Delaney winked at her. ‘If you play nicely, I’ll get Roy to fry you an egg to go with your sandwich.’
‘And you can do one of those for me too while you’re at it,’ said Sergeant Halliday as she walked up with Sally Cartwright to join them.
Roy lifted his eyebrows as his gaze rose from Emma’s flat-soled shoes to the top of her head, all six foot two of her. He pursed his lips as if to whistle but Delaney gave him a shake of his head.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.
‘Another bacon sarnie it is, then.’
‘Good call,’ said the sergeant, smiling.
‘Any sign of Bennett yet?’ Kate asked Sally.
‘No. And he’s not answering his calls.’
Delaney turned to Sally Cartwright. ‘How did it go at the school?’
Sally shook her head. ‘Not good, sir. Apparently.’
‘What happened?’
‘Somebody got there before us. A long time before us,’ Emma Halliday said.
‘He’s dead?’
Sally grimaced. ‘You could say that.’
‘Someone tied him kneeling to his bed, stuck a single-barrelled shotgun up his arse and pulled the trigger,’ Emma Halliday said bluntly.
Delaney frowned. ‘And nobody noticed? Nobody heard anything?’
The tall sergeant shook her head. ‘His body acted like a silencer, I guess.’
Roy handed a sandwich to Delaney, who took a big bite of it. He realised that Kate was staring unbelievingly at him. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘I can’t believe you’re eating that,’ she said.
‘I told you. I need to think.’
He looked over at Roy as the burger man flipped the bacon again and cracked an egg on the griddle plate. Delaney turned to Sally again. ‘You know those pictures of the staircases going up and down? You look at them one way and they are going up, you look again and it seems they are going down, or outside and inside. And you follow a straight path but at the end they’ve dropped several levels. Like optical illusions. Can’t remember the artist.’
‘M.C. Escher, sir. Dutch,’ Sally said.
Delaney waved his hand dismissively. ‘Whatever. The point is, we’ve been looking at this all the wrong way, whether the stairs are going up and down.’
‘And what should we have been doing?’ asked the sergeant.
A motorbike turned the corner at the top of the street and headed towards the van. ‘We should have been taking the fricking elevator,’ Delaney said and turned back to the counter. ‘Roy, give us one of those catering gloves, will you?’
‘What for?’
‘Just give us the fecking glove.’
Roy handed him one of the plastic gloves. Delaney took it and looked across, puzzled, at the motorbike that had stopped on the other side of the road, leaving its engine running. He realised that the rider, who was wearing a dark outfit and a black helmet with a black visor, was swinging something in his hands and pointing it at Kate, who was standing in front of Delaney. Something long and metallic. Delaney processed the information in a split second, shouting for everyone to get down as he grabbed Kate, swinging her round and pulling her to the ground at the side of the van.
The shotgun blast ripped the air apart, the pellets blasting into the trees and the cars and the fencing opposite the van. Delaney scrambled round the side of the van but the motorcyclist was already gunning his engine and racing away back in the direction he had come. There was no number plate on the back of the bike.
Kate stood up, breathing heavily. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ she said, her face as pale as Delaney had ever seen it.
‘I don’t know, darling. Is everyone okay?’
Emma Halliday and Sally Cartwright had both dived for cover as soon as Delaney had shouted and they’d seen what was happening. They stood up, dusting their clothes.
‘What the hell was that, sir?’ asked Sally. ‘A warning? Or was he trying to kill you?’
‘God knows. Maybe it wasn’t me he was after.’
‘We thought someone might have been taking a shot at you in Mad Bess Woods on Saturday morning, didn’t we?’
‘You did. I didn’t.’
‘There’s not a lot of doubt about this one, Jack,’ said Emma Halliday. ‘Who’s got a grudge against you?’
Behind the counter Roy snorted, continuing to cook as though nothing had happened.
Delaney shrugged ruefully. ‘How long have you got?’
But Emma wasn’t listening. She was looking at Kate, a concerned look on her face. Delaney turned round to
