BEING ALL ROUND GOOD BLOKES
THE MOBILE FINGERPRINT VAN WAS PARKED IN THE DELIVERY YARD of Ansell’s Bakery. A yeasty smell of dough and fresh-baked bread wafted out from the open delivery bay as a file of workers came down a short flight of steps and began to assemble in the yard, bakers in white coats and caps, accounts clerks in sleeveless pullovers, and three managers in identical grey striped suits, white shirts, and blue ties.
The manager, Malcolm Whiting, checked his list of employees to ensure, that as requested by the police, all male staff were present. His head nodded as he silently counted the workers and then turned and nodded at Yarrow, who felt that this vital fingerprinting procedure was too important to allocate to anyone else. Like Shuggie McDermott, he too felt that they were within smelling distance of their man.
‘Thank you, Mr. Whiting, thank you, everybody, for agreeing to come out in the yard like this, no doubt you’ve seen these mobile fingerprinting vans before, around the town.’
As he said this, the killer, who had insinuated himself to the rear of the assembled workers, felt a sudden shiver, a cold hand of apprehension; this was not a routine visit, he was sure of it and looked about wildly as if seeking a way to flee. ‘As you know, we are looking for the cold-blooded murderer of four-year-old Emily Black,’ and a murmur of anger rippled around the yard, ‘and we’ve asked that all males aged between 16 and 65 voluntarily, voluntarily, be fingerprinted and I’m sure that most of you, being all round good blokes have already done so,’ and this time the murmur was of agreement not anger.
‘However, we have a problem, a lot of the fingerprint cards have been damaged. They are stored in the basement at the police station on Wentland Street, we had a burst water pipe, no one quite knows why, but the basement was flooded, and a lot of cards damaged.’
As he heard the burnt-faced copper say this, John knew it was a lie, his heart pounded fiercely, there was no way out of this short of making a run for it and he was sure that the police would have the place surrounded, maybe even have hidden snipers on the roof, he was trapped.
Furtively, he looked around but nobody seemed to be paying any special attention to him but maybe ‘they’ were, ‘they’ were sure to be around somewhere, and panic began to rise. ‘So, as I say,’ continued Yarrow, ‘we have to take a lot of prints again and so we are calling at a number, a considerable number in fact, of factories, warehouses, and shops, to take them again, and so with the kind agreement of your management I would ask that you all step forward and be printed, even though you may have already done so previously. Thank you.’
One by one the workers and office staff shuffled forwards. He was trapped, there was nowhere to go, and irrevocably he shuffled forward with the rest of his workmates, until it came to his turn, and as if mounting the steps to the scaffold, he slowly climbed up the steps and into the van for fingerprinting.
As he stepped up into the van, he had a shock of recognition, the WPC who took down the names of every man being printed was the police-bitch who had been nosing about on Effington Street that day. He recovered himself when he saw that the WPC gave no sign of recognising him and so he gave her his name, he had to, no option, Jack Reynolds, one of the bakers, stood close behind him and would have heard if he had given a false name. He then had his hand inked by the other copper who had been with the police-bitch that day and his prints were taken; right-hand thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger.
However, he still told himself that he was in the clear, I know for sure that I left no prints anywhere in the hospital, dead certain of that. Fingerprints on the body, they can’t take fingerprints from a dead body, can they? Can they? No, of course not. I’m in the clear. Clear! Clear!
Clear!