Holm peered down. A picture showed the man lying in the heather, only now, to the right of the body and clasped in one hand, was an empty bottle of Smirnoff vodka.
‘Great.’ Holm felt his earlier excitement fade. Had he been played by the person sending the tweets? Or perhaps there’d been an error, the wrong information sent. That never happened in spy novels but it wasn’t hard to imagine a mistake being made, especially if the person sending the message had been in a hurry or at risk of being discovered. ‘So Mr Western drowns his sorrows and wanders onto the heath, lights up a cigarette and accidentally sets fire to himself. How many of these types of losers do you get a year?’
‘Not as many as in London, I’m sure, but all is not quite what it seems, Mr Expert.’ Cornish reached out and pointed at the head of the corpse. ‘Look closely at the base of the skull. There’s an entry wound.’
‘He was shot?’
‘Seems likely. We’ll know after the post-mortem.’ Cornish stood beside Holm. She glanced at her watch. Pressure. Deadlines. Then the tension dissipated. ‘Look, sorry I snapped earlier. It’s good to see you again. Why don’t I buy us something over at the National Trust cafe? Your colleague too.’
‘He won’t be hungry.’ Holm gestured out through the flap of the tent. ‘About to relieve himself of his breakfast by the looks of it.’
‘You missed this.’ A few paces away, Javed straightened. He hadn’t been sick and didn’t appear ill. He pointed at a canister lying on the ground. ‘Down in the heather.’
‘What is it?’ Cornish said.
‘A cigarette lighter refill. I guess there’s your accelerant, not the vodka.’
Holm smiled. He was a little saddened Javed hadn’t spewed his guts up, but on the other hand showing Cornish JTAC employed more than just paper-pushing analysts was worth the disappointment.
‘I guess that’s why we had to drive all the way from London,’ Holm said. ‘I don’t know, Farakh, what would they do without us? Bloody country bumpkins.’
Cornish barked something out to one of the CSIs and directed him over to Javed. She shook her head.
‘Thanks.’ She nodded towards the sea. ‘Let’s get that coffee.’
Holm and Javed followed Cornish along a narrow path back to the car park. The little cafe was devoid of customers aside from a solitary police officer who was chatting to the woman behind the counter. When Cornish approached he nodded and made his excuses.
‘That’s what it’s like these days,’ Cornish said as they sat at a table. ‘The loneliness of command.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Holm said. He looked at Javed. ‘Although sometimes a little peace and quiet would be welcome.’
‘Believe me, there’s never any of that.’ Cornish stared out of the cafe window. The officer who’d left was talking to a colleague, and Holm had the sense Cornish wasn’t exactly happy with her role.
‘Ma’am?’ Javed cut into the awkward silence. ‘Who exactly was Ben Western?’
Cornish swung round. ‘He worked as the operations manager at SeaPak, a container shipping company. They’re based at Felixstowe and have a distribution centre there, as well as at Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Six months ago Western handed in his notice. Then, last week, he went missing. There was some evidence he might have been abducted, but it was sketchy. There was certainly no reason for him to run off and leave his wife and kids.’
‘It happens.’ Holm remembered walking into his living room to find his own wife straddling his next-door neighbour, his first thought – bizarrely – that he’d paid way over the odds for the deep-pile carpet the pair were fucking on. Perhaps he should have simply turned round and disappeared himself.
‘Yes, but alarm bells started to ring.’ Cornish paused. She took a sip of coffee, and when she spoke again the edge in her voice returned. Suspicion and a touch of aggression. ‘Now, before I tell you anything else, I want to know what exactly your interest is in Ben Western.’
‘Like I told you on the phone, animal rights.’ Holm bent to his own coffee, trying to disguise the lie. ‘Five are tracking a group out of Birmingham. We believe they may be planning something.’
‘Crap,’ Cornish said. ‘One, as far as I know Ben Western has nothing to do with animal rights, and two, since when did Stephen Holm concern himself with the antics of a few vegan loonies?’
‘Since last month.’ Holm didn’t have to put on an act now. He lowered his head. ‘Since the whole country went to a critical threat level on my advice. Since UK citizens died in Tunisia on my watch.’
Cornish looked abashed. She reached out a hand and touched Holm’s arm. ‘That was you?’
Holm nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Those were a crazy few hours, even out here in the sticks. We had to lock down the port of Felixstowe and then there was…’ Cornish let her words trail off and she turned her head once more. This time her gaze was directed up the coast to where a distant cluster of huge concrete buildings surrounded a brilliant white dome. Sizewell nuclear power station. ‘You’d tell me if your investigation had anything to do with that, wouldn’t you, Stephen? National security or not?’
Holm took another drink of coffee. Swallowed. He’d spotted the power station on the drive in, even pointed it out to Javed, but for some reason it hadn’t even crossed his mind it could be connected.
‘Of course I would,’ he said.
‘So,’ Javed said as they watched Cornish drive off in a patrol car. ‘What do you reckon?’
Holm wasn’t listening. He was still considering Cornish’s question about Sizewell. He’d refused to answer her probing directly, instead keeping up the animal rights charade, but if there’d been a real threat? Something which could have harmed her? National security or not, he pretty much knew he’d have told her the truth.
As it was, Cornish had let it lie. She’d given them some more information on Ben Western and SeaPak, but there wasn’t
