‘God, yes,’ he gasped.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Henry looked up from the murder book and his mass of notes. The bulky form of Bill Robbins was leaning on the door frame. ‘No luck with found property, I take it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Never mind, good idea, though. Have you had something to eat?’
Bill shook his head.
‘Get something while they’re still open and then hang around will you? Not sure what’s happening to the star witness yet.’
Bill nodded, pushed himself upright and left the MIR to catch a meal in the canteen.
Henry closed the office door, not wanting any more disturbances. Better detectives than him had had cases seriously threatened by not keeping the murder book up to date. It was sometimes difficult to do, especially when things were happening, but there was never any excuse when the lawyers came into the equation, as they always did. And at the moment, Henry’s notes were in disarray. As he sat down he was immediately interrupted by a knock on the door, which opened without invitation as Rik Dean wafted in. Henry thought about saying something about manners, but bit his tongue.
‘Post-mortem carried out on Rory Costain,’ Rik announced brightly. ‘Only confirms what we already know — shot in the head, massive brain trauma, some lovely chunks of bullet recovered.’
‘We need to get them compared to the fragments recovered from Petrone, then the link will be conclusive, but I already believe it is. Can you fix that?’
‘I’ve already got it put through Scientific Support and a motorcyclist is on his way with them to the forensic lab.’
‘Good — and what about Billy Costain and Mandy Carter?’
‘The pathologist will do Billy this evening and Mandy in the morning.’ Rik checked his watch. ‘She wants to start in an hour and said she’d like you to be there for that one.’ Rik sneaked forward, bent slightly and wagged a finger at Henry. ‘And not just because you’re the SIO, I suspect. She spoke very affectionately about you.’ He raised his eyebrows and Henry half-thought he was going to say, ‘Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.’ Instead, Rik said, ‘You got something on the bubble with her?’
‘No,’ Henry said flatly, and if he could have, he would have sent Rik back to stand in on Billy’s PM, but he knew it was something he had to do — professionally and personally. ‘I’ll be there.’
Rik did then wink. ‘Just remember, pal. One day soon we may be kith and kin, you and me, so we now need to set the ground rules of infidelity.’ Henry scowled at him. ‘Like, if I stray and you find out — zip.’ Rik pretended to zip-up his lips. ‘And vice-versa… a family trust thing.’ He looped his forefingers together and pulled, like they were links in a chain.
Henry said tiredly, ‘My sister might be a doozy, but I actually think she’ll see right through you sooner rather than later, or, vice-versa, you’ll see through her, because she finds it equally hard to keep her panties on as you do your flies up. Don’t want to be a killjoy, but if you two ever get hitched I’ll show my ring-piece in Burton’s window.’
‘You can be very cutting, Henry.’
‘The truth often has a sharp edge to it.’ He looked down despondently at the murder book and closed it softly. He guessed it would be a midnight thing. ‘Fancy a bite?’
Freshened and sated, Donaldson was back in Henry’s study looking at the laptop. He had a small lager next to him on the desk, which he sipped. It was cold and tasted wonderful with the huge sandwich he’d just eliminated.
His fingertips rested on the keyboard, touching it lightly, but not pressing any keys. When the connection was made he went on to the FBI website and entered his password to take him on to the highly sensitive staff site. He was then asked a series of security questions to enable him to get further into the site and on to the databases he wanted to interrogate.
Things seemed to be going well.
He clicked on a folder named ‘C2’ and a prompt requested a further password from him, which he supplied, then hit ‘enter’ triumphantly.
There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation before the screen flashed ‘ACCESS DENIED’.
He cursed and tried again, thinking he might have entered an incorrect letter or digit, but the response was still the same.
He watched the screen for a few moments, then picked up his phone and dialled his office at the American embassy in London. Even though it was now well past office hours he had every expectation that his shared secretary, a very busty sixty-year-old career FBI admin lady named Jacintha, would still be hard at it. Her family had flown the coop, her husband had popped his clogs (as Donaldson believed they said up north when someone had died) and her life revolved around work, a tiny south London garden and four smelly cats.
‘Cinth, it’s me, Karl.’
‘Hello, sir,’ she said primly. All the men were deferred to as ‘sir’, whilst all the women were given short shrift.
‘Cinth, I’m trying to log on to look at a file, but I can’t seem to get into it for some reason. Any idea why?’
‘Not in the least, sir.’
‘Could you possibly do a quick check with the IT guys? I really need access. Then call me back?’
‘Yes sir, no problem.’
Donaldson exited the programme and went on to his email. Two unread messages vied for his attention with little red flags, both from a Scandinavian lady who was becoming a nuisance. He knew he should really have deleted them without reading, but curiosity urged him on. The messages were actually blank, so he clicked on the attachments.
‘Oh… my… God,’ he said as he opened them. The photographs had obviously been taken by Vanessa herself — he hoped. They were detailed self-portraits of a particular part of her anatomy, held apart by her fingers in such a way that made him cringe.
‘Not even a gynaecologist…’ he started to say and deleted the photographs. He sat back and felt a little less fresh now. ‘What have I done?’ he asked himself.
His mobile phone rang.
‘Karl, it’s Don Barber — what’s happening up there?’
‘Erm…’ he began, choosing his words carefully, ‘we managed to get hold of the witness, who is now in custody in Blackpool,’ he answered, trying to get his mind back on track.
‘Is the lad any use at all?’
Donaldson blinked. ‘Hard to say at this stage. Definitely saw the murderer, saw the killer’s face and a photo was even taken on a cellphone…’
‘What did the photo show?’
‘That’s a good question, Don — because the phone’s missing. The witness who got murdered lost it whilst running away from the scene. So far it hasn’t turned up, which is a pisser.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘The police artist is going to spend some time with the witness tonight, so we’ll see what comes out of that. Don, I can’t seem to log on to some files I want to see. I wondered if you were having problems down there?’
‘No, it’s all working correctly far as I know.’
‘Not what…’ Donaldson started to blurt, about to say, ‘I heard’, but he stopped himself for some reason.
‘What’s that, buddy?’ Barber asked.
‘Nothing… hey, speak later, yeah?’ Donaldson ended the call and sat pensively, mulling things over. He looked at his mobile phone and shook it, but his mind drifted back to the close-up shots he had received from Vanessa. ‘Hell, I wonder if she wants me to send shots of me back to her?’
Henry ate a hearty tea, meat pie, chips, peas, gravy, mug of tea and another sticky bun. A real copper’s feast and it tasted amazing. He had reached a stage in his life where, more often than not, he was reasonably careful about what went into his mouth, but every now and then an unhealthy meal or a fast food breakfast was just what the doctor ordered. The type of food he’d survived on in the eighties, and he always remembered having a stained tie from the juice that ran out of hot chip shop meat pies and always caught him off-guard. It was a long time since he’d eaten such a pie, but the memories lingered fondly.