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apologies for the armed search. ‘For all we knew, the killer could have been in here with a gun at your head.’
    ‘In which case, I’d be dead by now,’ Willis said. ‘Your people weren’t exactly subtle. The way they burst in would put the frighteners on anyone.’
    ‘Leave it,’ Diamond said through his teeth. ‘We’ve work to do. I’d like to see the view from the back of the flat.’
    ‘And I’d like you to witness the damage they did, because I fully intend to sue.’
    Inside, the reason for Willis’s outrage became more clear. He was a compulsive personality. The place was tidy to the point of obsession. It would have been immaculate before the armed response unit went through. Pictures and mirrors shone. Books were displayed according to size and colour, magazines stacked like a deck of playing cards on a shining glass table. The carpets must have been vacuumed the previous evening. All this made the open cupboards and their avalanche of contents spread across the floor, clearly dragged out by the gun team searching for the sniper or his weapon, look more of an outrage than it was.
    Diamond wasn’t being sidetracked. The windows that interested him were at the back of the house, with original sash frames, two in the sitting room and one in the bedroom. All three would provide a direct line of sight to the stretch of Walcot Street where Harry Tasker had been shot. He checked the sitting room windows and– as you would expect with such a fastidious owner – each moved so well it could be raised with one finger on the brass fitting.
    The bedroom looked like a hotel room after the maid had been through, everything folded and in place. Except that the lower section of the window was pushed up.
    ‘Why is this open?’
    Willis said as if to a child, ‘Airing the room.’
    ‘Anyone airing the room would pull the top window down. You were watching what was going on.’
    ‘That’s no crime.’
    ‘Did you hear the shooting?’
    ‘I’m a heavy sleeper. The first I knew was all the sirens going. Shops, ambulance, police cars. They’d have woken anybody.’
    ‘Were you conscious at any time of other people in the house?’
    Willis rolled his eyes upwards. ‘These are apartments. Other people live here.’
    ‘Unusual sounds?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re a marksman, I heard.’
    He hesitated. ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Is it true?’
    ‘Shooting is a hobby of mine, yes. Competition shooting.’
    ‘What are we talking here – a rifle?’
    ‘Mainly.’
    ‘So you own one?’
    ‘Three, in point of fact.’
    Diamond kept the same even tone of voice. ‘Where do you keep them?’
    ‘Not here. That would really play into the hands of you people wanting a quick arrest.’
    ‘I’m ignoring that remark,’ Diamond said. ‘Answer my question, please.’
    ‘Under lock and key in my club at Devizes, twenty miles’ drive, whichever route you choose.’
    Keep the pressure on, Diamond decided. This man isn’t as calm as he wants to appear. ‘You have a car, then? Where is it?’
    ‘Where I left it, I hope, in Beehive Yard.’
    ‘Key, please.’
    ‘I don’t think you have the right.’
    ‘If we aren’t given the key, Mr. Willis, I’ll tell you what we dohave – a small spring-loaded device that smashes car windows.’
    The threat of more damage to his property was too much for the overparticular civil servant. He handed across the key and volunteered the make, colour and registration.
    As a gun owner living in this house with a sight of the street, Willis had to be treated as a suspect. If he had the means and opportunity, his motives could be probed later. Who could say what was motivating the Somerset Sniper to pick off his victims? Contempt for the police? A personal grudge? The power thing you get from handling a precision weapon? Or was it just boredom from shooting on a range? A live quarry was a different challenge from paper targets.
    ‘Have you lived here long?’
    ‘Just over two