was already parked in the shadows, side on, the number plates not visible.
Dryden squinted, leaning forward. ‘Did we not see the car pull in?’
Reade shook his head. ‘The camera is timed. It comes on at 6.30 and the car was already parked up.’
A single figure in a knee-length hoodie moved in jerky spasms across the car park and miraculously appeared inside the car without having opened a door. A clock on the screen showed the time ticking by. A minute and thirty-two seconds later the figure was out, walking towards the camera, the coat’s hood pulled down low.
‘Customer number one,’ said Reade, freezing the frame. ‘Note the wedge-shaped badge on the jacket – it’s a designer label. Pretty rare, pretty expensive.’
Garry fingered his spots. ‘Did you get the kid?’
Reade nodded. ‘Well, we got a kid in an identical top. A week later in Market Square. He’d just had a hit and was trying to take his trousers off over his head.’
They laughed without mirth.
‘His dad didn’t find it funny when we took him home,’ said Reade. ‘Nice middle-class semi on the Lynn Road.’
Another figure appeared, moving across the tarmac like an animated clay character from children’s TV. Two others joined the first at the car window. This time the deal was over in twenty-five seconds.
‘It gets boring after that. Until 7.38pm precisely.’
Reade accelerated the picture forward, a dozen or more customers coming and going in a few seconds. Then the driver’s door swung open, a man got out, locked the car, and slipped behind a ventilating unit. A dark liquid stain spread out from the shadows, trickling towards a gutter.
‘Charming,’ said Dryden, as the man reappeared and Reade froze the frame. He was medium height, thin shoulders under a dark overcoat, one hand in a pocket, the other, massive, hung low like a weapon. The face was split between light and dark, the contrast too great to allow any ID.
‘It’s not much,’ said Reade. ‘I’ve got a statement you can use,’ he added, handing Garry a Xeroxed sheet. ‘It’s got the car make and model etc. When he drove off, the plate stayed in shadow.’
‘And the CCTV stuff had been destroyed? No way of following him out of the town centre?’
‘Right,’ said Reade unhappily. Garry nodded, having lost the plot.
‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, standing and pointing at the rear of the car. It was a four-wheel drive. The rear windows, all the windows in fact, had become clouded with condensation. But in one side pane there was a small black irregular patch of clear glass. ‘Can you run the tape back?’
Reade pressed the rewind. The drug seller retreated into the shadows, reappeared, and got into the car backwards. Suddenly the small black window in the misty pane was gone.
‘Someone else?’ asked Garry.
Dryden shook his head: ‘I think it’s why a lot of the kids didn’t get in the car. When the first punter got in you could just see a dividing mesh – between the back and the passenger seats. It’s a dog. Bit of security?’
Reade let the film run forward again.
‘Could we have a still?’
The detective rummaged in a file and produced a black and white ‘video-grab’ image. It was grainy and indistinct, but it caught some of the menace of the original footage.
‘Great,’ said Dryden, handing it to Garry. ‘We’ll give it a good run.’
Back upstairs Dryden waited until Reade had given Garry more data on local drug-related crime to boost the story before bringing up Declan McIlroy’s case. ‘There was nothing on calls, but have there been any reports of a bogus caller in High Park Flats – or on the Jubilee? Someone posing as a health visitor perhaps, or doctor. There was something on a bogus plumber – but that was out of town.’
Reade took them back to the deserted office. He rifled through some files on one of the desktops, then booted up a PC.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘As you said, we’ve got a joker pretending to be a plumber, but that’s just the older semis on the edge of town. He’s never touched a flat. That’s pretty rare, of course; there’s less to filch and it’s much more difficult to get away quickly in one of those blocks if the con fails and they get sussed. High Park is not a good place to upset the natives.’
Dryden nodded. ‘Declan McIlroy had a visitor the night he died. I’m pretty sure it was a bogus doctor – he took in the old folks next door as well.’
‘Get away with anything?’ asked Reade, making a note.
Dryden shook his head: ‘Perhaps the motive wasn’t theft.’
Reade sat at the PC and keyed in some instructions. He read quickly, then gave Dryden a sympathetic look: ‘Not much suspicious about McIlroy’s death,’ he said. ‘Lonely guy, history of mental illness, neighbours heard nothing. Inquest was this morning.’
Dryden felt a hot spate of anger. ‘Shit – that was quick. What’s the hurry?’
Reade straightened. ‘It was today or wait a week – nobody objected. We like to expedite such matters.’ He blushed, knowing he’d tried to fob them off with a long word.
‘Verdict?’
‘Misadventure. Death by hypothermia, but he had enough booze in him to knock out a rugby team plus a dangerous level of painkillers.’
‘Any witnesses called?’
