing.
Widcombe Hill morphs into Claverton Down Road a mile out of the city and then loops around the contour and doubles back. At almost the farthest point out, Ingeborg swung the little car into a space in front of a set of closed iron gates.
‘This is it.’
A straight drive between lawns led to a large three-storey building. Block-like in shape, the house had an institutional look, rows of windows as regular as a prison. But it was heavily clad in some climbing plant like wisteria that had established such a good hold that it reached to the eaves.
‘Wouldn’t be my choice,’ Diamond said.
She shrugged. ‘Up here, the air’s easier to breathe than it is in Bath through most of the summer. Prime location and plenty of land. I bet you wouldn’t get much change out of ten million.’
