by Jack Probyn
Tucking the final few strands of her hair beneath the hood, and pinching the mask over the top of her nose, she stepped into the room. When she stopped at the foot of the bed, she noticed the en suite to the right. Perfect. Smaller and a much more manageable task than the rest of the room.
Upon entering, she surveyed the walls and furniture, and noticed it was clean. Too clean. As though it had been industrially cleaned only a few hours ago. Already her mind was beginning to imagine the last tenant, cleaning after themselves, moving about the bathroom, making sure nobody would find out what they’d touched and where exactly they’d touched it. Her old mentor had once told her that evidence was like true love. Time and care had to be dedicated to it when uncovering it, and once discovered, it needed to be protected at all costs.
Charlotte reached inside the bag, found her zephyr brush and flake powder, and set to work. First, she started with the sink, rubbing the fine animal hairs on the aluminium powder before transferring it onto the surface. A thin dust billowed into the air as it made contact with the porcelain, and she carried on regardless, methodically moving her way around the basin until its entire surface was covered. Then she moved to the cabinet, wiping an extra load of powder on the bottom-left corner and on the shelves, the prominent touch points.
Within a few seconds, she had something. A thumbprint. Followed by another. And then another.
Charlotte leant closer and inspected the minutiae of the three prints. The bifurcation. The core. The delta. The pore. The beauty of it. She wondered who they might belong to, trying to conceive of their appearance, their mannerisms, their final few moments before leaving a perfect stain. They’d make fantastic characters in her book.
Smiling, she delicately set the brush aside on the bathroom sink, removed a piece of adhesive tape from her bag and set it on the first of the three prints. Then she peeled the tape free from the surface and smoothed it down onto a piece of Cobex – a thin plastic sheet. She scored the ends of the tape, signed and sealed the evidence in a plastic bag, and then repeated the process for the remaining two.
‘Bye-bye, little beauties,’ she whispered playfully. ‘Let’s see what details you can tell us.’
She pocketed her findings and headed downstairs. She was under strict instructions to notify the crime scene manager as soon as she’d found something of interest.
‘Guv,’ she said, holding the evidence bags in front of his face. His features were concealed behind the white mask, yet his dark eyes growled at her. ‘I found this. Fingerprints. From the en suite upstairs.’
‘What’s special about them?’ he replied, deadpan.
‘They’re fresh from the cabinet on the wall. One on the door and two on the shelves. The entire bathroom looks like it’s been cleaned; there’s not a single print on the rest of the surfaces. Nothing on the taps, toilet seat, shower head. Nothing.’
‘Interesting. Now upload them to Ident1,’ he ordered and turned his back on her.
As she started off, he pulled her back by the arm gently. ‘Oh,’ he began, ‘erm… good… excellent work.’
Charlotte said nothing as she headed out of the house. The attempt at making her feel better was acknowledged but not accepted. It was just a shame she couldn’t tell him what she really thought about him. If she could, she was sure she would have lost her job months ago, before everything else between them began. If she ever needed a disgruntled, backstabbing dictator for one of her books, then he was the perfect man for the job.
CHAPTER 25
HOLE 13
Jake and Bridger’s abrupt presence alerted everyone in the vicinity of Farnham Golf Club’s car park. Heads snapped towards them like meerkats on guard, and some of the would-be golfers retreated a few steps; more to protect their expensive gear from getting hit by the car and kicked-up gravel than themselves. Jake had never golfed before, but he’d been around several golfers at university, and he knew that they often treated their equipment with more care and attention than anything else.
Jumping out of the car, Jake slammed the door behind him and jogged over to the club’s entrance, slipping into the building after Bridger. They were standing in the middle of what looked like an upmarket version of Sports Direct. Golf clubs dangled from the walls, trollies were placed neatly in a row beneath and there were racks of clothes, shirts, gloves and trousers in the centre of the space. At the other end of the building was a reception desk. A sign that said ‘Restaurant This Way’ hung above, pointing to another door in the far-left corner of the room.
‘Can I help, gentlemen?’ a concerned voice came from behind the counter.
‘Are you the owner?’ Bridger asked, reaching into his trouser pocket.
‘Yes. James Atwood. This is my establishment. Is something wrong?’
Bridger flashed his warrant card. ‘We’re investigating a murder and a robbery in Guildford High Street. Have you seen – or has anyone handed in – a set of keys today? Or anything mysterious that may have been found on the course?’
James Atwood’s brow furrowed as the obvious question crossed his face: what the hell did a set of keys have to do with a robbery and murder?
‘We’ve only been open about an hour,’ he said. ‘I doubt anyone’s made it all the way round yet.’
‘Is there… is there anybody who will know for certain?’ Jake asked, trying not to sound too condescending. He took a step back to allow Bridger to take control.
James’s face contorted.
‘It’s urgent,’ Bridger said, feigning a sincere smile.
James arched his back away from them and twisted his head to look down a small corridor to the right. ‘Denise, love – has anyone handed in any keys?’
A second later, a distant voice cried back, ‘Yeah. About half an hour ago. Think I put them in the safe.’
James grunted and then ducked beneath the cash desk. The noise of a six-digit pin being entered into the safe sounded, and within a moment, he reappeared.
‘Is this it?’ he asked. In his hand he held a small key, as brown and rusty as the one Jake had found in Candice’s bathroom.
‘Excellent. Yes. That’s the one.’ Bridger snatched it from James. ‘May we speak with Denise for a moment?’
‘I… I don’t see why not.’ James shrugged and called Denise again. She arrived a few seconds later, drying a dinner plate with a tea towel. Dressed in a thin white blouse that was cut low, hair tied up, she looked out of place, as though she’d be better suited behind a bar somewhere rather than a high-end golf club.
‘Would you be able to describe the person who gave you this key?’ Bridger asked.
‘It was a woman. Young. Maybe in her mid-twenties. Said she found it in the car park.’
‘Was she alone?’
Denise nodded.
‘What did she look like? Do you have any CCTV footage?’
‘Yeah.’
Bingo.
‘Do you mind if we take a look?’
‘Certainly. Please follow me.’
Holding the plate in one hand and flinging the tea towel over her shoulder, Denise turned her back on them and headed down the corridor she’d just come from. She led them into a cramped office that was barely large enough for the three of them. Lever-arch files rested perilously on the shelf’s edge, bowing it in the middle. And beneath them was a computer monitor, showing the live feed from the CCTV cameras posted around the clubhouse and car park.
‘Would you be able to go back to when the person entered the shop please?’ Bridger asked.
Jake removed his pocketbook in preparation and Denise did as instructed. As soon as she’d finished, she prodded the return key with an oversized finger and played the footage. Jake crouched so that the screen was at eye level and rested his elbow on the desk, watching, waiting for the woman to enter.
And then she did.
Pen pressed to paper, Jake made a note of the timestamp – 09:55:32. Nearly an hour after the heist. The woman entered the shop, sauntered up to the ca
sh desk, handed over the key and then left, heading back to her car. Her face was hidden behind a baseball cap, and she was dressed in a short white skirt, a black-and-white-striped shirt and held a golf club in her hand. At the back of her head, poking through the baseball cap, was a brunette ponytail.
Jake continued to watch the woman’s movements. After she was finished with her car, she grabbed a trolley and wheeled it away, disappearing onto the golf green.
‘Can you go back a few minutes please?’ Jake asked.
Denise rewound the video, and Jake told her when to pause it. He leant closer, removed his phone and photographed the still, heavily pixelated image of the woman’s face. He wasn’t sure whether she was a suspect, or whether she was a Good Samaritan, but he was going to make sure he found out.
‘Would you be able to zoom in on the car park?’ Jake said as he adjusted his positioning to ease the aching in his joints. He was only twenty-four but the grief his knees and back gave him made him feel forty years older.
‘I can try,’ Denise replied. ‘The image isn’t very good though.’
‘I’m sure we can work with it.’ Jake glanced up at Bridger for an approving look and then returned his attention back to the screen when it came.
Once Denise had gone back to the image of the car park, he took another photo. This time of the number plate. He zoomed in on the photograph he’d taken. It was illegible.
‘Do you mind if my colleagues seize this as evidence?’ Bridger asked. ‘I can get someone down here soon. We’re working on a murder investigation.’
At the mention of those final two words, Denise’s eyes bulged. Jake sensed that it was more out of curiosity and excitement than fear that a killer may have set foot on her golf course. Something to spice up the mundanity of swinging a ball and wandering around a field all day to find it, Jake supposed.
‘Anything we can do to help,’ she said, nodding excitably.
As they returned to the cash desk, Bridger thanked both James and Denise for their time, and then the two of them exited the premises. A wall of dense, stifling heat punched the air from Jake’s lungs as he breached into the open. Moving across the car park, he inspected the cars’ number plates. From the footage, he’d been able to discern the make and model of what he was looking for: a silver Audi A3. And, in front of him right now, he was faced with a row of black Range Rovers and Volvos.
‘She’s gone,’ Jake said, thinking aloud as Bridger unlocked the car.
‘Maybe she finished early. Maybe there was an emergency. We’ve got what we came for.’
‘Hmm.’ Jake was dubious. Something wasn’t sitting right with him – something that was niggling at the back of his mind like the letter that was still on the table back home from HMRC telling him that he owed them a substantial amount of money that he didn’t have. ‘I think there are more keys out there.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Bridger shut the door gently.
‘The note. It said “roll the dice and find out which one, or three, will be the winner”. I don’t think we should go back to the house only to realise we’ve got the wrong one – that we’ve missed some.’
Bridger fell silent and looked out at the gorgeous stretch of green in front of him, pockmarked by small holes of yellow. ‘Nice thinking. But we’ll have to be quick – we’ve got the other clues to find and I’m conscious of the time.’
Jake didn’t need reminding. The ticking was silently reverberating around his skull with every passing second, counting down until those spikes impaled themselves in Candice’s flesh.
Bridger locked the car again, pocketed the keys and rounded the bonnet. ‘I’ll start at the first hole; you start at the last. Then we’ll meet in the middle, yeah?’
Jake nodded his assent and headed right, towards the eighteenth hole. The course was mapped out in a circle, and it didn’t take long for Jake to lose sight of his partner. He sprinted to every hole, checking inside the flag and the surrounding area, but found nothing in the first three.
Jake jogged up and down the undulating surfaces, his legs quickly fatiguing as he covered the massive distances between each hole. Despair quickly sank in. He was approaching the fourteenth hole and he still hadn’t found anything. But he was determined not to give up. Breathless, he slowed his pace to a jog that was more like a walk than a run.
On the fourteenth hole, Jake stopped by the course’s sandbank. He scanned the surroundings, made sure he was alone and that there was no one else in the vicinity, then removed his phone.
‘Danika?’ he said, holding the device close to his ear as he walked towards the next hole.
‘Jake – are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. What’s going on your end?’
‘It’s busy. Non-stop. Everyone seems to have disappeared to the crime scene, but I’m pulling some research together for the team now. Oh! And uniformed officers found Roger Heathcote in the middle of the road, collapsed.’
‘Is he OK?’
‘They found him passed out from exhaustion. He was checked over by paramedics then they brought him here. Turns out he’s a family lawyer, owns his own company with his wife.’ Danika hesitated. ‘What’s it like down where you are?’
‘It’s worse than we thought,’ Jake replied, filing away what Danika had told him to examine later. He was grateful that he’d now caught his breath. Too many snacks, sugary drinks and long moments of inactivity. Not to mention the gluttonous portions Elizabeth placed on his plate every night because she was afraid he was starving during work. ‘We found Candice Strachan, but she’s got a collar bomb strapped to her neck. The only way to disarm it is by finding four sets of keys. We’re in the middle of sourcing them now.’
‘Jézus.’ Danika’s voice was swamped with deep concern. ‘What about The Crimsons? You were right about that, eh.’
‘I wish I wasn’t.’
‘Do you know where they are?’
‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me. Have there been any sightings of them?’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
‘OK.’ Jake hesitated and looked around him one last time, searching for anyone listening nearby. When he realised he was alone, he swallowed and kept his voice low.
‘Danika – I need to ask you for a couple of favours.’
‘OK…’
‘Can you keep me in the loop? Anything that comes into the office relating to The Crimsons, I’d like to know about it. Something about this entire thing is throwing me off. I’d just like to be prepared, look like I’m on the ball, that kind of thing. Any information you can give me will go a long way, especially if we’re on the road.’
On the phone, Jake heard someone in the office approach Danika and stop by her side. They asked her a question and she replied, quickly getting rid of them.
‘Who was that?’ Jake asked as he listened to the footsteps disappear.
‘Just someone I spoke to earlier. Nothing you need to worry about.’
‘OK. Fine. There’s one more thing.’ Jake was expecting a response from Danika, but when one didn’t come, he continued, ‘You’re in charge of research, right? Good. I want you to find out everything you can about Candice Strachan.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something doesn’t seem right. She started talking to me about my watch and the fact that I look like her son, and it just… it seemed odd. I just think it’ll be worth investigating her, so we know she’s kosher.’
‘Does Pemberton know you’re asking me to do this?’
‘No… not yet. I don’t want to distract her. She’s snowed under at the moment and her thoughts must be going a hundred plus. If I’m going to say anything, I want to be armed with the facts.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Thank you. I have every faith you won’t fuck it up,’ Jake said playfully.
‘You really are a prick sometimes, Jake Tanner,’ Danika said and hung up. Jake felt a little lighter.
The thirteenth hol
e was in sight. He jogged the remaining twenty feet and peered into it. An object glimmered in the sunlight. Jake reached inside and retrieved the key. It was almost identical to the one James Atwood had given them. The same size. The same colour. The same texture. And, beneath it, was another note.
Jake was too excited to read it. Instead, he pocketed it, along with the key, and hurried round the rest of the course where he eventually met up with Bridger at the ninth hole.
‘You got one as well?’ Bridger asked, holding another key in his hands. ‘You’ve come a long way from making coffees in the office.’
Jake smirked. ‘Not just a pretty face, am I?’
‘No one’s ever said that. Except maybe your mum.’
‘Hers is the only opinion that matters. Now, stop wasting time and let’s get back to Pemberton.’
CHAPTER 26
DIRECT MATCH
Bridger manoeuvred the car into the same spot they’d picked it up from. By now, the forensic team had set up a perimeter around The Crimsons’ van, cordoned off by tape, and small markers were dispersed around the vehicle, signalling points of evidence that were not to be touched. A group of three SOCOs clad in their white oversuits were inside the back of the vehicle. Flashes sparked from inside as they snapped photographs of new pieces of evidence.
Jake was first out of the car and made his way to the garden. He came to a stop as soon as he realised it was no longer just Pemberton and Candice situated in the centre of the grass. In the time they’d been gone, four members of the bomb disposal unit had arrived and replaced the armed officers from before. The bomb squad looked like characters from a video game dressed in dark grey bomb suits – heavy-duty outfits designed to protect them from the threat of potential detonation – and helmets of the same colour.
