Cop to Corpse

Начало книги

Hero to zero.

Cop to corpse.

One minute PC Harry Tasker is strolling up Walcot Street, Bath, on foot patrol. The next he is shot through the head. No scream, no struggle, no last words. He is picked off, felled, dead.

The shooting activates an alarm over one of the shops nearby, an ear-splitting ring certain to wake everyone.

Normally at this time on a Sunday morning — around 4 A.M. — the streets of Bath are silent. The nightclubs close officially at three. The last of the revellers have dispersed. PC Tasker was on his way back to the police station after checking that Club XL was quiet.

His body lies in a bow shape under the light of a street lamp on the flagstone pavement, a small puddle of blood forming under the head. His chequered cap is upturned nearby.

Harry Tasker is the third police officer murdered in Avon and Somerset in twelve weeks. The others, like him, were shot while on foot patrol. A huge operation to identify the sniper has come to nothing. All the police know for certain is that the victims were shot by someone using a high velocity assault rifle that fires 5.56? 45mm cartridges. The killings and the hunt for the so-called Somerset Sniper have been splashed in headlines across the nation.

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