Joad scratched his head in annoyance. Over the weekend he had drawn a complete blank on Hanlon. His friend in personnel, HR as he now had to call it, had been transferred, and he could no longer access addresses of serving officers. The Data Protection Act seemed to be taken very seriously indeed these days. He had tried a couple of exploratory approaches but had been warned off. He’d then got in touch with an old drinking buddy in the Met, to see if he could shed any light on Hanlon’s whereabouts. Again, a total blank. Hanlon was one of those people who everyone felt they knew, but nobody actually did. He couldn’t go back empty-handed to Belanov.
What he did next, struck him as genius.
‘Hey, Dave,’ he’d said to the desk sergeant at Summertown. ‘Hi, Ian, busy are you these days. Caught the St Giles flasher yet?’ Someone had been exposing themselves to women, students and tourists, in the centre of Oxford and Joad had been given the case. Three of the women had said ‘there was something funny’ – that is, strange – about the man’s genitals. Beyond that and the fact he had long hair, Joad had made little progress.
He was in no hurry.
‘I think he’s a foreigner, Dave,’ said Joad seriously. ‘But I tell you what is strange, several of the women have mentioned seeing an Audi around at the time.’
‘An Audi,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘You amaze me, Phil. Not an Audi, oh, there’s probably only, what, a few thousand in Oxford. You’ve practically nailed him. Promotion beckons.’
‘Very funny, Dave,’ said Joad. ‘It was an Audi, like that bloody arsey woman from London was driving, the DCI. Here for the Fuller inquiry.’
‘DCI Hanlon. A TTS Coupé?’ said the desk sergeant.
‘No way was it a TTS Coupé. It was an RS,’ countered Joad. ‘No, it bloody well wasn’t.’
‘RS. I used to be in Traffic.’ ‘So did I. It was a TTS.’
‘Bet you a fiver it wasn’t.’ Joad dangled the offer of the money provocatively and the desk sergeant took the bait.
‘Done,’ said the sergeant. ‘Prove it!’ said Joad.
He shrugged and typed into the keyboard in front of him, calling up the CCTV images from Friday and the approximate time. Both men watched as Hanlon’s scarlet Coupé rolled into the station car park and neatly reversed into an empty bay. The camera froze on the image of the bonnet and front number plate.
The desk sergeant looked at Joad in triumph. Ian Joad sighed and pulled out his wallet.
‘Better luck next time,’ called the sergeant.
As soon as Joad was round the corner, he pulled his notebook out and jotted down the number.
Five minutes later, he ran her plates through the PNC and had her address.
Bingo! he thought.
But if Joad was stalking Hanlon, Huss was stalking Joad. DI Huss approached the desk sergeant with her firm, steady walk and land-girl physique. She was from generations of Oxfordshire farming stock and looked it. There were three hundred years of Husses in the local churchyard. Her lineage would have stretched way back beyond then, before recorded history for the non-aristocracy.
She could drive a tractor at ten; her father’s old second-hand MoD Land Rover when she was eleven. Now he relied upon her to fix it. It was a Series 2 1964 Land Rover, which made it almost a quarter of a century older than Huss.
She could repair fences, milk cows, trim hedges, plough and harvest. She could butcher a cow, pig or sheep, and her baking skills were formidable. She could do her father’s tax returns and sort out his computer, apart from the occasion when he had attacked it in a fury with his powerful, scarred fists. She was also a regular finalist in the BASC twelve-bore shooting contests in Oxfordshire.
Police work was dealt with in the same can-do spirit, but like most farmers Huss had a formidable temper.
Like all her family, indeed like most country people, she also held a grudge, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Huss hated Joad.
It was Huss’s self-appointed mission to get Joad sacked. One day, please God, he would really mess up incontrovertibly.
‘Hi, Dave,’ she said cheerily to the desk sergeant.
‘DI Huss. Are you still free for the darts night next week?’
Dave Rennison ran the police team and Huss was probably his most talented player. It was a source of grave regret to him that the younger police didn’t seem interested in the game at all. Too busy farting around with stupid electronic things.
‘Wouldn’t miss it for all the world. What was Joady after, Dave?’
The sergeant explained. Huss thanked him, then walked off and out of the building. The desk sergeant’s reply had given her plenty to think about.
Huss was now heading back to the Blenheim Hotel, where she hoped that Irek would have the information she needed on access to Fuller’s room.
She arrived sooner than she wanted at the Blenheim and to kill some time, trotted up the steps of the Ashmolean Museum opposite.
She sat on a bench in the first gallery that she came to, oblivious to the paintings around her, and thought about Joad. One thing Joad did know about was cars. She’d heard him shooting his mouth off often enough, about the merits of this gearbox compared with that, where to buy the best tyres locally, the strengths and weaknesses of this new car versus that. A lot of it, she suspected, would be recycled Top Gear or What Car? gossip, but he would have known what car Hanlon drove.
That was without a shadow of a doubt.
No, he wanted that image so he could get her number plate details. It had to be that. Nothing else made sense.
Huss now jumped to the right conclusion, but the wrong reasons. Obsessed as she was by the Fuller case, she assumed that Joad would be gathering information to sell to journalists about the investigation. Hanlon’s car registration could well give Joad access to more personal details. And if he was going down the press-informant route, why stop at Hanlon? She and Templeman could end up splashed across some Sunday supplement or on a TV programme.
It had to be that. Only sex or money would motivate Joad, and even Joad wouldn’t be stupid enough to try it on with Hanlon.
As soon as I get back to the station, I’m pulling Joad’s roster schedules, she thought. He’ll want to see the journalist in person in order to get paid. With Joad, it’d be cash all the way.
He’s not going to be paid in anything traceable. I’m going to follow that bastard.
She thought there was one good thing about a useless cop like Joad. She could follow him mounted on her father’s prize bull and he would never notice.
Satisfied with her decision, she left the Ashmolean, crossed the road and headed up the steps of the Blenheim, to see if Irek had any information for her.
Twenty minutes later she reappeared with a face like thunder. Irek did indeed have information for her. Someone had used an executive pass key to enter Fuller’s room at five past eleven on the Friday morning.
At that time, Fuller was being interviewed by DCI Temple- man. The new evidence would now be totally inadmissible. The crime scene had been irrevocably compromised.
Huss shook her head mentally in irritation at the thought of having to tell Hanlon she had been right all along.
Joad, you bastard, she thought venomously. You should have thought of this. Well, I’m going to make sure you get done for something, even if it kills me.