Cupidi found the owner of the breaker’s yard in the lot behind the office. He was wearing swimming trunks and dark glasses. A man in his fifties, greying hair swept back across his head, sitting on a plastic chair next to a swimming pool with a can of lager in his hand.
The pool was surrounded by piles of old tyres and rusting gas cylinders.
‘Hard day at the office?’
His leathery tan suggested he was out here most days during the summer. He fancied himself; worked out a bit. His stomach was flat for a man his age, his arms muscular.
‘Work, work, work,’ he answered, smiling. ‘What about a dip?’
‘Detective Sergeant Cupidi,’ she responded. ‘I called you about an hour ago.’
The man took a gulp from his lager, stood, slid his feet into a pair of slip-on shoes. ‘Like I told you, not much left. Hardly worth me buying it.’
‘What do you mean?’
He put the can down beside the pool, ran his hand through his hair. ‘Nobody wants old caravans. All we do is strip out anything that’s worth taking. Fridges. Cookers. Foam fetches a bit these days, you’d be surprised. The rest goes for scrap or straight to the tip. Hardly anything of value in there.’
Cupidi followed him around the edge of the swimming pool. An oil drum, cut in half, made a barbecue. A fridge, presumably from one of the caravans, sat on a pallet, a long orange flex leading off towards the office.
‘All mod cons,’ said Cupidi, looking round.
‘Ain’t much, but it’s my slice of heaven.’ The man led her to a fence at the back of the yard and opened a small gate.
‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘You’re pretty flukey. I was planning on taking it to the scrap-metal merchant today, only the sun was out.’
Parked in a narrow lane behind the property was a dropside truck. Stacked upright on the back were sheets of aluminium, strapped together with webbing and rope. A couple of axles, a rusty wood-burning stove and lengths of chimney flue lay alongside them.
‘Oh.’
‘Yep. That’s the caravan, said the man. ‘What’s left of it, anyway. I cut ’em up, see?’
‘What about the contents?’
He jumped up onto the back of the truck’s bed, looking down at her and rattling the sheets of aluminium. ‘Weren’t much else. Couple of books. A few photos. Burned those at the weekend. Lit the barbie with them. Spare ribs with sauce.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Cupidi.
‘It’s my job. Why you so interested, anyway?’
Cupidi looked at him. ‘Because it’s possible that this was a murder scene,’ she said, looking at the remains of the caravan.
‘You’re having a laugh,’ he said, standing in his snug black trunks.
‘No. The caravan was brought in by Mr Eason. Did he sound keen to get rid of it?’
A shrug. ‘Wanted a hundred for it. I offered him twenty. He took thirty in the end.’
‘How did he react? Disappointed? Or so eager to get it off his hands he’d have taken anything?’
‘Don’t know. Man of few words, as I remember.’
‘How did he get it here?’
‘Towed it.’
‘Do you remember the vehicle?’
‘Ratty old Land Rover.’ The orange one that had been parked in the yard.
‘So, from what you saw of it before you smashed it up, what kind of woman lived in it?’
‘Bit of a hippie, ask me. Woodburner. Dead giveaway.’
‘Who was in the photographs?’
‘Didn’t really look. When it’s a caravan someone’s been living in, it’s like house clearance. You don’t want to get too caught up, do you?’
Sitting in her car on the breaker’s forecourt, Cupidi called the incident room at Ashford on her mobile. Moon picked up. ‘We’ll have to impound it. Get it picked up from here somehow. Though I’m not sure what we’re looking for. There won’t be any blood.’
Was there even any point? She dug in her handbag for something to eat and came up with one of the energy bars she had bought that morning; suddenly she didn’t feel hungry anymore. She left it in the bag. ‘What about the man in the slurry pit? McAdam said it was a murder investigation now?’
‘The man had significant bruises on his body, apparently,’ said Moon. ‘It looks like he was assaulted.’
‘What about Ferriter?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re her friend, aren’t you?’
A pause.
‘Sort of.’
‘She likes you.’
‘Does she?’ Like he didn’t know it already.
‘So I assume you might have heard from her.’
‘Yeah. She messaged me a couple of times. Think she’s a bit shook up, to be honest. Says she wants to come back in, else it will do her head in.’
Still dressed in his trunks, the caravan-breaker was watching her from his office window. ‘What else? Anything new on Hilary Keen?’
‘We’ve managed to dig up some old arrest records from the eighties and nineties. And the dentist. The woman who treated Hilary Keen has retired, so we haven’t been able to speak to her. They’re trying to find contact details for her. We got him, though, haven’t we? I bet you we’ll find something that links him to her within the next twenty-four hours.’
‘I’m glad you’re sure.’ As she turned the key in the ignition, something made her look round. Still dressed only in his swimming trunks, the caravan-breaker was running towards her shouting, ‘Wait!’
He caught up with her, panting. She rolled down her window and turned off the engine.
‘Just remembered something.’
In his office there was a large desk. While she stood waiting, he sat down on the chair behind it and pulled open a drawer full of papers. ‘Hold on,’ he said, still breathless. Rifling through it, he picked out a small, slightly faded, colour photograph. ‘I kept that one, see? On account of the caravan. It’s a classic.’
She took the picture from him and looked.
It was parked in a meadow; two boys, long-haired and grubby, sitting in front of it. It had been taken in late summer, around this time of year. The grass was long and dry, lit by low evening light. The oldest looked about eight; the younger maybe five or six. It was easy to see the similarity in their faces. They must be brothers. Shirts off, chests brown from living outdoors, the younger one sat on the step of the caravan, the other in a camping chair, both grinning at the camera.
On the caravan was written, in green paint: ‘WE ARE WATER’.
‘Why did you keep this one?’
‘It’s a classic two-door, built around 1970, I reckon. Look at the lines on that. Beautiful, isn’t it. Still got the Royale badge on it.’ He pointed to a small winged insignia at the front of the white streamlined mobile home. ‘Royale Touranger. Not any of this modern rubbish. She must have liked it, too. It was pinned on the shelf above her bed.’
There was a small mark at the top of the picture, from where the dead woman had fixed it onto the wood. She looked at the picture for a long time, fingering the small indentation Keen had made in it.