23 Cold Cases (The Mac Maguire detective mysteries Book 5)
Page 22
‘Miss Green,’ a man in a soiled boiler suit said, ‘it’s been a while. How are you?’
‘I’m very well thank you. As this is a special job there’s a little bonus in there for you,’ she said as she handed him a thick envelope.
‘As generous as always,’ he said as he tucked the envelope into an inside pocket. ‘Well, I need a cigarette so I’ll see you later.’
The man walked off. She knew where everything was. She got the pallet truck and raised it up to the height of the boot and rolled the carpet onto it. She then placed the sports bag on it too. She rolled it towards the conveyor belt that ran into a furnace. The furnace was white hot and she could feel the heat energy on her skin as she rolled the carpet containing Mr. Rafiq onto the belt. She placed the bag on it too and stood and watched as they both disappeared into the fire. In a few minutes she knew that Mr. Rafiq would be reduced to a scum on the surface of the metal pool. She thought that this was highly appropriate considering the kind of man he’d been.
She returned the pallet truck to where it had been and waved goodbye to the man on her way out.
She drove back home and sat in the car and waited. It was eleven thirty when she went over to the house and smashed one of the little windows in the porch. She went back to the car and drove off at speed with no lights on.
The tyres squealed as she took the corner. Someone was driving towards her so she seized the opportunity and flicked the car towards them causing them to swerve.
They won’t forget that in a hurry, she thought.
She then turned on the headlights and made for the motorway. She smiled, she was really going to enjoy this.
She’d picked her route carefully. She wanted a good stretch of fast road with cameras towards the end. She wanted to finally see how fast she could get the car to go. She hit eighty going on to the motorway and was well over a hundred a few seconds later. She got up as high as she could and whooped out loud as the speedometer reached one hundred and fifty. A succession of speed cameras flashed at her.
She reluctantly left at the next exit and made her way down increasingly narrow country roads to the spot she’d selected. It was a sort of layby and she’d selected it because it had been used before for the same purpose. She took the two plastic packages and placed them behind a bush further up the road. She opened up the bonnet and got two plastic bottles from the boot. They contained liquid fuel for barbecues. She was following a previous MO to the letter.
She sprayed most of the first bottle in the boot and the rest inside the car on the seats. The second bottle she sprayed on the hot engine, it immediately burst into flames. She threw the bottle into the fire and walked away. She took a fresh purple track suit out of one of plastic bags and changed. She put the old tracksuit into the bag and waited. It only took a minute or so before there was a loud ‘Crump’ as the fuel tank exploded. She knew there was little chance of anyone coming immediately as the spot was so remote so she went back to the car and threw the plastic bag into the flames.
She had now removed all traces of Youssef Rafiq.
She unzipped the other bag and opened up the foldable cycle. She then cycled away from the burning car. About a half a mile away there was a bus shelter. She sat there in the darkness until it was light enough then she mounted the bike and started back towards home. She arrived not long after six and went in through the back garden.
She was hungry so she ate a leisurely breakfast and then got changed into her librarian outfit again. Just before nine she went outside and started crying. Mrs. Ballard came straight over.
‘What is it dear?’
‘My car, it’s gone!’ Cass exclaimed. ‘They’ve broken my window too.’
Mrs. Ballard phoned the police and they were very nice when they arrived. It all sounded very familiar to them. They asked Cass if she kept her car keys in the porch.
She nodded, ‘Yes but I always keep it locked.’
‘What they do is smash a window and then use a probe with a magnet on the end to snag your keys, like fishing really. Once they’ve got the keys they’re away. If it’s who we think it is I’m afraid you might find that your car has been burnt out,’ the policeman said with mournful expression.
He was of course right and her car was found a few hours later just where they expected it to be.
Cass wondered what she could do in London to make Lawry feel a bit better. She thought about this as she drove to the city in the hire car provided by the insurance company.
The cinema perhaps? No he could always go to the cinema in Letchworth, it had to be something special. The theatre maybe?
Yes that sounded good, she thought.
She wondered if he’d like it.
THE END
I hope you enjoyed this story. If you have please leave a review and let me know what you think. PCW
Also in the Mac Maguire series
The Body in the Boot
The Dead Squirrel
The Weeping Women
The Blackness