Grace was still gripping her arm when she reached her office, to find Ty Frost, the young CSI from Workington, installed at her desk. He was tapping furiously at his laptop and slurping Red Bull straight from the can. She paused in the doorway and he glanced up, instantly sheepish.
“Sorry, Grace.” He pushed his frameless glasses further up his nose. “Mr Blenkinship said it would be OK to set up shop in here.”
She found a reassuring smile as he scrambled out of her way. “Don’t worry about it.”
Frost’s embarrassment faded as he noticed her odd stance. “Are you all right? What’s the matter with your arm?”
“Nothing,” Grace said, distracted. “I just need…ah, could you uncap that felt pen for me?”
Frowning, Ty reached for an indelible marker, holding it out nervously as though offering lump sugar to a bad-tempered horse.
“Um, if you could just put a couple of little dots on my arm…there and there. That’s it. Right where I’ve got my finger and thumb… Thanks.” She finally let go, took the pen and recapped it.
“And what was that in aid of?”
“Do you know a Special here called Jim Airey?”
“Don’t think so.” Frost shook his head. “Why?”
“Well, he’s in reception with his daughter, who’s got some very suspicious looking marks around her neck. So, I provoked Airey into grabbing me—”
She didn’t need to finish. Understanding leapt into Frost’s moon face. He nodded to the pen marks he’d just made on her arm. “You should be able to use those as an exact frame of reference to calculate his hand span and see if he’s the one who tried to throttle her,” he finished. “Sneaky.”
He closed down the file he was working on, hardly glancing at the keyboard, then opened up another program from the menu, flicking her a sideways grin. “Want to give me those measurements, then?”
Grace rummaged for a tape measure, wound it around her arm from one pen mark to the other, reading off the distance between Airey’s forefinger and thumb. Frost input the information, peering at the screen.
“Ah. One other thing,” Grace added as the image of the hand morphed to fit the parameters. “Airey is missing the top of his right index finger. To the first knuckle—there.
Frost pursed his lips but bent over his keys without a murmur.
“There you go.” He turned the laptop round slightly to face her, tried putting his own hand over the top. His rather long digits overlapped by half a centimetre at the ends.
Grace looked at the image. “Is this actual size?”
“Uh-huh.” Frost wiggled his fingers. “Small hands for a bloke, hasn’t he?”
“Hm.” Grace sighed. “The trouble is, I won’t get the girl’s agreement to examine her closely enough to prove a match, so I’ve probably done more harm than good.”
Frost held up a finger. “No. No, not necessarily. They were in reception, did you say? Let me just…” He spun back to the desk, fingers scuttering over the laptop keys. “I just downloaded some new software from the States. Allows you to freeze video footage and work up a 3D model.”
“And reception is covered by CCTV.” Grace moved to the phone, dialled down to the front desk. “Thank you, Tyson,” she said while the line rang out, flashing him a brilliant smile. “You’re a genius.”
“It’s just basic photogrammetry techniques. They developed it originally for digital effects—you know, in the movies,” His face was the most animated Grace had ever seen it. “Did you see Fight Club? No, never mind,” he muttered before she could answer. “Um, of course, it might not actually work,” he pointed out. “I’ve agreed to be one of the beta testers. It’s still kind of experimental.”
He had an untidy air that brought to mind an overgrown schoolboy, with his shirttails hanging out of his trousers and his tie knot askew. But the laptop was the latest state-of-the-art design that had easily cost more than the old banger he drove.
“They’re going to nip up with a copy DVD of the security footage,” Grace said a few moments later, putting down the phone. It rang almost immediately.
“CSI McColl.”
“Grace? Chris Blenkinship,” said the voice at the other end, making an obvious effort to inject cordiality. The volume was such that Ty Frost gave a guilty start, as though caught shirking. “I just, ah, wondered how you were getting on with those calculations for the direction of the shot. I’ve had this CTC lad, Mercer, chasing me. Any joy?”
“I’m working on it.” Grace allowed no irritation into her voice. “Don’t worry. Richard’s still down at the scene. As soon as I have anything, I’ll take it straight to him for the search teams.”
“Oh, ah, right you are, pet. Knew we could count on you.”
Grace put the phone down wondering if she was being too sensitive in bridling at his use of “we”, found Frost eyeing her anxiously.
“Chris is not a bad bloke. Most of the time.”
She gave a rueful smile, brought her own computer out of standby and clicked into the maps she’d been studying before her encounter with the Aireys. She was tired, she recognised. Perhaps too tired to be doing this, but she couldn’t leave it. If she didn’t see it through now, the long night’s labours would be for nothing.
By reconstructing the showjumping wall and pinpointing as accurately as she could where Angela Inglis, Major Frederickson, and Max had been standing at the moment of impact, she reckoned she had just about narrowed down the only possible flight path of the bullet. The theodolite had been invaluable for calculating the angles. From the statements and sketches of the scene, she knew the round had passed within a hairsbreadth of Max.
Reaction sent a cold wash of fear down her spine. She shook her head, put it aside. According to Major Frederickson’s information, the most likely type of gun had a range of more than a mile. She zoomed out, put a radius around the GPS location she’d taken and there, as close as she could call it, was the search corridor.
As the printer spat out a dozen hard copies, Grace turned to the second shot. It was more difficult to track than the first. The bullet had passed through Danny Robertshaw and apparently nothing else. Blenkinship was trying to find the spent round, but no luck so far—at that kind of velocity, how far it might have continued on was anybody’s guess. Without knowing its point of origin, there was no way to tell where it might finally have gone to earth. They needed to narrow it down somehow.
Suddenly, Grace remembered the last image she’d taken. She’d spotted something in the distance, a vehicle perhaps, and snapped off just one frame before setting aside her camera and walking away from Sibson, calling to Robertshaw. Bringing him out into the open…
She shut her eyes, squeezed the bridge of her nose with forefinger and thumb, then reached for her camera bag. The memory card she’d been working on was tucked away in an inside pocket and she slid it into the reader permanently wired into her computer.
The card held four gigabytes and was close to capacity. The images downloaded with frustrating slowness.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, ignoring the way Ty Frost glanced round nervously.
“Going as fast as I can,” said a voice from the doorway. Both CSIs turned to see a uniformed sergeant with a DVD disk in his hand.
Grace took the disk, smiling an apology.
“Something important, is it?” the sergeant asked.
“We’re just checking out a new piece of recognition software,” she said, which wasn’t entirely untrue, but Ty Frost flushed, suddenly busied himself with his keyboard again.
The sergeant gave a disinterested grunt and departed. Grace handed the DVD to Frost, who slid it into his laptop. Grace wheeled her chair closer to hang over his shoulder.
The footage was a half-hour segment, which showed Grace leaving as well as returning. In between, the Aireys walked in, Jim ordering his daughter into a chair and bending to have what looked like a few fierce words before he disappeared into the station proper. Edith sat alone with her face averted, hardly moving. She didn’t react to Grace’s return until she actually sat down alongside.
“Can’t get a good look at her neck from this angle.”
“She looks up—when her father reappears and I rattle his cage.”
“You’re right,” Frost said moments later, slipping a covert glance in her direction. He let the footage run a little further, then backed it up to the best spot, froze the image, selected and enlarged it. His fingers danced over the keys, delicate as a concert pianist. Grace leaned in a little closer.
Gradually, Frost’s movements slowed and his eyes slid to meet hers, panic in them. “Erm, give us a bit of room, eh?” he said, squirming. “I can’t do it with you breathing down my neck.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just interested. This is fascinating.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed and he jerked his head towards her own desk. “Your pictures have finished downloading,” he said with an air of hopeful desperation.
Grace took the hint and pushed back across. She scrolled right the way down to the last shot that had come off the memory card. It was a landscape, quite ordinary and innocent-looking. Except that a few moments after it was taken, everything had changed forever.
She had been about to get a tripod so she could take a picture with maximum depth of field, which required a relatively long exposure to eliminate camera shake. But the light had been good and Grace knew she had steady hands. As she zoomed in she was pleased to see the definition remained reasonably crisp.
And as she did so, she glimpsed something pale blue and blocky shaped, like a van. Or…a 4x4; the type farmers favoured.
Something about the shape, the colour, teased and tormented at Grace in whispers too indistinct to be more than an annoyance.
The answer unfolded out of some corner of her mind like an inflating life raft, almost overwhelming her with its sudden arrival. There had been a pale blue vehicle, like a van, in the lay-by at the top of Orton Scar on the day Frederickson’s dog was killed. But where else had she seen it?
She hunted through the files, called up the right image and opened both on the screen. Even magnified as far as the resolution would allow, both remained frustratingly obscure. The distances involved were just too great to get a clear picture before it started to break down into individual pixels.
Grace sat back in defeat. It can’t be coincidence, she thought. There has to be a connection.
And as her mind ran back over the first incident, she remembered waiting for Nick to turn around to follow her back to the cottage. He’d disappeared up the hill in that blue Subaru of his. Would he remember a parked vehicle from a week ago?
While the images were printing off, she dialled Nick’s mobile number. It went straight through to his answering service. Hiding her impatience, she left him a brief message and got to her feet, gathering the printouts.
“I need to get back to the scene with these,” she said to Frost.
“Erm? Yeah, OK, right.” He barely turned his head, eyes glued to the screen. He groped for the Red Bull again. “Soon as I have something, I’ll let you know, OK?”
“Great.” Grace got to the doorway, hesitated a moment and turned back. “Oh, and Tyson—I’d appreciate it if you kept this Airey thing just between us. Whatever we get has been gathered without the Aireys’ knowledge or consent. It’ll be worthless in court.”
That did make him look up. “Yeah, but we’ll know,” he said. “Won’t we?”