‘But you were there. You saw it.’
Franks’s voice was harsh.
‘I can’t talk about it.’
‘Who went up the stairs first?’
More silence. Gilchrist thought she could hear Franks’s breath. Short, almost panting. Then there was a click and the sudden buzz of a phone hung up.
She tried Harry Potter next. She hadn’t forgotten the sight of him leaning heavily against the wall at the top of the staircase in the house in Milldean. He had looked so defeated.
Potter’s wife picked up the telephone.
‘Hello?’ she said cautiously.
‘Hello, Mrs Potter. It’s Sarah – Sarah Gilchrist. I work with Harry – with DS Potter. I wonder if I could have a word?’
Mrs Potter put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. Gilchrist could make out a muffled conversation then she heard Potter’s voice.
‘Sarah, this isn’t a good idea.’
‘I know – I’m sorry. I’m just so in the dark. Can you tell me anything?’
Potter cleared his throat.
‘I was focusing on the back room. It was empty. The shooting started when I was in there. I went along the landing but nobody was letting me through – and, anyway, the damage had been done.’
‘Were our men fired on?’
‘I have no way of knowing. I just heard shots. Finch would know.’
‘You looked shocked by it all when I came up the stairs.’
‘Weren’t you? I signed on to protect people not kill them. What happened was appalling.’
‘Do you blame our men? Do you think they were trigger happy?’
Potter was silent.
‘Harry?’
‘Not for me to say, is it?’ Potter’s voice had changed. ‘Let the investigation decide that. Look, Sarah, I’ve got to go. My wife… you know.’
Gilchrist tried Finch next. Aside from anything else she was curious about his relationship with Connolly and White from Haywards Heath. Judging by his appearance at the hot debrief, the cocky bastard had had the stuffing knocked out of him by the events in Milldean.
Finch’s phone rang and rang and then voicemail clicked in, inviting her to leave a message. She declined the offer. The moment she put her own phone down, it rang. She jumped. It was an officer from the Hampshire police service asking her to come in for an interview later that morning.
Bill Munro from the Hampshire force came to see me on Wednesday lunchtime.
‘Sorry to be talking to you in these circumstances, Bob.’
Bill and I had served together for three years. We were of an age, though I’d risen higher. He was a stolid, methodical copper. Not much flair but then, except in novels, policing isn’t about flair. It’s about methodology and luck, in about equal measure.
He was one of the few happily married policemen I knew. I put his girth – he was a couple of stone overweight – down to love of his domestic life. And love, more specifically, of his wife Alice’s cooking.
Molly and I had been round to dinner once, years earlier, and Alice had produced a four-course blow-out that must have been from some fifties French cookbook – heavy on cream, butter and virtually every other fat-forming food.
I was pleased to see Bill, despite the circumstances. My high regard for him was the reason I had chosen to bring in the Hampshire force rather than any of the others in our family.
‘I have to say, Bob, this is a bloody mess.’
‘Five people killed – I can see why you would think that.’
‘Five? Oh, you mean your officer, too. Yes, it’s especially bad when one of ours go down – though I’m not sure what I think about suicide. But you’re in deep shit for more than that. This riot. And I have to say you’re utterly exposed. The procedures you have in place here for armed response operations – or rather the procedures you don’t have in place – frankly, the whole thing is a disgrace.’
‘I was about to address it.’
‘About to? Given current international circumstances, it should have had absolute priority.’
I was terse. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
And I did know. Even so, I resented him saying it. My conceit, I suppose. When I was brought in, the Southern Force was in decline after years of liberal posturing and neglect. I’d put off doing something because I had vested interests to contend with and I was drowning in other procedures.
‘There is so little audit stuff in place that anyone can go in to the armoury and take whatever the hell they want. They can use it to shoot at anything or anyone they damned well please, then drop it back without the force being any the wiser.
‘And this particular operation is a total botch. Your officers are doing no one any favours by remaining silent. Nobody knows where the tip came from. The policeman who received it is unavailable. Your gold commander is watching his back and your silver commander – who should never have been in operational charge – has killed himself.’
‘The procedures in place are standard around the country.’
‘I well know that,’ Bill snapped. ‘It’s the way those procedures are carried out that matters.’
I nodded, looked down at my desk.
‘Is everybody covering up?’
‘Except for Gilchrist. But she’s got a fixation on the man shot in the kitchen. She claims he had something in his hand but it wasn’t entered into evidence. She claims someone took it.’
‘Another officer?’
‘That’s the implication.’
I looked up at him.
‘Who is the man in the kitchen?’
‘Still unidentified.’
‘Who shot him?’
‘None of your snipers are admitting to firing the fatal shot. We’re running tests on the rifles in the armoury to see which one has been fired. But we won’t know who checked it out because there’s no signing in and out of weapons. Any forensic evidence we get will be contaminated as everybody seemed to be handling everyone else’s weapons.’
He shook his head then leant back.
‘You’re being pretty squarely blamed for the rioting too. What are you going to do?’
‘Find out what went wrong.’
Munro shook his head again. Put his hand on his paunch.
‘I can’t let you near it, Bob. You’re part of the investigation now – and you’ve shot yourself in the foot by that damned stupid announcement.’
I sat up straighter.
‘Supporting my team, you mean?’
‘Anticipating the results of my enquiry. I can understand why you were tempted to do it. But I wish you’d resisted the temptation. Especially as, on the evidence I’ve been able to gather, you may well end up with egg on your face.’
‘I assume they didn’t just go in guns blazing – they fired because they thought they were about to be fired upon.’
He shifted in his seat.
‘Don’t be so sure. At least one of the killings looks horribly like an execution. The man on the toilet…’ He shifted in his seat again. ‘How’s Molly handling all this?’
‘Not well. She’s not good under pressure.’
He eased himself up in his chair.
