‘Nowhere has more than London but focus on the farmer’s village.’
‘I’ll go and see the farmer for you, see if he’s your type.’
‘He will be. Hurry back soon. The office is not the same without you, and I’ve got another report to file. I could do with your help.’
The next day, Bridget tucked into a good breakfast. The hotel offered either continental or English. She chose the English, realising that she was falling into the trap of the reluctant tourist, wanting to see the exotic as long as it was accompanied by a cup of tea and bacon and eggs.
At the central police station in Brussels on Rue du Marché au Charbon, Bridget met her counterpart, a moustached man who smelt vaguely of mothballs. She imagined Hercule Poirot, but this man was not short or rotund, and his moustache was neatly trimmed, not curled up at the ends. He was also talkative and did not use his little grey cells to the same extent as Agatha Christie’s most famous creation.
‘Bridget Halloran, I am pleased to meet you,’ Hendrik Brun said, his Belgian accent strong, his English understandable. He also took her hand and kissed it. Bridget blushed. She could never imagine her DCI or her DI kissing her, hand or cheek.
‘We’ve got a lot of work to do,’ Bridget said. The office was better than Challis Street, more modern, more open. To her, it lacked the charm that Challis Street offered, the homely touches she had brought to it. She took out her laptop, logged on using the police station’s Wi-Fi, the password supplied by Brun.
‘We’ve obtained records from the cameras out at Herzele,’ Brun said. ‘One of the cameras was faulty. Also, the videos from another have been deleted. We do have two others. With your permission, we’ll concentrate on them. For our purposes, I suggest we divide the videos, you taking the time after the murders, and I’ll take before.’
Bridget could see that the man was no-nonsense, straight down to work, and as competent on a computer as she was. They first checked the videos at the ferry port where the vehicle had entered the country. The date and the time were now known. It was not difficult to spot the Toyota coming off the ferry and driving up the ramp and onto the dock. The road markings took the cars from driving on the left to the right, and numerous signs reminded the drivers that this was Belgium, and all vehicles were left-hand drive, and great care was to be exercised.
‘The windows are darkened,’ Brun said. ‘We can’t see the driver or the passenger.’ Bridget could see that he was right. The vehicle that had been recently checked in England had clear windows. Someone had applied a film, probably purchased at an automotive store. Whoever had done it had complicated their work. None of the CCTVs in Brussels were of any use, as the department responsible prided itself on erasing all footage after six months.
Herzele was a different situation. The records were kept in Ghent, a city not far from Brussels, and the deletion of video files was not so rigorous. Bridget sat on one side of Brun’s desk, he sat on the other. In front of them, a large monitor each. Brun slowly scanned back from the closest time to the shooting, Bridget scanned forward. The video from one of the two cameras was clear, the other was blurred and out of focus.
It took two hours before Brun saw the vehicle in the village. He and Bridget then focussed forward from that time. It was another twenty minutes before he had traced it as far as he could, which was still two kilometres from the murder scene. With times established, he used enhanced imaging technology to look for additional detail. ‘The tinting is only on the windscreen and the front windows, the rear tailgate has none,’ he said.
Bridget wondered why they had not picked up the Toyota at the time of the murders. But then, as Brun explained, English tourists driving around were not that uncommon, and the registration number wasn’t easy to read. In fact, it was almost impossible, the first and last letters covered in mud or rust or both, the numbers scratched and unreadable. It was either done on purpose or the result of bashing over muddy tracks or logs with the off-roaders.
After nine hours solid looking at the monitor screens, neither of the two officers was able to focus any more. Bridget phoned Wendy who brought in Isaac on speaker. The time in Brussels had been successful in that the vehicle had been identified. It would need another day, when she and Hendrik Brun would focus in detail on the time that one of the men had entered the shop in Herzele. The almost accident with the farmer had been outside of the village, in an area where there were no cameras. Nothing would be gained by trying to look for further verification from the farmer or any other drivers on the road. It had been a overcast day when the murder occurred and the road had been mainly deserted, the reason that the farmer had pulled his tractor out into the centre of the road without due care and attention.
***
In Belgium, the prosecution case was firming against Ainsley Caxton and Hector O’Grady. In London, there were other developments, in particular, the hospitalisation of Michael Lawrence.
The first Homicide heard of him being there was when the hospital administration had phoned, his name being on a database of concerned persons, a possible drug overdose. The second was when Molly Dempster called to tell Isaac that Ralph was on his way to see his son.
In intensive care at St Mary’s Hospital, where Alexander Fleming had discovered
