by Zoe Sharp
“Only, we’ve been looking at CCTV footage and you’d be surprised what’s turned up,” Pollock said, rolling his shoulders as if he was about to start a fight.
Dylan smirked at him. “CCTV? How much of that d’you think there is round here?”
“Oh you’d be surprised.” Pollock’s voice was mild. “Just about every petrol station and convenience store has something covering the front of the building—amazing how much passing traffic they record while they’re at it. Not to mention the ANPR cameras.” He turned, said almost conversationally to Weston over his shoulder. “You may not be aware of this, lad, but trucks are not supposed to cut through the middle of Kirkby Stephen on their way from Tebay over to Scotch Corner. Supposed to go up to Penrith and across the A66, eh? But there’s always a few who bend the rules, and then they wonder how we catch ’em…”
Dylan ran a hand across his suddenly dry mouth, tried not to fidget. He’d never given the Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras a second thought. Well, you didn’t, did you? He’d always thought they were just to catch the folk who had let their car tax run out, or maybe weren’t insured…
“All right, all right, so I went out? What’s the big fuss about that? I wasn’t nowhere near Kirkby Stephen, was I? Just passed through, that’s all.”
“On your way where, exactly?”
“To see a man about a dog. In a pub—in Windermere, as it happens.” That last bit, at least, was almost true.
“Which pub?”
“I don’t remember. A few of ’em.”
Pollock shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re going to have to do better than that, lad. In—”
“I know exactly where you was and what you was up to!” Yvonne’s voice had taken on the screechy note that always set his teeth on edge.
He swivelled. “For God’s sake, woman! Will you just shut the—”
But she didn’t listen. Why wouldn’t the damn woman just listen for once?
“You was seein’ her, wasn’t you?”
He lunged upward and slapped her, opened handed, across that flapping mouth. Wasn’t supposed to be much of a blow but he hadn’t reckoned on her flinching downward, almost walking into it. Nor that her head would bounce off his hand and straight into the wall alongside her. Her legs went from under her and she dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Pollock darted forward with surprising speed for a man of his bulk. He grabbed Yvonne under the armpits before she went head first down the remaining stairs.
Dylan wasn’t sure what happened next. He didn’t see Weston move. But, the next moment, he found himself dragged backwards off the staircase, feet scrabbling unsuccessfully to stay underneath him. He was spun, landing hard, face down with his nose mashed into the hall carpet. There was a heavy knee in the middle of his back as his hands were wrenched up behind him and the cuffs went on.
“Dylan Elliot, I am arresting you for assault. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention…”
Dylan tuned it out, seething. Perhaps because he couldn’t see Weston’s face, the grim satisfaction in the man’s voice came through loud and clear.
60
The email waiting in Blenkinship’s inbox from Dr Onatade had for its subject line the name ‘Elliot, Jordan’ followed by the case number. As soon as he saw it, Blenkinship had the same churning feeling in his gut that he’d experienced at the post-mortem exam, right before he threw up.
He sat for a moment, staring at the screen without moving. Then he leaned forward and clicked the email open, doing it quickly as though otherwise he might lose his nerve.
The message itself was brief and businesslike. He would not have expected anything else from the ever-efficient doctor. But it did not tell him what he needed to know.
He downloaded the report and sent it straight to the printer, forcing himself not to seize each page from the tray as it spat out. He made himself wait until the whole thing was done before he picked it up, but then couldn’t prevent his eyes from darting along the lines of text, snatching meaning from the key words and phrases.
And the more he read, the tighter the feeling in his chest, his ribs, became. His fingers were so tense that the paper quivered in his hand.
In truth, it was not as damning as he’d feared, from the conversation he’d had with Dr Onatade in her office in the immediate aftermath. He began, cautiously, to hope.
And then, when he was almost at the bottom of the conclusion section on the final page, one sentence hit him like a truck.
‘I cannot state with certainty that the victim was dead at the time he entered the river.’
Blenkinship almost felt the blood drain from his face, his vision darkening at the edges.
“You bitch,” he muttered out loud in the empty office, his voice choked.
He slumped back in his chair, seeing nothing. Seeing everything, too.
The whitened scene in the glare of his headlights.
The flash of movement from the side of the road.
The jolt.
The clatter.
The crunch.
And he saw, too, the exact moment when life had become death. He’d known it, at some instinctive, primeval level. Had felt it.
“Of course he was dead when he went into the water. Of course he was,” he whispered. “He was dead the second he went under my wheels. Do you think I didn’t check? Do you think I wouldn’t know?”
He threw the pages onto his desk. They splayed across the surface, the last couple skidding over the side and fluttering to the worn carpet tiles. Rubbing his hands over his face, Blenkinship got jerkily to his feet. The office was too small to pace but he did so anyway, trapped like an animal in a third-rate zoo.
Some small logical part of his brain knew this made no difference to the way things stood. There was still no connection between him and the dead boy. The damage to his car had been fixed within a day of him ‘accidentally’ running into Nick Weston. He’d thoroughly cleaned the underside, got rid of the memory card from the dash-cam. What else was there?
He glanced back at the report spread across his desktop. And he knew that single damning sentence would haunt him. Almost as much as the continuous loop-tape of the accident itself, which he couldn’t seem to purge from his head.
Especially at night, when he closed his eyes. Darkness made it worse. He’d tried leaving a light on when he got into bed, on the excuse that he wanted to read before dropping off, but Susanne complained that it was stopping her getting to sleep. He’d tried booze but that just seemed to make the nightmares more vivid rather than less.
He’d even sneaked a few of the tablets Susanne’s GP had prescribed, when she had that bout of insomnia during the last run-up to exams. Half her staff were off with some kind of mystery virus, and her stress levels were through the roof.
They had made him sleep, sure, but he woke feeling leaden, groggy and disconnected, as if looking out at the world through frosted glass that dulled his brain as well as his senses. After he’d come very close to pulling out into the path of a truck on his way to work, he daren’t take any more. The last thing he could afford would be to have his ability to drive put under scrutiny.
With a heavy sigh, he dropped into his chair, bending to pick up the fallen pages. But as he reached out for them, his hand stilled.
They’d landed with one slightly overlapping the other. The corner of one page was just covering the end of the last word on one line.
It turned ‘cannot’ into ‘can’.
Blenkinship froze.
‘I can state with certainty that the victim was dead at the time he entered the river.’
Just three letters obscured but they made all the difference.
If only…
Just three letters…
Blenkinship picked up the pages and pulled open his desk drawer, rummaging through the stationery oddments stored there—boxes of paperclips and staples, a hole punch, a calculator. And there, right at the ba
ck, a bottle of correction fluid.
He had no idea why it was there—or even how long it had been so. Nobody used typewriters anymore, and erasing a typo on a computer document had long since become a matter of hitting backspace and trying again.
He shook the bottle, pleased to feel the contents were, at least, still liquid. Using the little brush attached to the cap, he very carefully covered the offending letters, blew on the paper to dry them. Then he scanned the sheet and reprinted it. By repeating the process on the copy of the copy, he judged the final version to be almost flawless.
He fed the original page, and the first copy, through the shredder alongside his desk and put the revised report back together, flipping through it one last time. He could detect no deterioration in the print quality of the altered page.
He sat back in his chair and that tiny bright flame of hope began to burn again in his chest. He clenched his fist against his breastbone, knowing it was only heartburn. But still…
All he had to do now was delete the original file from the server. But as he clicked open the email, he saw that Dr Onatade had not only sent the post-mortem report to him.
She’d also sent it to Grace McColl.
He reached for his phone, dialled her number and listened impatiently as it rang out. He had no idea what he was about to say. How could he ask her if she’d looked at the report yet, or persuade her not to do so without making her curious?
But when she answered, it was clear she was in a vehicle. He could hear road noise in the background, the rhythmic click of an indicator. The reprieve had him sagging in his chair.
“Christopher,” she greeted coolly. “What can I do for you?”
“Ah, hello, Grace.” Relief made his voice warmer than was usual. “Where are you?”
“Kirkby Stephen,” she said. “Tyson and I have just been running a drone survey of the Eden.”
“Oh aye? I don’t suppose you’ve actually found anything of use?”
“Yes, we have, as a matter of fact. Trace evidence on the rocks of the waterfall at Stenkrith Park, showing the victim definitely went into the water upstream of here.”
Blenkinship checked his watch, already on his feet and shrugging one arm into his jacket, the phone wedged in the crook of his neck. “Well, how much longer do you think you’ll be?”
“As long as it takes to do the job properly,” Grace replied with an icy note. “Why? Was there something you needed?”
“Oh, er, no, it’ll keep,” he said, too flustered to pull her up on that. “I’ve got to, er, call in to Penrith—thought you could update me on the case, eh?”
“Well, I’m not sure when we’ll be finished, so please don’t make a special trip.”
He gritted his teeth. “Just keep me informed, McColl.” And he cut the connection before she could respond to that request. He left the office moments later, hustling for the car park with the doctored post-mortem report in his hand.
Maybe, just maybe, this might work…
61
Grace allowed herself a brief scowl as she ended the call. The man who was now her boss drove her to distraction on all but the good days—and those were becoming few and far between.
“Problem?” Ty Frost asked, eyes still glued to the view-screen of the drone controller.
She let out her breath noiselessly, tried to let go of her irritation at the same time.
“Oh, it’s just our lord and master launching a new charm offensive.”
That did make him glance up for a moment. “Really?”
“No, not really.”
“Ah.”
Grace shoved her phone back into her pocket and finished scribbling the details onto the sealed evidence bag, before dropping it into the open plastic box with the two others. She eyed them. A torn piece of fabric that was a visual match to the T-shirt Jordan Elliot had been found wearing, a bloodied piece of denim that might be a ripped-off repair patch from his jeans, and a scrap of what looked like human tissue that included skin and maybe half-a-dozen hairs.
In some respects, it wasn’t much. In others, it was a miracle they’d found anything at all that had even the possibility of a link. Grace found herself ever more in awe of Ty Frost and his skill as a drone pilot.
Perhaps what was most remarkable, though, was the change that came over him when he was flying it. She checked him now. He stood leaning against the front end of the pick-up, at ease, relaxed, thumbs making constant minor corrections to heading, speed, and height, swivelling the camera from one side of the river to the other. Normally shy and socially awkward, Ty suddenly blossomed in confidence when he stepped out into his own particular arena of expertise. It was a pleasure to watch.
She folded her arms, realising as she did so that she hadn’t recapped her pen. The nib left a streak of permanent marker on her forearm. Digging in her pocket for the cap, her fingers brushed against something small and flat. When she pulled it out, she found the SD card Ty had given her when they arrived. The one that he said had come from the camera in Blenkinship’s car.
Grace had a similar dash-cam in her own vehicle. If she slotted this card in place, it should play back what was on it—if indeed it was perfectly OK, as Ty suspected. She started to move toward the driver’s door.
“I’m coming up on the far end of Water Yat now, Grace,” Ty said over his shoulder. “There’s sheep netting across the river, so I’m thinking he couldn’t have gone in any higher than this.”
Grace paused. “I agree. I think we’re done here. Well done, Tyson. Is there enough juice left in the batteries to bring the drone back up here, or shall we go down there and collect it?”
He squinted at the corner of the display. “Best to go down there, I think. Just to be on the safe side.”
She nodded, bending to collect the evidence box and her cameras. She dropped the memory card back into her pocket and dismissed it from her mind. For the moment, at least.
62
Queenie never meant to eavesdrop but when the opportunity presented itself, well, she would have been a fool to turn a deaf ear to it.
The heat of the day had weight to it all of its own. By the time she’d been up the hill and back with Ocean on the piebald, plus a splash in the river, she needed a little quiet time and a change of clothes.
So, she’d led the old horse back up to the camp field, replaced his bridle with the headcollar clipped to the staked tether, and let him rub the sweated band behind his ears against her shoulder. He bent his head to it, leaning in. She had been about to climb the wooden steps up to the vardo when she heard their voices.
Bartley and Vano.
Not arguing, not quite. But talking fast and low, with a charge behind the words that sparked and stung.
She stilled like the hare when it first sees the dogs, hoping that stillness alone will keep it hidden. The voices carried on without a pause, oblivious to her presence. She eased her feet back and slipped to the side, leaning her head against the wooden boards. Their words seemed to come louder then, amplified by vibration through the framework of the van itself.
“Have you lost your mind?” Bartley was saying. “The man’s a demon, right enough. Did you not see him go up against O’Reilly last summer? Had to be dragged away from the poor feller when he was lying there unconscious.”
“Ach, he was faking. That was just O’Reilly’s way of saving face.”
“Says you. He limps now in the winter and doesn’t hear well to the left-hand side…”
They were talking about a fight, Queenie realised. She remembered the one—by repute, anyway. It had been brutal, she was told. What was the feller’s name, now…? Ah, McMahon, that was it. Surely there was no way Bartley would have agreed to go up against a man like that?
Not after all the promises he’d made her…
“Come on, my brother.” Vano’s voice had taken on a note of pleading. “You don’t have to last the distance—just put on a good enough show.”
“And what of the luvvo you�
��ve already wagered on me to win?”
“Well…surely they won’t expect those wagers to stand?”
Bartley gave a short hard laugh. “Oh, you reckon not? You reckon they’ll allow you to change your mind from the thought of me pitted against a giant of a man, with a reputation to match, to that wee scoundrel? You reckon they won’t see right through what you’re about and clean out the other side?”
“I…” For a moment, she thought Vano would throw another argument out there, full of his usual bluster. But then he cursed, long and loud, and it sounded suspiciously like he kicked the side of the cast iron stove in pure temper. “If you won’t fight him…then I must.”
“Don’t be a fool, man,” Bartley said calmly. “McMahon’s a killer and you—”
“Be very careful of the next words that come out of your mouth, my brother!”
A pause. “You are not,” Bartley finished simply. “Besides all else, you have Nell and the baby to consider.”
“And you do not, I suppose? What about Queenie? Ocean and Sky?”
For a long time, Bartley made no response. Queenie found herself holding her breath. Then he said, “Queenie may want me, sometimes, but she doesn’t need me. Not like your Nell needs you.” And something contracted in her chest, sudden as a clenched fist, so that she almost gasped aloud. “So, if it comes to it, I’ll be the one to tell them there’ll be no fight.”
“That’s just it,” Vano went on, sullen now. “If we don’t stand on for the fight, he’s sworn to come after Nell, Queenie, the little ones…”
She didn’t wait to hear more. In two quick strides she was up the steps and bursting in through the vardo doors. Both men whirled to face the intrusion. She saw a swirl of emotions laid plain across their unguarded faces—anger and fear, frustration and regret.
Vano recovered first. “Leave us be! This is not women’s talk.”
“Oh, it isn’t, is it not?” she demanded, shoulders stiffening at the scorn in his tone. “Well, considering what a fine upstanding job the pair of you are making of this business, I’ll take myself off then, shall I, and not be offering you my help?”