back, half the carpet's missing, any evidence is so compromised it's not funny.' Steel turned and poked Logan in the shoulder. 'Well, Poirot, you figured out how you're going to explain this one to the ACC?' 'But it's a copycat, it has to be.' 'Blah, blah, blah.' A loud bleeping noise came from inside the house, closely followed by the wailing alarm and a uniformed PC's head. 'It's not working properly!' Logan rolled his eyes. 'Did you enter the alarm code?' 'Course I entered the alarm code:1993.' 'Five. One, nine, nine, five .' The PC disappeared back into the house muttering,'Bloody handwriting's appalling ...' Logan turned back to the IB team-leader. 'Is there anything we didn't search?' 'House, garden, garage, cars - we did the lot.' 'Come on, Laz,' said Steel,'give it up, eh?' He pulled out the last search report again, flipping through to the photocopied map at the back - reading by the glow of the Transit van's headlights. They'd gone over every inch of the property, twice, and still not turned up anything. Logan took one last look around him: house, front garden, flash cars, road, field, other field, garage, and back to the house again. The nearest neighbours were a faint yellow flicker through trees. Miles from anywhere. 'You think they're on mains water?' Steel shrugged. 'Probably.' 'What about sewage?' Clutching at straws. 'How the hell would ...' She drifted to a halt and stared at him. 'Oh, you're kidding ... Tell me you're kidding!' 'It'd have to be downhill from the house, but close enough to the road so the tanker can get in and drain it.' He started walking round the garden, Steel hot on his heels. 'If you think I'm rummaging through someone else's jobbies in my good work suit, you've got another think coming!' There was no sign of a septic tank cover anywhere in the front garden. 'OK, the road runs downhill to the right. We just have to see if we can find one there.' 'I'm warning you, Sergeant, if I get shite on my suit--' But he was already out of the front gate, wandering down the road in the dark, probing the field next to the house with a torch. Mud, grass, mud, sheep ... He switched his attention to the grass verge: more mud, patch of dead nettles, brambles, a roadkill rabbit, yet more mud. A rectangular shape poked out between tufts of grass. Logan squatted down and rapped on it with his knuckles. Solid.
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