Rego was exhausted and very tempted to give in to the waves of tiredness washing over him. He’d snatched a few hours’ sleep after he’d left the hospital, but his brain kept creating lists of urgent jobs, so in the end, fuelled by bad coffee and a Mars bar, he’d gone back to the office and got stuck in.
DS Tom Stevens was in early too, looking bleary eyed and determined to be fully caffeinated, drinking cup after cup of coffee until Rego was worried he’d have to peel him off the ceiling.
The whole team had worked late and then Rego had dragged himself back to his hotel room, only to do it all over again the next day, and the next and the next.
Each day brought a mountain of new intelligence that had to be waded through. Phone records from all the contacts on the various burner phones were providing a mine of information on the local crims, as well as several further afield.
Forensics were stretched thin with a team at George Mason’s house, another going over Tamsyn’s car and her grandfather’s car; the Daniel Day and the Mari-morgans had been put on trailers and were on their way to a sterile garage where a specialist team would be looking for fingerprints, blood, gunshot residue and evidence that drugs had been on board. Rego also wanted to know if Ruçi’s body had been kept on either boat. They thought they’d matched the lividity marks to an area at the stern of Mason’s boat. It was still to be confirmed, but it was looking likely.
The Super was pressing Rego to have a forensics team at the Poldhu residence as well, and for Tamsyn to be suspended from duty, but so far Rego had held off on both of those, but if the evidence pointed in that direction, then he’d have to.
For now, Tamsyn was officially on sick leave.
Rego had his own problems, although they were insignificant compared to Tamsyn’s. The whole situation had developed quickly so he wasn’t worried that he’d be criticised for things that were out of his control, but he might have to explain why he hadn’t sent Tamsyn to a different police station as soon as there had been a suspicion that relatives of hers had been involved in the Ruçi case.
There would be a review of the intelligence and decisions he’d made, all of which had been recorded in his policy book. The on-going document included everything that he’d done and the reasons that he’d made those decisions. He was confident that he’d followed the national decision-making module guidelines: gathering information and intelligence, assessing threat and risk to develop a working strategy, considering powers and policies, identifying options and contingency planning, and constantly reviewing those decisions. At the heart of it was a guiding standard of ethics and professional standards that informed every officer’s decisions.
But questions were always asked, and when it came down to it, Mason was missing and Domi had escaped.
Rego was beginning to suspect from the quantity of blood they’d found that wasn’t Ozzie’s, that Mason was already dead. Even so, they had enough to issue a warrant to arrest both of the suspects, and details had been circulated in the UK on the PNC that Mason and Domi were ‘wanted for interview’. It was a longshot, and Rego believed that Domi was probably on his way back to Albania and swilling down Smirnoff or Rakia, or whatever they drank over there.
They had a long list of dealers and users that were going to find themselves face to face with arrest warrants, too. It would put the local drug trade out of business, at least for a while.
The Harbour Master at Newlyn had given Rego a list of the areas where Ozzie and George Mason had fished, with a description of the buoys and flags they used. Rego had passed this information to the lifeboat team and so far, they’d found five live lobsters and a number of small crabs – all had been thrown back in the sea and the pots retrieved for analysis. But there were still many more to find.
A Border Force cutter had hunted for the yacht that Domi was supposed to be rendezvousing with, but the search had been fruitless; it had slipped past them in the dark and had pinged near Cherbourg, then turned around and headed back to Portugal. He had to assume that Domi was now travelling overland to Albania.
Rego rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He needed to know what had really happened on the Mari-morgans – he wanted to take Tamsyn’s word for it but he couldn’t.
He’d been pleased that PC Smith had volunteered to go and fetch Tamsyn and her grandmother from the hospital that first morning. She’d made a big impression on E-team, and they were all worried about her.
His phone rang – it was DC Jack Forshaw who was heading up the search team at George Mason’s house.
“Sir, traces of blood have been found at Mason’s place. Forensics say that it was a large blood spatter, apparently from a serious wound. The blood type is the same as Ruçi’s but we won’t know if it’s an exact match until we can get DNA results back.”
“I want that fast-tracked,” said Rego.
“It’ll be at least a week, boss.” He paused. “But it’s looking like this is the place where the victim was killed.”
“Good work. Anything else?”
“A collection of kitchen knives as well as knives from his boat – forensics will be testing them all for blood, uh, human blood.”
Rego thought about Domi’s nickname, ‘the knife’ and suspected that he’d have used his own weapon for reprisals. The whole thing had seemed personal from the moment Domi decided to take care of business himself.
“The sniffer dog has been having a field day,” Forshaw added. “She’s indicated on just about every room in the house, but all we’ve found so far is a couple of baggies of weed.”
“What about a phone? There must be one – get a digital dog on it, if necessary.”
Rego knew that colleagues in Exeter had worked with the FBI to set up a programme for dogs to detect electronic storage devices, sniffing out the chemical compounds found in a circuit board. One of his success stories back in Manchester had been when a digi-dog had found a Pepsi can which was stuffed with SD cards.
Forshaw said he’d stay while SOCO officers continued to work the scene.
Rego was about to make another cup of awful coffee when his phone rang again.
“Boss,” came Tom Stevens’ voice. “A man’s body has been found washed up at Nanjizal beach, not far from Land’s End. Coastguard are there now.” He paused. “They found George Mason’s wallet in his pocket.”
“Positive ID?”
“Negative. The face is too messed up. Not sure we’ll get dental either – the victim was shot in the back of the head, execution style – and fish have been finishing off the rest.”
It gave Rego no pleasure to be proved right. And if it was Mason, it added another murder victim to Domi’s list.
“Thanks, Tom. I’m on my way.”