‘I’m not taking on the short arsed twat,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s your job if you want it. I have to get the planning applications through and that’s the same shit whether it’s for him or you.’
Harry thought losing your reputation but waving bye-bye to a wife like Elgin’s was the deal of the century, but then some people were strange.
‘What time’s your meeting?’ he said now.
‘Thirty minutes,’ Elgin backed away from them. ‘Why?’
Harry nodded. ‘Me and Deano need to pop out but we’ll be back by eight. Let’s have a chat then. You never know, Tara might call in later.’
Harry winked but Elgin didn’t notice. He was watching Dean Silvers smirk.
Chapter Twenty
‘Okay,’ Sam said. ‘Get the image of Julius’ mate enhanced but I don’t hold out much hope. He’s deliberately keeping his head down and his baseball cap’s pulled low. Who else knows about this?’
‘Other than the guy looking after the speeding cameras, nobody,’ Ed told her.
‘Paul, go and tell him not to breathe a word,’ Sam said. ‘If he’s already told anyone else he’ll have to track them down as well and tell them to keep their mouths shut. If I hear of anybody discussing this after…’ Sam checked her watch, ‘twenty minutes as of now, I’ll have them doing career development in the worst poxy job I can find and as far from their home as I can manage.’
‘Okay boss.’ Paul stood up.
Ed followed Sam into her office and sat opposite her.
Sam opened her drawer, pulled out a couple of Mars bars.
‘Okay let’s think about it.’ She lobbed a bar to Ed. ‘There are a few new lines of inquiry springing up from that CCTV footage.’
‘Trace and interview three gorillas,’ Ed said, grinning as he ripped open the black wrapper.
Sam smiled back. ‘Apart from the bloody obvious. See if that van’s captured on any other cameras, speeding, CCTV, anything. How the hell have they got the number plate?’
Sam stood, bit into the Mars, and paced the room.
‘You can’t just walk into Halfords without any documentation and ask them to make a plate up, so how have they got them?’
She chewed the chocolate and kept pacing.
‘Next. Who was Julius with? Let’s make some inquiries at the football thing he runs. Maybe the kids have seen his mate there.’
She stared out of the window, took another bite.
‘Hans wasn’t there when Julius was snatched, so when and where do they get him?’
Sam sat, put the last of the bar in her mouth and dropped the wrapper into the waste bin.
Ed chewed, waiting for Sam to speak.
‘Let’s do door-to-door around Hans’ house. We now know when and where they got Julius so let’s set the time parameters two hours before and two hours after that. Establish if any of Hans’ neighbours saw anything suspicious in that four hour time window.’
Ed raised his eyebrows.
‘What?’ Sam asked.
‘Time window? Really?’ He leaned back into the chair. ‘I’ve told you before about speaking that management shite. Talk like the tossers and your credibility’s gone. We can just about cope with back-burner, but time window? What’s next? Take that off-line, park that, run that up the flagpole.’
‘Alright, alright,’ Sam grinned. ‘I apologise.’
‘Don’t get brainwashed, speak English,’ Ed said. ‘It’s why the rank and file can relate to you. You’re one of them.’
He leaned forward.
‘You know what I overheard the other day in the corridor? It’s my new favourite. Punch a puppy.’
‘What?’
‘Punch a puppy. Means do something that’s despicable but good for business. You couldn’t make it up.’
‘Jesus. Right, I want to sort out another press appeal …’
‘To launch the ‘punch a puppy’ campaign?’
Sam raised her hands and showed Ed her palms. ‘Okay you’ve had your fun at my expense.’
She dropped her hands.
‘I want to ask for witnesses who saw the gorillas. Maybe someone saw them without their masks getting out of the van, because let’s be right they won’t have walked far from that van. Why bother? They knew exactly what time their target was going to be there. All the ‘friend’ had to do was press send on a pre-typed text and the job’s done.’
‘Never mind walking like the military, this is military in the planning,’ Ed said.
Sam put her elbows on the desk, cupped her palms around her chin.
‘Would the driver draw attention to himself by driving around in a gorilla mask before the abduction?’
‘Possibly,’ Ed said. ‘They’ve got the balls to be driving around on plates from a police vehicle.’
Sam pushed her chair away from her desk.
‘Let’s check CCTV on the off-chance. I’m not sure they’d be looking to draw any attention to themselves before they had to. At least we’ve got an image of his so-called mate. That’s a start.’
Sam was cut short by her office phone ringing. Bev was on the other end of the line.
‘Uniform have just attended a shout to a burnt out Ford Transit up the Zinc Road, near the old sea coal depot.’
‘Bollocks,’ Sam said. ‘Notify SOCO. Get them up there to do their stuff.’
She put the handset down and told Ed about the van.
‘Suggests it’s served its purpose,’ Sam said. ‘Or they’ve got a replacement.’
Sam and Ed walked heads bowed through the downpour and ducked under the blue police tape, the water dropping onto their backs, their trousers already sodden, and the howling wind driving the rain into their faces.
The burnt out shell of a Ford Transit seemed to strangely fit the industrial wasteland where a decaying chemical plant and stubborn wildlife lived side-by-side, partners in some perverse eco pact.
The white foamed waves of the North Sea boiled against the black sky. Sam stared at the dark water and shivered as the wind chill ripped through her clothes. She always thought of the seas and oceans as timeless. That they were treacherous and without pity she knew all too well.
Julie Trescothick walked towards them, carrying something in her left hand.
‘Present for you.’ She handed Sam a polythene bag. ‘Left near the van.’
The bag, still sealed, contained what appeared to be a brand new, unworn gorilla mask, the mouth hole with the ridiculous rubber teeth a mocking grin.
‘Now they really are taking the piss,’ Sam said.
She looked along the wind-battered beach. In the distance a landscape photographer, huddled under a huge golfing umbrella, peered into a camera lens atop a tripod.
Sam thrust her hands into her overcoat pockets and wished all she had to worry about was a weather photograph for the local news, even if the light was fading fast.
She didn’t turn around when she spoke. ‘Do we know where it was stolen from?’
‘Yes, the VIN plate survived,’ Julie said. ‘Stolen from a boatyard in Hamble about four weeks ago. Not reported for a week as the owner was yacht racing in the Isle of Wight.’
Sam continued staring out to sea. She had sailed out of Hamble herself into The Solent and across to the Isle of Wight.
Her throat grew tight as she remembered berthing in Cowes Yacht Haven with its direct access onto the High Street; Tristram at the helm, her jumping onto the jetty with the mooring lines and tying bowline knots; the short walk to The Anchor Inn, standing at the bar her body still swaying, legs still at sea.
She breathed deep, rubbed her eyes and turned around.
Ed walked around the van and stopped at the bonnet: ‘Never imagined you yachties being white vans types.’
Sam moved closer to Ed, past caring about the rain. ‘I never expected ageing, bald detectives to drive old VW camper vans, but there you go, takes all sorts…So were the thieves just lucky, or did they know the owner was going to sea for a week?’
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Ed bent down and examined the dented front of the Transit but Julie told him it would be impossible to even roughly estimate when the damage had been caused, the fire having burnt the paintwork to the metal.
Ed stared at the driver’s headlight then walked to the passenger headlight, looking at it closely.
Thank God the brigade saved the lights, he thought.
‘Julie, get somebody to remove the headlights before it’s towed away,’ he said. ‘Bag and tag them.’
‘Thanks Julie,’ Sam told her. ‘We’ll catch up later.’
Ed strode after Sam and the shelter of the car.
‘Could they have watched him load up his boat?’ Ed asked, turning the ignition, setting the heater to maximum.
‘If they were in the yard, marina, whatever, anyone could see him victualling the boat and…’
‘Vicking what?’
‘Victualling,’ Sam repeated. ‘Loading the boat with food and supplies to you.’
‘Aye aye captain’
Sam punched his arm. ‘Less of the sarcasm, it doesn’t suit you. I can’t help it that I sailed.’
She rummaged in her handbag for a tissue and wiped her face.
‘Christ I’m wet through.’ She shivered and rubbed her thighs. ‘Is the blower on full blast?’
Ed turned the fan up. ‘It is now.’
Sam sat back into the seat, wishing like her Audi’s it was heated.
‘Why not just nick a van from up here?’ she said now. ‘It’s a hell of a trek down to Hamble. Six or seven-hour drive. I’ve done it.’
She couldn’t see the gang buying the van after it was stolen, too slick and switched on to involve someone else.
‘They’d never risk getting bubbled,’ Sam said, slipping into the police slang for being grassed or turned over by an informant.
She put her hands in front of the vent. What had her grandmother told her about putting cold hands on hot radiators? Something about chilblains? Sam would take her chances.
‘It just doesn’t add up,’ she said. ‘There’ll be thousands of Transits between here and Hamble.’
Ed turned on the wipers and watched the rain.
‘Least on a Saturday this weather’s good news for the house-to-house teams,’ he said as the blades and the zigzagging rivers of rain water did battle on the windscreen. ‘Loads of people at home. Only daft buggers like us are out in it.’
Sam hunted her mobile from her handbag, hit speed dial, and reached Bev for updates.
Ed switched on the headlights, turned the car through 180 degrees, and was silently relieved his fingers and cheeks had finally defrosted.
‘Cheers Bev,’ Sam was saying. ‘We’re on our way back.’
Ed tuned the radio to TalkSPORT and waited for Sam to bring him up to speed.
‘A neighbour saw two gorillas manhandling Hans down his path,’ she said. ‘They know he’s a university lecturer so just thought it was some student prank.’
Then Sam suddenly remembered the Transit’s headlights and asked Ed why they might be important.
‘When we watched the CCTV I never saw any damage to the front end of that vehicle, probably because we weren’t looking for it, but I distinctly remember both headlights being on.’
‘Point being?’ Sam said.
‘There might not be a point,’ Ed turned on the fog lights. ‘But the makes were different when I had a look at the burn out. One was a genuine Ford headlight, the other a cheaper copy.’
‘Good spot,’ Sam was impressed.
Ed smiled, remembering the countless hours he had spent bringing his 1972 VW Camper van ‘Doris’ lovingly back to life.
‘When you’ve been involved in restoring a vehicle you notice these things,’ he told Sam. ‘We can check with the owner. See if he damaged the vehicle and whether he replaced the nearside headlight. If he didn’t, the gorillas did and they’ll have had to buy it somewhere, hopefully locally.’
Sam was about to respond but Ed turned the radio up as the anchor announced a live update for Newcastle United.
Another goal and now 4-1 down at the Emirates to Arsenal, Santi Carzola riling the partisan commentator with a piss-take ‘panenka’ penalty, dinking the ball over the Newcastle goalkeeper in the 88th minute.
Ed hit the off button and grimaced.
Bloody football, as someone once said.
Ed’s phone call to the registered keeper of the Ford Transit told him what he needed to know…it wasn’t damaged when it was stolen; both headlights should be originals.
‘So our killers have probably damaged the van and then replaced the headlight,’ Sam said, looking up from her computer. ‘Unusual.’
Maybe they didn’t want to steal another van, didn’t want to risk getting pulled by uniform for having a light out, Ed told her.
‘Not that there’s enough cops on the street these days to pull anyone.’
Sam wondered again how Ed could keep his anger-level so high and for so long.
‘Any reports of Transits being involved in an RTC?’ she asked, reaching into her handbag and taking out an oat bar.
Ed crossed his legs, leaned back, and eyed the snack with a mixture of hostility and suspicion.
‘Always been good old-fashioned RTAs to me,’ defiance in his voice. ‘Road Traffic Accidents. No need to change it.’
‘Jesus,’ Sam gave him a weary smile. ‘They’re Road Traffic Collisions on the system so…?’
‘Nothing there,’ Ed told her, suddenly heading for the door. ‘But give me a couple of minutes. I’ve just had a thought.’
Five minutes later he was back, carrying two mugs of coffee and speaking on the move.
‘I remembered a message on the overnight log from this morning,’ he said. ‘Two sets of temporary traffic lights and two roadwork signs were stolen from a compound. The gates had been knocked off their hinges and there were glass fragments scattered on the ground.’
He put one coffee in front of Sam and sat down holding the other.
‘So what’s on your mind?’ she asked.
Ed slurped the coffee and muttered ‘bollocks,’ the drink so hot it blistered his tongue.
‘We believe the van belongs to the killers,’ Ed said. ‘That’s purely and simply because there’s a new gorilla mask next to it, still in its original packaging.’
Sam was silent, watching and listening.
‘We can compare the glass fragments left at the depot to the glass in the original headlight and hopefully get a match.’
Sam stared over the rim of her mug, blowing on the coffee so she didn’t repeat Ed’s mistake, and asked if the glass had been recovered.
‘It’s getting sorted now,’ Ed told her. ‘If it is the same glass, why bother replacing a headlight if you’re going to burn out the vehicle? Doesn’t make sense.’
Sam stood and paced the office.
‘If they’ve replaced the light they could have only done that this morning once the shops were open.’
Ed nodded and took a hesitant sip from his mug.
‘So why within hours are they burning it out? What’s happened that’s made them alter their plan?’
Sam drank while she walked, working it through.
‘If they replaced the light, that suggests they still needed the van,’ the pieces falling into place. ‘They had to burn it out so now they need to steal another! Get onto Control Room. Tell them we want to know about all stolen vans.’
Ed picked up the phone, said he was on it.
Sam leaned her back against the wall, thinking aloud again.
‘What else have they got planned? What the hell are they going to do with the traffic lights?’
Ed had just replaced the receiver when the desk phone rang, Sam signaling she would take the call.
Ed stood up but she motioned for him to sit back down.
‘Can I send an officer to see you,’ Sam was saying. ‘Okayyy…’
Ed picked up on the way Sam stretched out the word.
&
nbsp; ‘Tomorrow?’
Sam looked at Ed, raised her eyebrows.
‘See you then.’ She put the phone on the cradle and grinned at Ed. ‘Fancy a trip to Hampshire tomorrow?’
The short and sensible answer, Ed knew, was ‘no.’
An away day to the other end of the country would go down like a £5 prostitute once Sue found out. Make the trip on a Sunday and he’d be in a full blown shit storm.
‘Why?’ he asked, dreading the answer.
‘That was the headmaster from St Augustine, Jeremy Scott’s old school,’ Sam said. ‘Wants to talk but he’ll only talk to me. He has some information about Scott.’
Ed dropped deeper into the chair, the situation sinking in.
Whatever he said, tomorrow he was going to Hampshire.
How to the hell do I break that little zinger?
‘More likely wants to keep the school out of it,’ he grumbled, an air of resignation descending like smog.
‘But we’d have gone to the school at some point,’ Sam was button bright, a long road trip hands down better than another day solo in the ice palace. ‘May as well get it done.’
Ed sighed loudly, more for Sam’s benefit than his.
The head had asked for Sam personally. If Ed was a betting man he’d take odds on he had something worthwhile to say.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ed was driving through a downpour, windscreen wipers working overtime.
The destination was ciggie-break central.
‘Thought you weren’t bothered about smoking in the office on a Saturday?’
He glanced at Sam as he stopped his VW Golf at a junction.
‘Bev’s out and about with Paul,’ Sam told him. ‘May as well catch up in the park and have a smoke at the same time. Besides, it’s Never Wright on duty today, and you know what that little shit’s like with his anti-smoking agenda.’
Ed scowled, picturing Inspector Mick ‘Never’ Wright, a pedant with a nose so brown it looked varnished.
‘Still got his wife under house arrest?’ Ed moved off. ‘Or does he trust her again?’
According to the in-house rumour-mill, Wright had discovered his wife had been having an affair.
Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set Page 77