her hair.
The woman stepped away and took a loaf out of the bread bin. Knife from the block, wooden board from a recess, basket from a deep drawer. A few strokes of the blade and she placed a basket of bread on the table as the man fetched bowls from a cupboard and ladled a chunky soup into them. They sat down and set about their lunch.
Vance reclined the car seat a little. He needed to wait for the right moment, and that might take a while. But that was OK. He’d waited years for this. He was good at waiting.
Carol took her time reading the
‘Someone’s leaked,’ Carol said. ‘Comprehensively.’
‘Yeah, and we all know who,’ Paula said bitterly. ‘First they slag us off, then when you call them on it, some resentful little shit decides to try and shaft us like this.’ She stabbed a finger at the paper. ‘Never mind that we wanted it kept close for solid operational reasons. Getting a dig in at the Minorities Integration Team obviously matters more than catching a serial killer.’
Tony took the paper from her and read carefully. ‘She doesn’t even make the assumption that these are sexual homicides,’ he said. ‘That’s interesting. Looks like she was satisfied with what she got from her source without implying there’s more to it.’
‘Fucking Penny Burgess,’ Chris said.
‘Isn’t that what Kevin used to do?’ Sam asked of nobody in particular.
‘Shut up,’ Paula snapped.
‘Yes, Sam. If you can’t be helpful, be silent,’ Carol said. ‘This means that we can’t actually trust Northern with any leads we’re developing. We can still get their uniforms to do the grunt work – door-to-door, showing photos around, that sort of thing. But anything else, we play very close to our chests.’
Stacey emerged from behind her screens with a glossy print in her hands. ‘Does that mean we keep stuff off the whiteboards?’ she said.
‘What sort of stuff are we talking about here?’ Carol could feel the dull beat of a headache starting behind her eyes. Too many decisions, too much pressure, too many balls to juggle; West Mercia was acquiring more of a gloss with every passing day. She did not expect to crave a stiff drink before noon in her office in Worcester. That was not the least of her reasons for moving.
Stacey turned the print round so they could all see it. ‘Traffic-light camera two hundred metres from Dances With Foxes,’ she said. ‘Heading away from town.’ The colour print showed a Toyota that could have been red or maroon, the number plate clear enough to read. The passenger looked like a woman, long hair evident. The driver’s face was half-hidden beneath a baseball cap; what was visible wasn’t clear enough for ID.
‘Is this our guy?’
‘It’s the right time frame. This particular car does not feature on the traffic cam before Dances With Foxes, but it pops up here. So it either came from the club, the carpet superstore next door, or the sunbed-and-nail salon beyond that. I don’t think either of them is open at that time of night. So it’s almost certain that this car came from Dances With Foxes. Two other cars have the same movement pattern in the time window, but neither of them has a passenger. I would say the weight of probability is that this is the car of the man who drove Leanne Considine from the lap-dancing club.’
Stacey always delivered her reports as if she was in the witness box. Carol loved the clarity, though she would sometimes have preferred more adamantine certainty. ‘Great job, Stacey,’ she said. ‘Anything from the plates?’
‘They’re fakes,’ Stacey said succinctly. ‘They belong to a Nissan that was scrapped six months ago.’
‘What about enhancing the driver’s face?’
‘I don’t think there’s enough visible to make it worthwhile. Certainly not for something we could release and hope to get a result from.’
Sam slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. ‘So it doesn’t get us anywhere.’
‘It tells us that the man in the car is almost certainly the killer,’ Tony said. ‘If he was just a punter, he wouldn’t go to all the bother of fitting fake plates to his car. That speaks to forward planning.’
Stacey turned to Sam and bestowed one of her rare smiles on him. ‘Actually, Sam, I don’t think it’s a dead end. We need to come at it laterally, that’s all. Like everywhere else in the UK, Bradfield has an extensive Automatic Number Plate Recognition CCTV network. These days, traffic cops and the security services track car movements on main roads all round the country. On A-roads, they can latch on to any car and follow it in real time. Or as near as damn it. And here’s the killer: all those detailed vehicle movements are stored for five years in the National ANPR Data Centre so they can be analysed for intelligence. Or used as evidence. All we have to do is ask for any records for that plate number after the date the Nissan was scrapped. That could practically lead us to his front door. Or at least give us a good enough likeness for somebody who knows him to recognise him and come forward.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’
‘Beautiful? It’s better than beautiful,’ Carol said. ‘Can you contact them, Stacey? Impress them with the urgency. Life at stake, all the usual. We need this yesterday.’ The headache was in retreat. As always in this job, a little good news went a very long way. ‘We’re on to something, guys. And this time, it stays inside these four walls.’
29
After the soup, the cheese and biscuits and fruit. Waste of time, all that healthy eating, Vance thought. They were going to be dead soon, regardless of the quality of their diet. He shifted in his seat, trying to get more comfortable. If they both went back to work, it would be a while before he had the chance to take them by surprise. It could be hours. But that was OK. He was from the last generation to believe in deferred pleasure. He knew that all good things come to those who wait. It sounded like one of those mnemonics schoolkids learned – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, or Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. For him, it had become a mantra.
But this time, he’d guessed wrong. When they finished eating, they loaded their plates into the dishwasher.
