Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

The others nodded assent.

‘And then what?’ Bent asked.

‘Good question,’ Henry admitted.

‘Can I make a quick suggestion?’ Bill Robbins asked.

‘Go on.’

‘I know it’s a long shot, but — ’ he screwed up his face as though what he was about to propose was particularly stupid and that he would be stoned to death — ‘is it worth checking the found property register for the mobile phone? Sometimes people have been known to be honest and hand in property… it’d only take a minute.’

‘Not such a bad idea. Can you do that?’ Henry asked.

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

Robbins rose and left the room.

The remaining officers all shook their heads. ‘Not a chance in hell,’ Bent said cynically. ‘And if it had been handed in, it should have been cross-referenced to the crime report, so we should know if it had been.’

‘Mm,’ Henry said doubtfully. ‘Can you check the phone’s status, though?’ he asked Bent. ‘I’m presuming it was blocked after the robbery was reported. If it has, maybe it could be unblocked, and if it’s still transmitting a signal we could locate it that way?’

‘Will do.’

‘Have we heard anything from Rik yet?’

‘No he’s at the mortuary with Mandy,’ Bent said.

‘The pathologist will be wanting to do Rory’s PM. Ask Rik if he’ll cover that for me, will you? And then arrange to get Mark Carter sorted?’ Henry checked his watch. ‘Social services should be here soon, so they promised.’

It was almost four p.m. as Bill Robbins sauntered through the tight, badly decorated corridors of Blackpool police station. He was feeling quite serene, having been dragged away from the drudgery of some tedious lesson planning at the training centre to come and be Mark Carter’s bodyguard. Since coming to the station he had locked all his firearms in the safe in the ARV office.

He went down to the ground floor where the public enquiry desk was located and popped his head through the door behind the desk itself. As ever there was a stream of people at the desk being attended to by a harassed assistant. Bill saw the found property register on a shelf underneath the desk, reached through and took it, then stepped back out of sight lest a member of the public demanded to see a real cop as opposed to a public enquiry assistant, or PEA as they were known.

He retreated into the tiny PEA office and flicked through the book.

These days the police took less and less property from the public. When Bill had joined the job, the cops took everything. Now finders were encouraged to keep what they’d found and if they hadn’t heard anything within twenty-eight days, were told that the property became theirs. This even applied to fairly large sums of money.

There wasn’t much recorded in the book over the last two days. Bill would have expected that if a mobile phone had been handed in, it would have been retained by the police to cross-check with recorded crimes, pretty standard procedure for such items.

A female PEA came into the office, fitting her epaulettes. She was clearly just coming on duty, working the four-to-midnight shift, after which the police station would be closed. She was a bonny young thing, Bill thought patronizingly, glancing at her name tag: Ellen Thompson.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘Just checking to see if a mobile phone has been handed in over the last couple of days… doesn’t seem to be anything.’

‘Mm, I’ve certainly not taken one in,’ the PEA said quickly. ‘Don’t know about anyone else.’

‘It would have been recorded in here, wouldn’t it?’ Bill tapped the red-spined found property book. She nodded. ‘OK, no probs.’

The PEA held out her hand. ‘Shall I put it back for you?’

‘Thanks.’ Ah well, he thought, another bright idea that came to nought.

Henry and Donaldson stepped out of the lift on the top floor and entered the canteen. Henry was gagging for a drink and something to eat. Donaldson was coffee’d up to the eyeballs, so he bought a mineral water and both men picked a cherry-topped raisin swirl each to go with their drinks, and took their mini-feasts to a table giving them a view across the Irish Sea.

Henry sipped his coffee and waited for the hit before biting a chunk out of his pastry.

Jerry Tope entered the canteen, got himself a brew and went to sit alone. Henry was watching him, but not thinking about him.

Donaldson winced as he tasted his water. ‘Complex stuff,’ he said.

‘What, H2O? Hydrogen, oxygen isn’t it?’

‘If only things were that simple,’ he frowned.

‘You have a look of disquiet,’ Henry observed skilfully.

‘Something doesn’t add up.’

‘Tell me about it. You can trust me, I’m a cop, a detective super at that.’

‘I’ve been looking at all the Camorra killings since the hit in Majorca,’ he explained, ‘and some don’t fit the pattern.’

‘In what way?’

‘The hits on the senior Petrone clan guys seem much more tidy and professional than all the others. The street killings are the usual horrid mess, but the ones where the bosses are taken out are much more clinical — it’s no wonder Rosario did a runner. Anyway, I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.’

‘Whoever killed him also seems very keen to the extreme on eliminating witnesses,’ Henry said.

‘Problem is I can only access certain files at the moment. I need to look at some more detailed information that I know exists, but I don’t seem to be able to get into. A glitch, I think.’

Henry nodded in Jerry Tope’s direction. ‘How about our resident hacker? Could he be of assistance?’

Donaldson looked around at Jerry who sipped his coffee thoughtfully and nibbled a custard cream. He knew the Intel unit detective was a skilled hacker and often searched the databases of other organizations without consent. He had once probed deeply into the FBI computer and delved much deeper than most hackers, until he had been discovered by the IT bods at Quantico and chased — in the cyber sense of the word — across the world. Donaldson had been given the task of investigating Tope and there could easily have been much embarrassing egg-on-face all around if the FBI hadn’t actually wanted to recruit Tope.

So far, Henry had deflected their advances on behalf of Jerry, but he guessed that one day a financial package would come along and lure him away from Lancashire. Henry would hang on to him for as long as possible because he recognized a brilliant asset when he saw one, even if he was a glum sort of guy.

Donaldson considered him whilst eating his half-cherry. ‘Nah, back burner… I’ll go and try again. It was probably just one of those IT gremlins.’

‘He’s there if you need him.’

Henry and Donaldson watched Tope as he split apart his custard cream and began to lick the filling with the relish of an adolescent.

Henry dropped Donaldson off at his house, gave Kate a quick wave — who, by rights, should have been sat at an airport now — then shot back to the police station. He had about an hour, he estimated, that he would put to good use by writing up the murder book and doing a spot of problem solving.

Donaldson’s mobile rang as he walked through the door of Henry’s house. He answered it with trepidation as the caller ID told him it was Karen calling. Despite the caution, he tried to give his voice a pleasant lilt.

‘Hi, babe, where the heck are you?’

‘Love, I’m sorry, I couldn’t get away from work.’ Karen was a superintendent working for the Metropolitan Police but seconded to Bramshill, the grand former stately home in Hampshire now home to a broad spectrum of police training. She was head of the overseas development arm, assisting other countries to develop training packages for their high-ranking officers. She did sound contrite.