Ros stopped. “You going to resign?”
“Resign? No, they’re going to sack me. And the sooner the better.”
“You don’t mean that?”
Eddie held the garage door open. “Stuart gave him that IBIS log. He manipulated Jeffery into giving us this damned car. He’s why I want out.”
Ros put down her kit box on a small, stain-covered desk in the corner of the garage. “Let’s crack this thing off, eh? You can take me to lunch later.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, “I’d like to do that.”
The garage was an echo chamber. Its high breeze-block walls were whitewashed yet grimy with years of exhaust fumes and fingerprint powders. The concrete floor spat dust each time a foot went near it, and it stank of damp in here, even in June. Traffic roared past on the busy main road beyond the sliding wooden doors, and behind them, high-speed trains made talking impossible every ten minutes.
Banks of fluorescent tubes dangled from the ceiling on chains, and more were screwed to the walls casting a cold light over the Jaguar’s scratched, dusty paintwork. It stood alone in the CSI bay.
“What’s the story behind this, then?”
Ros looked at the printout. Scanned its pages and shrugged. “Not sure, really. It’s been recovered from Great Preston. Stolen-recovered.” She read on, “Wait a minute. It was stolen nearly a month ago!”
“Then why do CID want a full mashings job on it? Doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll give them a call.” Ros perched on a plastic chair next to the desk and held the phone to her ear, talking quietly, eyes roaming as she was passed from detective to detective.
Eddie lit a cigarette and strolled up to the Jaguar. He followed its curvaceous styling from the bullet-shaped bonnet across the rounded wedge of its doors through to the muscular flank of the rear wheel arch. He stepped back; his reflection blurred and then scooted away. He looked at the car, at its darkened windows and scratched paintwork.
It was green. It was a dark green Jaguar.
Eddie held his breath. Smoke crawled up his face as a shiver ran down his back. The cigarette fell out of his mouth, and he stood on unsteady legs, not daring to move in case he simply fell over. His hands began to shake as he turned to Ros, but he saw nothing except shimmering strips of white light.
She was there just as the first tear fell. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” she said.
“Is it… is it the one. The one?”
“They think so, yeah.” She led him away, making him turn away from it. “Come on, let’s have a coffee.”
The admin office next door was empty and quiet, soundproofed from the road and the trains. It had its own kettle and comfy chairs.
“Why does he get such a kick out of it? How would he like it?”
“He’d love it, Eddie. He’d be thinking of the overtime he could get out of it.”
Eddie screwed his hands into fists, “I’ve never wanted to kill someone before.”
“Enough,” she warned. “Even garage walls have ears.”
“Can you blame me?”
“I can’t blame you at all. He’s malicious. He’s done it to provoke a reaction–”
“And I’ll see to it he’ll get one.”
She patted his hands, “Think how disappointed he’d be if you came back to the office smiling about it; think of his face–”
“Oh I do. With a fucking bullet hole in it.”
“–when you don’t rise to it. He’ll be furious.”
“And then what will he do next?”
Ros sipped her coffee and Eddie lit another cigarette.
“When it boils down to it, if that’s the car that killed Sam, it’s a big part of him, wouldn’t you say? Jilly and me brought Sammy into the world. That thing took him out of it. That is big.” He was cringing as he spoke, because he didn’t know if it made any sense or if it made him sound like an idiot. “Sorry. I’m talking bollocks.”
“Come on,” Ros said, “we’ll go back to the office. I’m not having this. Jeffery’s gonna hear about–”
“I’ll do it, Ros. Maybe Stuart’s done me a favour.” A smile came to Eddie. “Maybe he’s done me a really big favour. I can find out who killed Sammy.”
Ros looked worried. “Why would you want to know that?”
Eddie paused for a moment, looked away as he said, “So the police can lock him up. Obviously.”
– Four –
Ros watched Eddie as he struggled into a scene suit. He was shaking. And he avoided looking at her; because his eyes shone with tears. Examining the car that killed his boy wasn’t right, and the very thought of it sent a shiver up her back and stirred the anger inside.
Dealing with other people’s misery became easier after a while; she simply distanced herself, grew detached and though she still sympathised with the victim – how could she not – it was more than her own sanity could bear to let the sadness of a scene be anything more than work. But that didn’t apply when it was so close to home.
Eddie set the camera up and Ros began the paperwork. But her eyes strayed to the tufts of hair in the cracked windscreen and she wondered how he would cope with recovering them.
The flash popped and a green rectangle clung to her vision.
She watched him. She still wanted him. The pre-January Eddie would be better; the calm one, the one everyone looked up to, but this version would heal eventually, and then–
“You gonna stand there all day, or you gonna give me a hand?” Eddie smiled, but it was a mask. Plastic.
Ros blinked, cleared her throat. “Where do you want me to start?”
He pointed to windscreen. “I’ve photoed the hair, Ros, but I can’t… would you mind…”
“Go and fix another coffee, would you?”
He said nothing, just put down the camera and walked from the garage.
As the door closed behind him, Ros pulled out the hairs with sterile tweezers and dropped them into a small plastic pot. She packaged and labelled it, and the sliver of scalp, before quickly inspecting the front bumper, the grille and mascot badge, the windscreen washer jets and wipers and then the screen-to-roof joint for further hair, for fibres from the kid’s – from Sam’s – clothing. Nothing though. No blood, nothing.
“Here you go.”
Ros jumped. “Jesus! Cough or whistle next time, will you?”
“Would a fart do?” Eddie set down his coffee and lit a cigarette.
She tried not to smile but found it impossible. It was good to see him trying. “What next?”
“The wadding in the fuel filler pipe. Someone tried to fire it. Bit optimistic considering it’s a diesel,” he shrugged, “but it’s good evidence.”
“Maybe they lost the filler cap and were using the cloth as a bung.” She peered at the material.
“It’s been burnt around the edges. Look. Singed.”
“That’s a cuff,” Ros said. “Yeah, it’s a shirt sleeve. You can see the button.”
Eddie flicked on the Maglite and looked closer. “It says Oxford & Hunt.” For the first time, professionalism was beginning to take over as master; maybe this was teetering towards becoming a job. And that was a good thing.
“That’s expensive designer gear. Don’t find many scrotes wearing Oxford & Hunt.”
“Let’s get a macro shot of the button and then we’ll open out the sleeve to show the scorching, and bag it. If we can match someone’s shirt to that–”
“Fat chance.”
“We have to try, Ros. Might even be able to get wearer DNA from it.”
“I didn’t mean… never mind.”
Eddie stood up, turned the torch off and stepped closer to her. “Don’t beat yourself up every time something downright tactless falls out of your slack gob.”
Ros’s mouth fell open.
Eddie smiled. “Now, lighten up.”
“Okay,” she said, “sorry.”
“And stop being sorry.”
“Sorry.”
Ros pulled on a f
resh pair of gloves and eased the sleeve from the filler pipe, laid it out onto a clean exhibit sack. “They look like cigarette lighter marks. You can see the tiny circles of burnt cloth.”
“Okay, I’ll take a shot with a scale.”
Two hours, four coffees, and for Eddie, countless cigarettes, later, they had fingerprinted the dusty exterior of the car using MLPD spray because using a brush and powder would have destroyed any marks beneath the dust. They had taped all four of the leather seats for fibres, swabbed the driver’s seat because of a curious odour coming from it, had swept the footwells, fingerprinted and recovered the damaged mobile phone and had begun photographing and swabbing the fine droplets of a dark brown liquid that had sprayed across the passenger seat and partly onto the fawn leather dashboard. “Blood?” They KM tested a site and the filter paper turned pink. “Certainly is.”
“Okay,” Ros said, “What’s left?”
“Interior fingerprinting, and photo and swab the cig lighter.” He eased out of the car, stood and stretched.
“Need a drink?”
“I could slaughter one, Ros, but I ain’t touching a drop while I’m near this thing.”
“Glad to hear it.”
The coil of the cigarette lighter was dimensionally the same as the marks in the shirtsleeve, though Ros supposed it proved nothing. It would be the DNA that would put a name to the would-be torcher.
“Aren’t these things fitted with a tracking device?” asked Ros.
Eddie shrugged. “No idea. Something like this is approximately a house and a swimming pool out of my price range.”
Eddie reclined in the reception area, bags of evidence surrounding his chair. “Thank God that’s over.” His eyes were dark, he looked as though he hadn’t slept in a year, and still he had that slight tremor in his hands. “I think we have a pretty good chance of nailing the bastard with what’s in here.” He patted the bags.
“You want me to come to the meeting with you?”
“What meeting?”
“And I thought it was worrying you.”
“The head’s meeting?” He took a deep breath. “All I’ll say is that when I go down, they’ll want my supporters to go down too.”
“Then it looks like I’m going down.”
“Haven’t had an offer like that–”
“Eddie Collins!”
“Sorry,” he laughed. “I would like you there, Ros.”
Absently, she asked, “You making any progress with Jilly?”
“If you can call it progress.”
“Well?”
He spoke with a sigh, “She’s invited me back home.”
Ros nodded, looked away, “That’s great. I’m so pleased for you.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
She looked back. “Why?”
“She’s deranged, that’s why. She’s got it into her head that me, her, and Sammy can be a wholesome family again.” Eddie tutted.
“She’s trying to cling to him. You can’t blame her for that.”
“I’m clinging to him too.” He thought of the NY hat on the mantelpiece. “But I won’t delude myself. Sam’s never coming home again. She thinks he will.”
“You should give it a try. It’s what you’ve been praying for, you’d be silly to pass the chance up.”
“Think so?”
“I do.”
“So do I.”
Ros sighed.
“But it won’t last. We’re different people who’ll never go back to being themselves.”
“You should still try.” Ros blew air through her nose. “If you don’t, you’ll forever wonder how it would have been. And if you do, you may like it, you might both get along great. And that’s good. Then again, you might hate each other, and that’s good too because at least you’ll both know you have nothing in common and you can get on with the rest of your lives.” Her eyes glistened.
The Yorkshire Echo. 23rd June
By Michael Lyndon
Lincoln Farrier death is suspicious
This reporter travelled into the countryside on Monday to interview a 78-year-old man called Lincoln Farrier.
He wrote to The Yorkshire Echo asking for our support in helping to get his son released from prison after he stabbed a burglar.
Of course, we wanted to help, but I wanted to learn how he saw the country as a whole today, and what he felt about the introduction of The Rules.
I was never able to find that out because Mr Farrier, a grandfather of three, was dead when I got there. Initially I thought he had committed suicide because he was distraught at being separated from his son for so long and with no chance of being together again for some time.
I was wrong. Lincoln Farrier did not commit suicide and the police have launched a murder enquiry.
Readers will be pleased to note that I have furnished the police with all my findings concerning Mr Farrier and would be honoured to help in any way I could.
The Yorkshire Echo will continue to report on this case as soon as I know more. We can only pray that those responsible for Mr Farrier’s death are brought to justice soon, and our thoughts are with his son and his grandchildren.
That he was concerned enough to write to us after the miscarriage of justice surrounding his son’s imprisonment, shows that the Justice Ministry still has work to do in distinguishing what is right from what is wrong.
We hope they get there soon.
51
Wednesday 24th June
Using the last of the daylight, Christian had walked through a thin rain around the haul road that wound its way up to the surface like a corkscrew. His left leg ached where the golfer had swung the club at him, his head was a pit of percussion instruments, and his lips and eyes were still swollen. The walk out of the old opencast had taken hours, by which time Sirius and Henry had vanished.
He made it back to the derelict hut.
Henry had screamed to Sirius that the police were coming. Well, they and the dark-coloured car had left too, and he was alone in total silence, just him and the remains of this old hut. It was okay, he said to himself, he was used to living in dereliction, had done most of his adult life.
He had only been inside it for less than half an hour before the shock bit like a dose of bad street drugs. And that was when the shakes came and he felt icy cold. The cuff on his right wrist rattled. And the more he shook the more pain he experienced in his face and his shoulder especially. He was a patchwork of matted blood and even in the coldness of the old hut, even while suffering the shakes, he sweated like a tenth-round boxer.
It grew towards twilight and Christian merged with it into a dreamless sleep. The rat woke him the next morning as it scurried across his face and dug its muzzle into his ear. He screamed and jumped. And when he jumped, the pain bit and he screamed again. The rat fled. But so too had the shakes and the sweats and that was a good thing.
He peered out of the hut, and the sun was creeping like a thief up the horizon. Its brilliant glow caught the far rim of the canyon, gradually working its way down into the bottom to reveal all kinds of demons and wreckage there.
Christian wiped a hand under his nose. It came away bloody. More bloody wetness down the left side of his neck. He stepped outside and checked his surroundings. They were clear. And when he listened, he heard nothing except his grumbling stomach. He ignored it, because today was all about putting distance between himself and his previous life, and surviving.
How was he going to get away from here without being seen?
He began walking and the aching in his body gradually subsided. Mud squelched under foot and progress was slow, but the sun warmed his damp body and before long, Christian found himself on the periphery of a village. He saw the church first and then houses, farms, a pub, and a shop that also doubled as a post office.
The village was small and private. There were terraces of cottages, old farm labourers’ cottages, and the odd detached property of a grander nature. As he skirted the village, keeping l
ow behind the bursting hedges of a bridleway, the detached properties grew larger, had more land.
The bridleway opened out into a field that was bordered on its lower part by a small but dense wooded area. And the woods ate into the grounds of a fake Tudor mansion with a BMW and a Mercedes parked squarely on a black asphalt drive along the side of the house. He peered through the trees. All the windows were open, curtains moving gently in a breeze he could not feel.
Christian’s feet contacted tarmac and he walked to the side of the house to where the cars were parked. No keys in the ignition.
He moved across to the house, unlatched the open casement window, pulled aside the curtain and peered into the gloom of what seemed to be a dining room. He swung the window wide open, slid a potted plant on the windowsill aside and pulled himself in. There were no visible PIRs, no alarm of any sort so far as he could tell.
Without a sound, his feet touched the wooden floor, and he began looking for car keys.
There they were, hanging on one of six small hooks on a plain wooden board screwed to the wall next to the rear door. He made his way over the floor and was about to reach up for the BMW keys when something growled.
Christian froze. It growled from behind him, and a shiver flowed through him like a slow electric shock. His hands were inches from the keys. He weighed up the odds of a quick escape and discounted them immediately. Without turning around, without daring to breathe, he opened the fridge door and peered inside.
The dog growled again, and Christian reached in for the bacon. He allowed himself to exhale as it hit the floor. The dog’s claws scrabbled quickly and there followed the sounds of a hungry pooch lapping up the offering. Still without turning, he grabbed a block of cheese from the fridge, unhooked the keys and edged over to the window.
He was halfway out when the lapping stopped and the growling started again. Christian made it to the BMW, threw himself inside, and slammed the door as an Alsatian leapt at the window, slavering down the glass as it barked. The keys wouldn’t go in the ignition, and just when he thought the dog was going to break the window, the key hit home and the engine screamed. So much for a silent exit. He turned left and booted the throttle.
[Eddie Collins 01.0] The Third Rule Page 29