ON THE SILVERLINK Industrial Estate, DCI Kate Daniels had just finished overseeing a delicate and ghastly operation. Having called upon the Fire Service to jack up the Mercedes to enable crime-scene investigators to photograph her victim in situ, she’d looked on as the body was extricated from the underside of the vehicle and handed over to mortuary staff for transfer to Newcastle’s city morgue.
The body-bag was zipped up, laid on a stretcher and loaded into a black van. Hank Gormley waved it forward, instructing a uniformed colleague to follow in a panda car. It was important to preserve continuity until the cadaver was in the care of Tim Stanton, who was standing by to carry out an urgent post-mortem. Police tape and cones were lifted, allowing the vehicles through inner and outer cordons, where they were joined by a Traffic car, its driver engaging blues and twos to ease the journey.
As the mini-convoy disappeared, Kate turned to face Hank.
‘What was the name of our witness?’ she asked.
‘David Prentice. Forty-eight-year-old widower. No form. Lives on Benton Park Road. Father of two, grandfather of four.’ He pointed to a sign behind them: JMR Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Services. ‘He’s in there, waiting for you.’
Kate found the man at his desk in the security office, hands cupped round a mug of sweet tea, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. He stubbed it out and stood up as she walked in. It was as if the room was shrouded in fog. Bizarrely, it had no air conditioning. Without asking permission, the DCI opened the window to let the smoke out. Then she sat down, taking the weight off her aching feet. The man looked grey. Was it any wonder? She wasn’t feeling too hot herself.
‘I’m DCI Kate Daniels. Are you up to answering questions, sir?’
‘To be honest, I’d rather go home. I’m feeling a bit shaky.’
‘That’s entirely understandable. Finding a body must have been harrowing for you, especially in the dead of night.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
He was a dead ringer for Kate’s old guv’nor who was now the head of CID; a little younger perhaps, but the face was the same shape, with a generous mouth and greying hair at his temples. They could’ve been brothers, except Prentice was quaking in his uniformed boots and Detective Chief Superintendent Bright would never do that, no matter how unpleasant the circumstances. Then again, the security guard had probably never seen so much as an angry dog in his whole career, much less had to deal with one.
‘I won’t keep you long, I promise.’ Kate gave a smile of encouragement. ‘The sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can go home to your bed. It would help if you could tell me everything you know, a blow-by-blow account of your movements since you came on duty, including how and when you discovered the body. It’s very important to establish what happened here so I can start looking for those responsible.’
Prentice took a deep breath. ‘I started at ten o’clock. It was a normal, boring shift until I noticed the van a few minutes before five, after leaving the office for a moment or two.’
‘Is that allowed?’ Kate asked.
‘It was that or piss in a bucket. Forgive the language, I—’
‘Needs must, eh?’ Another smile. Kate pointed at a hard-backed ledger on his desk. ‘Is that your duty log?’
He nodded.
‘May I see it please?’
Prentice pushed it towards her. He looked on as she opened it up and turned to the relevant page. The writing was neat but so small she was forced to use her reading specs. Scanning the entries, she noted that he’d made a tour of the perimeter fence every hour throughout the night until four a.m. The five o’clock patrol remained blank.
Picking up on her concern, Prentice was at pains to point out that he hadn’t completed that circuit because he was too busy investigating the mystery van.
‘That’s when you called us?’
Sweating profusely, he nodded.
Kate shifted her attention from the man to a desk littered with paraphernalia: a half-completed crossword, an Open University pamphlet, a framed photograph of four grinning schoolboys she assumed were his grandchildren, a few jottings on a notepad and some literature on photography.
Oh God!
Along with a feeling of déjà vu, a young woman appeared in Kate’s head: an amateur photographer she’d come across in a previous case who’d tried to cash in by selling images of a dead man to the press. That was the way things were these days; everyone carried a camera in their pocket, the means with which to capture a moment in time, no matter how miserable. People saw it as fair game. Images that sold newspapers were highly prized. Sadly, that particular photographer had paid the ultimate price, silenced for good by someone who didn’t want their face made public.
‘Keen photographer, are you sir?’ Kate took in an enthusiastic nod. ‘Take any snaps while you were outside? Because, if you did, I’d like the film and the camera.’
‘I don’t have one with me.’
‘Mobile phone?’
‘I didn’t take any pictures.’
‘That’s fine.’ Kate sent a warning shot across the desk. ‘I just need to be sure. The incident I’m investigating is not one that should end up in the public domain. If that were to happen, you should understand that there would be consequences.’
‘Check it if you don’t believe me.’ He pushed his mobile across the desk. ‘There’s nothing on it, I swear.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
Thanking her, Prentice shuddered as if something with more than two legs had walked across his skin. ‘To be honest, I was so spooked when I realized what I’d found that I bolted back here. I dialled 999 in case he was, y’know, still alive. It never occurred to me to get my camera out. I’m no ghoul, Inspector.’ He paused for thought. ‘Not that I thought he could be – alive, I mean. But I’m no doctor, am I? You hear about people surviving terrible accidents.’
He hadn’t been told.
Kate tried to find the right words with which to convey the unpalatable truth. ‘Mr Prentice, I’m not here about a terrible accident. This is a clear-cut case of murder. As despicable as it sounds, what you witnessed tonight was a deliberate act.’
‘What?’ He looked horrified.
‘I’m afraid so. I’m sure you’ll appreciate how serious that is and why I need your full cooperation.’ Unfortunately, Kate was destined not to get it.
Prentice immediately clammed up, floored by the realization that whoever she was after knew where he worked and when they could find him alone on the premises. Having seen what they were capable of, he had no doubt they would silence a witness without a second thought.