The light was nearly gone. Walking at a funereal pace behind the ragged line of the search team, the steadily dropping sun elongated Grace’s shadow until it stretched across the grass to brush their feet.
She rechecked the coordinates again on her hand-held GPS.
“How much further, d’you reckon?” one of the sergeants asked, waving through the clouds of midges. There was doubt in his words, his face, that he was only just keeping in check. He would not continue to do so, Grace recognised, for much longer.
“Not far,” she said, more confident than she felt. Richard Sibson had backed her theory or he wouldn’t have let her tie up personnel, she reminded herself. Even if Chris Blenkinship pointedly chose to stay behind at the field. If he’d thought there was any chance she was right, he wouldn’t have let her do this without him.
“We must be close to a mile out.” The sergeant shaded his eyes as he turned back to stare in the direction they’d come. “Can’t have fired from this far, surely?”
“The witnesses agreed there was a gap of several seconds between Mrs Inglis being hit and the sound of the shot. That points to distance.”
The sergeant looked about to comment on the well-known veracity of witnesses, but shrugged instead.
Then one of the search team stopped and raised his hand, creating a bow in the line until the message filtered along. They halted, heads turning in a long ripple. Grace and the sergeant hurried forwards.
“Been some digging here,” said the searcher who’d stopped. A young lad, not long out of training and red-faced at the attention.
Grace squatted down, careful to keep a distance.
Behind her, the sergeant said dismissively, “Animals, most likely.”
“Only if they’ve mastered using a turf cutter.” Grace pointed to a faint outline just visible in the grass. “OK, mark it.” She rose, giving the young searcher a brilliant smile. “Well done. I think you might have found our hide.”
“You want me to radio in to Mr Sibson?” the sergeant asked. Grace nodded, already unshouldering her camera, but a minute or so later he returned with the news that Sibson had not been available. “But Mr Blenkinship says he’s on his way,” he reported without inflection. “You want to wait until he gets here?”
“I don’t think so,” Grace said briskly, hiding her disappointment. No point in asking the ground troops to take sides.
She worked quickly. By the time Chris Blenkinship arrived, flustered, nearly an hour later, Grace had confirmed the find. Dressed in another Tyvek suit, hood pulled tight around her face, she had carefully dug round the cut edges of turf and discovered a chickenwire layer underneath, so the whole thing could be lifted as a whole to reveal the dugout hide beneath, the framework of crushed branches that had supported the roof of the structure, like a tent.
“Grace!” he said, striding forwards. “What—?”
“Stop there, Chris,” she commanded. He froze, angry. “I’m still waiting for treadplates. Until then, I’d rather no-one else approached the scene.”
He simmered visibly. “I’ve some in the van. Sergeant! Give me a hand.”
Nevertheless, laying the protective plates to form a common approach path enabled Grace to sift through the location for a short while longer. She was still working, head down, when Chris’s figure finally towered above her.
“You were told to wait!”
“We’re already past dew-point and time is of the essence,” Grace pointed out calmly. “Where’s Richard?”
Blenkinship jerked his head and she saw the tall gangling figure of Sibson making his way across the grass. “So, what have we got?”
Grace sat back on her heels. He was a big man, she noted dispassionately, who nevertheless lacked the physical presence of Nick Weston. It was in her analytical nature to wonder why.
“It’s a very cleverly dug hide.” As Sibson drew nearer, she switched her attention. “That bank of nettles shields it from the front and, because of the slight drop of the land and the way it’s constructed, it would be very difficult to spot when it was occupied.” She nodded over to where some of the search team still lingered. “If a sharp-eyed young constable hadn’t had his wits about him, we would have walked right over it.”
“Yeah, good work,” Blenkinship dismissed, impatient. “Anything left inside?”
“Well, I’ve only just started, but there’s some hair that might have come from our sniper. I’ve bagged it and—”
“OK, pet,” Blenkinship interrupted. “You’ve done enough.”
Grace straightened slowly, flicked her eyes towards her boss who was standing silently alongside. “Enough?” she queried, looking to her boss for support.
“You worked all through last night, Grace,” Sibson said quietly. “Tired people make mistakes, and we can’t afford any on this one.” He skimmed her stunned face. “Chris will take over.”
“How does anything I’ve done so far classify as a mistake?”
Blenkinship coloured. “Well, getting your face plastered all over the tabloids isn’t exactly a good career move.”
“Maybe not,” Grace returned. “But it was either that or watch a man bleed to death in front of me.” She stepped up out of the hide, so she could meet him on a level. “I didn’t realise at the time that anyone chose not to go to his aid because they were worried how it would look on their next performance review.”
I must be tired, she thought with an inward groan, watching the anger tighten his features. He stepped in closer, would have bitten back had Sibson not put a warning arm between them.
“Go home, Grace,” Sibson murmured. “You’ve done good work here, but don’t spoil it. Let’s just say emotions are running high and leave it at that, shall we?”
Grace stepped back, face blank. Blenkinship held out his hand and, for a ridiculous moment, she thought he was asking her to shake. Then she realised what he wanted and dropped the sealed evidence bag containing the few strands of hair into his outstretched palm.
He nodded shortly, dismissing her.
“We’ll get this rushed through the lab,” Sibson said.
But Grace had already walked away.