‘Yeah. Most of our notice letters go out to dead clients and it’s usually a relative or executor who’s tidying up their affairs who replies.’ Jones shrugged. ‘They’re dealing with a will, bickering beneficiaries, funeral arrangements, maybe a house sale… The last thing they want is to pick through some unwanted old junk in a storage unit.’

  ‘Right,’ Minter said.

  ‘The panners who turn up…’ Jones continued.

  ‘Panners?’

  ‘As in gold panning?’ Jones said. ‘You know, like the Westerns… Some old prospector panning river pebbles for gold nuggets?’

  Minter nodded. ‘Ah, okay.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Jones, ‘most times they can turn a decent profit selling on the stuff that’s in there. Or at least I assume so, since there’s always a dozen or so who turn up for the auction days. There’s always a few old faces too.’

  ‘Speaking of old faces… The two who found the bodies, are they regulars?’ Minter asked.

  Jones gave it some thought. ‘They’re not ones I’ve noticed before, no. There’s a lot who come and go. And it’s usually a cash transaction. They have to sign a form if they win the unit, so we do have a name. Can’t vouch whether the name’s legit, though. Second-hand junk’s always been a cash-in-hand business, you know?’

  ‘I presume you keep up-to-date records of who owns and who pays for your storage units, though?’ Minter said.

  Jones looked irritated. ‘Of course. But that’s confidential.’

  ‘Not, I’m afraid, to the police. We will need to know who previously owned Unit Thirty-Seven,’ said Minter, closing his notebook and looking up. He had one last question. ‘Cheeky, I know…’ He glanced at the mug in Jones’s hands and gave him a winning smile. ‘Any chance of a brew?’

  ‘Sorry, detective,’ Jones said, looking anything but. ‘I’ve only got one mug out here. It may be chipped and dirty, but it’s mine. The rest are back at the house. This is a storage warehouse, not a Starbucks.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Minter sighed, then dug out a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it over. ‘If there’s anything else that comes to mind, my number’s on there.’

  Jones briefly examined the card and dropped it on his cluttered desk.

  ‘Since this is a murder investigation,’ Minter added, ‘at some point we will need you to come in to give a formal statement.’

  Jones blew out a sigh of irritation. ‘As I keep telling you, I run a farm as well, mate. It’s busy this time of year.’

  ‘And, as I have told you, this is a murder case,’ Minter reiterated. ‘I’m sure we can work out a convenient time.’ He turned to leave the office.

  ‘Are you going to need to look through all the other units?’ asked Jones.

  Minter paused in the doorway. ‘Possibly. Actually probably. At some point.’

  ‘Great,’ Jones said with a sigh. ‘Just great.’

  Minter stepped out into the sunshine and shaded his eyes. He spotted two civilians sitting on a stack of pallets. A uniformed officer was standing next to them. He wandered over.

  ‘I’m DI Minter,’ he said, waggling the lanyard around his neck. ‘And you’re the lucky devils who found the bodies, I take it?’

  7

  ‘Now, Mr Warren, you claimed in your statement that you turned up at Mr Knight’s house with absolutely no intention of arresting him; that in fact he was not even a person of interest in the case. It was simply an errand. A bit of procedural box-ticking, if you will. Is that correct?’

  Warren sat forward in his seat on the witness stand and nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In fact, these are your words, DC Warren,’ said Knight’s barrister. He turned to look at the jury and cleared his throat. ‘I was sent to Mr Knight’s home to hand over a release form that would allow Mr Knight to resume restoration work on the Martello tower, as it was no longer required as a source for forensic evidence.’

  Warren nodded.

  ‘So,’ continued the barrister, ‘in the short space of time that you were at Mr Knight’s house, he went from being a completely innocent man, to – in your mind – becoming the number-one suspect. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. That’s correct.’

  ‘Based simply on the fact that he possessed a Swiss Army penknife?’

  Warren nodded.

  ‘For the court records,’ cut in the judge, ‘we do need a verbal response, Mr Warren.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Warren. ‘He had a Swiss Army knife with a serrated blade that exactly matched the wounds on –’

  ‘Exactly matched?’ The barrister tutted. ‘That’s a forensic grey area, isn’t it? I mean –’ he turned to the jury – ‘I’m sure most of you have seen true-crime documentaries on television, such as, for example, The Staircase?’

  Some of the jury members stirred at his mention of the reality-inspired series.

  ‘For those of you who are unaware of the show, it features a murder victim who displayed wounds on her scalp that various experts claimed could have been anything from the claw marks of a barn owl to the impact wounds of a fireplace poker.’

  Boyd noticed some of the jury members nodding along to that.

  ‘The forensic match with the victims wasn’t with the soft tissue. It was matched against markings on bone,’ replied Warren. ‘Knight used the same penknife to gouge out the victim’s eyes, making score marks on the orbital sockets.’

  A muted gasp came from the jury box.

  Knight’s barrister stood up. ‘Excuse me? We have a matter of legal protocol to discuss.’

  The judge raised a hand and nodded. ‘Yes, quite.’ He turned to address Warren. ‘Mr Warren, it is proper form to use the word “allegedly” with regard to someone who has not been proven guilty yet.’

  Warren’s face pinked a little. ‘Sorry, Your Honour.’ He looked at Stephen Knight, tidily groomed and sitting in a smart suit beside his barrister. ‘Allegedly,’ he added, then glanced at the gallery and caught a glimpse of Boyd in the back row.

  Boyd winked and smiled. Warren had successfully managed to plant the ghastly image in the jury’s mind. Good job, lad.

  Minter held the dashboard tightly as Okeke sped her Datsun along the winding country lanes back towards Hastings. ‘Their names are Colin Holmes and Sid Beckett,’ he told her.

  Okeke chuckled. ‘Holmes and Beckett. Sounds like a pair of Victorian grave robbers.’

  ‘I suppose they kind of are the modern-day version,’ he replied. ‘Picking through the belongings of the dead.’

  ‘What were your impressions?’ she asked him.

  ‘They’re a bit like Del Boy and Rodney,’ Minter mused. ‘Actually, that’s not quite right. They’re more like Tyson Fury and Steptoe. Colin Holmes is Tyson Fury. He’s got a face that looks like a melted welly. And Sid’s like Steptoe.’

  ‘Who’s Steptoe?’ Okeke asked.

  ‘Never mind. It’s an Old Fart reference. The boss would probably get that one. Colin and Sid were hoping to score big with a unit full of antique furniture to upcycle and sell on, and they were very disappointed with their haul, as you can imagine.’

  She looked at him. ‘They weren’t in shock?’

  ‘Well, that too, yes. Both of them were chugging on their cigarettes like they were lollipops.’

  ‘Speaking of which…’ Okeke took one hand off the steering wheel and fumbled in her bag.

  ‘Here, let me,’ Minter said, in a bid to keep both her hands on the steering wheel, especially at the speed she was going. He unzipped her bag, stuck his hand in and felt around gingerly, mindful that a woman’s handbag was a potential Aladdin’s cave of awkward surprises. He felt her box of Berkeleys and her lighter, and pulled them out. ‘Windows open, though, please,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want my lungs caked with your soot.’

  Okeke wound down the window on her side, then fumbled out a cigarette and sparked up.

  ‘I also got the name of the person who’d originally rented the unit,’ Minter said. ‘Alan Smithee.’

  ‘Right.’ Okeke nodded. ‘Thanks. I’ll look him up when we get back. Then we can chat to the guv and work out what the action points will be.’

  Minter resisted the urge to shake his head. I’m the SIO here. The woman was virtually impossible to line-manage. ‘I’ll chat to the boss when we get back and I’ll sort out what the action points are,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘Get my phone out,’ she said, nodding towards her bag. ‘I took some photos of the bodies if you want to review them.’

  He wasn’t particularly keen on that, but, still, he delved into her bag again and this time his fingers brushed against the rounded end of something. He pulled it out.

  ‘Okeke… what’s –’ he asked.

  She glanced over at it. ‘Pepper spray,’ she replied.

  Minter looked at her. ‘Actual illegal pepper spray?’

  She nodded. ‘I know, I know. I bought it online. And not through Amazon. Obviously.’

  Pepper spray was banned from public use under the Firearms Act. If that canister spilled out of her bag at work in front of Sutherland, she’d be in big trouble.

  ‘Something going on I should know about?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve just been on too many unsupported forced entries with Boyd to wander around completely empty-handed.’

  Minter could understand that. On Boyd’s first case after arriving in Hastings, he’d dragged her into a house where he’d almost had his ear sliced off by a Russian hitman.

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t find it,’ he said, dropping it back into her bag. His fingers finally found her phone in a side pocket and he pulled it out.

  ‘Zero-two-two-one-six-five,’ she said.

  He tapped in the code and unlocked the phone. The picture of Jay’s grinning face was immediately replaced with another face. This one looked as though it was grinning too, the desiccated flesh of its lips pulled back to reveal a tidy row of yellowing teeth.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell!’ Minter yelped. ‘Can I have a bit of warning next time, Okeke?’

  ‘Magnusson found three heads in the first box and it looks as if there’ll be enough body parts in the unit to put together three complete bodies,’ she said.

  He swiped through her pictures. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘So the question is –’ She blew a cloud of smoke out of her open window – ‘have we found ourselves the dumping spot of a serial killer?’

  ‘Another one?’ he replied. ‘Christ. We seem to be tripping over the buggers.’ He swiped through a few more images. There was one of Magnusson smiling, squatting beside a plastic sheet of leathery body parts like a child ready to assemble a giant Lego set. ‘They’re very old bodies,’ he noted.

  ‘Two very old ones. One more recent. They were buried in gritting salt. The old ones might not be that old. The salt in there would have drawn out the moisture pretty quickly, making them look worse,’ she explained.

  ‘Three bodies,’ mused Minter. ‘Two older than the other one. Any idea what sort of a timescale we’re looking at?’

  ‘None at all.’ She shrugged. ‘To be determined. Maggs said they’re all male, though.’

  Minter nodded. ‘If two of them were killed at the same time, that suggests to me something gang-related and not some lone killer.’ He clicked her phone off; he’d seen enough. ‘Christ, who’d have thought sunny old Sussex could end up looking like a Colombian cartel warzone?’

  ‘Assuming it is about drugs,’ she said. ‘Could be human traffickers.’

  ‘True.’ He nodded. ‘There’s lots of that going on these days.’

  To Minter’s relief, Okeke pulled up at a junction and turned onto a nice straight A-road with no more blind bends.

  ‘There’s a small service station with a KFC not so far off,’ she said. ‘Fancy?’

  His mind’s eye replayed the images on her phone of crinkled, dark flesh clinging to splintered shards of bone.

  ‘I think I’ll pass thanks,’ he said.

  Jay rapped his knuckles gently on the door to Mr Adrian McGuire’s office.

  ‘Yes?’

  He eased the door open and cautiously poked his head in. ‘Would you like a brew, boss?’

  The old man hadn’t been the one who’d interviewed him a fortnight ago – that had been the office manager, Janice: a stern-faced matriarch with lips so stiff she could have given Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess of Grantham a run for her money.

  ‘Ah, you must be our brand-new hire. Mr Jason Turner, isn’t it?’

  ‘Jay,’ he replied, ‘if you like, sir.’

  Mr McGuire waved him in. ‘Let’s get rid of all that “boss” and “sir” nonsense, shall we? We’re not a wretched cavalry regiment here. “McGuire” will do.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ Jay grinned, and he set the cup and saucer down in the middle of McGuire’s desk.

  ‘Not on the leather, not on the leather… Here…’ McGuire moved a pad of lined paper and placed his cup and saucer on top of that. ‘That’s Saffiano calfskin leather,’ he explained. ‘Jolly expensive stuff.’ He picked up the notes from Jay’s interview and quickly scanned them. ‘You’ve got all the necessary NVQs, which is helpful.’ He looked up from the notes. ‘But, honestly… I think they’re a big waste of time, a box-ticking exercise – necessary for our insurance and PI licence. Fieldwork is ninety per cent common sense and ten percent initiative.’

  Jay grinned at the mention of fieldwork. ‘I was worried you were going to use me as a tea boy,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll be on fieldwork almost straight away,’ continued McGuire. ‘Burning some shoe leather. Your work will mostly be watching someone or following them. Very discreetly. With a little bit of bin-rummaging every now and then. I believe your wife is a detective in the Sussex Police?’

  ‘My partner. Yeah,’ Jay said.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll be used to the idea that work isn’t discussed in bed. If she asks you how your working day has been, “all right”, “fine”, “ghastly” would all be acceptable answers, but no more.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ Jay said.

  McGuire paused, then he looked up from the notes again and studied Jay for a moment. ‘You’re quite a well-built chap, by the look of it. I’m presuming you can handle yourself?’

  ‘You mean, like…?’ Jay raised a hand and formed it into a fist.

  ‘Well… our work rarely comes to anything like that, but there will be times when a stern word and a little squaring up may be required. We can’t have someone who’s going to burst into tears if a little harsh language is thrown their way.’

  ‘I’ve been a doorman for several years,’ Jay reminded him. ‘I can handle a bit of attitude, McGuire.’

  The PI nodded thoughtfully. ‘I imagine you probably can.’ He set his notes down and raised one bushy eyebrow just a fraction.

  Jay took this as his version of a ‘welcome aboard’ smile.

  ‘Good chat,’ McGuire said, and nodded at the door.

  8

  Boyd left Warren having a celebratory smoke outside the entrance to the station. He’d treated the lad to a pub lunch at the Pump House for his sterling performance in court. The penknife evidence was almost certainly going to be the thing that would put Knight away for good, and the mental image of striation marks around the orbital sockets of those poor girls’ skulls was going to stick with those jurors for life.

  Warren had ordered expensively and eaten heartily. Boyd, who’d picked up the bill, had made sure to ask for the receipt afterwards.

  He climbed the stairs to the first floor in a good mood, but at the top that persistent twinge near his hip made him wince. Need to see a physio about that, he reminded himself.

  Boyd entered the CID main floor to see that Minter and Okeke had just returned from their call-out and were dropping their jackets over the backs of their seats.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked as he approached them.

  ‘Three desiccated and dismembered bodies,’ answered Minter.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘All male, all adult,’ added Okeke.

  Boyd put a hand on his hip, subtly massaging the pain away. ‘A gang hit?’ he wondered.

  ‘That’s what we were thinking, boss. OCG activity,’ Minter said. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. Or they could be traffickers?’

  Okeke side-eyed him for stealing her suggestion. ‘That was my view. The bodies could be trafficked migrants,’ she said. ‘This doesn’t seem like county-lines style to me.’

  Boyd nodded. Turf wars between the groups of London-based gangs had expanded their franchises out to the south coast, which had led to drive-by shootings or scuffles outside night clubs. Either way, they left their victims bleeding behind them in their haste to scarper before any flashing blue lights turned up.

  ‘Right,’ said Boyd, ‘Minter, you’re with me. We’ll have a chat upstairs with Sutherland, update him and set up the team.’ He turned and headed back to the double doors.

  More bloody stairs. Great.

  Minter took the steps effortlessly, chatting all the way. ‘I’ll open an action log, boss. Okeke can be my second-in-command...’

  ‘Ah.’ Boyd paused on the second-floor landing.

  Minter looked wary. ‘I am SIO… right?

  Sutherland steepled his fingers thoughtfully beneath his chin while Boyd and Minter waited patiently. Finally he spoke. ‘If it’s a drug hit, this goes straight over to DCI Flack, okay?’

  Boyd nodded. ‘But we’re not sure it is.’

  He explained his thinking. It was too tidy and, because of that, probably pre-meditated and not the result of a chance encounter and subsequent skirmish between rival gangs of dealers and their foot soldiers.

  ‘You think it’s something more structured?’ Sutherland said. ‘You’re thinking organised criminal gang stuff?’

  Boyd and Minter both nodded.

  Sutherland lowered his hands to the desk. His miraculously round head defied gravity and remained perched on his narrow shoulders. ‘So not a serial killer?’ he asked.