Kay walked into the incident room, a discordant mixture of raised voices and phones ringing assaulting her ears as she made her way across to her computer.
After leaving Harriet and her team at the waste management facility, she had updated Sharp about Natasha’s find and now needed to rally her colleagues and ensure they remained focused at such a late hour.
Darkness had blanketed the town over two hours ago, but there was still much to be done.
Although the administrative staff who were employed on normal hours had left on time, a rag-tag group comprising her detectives and various uniformed personnel remained, and she intended to make the most of their presence.
‘Briefing, now,’ she said, beckoning them towards the whiteboard. ‘Come on, we need to get on with this while our killer thinks they’ve got away with it.’
‘Unless he was at the facility,’ said Barnes, his face clouding as he dragged a seat across and dropped into it with a groan. ‘In which case…’
‘We don’t know that for sure yet,’ Kay replied.
The final stragglers scurried to lean against desks or pull up abandoned chairs, hastily forming a rough semi-circle beside the board, and the conversation died down.
After explaining the events at the waste facility, Kay glanced down at the notes she’d scribbled while Barnes had driven them back to Maidstone.
‘Given the circumstances, this can’t wait,’ she began, ‘so apologies if you had plans for this evening. First of all, Laura – can you work with Phillip to speak to the eight staff members who had access to the waste storage bunkers earlier today. Their shifts ended between seven o’clock and ten o’clock this morning, so hopefully by now they’ve had some rest and won’t get too antsy with you if you call them after this. We need to work out whether the rifle parts were dumped in one of the industrial bins collected from the Maidstone area, or by one of the contractors employed by the facility.’
‘Would it be better if we spoke to them face-to-face?’ Laura asked.
‘We don’t have time. I’ll leave it to the pair of you to use your best judgement in the circumstances. If you’re speaking to someone on the phone and they sound cagey, then by all means organise a formal interview – but quickly. Once people hear that we’re investigating the discarded rifle parts in connection with Thorngrove’s murder, our killer will have time to react, and we’re already dealing with the aftermath of what that might be.’
‘Understood, guv.’
‘Thanks. Daniel – where are you?’
A hand thrust upwards from the back of the small crowd.
‘Can you and your team take a copy of the list of names we’ve got from the facility and cross-check those against the firearms licensing database? Let Laura know immediately if anyone is flagged so she can adjust the interview strategy if she needs to.’
‘Will do, guv.’
‘Gavin – I’m going to need your help leading a team to go through the CCTV footage we’ve acquired from the facility. We’ve obviously got two lines of enquiry here – the rifle parts were dumped elsewhere and captured within a standard collection, or someone there tried to hide them. I’d like you to monitor activities from when the first shift started at six o’clock this morning and let me know the moment you spot anything suspicious.’ She bit back a sigh. ‘If you don’t, then we’re going to have to try and find out where the contents of that storage bunker originated from and––’
Kay broke off as the incident room door opened and Harriet Baker strode towards her, a determined expression on the forensic manager’s face.
She wore no make-up, and her cheeks still bore the imprint of the protective mask she’d been wearing while assisting her team of CSIs with their search.
‘Excuse the interruption but I figured you’d rather have an update from me as soon as possible,’ she said, slightly out of breath. ‘And give me a moment – the bloody lift is out of use and I’m not used to running up stairs.’
A good-natured murmur of sympathetic laughter rippled through Kay’s team, and she held up her hand for silence.
‘I take it you found more?’
‘We did.’ Now recovered, Harriet smoothed back her long fringe and took a deep breath. ‘So, as well as the trigger assembly part that Natasha Perrott found, we located the metal guard rod. We also discovered the gas piston and two discarded magazines – one with two rounds missing. I’ve just dropped them over to the lab for testing, and we’ve taken swabs to run against our databases too.’
Kay tried to ignore her racing heartbeat, her throat dry with anticipation. ‘Fingerprints?’
‘Patrick’s checking for those now. I’m going to head back to help but like I said, I figured you’d want the latest news ASAP.’
‘Did you find anything else?’
‘No, that’s it – we searched the two bunkers either side of the one where the parts were found too, but found nothing.’
‘That’s great, Harriet. Thank you – you’ll call me when you have more to report?’
‘I will, and you’ll get my full report from this afternoon’s search sometime tomorrow.’
As Harriet left the room, Kay waited a moment to let the team digest the information, then dismissed them and turned her attention to Gavin. ‘So, they’ve only found enough parts for one rifle, and until those have been tested we can’t assume it’s one of the ones stolen from the MacFarlanes. Even if it is, we’ve still got one missing so I need you to keep on top of the lab and pull in some favours to get more information tonight if you can.’
‘One of Harriet’s team owes me so I’ll give him a call now.’
‘Thanks.’ Kay glanced at her watch as he walked back to his desk, then sent Adam a short text message to let him know she would be home late.
It was going to be a long night.