Steven Dunne - Deity

Nearly two hours later, the credits rolled in the darkness. Rifkind and most of the other students had gone to lunch an hour ago but Adele, Becky, Fern, Kyle and Russell had continued watching through the bulk of the lunchbreak and even sat in silence as the cast of characters scrolled down the screen.

‘Wow,’ said Kyle, standing and stretching his slender frame in the gloom. ‘Sick film.’

‘Hard to believe a film about a girls’ school could be that good,’ agreed Becky.

When the inert screen ensured total blackness, Becky edged towards the large curtain and pulled it aside. Bright sunshine streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Media Suite and she and Fern immediately bent to check their phones. Adele remained seated, unable to move. She stared straight ahead. There were tears on her cheeks.

Back in his office at St Mary’s Wharf, Brook got his mouth around his second cup of tea and closed his eyes to savour its soothing heat while his computer loaded. He logged on then registered his dismay at the volume of internal emails in his inbox.

‘Thirty-six emails — in one day,’ he sighed. ‘The tyranny of faceless communication.’ Brook scrolled down the list checking for his personal buzzwords. Any email containing the words Committee, Budget, Target or Liaison in the subject line was deleted without being opened. Happily this was most of them and Brook was left with five relevant messages about open cases and upcoming trials.

After dealing with them, he rifled through the drawers of his desk for an A-Z he knew he had somewhere. He was both pleased and appalled to find his desk bereft of cigarettes. He remembered wistfully the pack in his locker given to Noble earlier that morning, as a demonstration of his willpower.

Brook flicked through the pages of the A-Z and stared at the sparse countryside to the south and east of Borrowash, taking in the minor roads accessing Elvaston Castle and Thulston. He didn’t know the area well but it seemed very flat and he knew from his trips along the A50 to the M1 or East Midlands Airport, that the land on either side of the carriageway was prone to flooding. Indeed, even without flooding there was sufficient water around the confluence of the Rivers Trent and Derwent to merit a marina at Shardlow for the nautically minded.

Brook pulled the Yellow Pages from another drawer. His eye glimpsed a mangled, half-smoked cigarette butt behind some old papers, covered in dust and fluff. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked it out of the drawer and brushed it clean like an old soldier polishing his campaign medals. He stared lovingly at the butt for longer than necessary then threw it resolutely in the bin, chuckling noiselessly at the absurd sense of achievement that followed.

Noble walked in, holding papers. ‘We’ve got more uniform searching up and down the river, just to be thorough. Nothing yet. On the plus side, DS Gadd’s organised a door-to-door on Station Road and, apparently, someone leaving early for London on Tuesday did see the road was closed. Every other resident says the road was open later that morning so it looks like you were right. Our perpetrator faked the closure while he dumped the body.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago.’ Noble consulted a scribbled note. ‘A Mr Hargreaves left his house at three thirty in the morning to drive to London. He couldn’t cross the bridges and had to take the A52 instead.’

‘Three thirty,’ Brook said thoughtfully. ‘So we’re unlikely to get witnesses walking the dog.’

‘What about anglers? They get up at all hours to bag the best spots.’

‘Get uniform to speak to every angler on that stretch. And maybe run off some notices to post near the bridges. Any chance of decent forensics?’ ventured Brook, though he already knew the answer.

Noble shook his head. ‘SOCO weren’t confident, not at the scene anyway.’

Brook nodded. ‘Water washes away many sins, John — though I prefer malt.’

‘They did find a large piece of cloth in the river nearby. They’ve bagged it for tests but we don’t even know if it connects with our John Doe.’

‘What about the bridge?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s hope the body gives us an ID. What’s that?’ asked Brook, looking at the sheaf of papers.

‘Statement taken from the lads who spotted the victim in the river.’ Noble handed the report to Brook, who skimmed it briefly.

‘Let’s call him the deceased until we’re told it’s murder, John.’ Brook yawned heavily and tossed the papers on to the desk. ‘Decent lads?’

‘Solid kids from good families. No juvey-juvenile cautions,’ Noble corrected himself before Brook caught his eye. ‘And those CCTV cameras near the bridge were dummies.’

‘Any other cameras locally?’ asked Brook.

‘In Borrowash? Hardly. The only excitement round there seems to be the odd broken wing mirror.’

Brook put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. ‘All this careful planning suggests our man’s a murderer.’

‘Man? So you’ve definitely ruled out multiple suspects.’

‘I think so. Statistically we’re looking for a male, especially as our John Doe may have needed lifting. And, whether he has accomplices or not, he was on his own when he dumped the body.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The traffic cones,’ replied Brook, looking up at Noble to see if he wanted to take the reins.

Noble lifted his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. ‘What about them?’

‘He couldn’t carry the cones as well as a Road Closed sign. Two people could have done it. After he dumps the body, he’s in a hurry so he picks up his sign . . ’

‘ . . and leaves the cones stacked on the pavement thinking no one would notice,’ finished Noble. ‘Presumably he blocked off the road from the other side as well — somewhere out of sight of the bridges.’

‘I think so.’

‘We should-’

‘I already looked, John. There’s nothing to see though I’ve got a picture of an impression in the road that could have been from a line of cones — all fairly pointless.’

‘We might get a fingerprint from the cones he left behind.’

Brook wrinkled up his nose. ‘Doubtful.’

‘At least we know he must have driven off south, towards Elvaston Castle, because if he parked on the river bridge to dump the body, he must have run the hundred yards back up to Station Road for his sign.’ Noble looked at the ceiling, thinking it through. ‘But when he drove away, he pulled up to his other road-block so it was easier to put the sign and the cones in his car.’

Brook smiled approvingly at his DS. ‘There you go. Though if he’s transporting a body, some kind of van is more likely.’ He pushed the A-Z towards Noble. ‘All of which gets us to here, the junction of the B5010, where he turns right towards the A6 and A50, maybe heading for the M1 or back into Derby.’

‘Or left towards Shardlow — assuming he’s not from Thulston.’

Brook sighed. ‘You’re right. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s wait for Forensics and the post mortem to find out exactly what we’re dealing with.’

The middle-aged man in a crumpled white chef’s uniform stared in disbelief as Rusty spoke to him. He then turned and glared over at Kyle and the others, giving them a lingering look up and down. Finally he shrugged and a moment later followed Rusty to their table and set a tray of soft drinks down, before distributing them to the students. He wore an ID badge with the name Lee and the archaic title Refectory Manager .

Adele smiled for the first time that day. The uniform and the title seemed incongruous to her, since the pinnacle of culinary sophistication in the college cafe was cheese on toast. Nevertheless she added the word ‘Refectory’ to her mental list of arcane words for future use. Just in case.