Grace was alone in the office, staring at her computer screen. On it was the hugely enhanced version of the last image she’d taken before Danny Robertshaw was shot. The one that showed the distant shape of a blue vehicle, which she’d been attempting to identify ever since.
The vehicle had been parked at an oblique angle to the camera, and she could only see the top half of it above a wall, making it harder still. From the dark patch in the centre, it looked like the rear door had been open when she’d clicked the shutter, further confusing the silhouette.
On a second screen, Grace went online and brought up a national car sales website, typed in a search for 4x4s. According to the database, there were over six thousand listed. She sighed as she began to scroll quickly down the first page, her eye running over the thumbnail images of each vehicle, looking for a shape that seemed right, familiar. Often the adverts contained multiple pictures taken from different slants. She investigated any that seemed to have the right boxy outline.
Grace was thirty pages into the website when her desk phone rang. Absently, she reached over and hit the speaker button, leaving her hands free to roam keyboard and mouse.
“Grace McColl, is it?” A man’s voice, a little wary, often the case with people making first contact with the police.
“CSI McColl, yes,” she corrected automatically, distracted. Daihatsu Fourtrack? No, windows are too big at the back. “How can I help?”
She scrolled further down the page as she spoke. The older Nissan Patrol models had the right square cast, but still not quite there. It took Grace a few moments to register that her caller hadn’t responded. She frowned at the silent telephone.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Still here,” the man said without impatience. “Just wanted to say I’m sorry, that’s all.”
Grace froze. Very slowly, as if he could see any sudden moves, she took her hands off the keyboard and sat upright. Pushed back from the desk so she was out of sight of the window.
“To whom am I speaking? And what is it, exactly, for which you have to be sorry?”
“Won’t do any good to give you my name,” the man said. “And I think you know what I’m on about, right enough.”
Grace let that go. Her mind darted through a hundred possibilities, eyes scanning the room as if for some means of self-defence. Her gaze touched on Richard Sibson’s desk, abandoned by Ty Frost now. The memo recorder Sibson habitually used was sitting on a pile of papers. Silently, she grabbed it, held it low behind her to muffle the click as she activated the record button.
“So, why are you calling me?’ she asked, using the cover of speech to set the recorder down, very gently, near the phone.
“Not to crow, if that’s what you’re thinking.” There was a long pause. Grace tilted her head, shut her eyes, but heard nothing in the background, no convenient trains going over points, no nearby construction, no traffic.
“Why, then?”
“Fired at the uniform, not the man.” He sounded casually regretful. “Won’t happen again.”
Grace heard no suppressed emotion in his voice. No madness, no fanaticism; a sane mind, if that were possible.
She knew she was supposed to humour him, but couldn’t bring herself to deference. Not with two bodies in the hospital morgue.
“You mean you won’t shoot again?” she asked, deliberately flat. “Or you won’t miss?”
That got a reaction, a slight grunt. She’d surprised rather than angered him.
She heard footsteps and the office door was pushed open. Grace signalled furiously for silence, glanced up and saw Chris Blenkinship wrong-footed in the doorway, mouth open.
“Saw what you did on that field,” the man’s voice said, measured. “Wanted you to know you’re not a target. Never were.”
“How can you say that?” Grace demanded quietly, ignoring the way Blenkinship had come forwards, looming. “You fire at one of us, you fire at all of us. Wasn’t it the same for you—in the military?”
“Ah…fishing now.” She panicked as she heard him detach, losing interest.
She added quickly, “Tell me what you want. Talk to me. Perhaps I can help you.” It stuck in her throat to make the offer, to mould sincerity into her voice.
“What I want, I’ll get without your help,” he said. “I know you found the hide. Good work that was, but it won’t make much difference in the long run.”
No triumph still, no smug satisfaction. He was entirely matter-of-fact. Maybe that’s what touched a nerve with Blenkinship. He leaned over her shoulder, snapped at the phone.
“Listen, you lunatic, we’ll get you—!”
Grace made a grab for his arm.
“Don’t need to listen to that.” A quietly underlying anger gave cut to his words. “You won’t find me. You certainly won’t stop me. Don’t put your people in my way. This is not your fight.”
“What about Angela Inglis?” Grace shot Blenkinship a warning glare. “Was it her fight? What did she do to become a target?”
“When you work that out, you’ll know,” the man said. “Meanwhile, there’s rules of engagement. Don’t change ’em.”
Rules? There are rules to any of this? “I have my job to do,” Grace said, stubborn. “I won’t be scared out of doing it.”
“No, you won’t at that. You be careful, now, CSI Grace McColl.”
And with that he rang off, leaving them both staring at a dead telephone. The reels of the little memo recorder wound on into the silence.