defeated man; a man who had been in pain for years and was in agony right now, suffering in front of her eyes. But was his pain entirely physical?
‘Can I have a look at your stick, Mr Beeley?’
‘My stick? I’ve had it a long time.’
‘May I?’
She held out her hand, and Sam hesitantly gave her the
‘ J O
stick. It felt heavy and solid and was well-made, so that it balanced properly and swung easily in the hand. The handle shaped like the head of an Alsatian was worn smooth and shiny by Sam Beeley’s hands. The back of the dog’s head formed a hard, rounded ball of ivory, easily capable of crushing a skull
352
if wielded with enough force. Or, of course, with (he right technique.
She examined the handle closely. There were no traces she could see. But then it could have been cleaned. And in six days of use, any visible traces of blood or tissue could easily have been rubbed off on to the parchment- thin palms of its owner’s hands. The forensics lab, though, would soon settle it one way or another.
‘I have to ask you to come with me to the station to answer some questions,’ said Fry.
Sam nodded wearily. ‘I’ll need to use my stick.’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to manage without it for a while.’
‘I can’t walk without my stick,’ he insisted,
Sam was trembling even more than usual. He looked as though he needed an ambulance rather than a trip to the station. Fry hesitated, conscious of the mistakes that had dogged the enquiry so far. The last thing she needed was a sick old man suffering a collapse in police custody.
As her brain ticked over, she found herself looking past Sam into the doorway of the shed. The interior was pitch black, but her eye was attracted by a quiet movement in the darkness. There was something in there that was blacker than the surrounding shadows, something with eyes that turned to watch her as she
brought her mobile phone from the Peugeot. She needed advice
or o
on this one. Someone else could make the decision on whether to pull an apparently helpless old man in for questioning.
She got through to the duty officer in the incident room again,
o o J o ‘
giving details of her location and asking for the whereabouts of Tailby and Hitchens. But the officer had news. And what he had to tell her made her forget about Sam Beelev for now.
O J
Fry asked a few questions and requested whatever backup was available at this time of night. Then she ended the call and dialled again, this time trying Ben Cooper’s number. She needed
O ‘ J O 1
to tell him this bit of news. It was something he had to know
o
before he encountered Harry Dickinson again.
According to the duty officer, a second search had been ordered that afternoon in the area of scrubland at the back of the Vernons’ garden, this time seeking evidence of Andrew
353
Milner’s presence in the vicinity. The search had spread, almost by accident, into die garden itself. And there, at the bottom of a well-trimmed privet hedge, Laura Vernon’s second trainer had been found late in the afternoon.
The man in the incident room was eager to talk. It was a lonely job in the evening, and nobodv ever took the trouble to
7 ‘ t>’ J
discuss the enquiry with him.
‘It caused a bit of excitement round here, I can tell you,’ he said with relish. ‘It went straight to the lab, and they found two clear sets of prints on the trainer. I thought Mr Tailby was going to hit the roof. Especially as the garden had been searched once already. But that’s the way it always goes, isn’t it?’
Fry held her breath, staring blindly at Sam Beeley and the shed behind him.
She heard that a fingerprint officer had worked late in the evening to lift the prints off the second trainer and compare them to those on the matching half of the pair. On the first trainer, they had found only Laura’s own prints — identified by taking fingerprints from the body — and those of Harry Dickinson, who had carried the trainer back to Dial Cottage. Now the new
o
fingerprint report had come through, and it showed that the two sets of prints were identical. It meant that Harry Dickinson had handled both trainers. But only one of them had been found with the body. Who else could possibly have touched the other one, except Laura Vernon’s killer?
Ben Cooper’s phone rang and rang unanswered. Fry knew, of course, that he had left his phone in his car. But still she let it ring. Echoing in her mind was that one sentence he had used that had trapped her into being here tonight, in this crazy situation. ‘Are you going to let me down?’ he had said.
