He’d miscalculated.
The iron bridge.
A narrow, one-way track called Midland Road snaked down to the river and provided a crossing. It was used mainly by vehicles heading south to the Lower Bristol Road.
To chase, or not to chase? For the present his damaged leg was holding him up. He couldn’t rely on it.
Ahead, Emma had reached the brick wall that separated the open ground from Midland Road. It looked high for her, but she was agile. At the second attempt she drew herself up, clambered over and dropped out of sight.
Diamond lumbered after her, taking shallow breaths. He actually caught up a little while she was scaling the wall. Being taller, he reckoned he’d find it less of a barrier. He attacked it at his best speed, grabbed the top, hauled himself up and over, making sure as he dropped that he didn’t land on the sore leg.
She’d already put more space between them and she was still running strongly. Catching her would be a lost cause once she was across the river. The iron bridge came up sooner than he expected. Dry-mouthed and gasping, he watched her dash under the first arched strut without looking back, her dark hair rising and falling.
What now? Phone for reinforcements? Wave down a car? Any more delay and she’d be out of sight again. The Lower Bristol Road gave her options of side streets that made any pursuit pointless. He was forced to flog himself harder and try and keep her in sight.
He reached the bridge and trudged across at the best speed he could. He remembered that on the opposite side of the river the road made a sharp left turn. She was about to vanish from view.
Then chance threw in a different possibility. A silver van ahead of Emma braked and signalled as if to go right.
Emma hesitated, and at first Diamond thought the driver was stopping to pick her up. He was wrong. On the right side, a gate had opened in the tall metal fence at the angle of the bend and the van was driving through. Emma had seen the opportunity of following it off the road and into the large yard beyond.
That was her choice. She nipped through that gate faster than the van.
As Diamond approached, someone was in the act of slamming it shut.
‘Leave it,’ he shouted with as much voice as he had left.
He came to a juddering halt when the gate slammed in his face. It was a barrier built with security in mind, set into ten-foot fencing and topped with barbed wire. The man on the other side was threading through a chain and padlock.
‘Police,’ Diamond said in a gasp. ‘Open up again.’ He felt for his ID and shoved it at the mesh barrier.
After an unendurable pause for thought, the gatekeeper allowed Diamond through.
By this time, Emma was not in sight.
He stood in uncertainty, wondering if she had turned sharp right and doubled back to the river. From there she could scramble down the steep bank to a narrow footpath.
He covered the few yards to check. No one was down there. She hadn’t chosen this escape route. So where was she?
Again he took stock of his surroundings. Then his heart pumped in his chest as if it was ready to burst out. So intent had he been on watching Emma run away from him that he’d missed the biggest thing in view inside this compound, the thing nobody could fail to miss: the gasholder. The enormous buff-coloured cylinder in its rusty iron framework dominated the scene this side of the Avon. In the heyday of the Bath Gas, Light and Coke Company, the fuel had been brought up the river in barges and three gasholders had stood expanding and contracting to meet the demands of the entire city.
He had spotted a movement near the base. A small figure in black was on the lowest section of the iron surround moving up a diagonal traverse that was evidently a set of steps.
He broke into a stiff-legged run again, powered by the knowledge that this was the end of the line for Emma, She had trapped herself. He would catch her now.
Then his confidence plunged again. The yard containing the gasholder and some brick buildings was enclosed by yet more metal fencing. So much security. How the hell had she got through? As he got closer he saw the gate open to admit the same silver van that had passed through the other entrance. Gratefully he hobbled through.
At the base of the gasholder steps, he took out his phone.
John Leaman answered.
‘Emma Tasker is climbing up the gasholder in Twerton. Don’t ask. Get a patrol here fast.’
He grasped the hand-rail and looked up. She had already scaled the first level and was on the narrow landing staring down at him.
‘It’s all over, Emma,’ he shouted up. ‘Better come down.’
Her response was to run to the next staircase and start on the next set of steps. What was she thinking of?
With a chilling certainty, he knew. She meant to throw herself off.
He had no other choice than to follow, if only to reason with her. The steps were a severe test for his knees after all the running. He toiled upwards to the first landing.
‘Emma, this is crazy,’ he yelled. ‘You’re going nowhere.’
Altogether there were four staircases and three landings. She stopped halfway up and turned again to watch him.
He continued upwards. And so did Emma. She made it to the second landing and dashed straight to the next staircase.
Soon she would reach the exposed section above the top tier of the great metal cylinder. The gasholder itself was about one-third below capacity. The supporting framework rose much higher, into space.
And she was still climbing.
Far from certain if he had a head for heights like this, Diamond continued to mount the steps, even when he could only see daylight instead of solid metal through the spaces between. Three landings up, he gripped the handrail and drew breath. She was about to go up the final set of steps. No doubt there was a panoramic view of Bath from up here. He didn’t care to see it. He tried to focus on what his feet were doing.
There came a point more than a hundred feet up when even Emma sensed that this ascent was finite. A few steps short of the crown of the entire structure, she came to a halt. Diamond was following slowly now and he hadn’t faltered, but he made sure he stopped a safe distance from her feet.
Down at ground level he hadn’t been conscious of any wind at all. Up here, it tugged at his clothes and rasped his face.
Even with the rushing in his eardrums, he thought it possible to exchange words, extraordinary as the situation would be. He needed to get his breath first, and find a way of keeping Emma from panicking.
No threat. No confrontation. Get her talking.
Finally he managed to say, ‘You should have brought the three sleuths up here.’
‘I didn’t think of it,’ she said.
He was encouraged that she was willing to speak at all.
‘You read the blog, then?’ she said. ‘Someone told you about it?’
‘They did.’
‘What do you think?’ She was keen to get an opinion on her imaginative effort. She wanted praise.
‘Compulsive reading once I got into it,’ he said. ‘You must have started writing it some time before Harry was shot.’
‘At least a week.’
Which left no question that the murder was premeditated, but he chose not to say so at this juncture. ‘You’ve got a lively imagination. It was clever, the way you wove in the clues about Bath and Wells and Radstock towards the end. I soon cottoned on that the real story you wanted to get across was about Tim, pointing the finger at a fictitious man.’
‘He wasn’t entirely fiction,’ she said.
‘All right, there were elements of Harry in the character, the non-communication and so on, but Harry wasn’t ex-army and the only outings he had at night were when he was on beat duty. You wanted us to read the blog and think Tim was the Somerset Sniper.’
