Boyd nodded.

  ‘And how long’s that been going on?’

  Boyd pursed his lips. He’d first become aware of it back in May. In fact, not long after Emma had announced she was pregnant.

  ‘A month or so.’

  Dr Ho nodded. ‘I see. Which side is it on?’

  Boyd indicated his left.

  ‘And have you noticed any changes to your stool?’

  ‘You mean my poo?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Yes. Its consistency, colour?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve taken a look. But, now you mention it, yes, it’s been… uh… looser than normal.’

  ‘Have you had any unexplained nausea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any sign of blood in your urine?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Inexplicable fatigue?’

  Boyd gave that a moment’s thought. To be fair, he had been walking to work less often recently, despite the weather warming up and the blue skies. But he’d put that down to weary resignation at the prospect of spending the day dealing with Sutherland’s paperwork.

  ‘Yes, actually,’ he replied.

  ‘Have you had any bloating? Feeling uncomfortable after meals?’

  That was another ‘yes’ and he didn’t like the serious look on Dr Ho’s face.

  ‘Can I have a feel?’ asked the doctor.

  Boyd nodded as Ho snapped on some nitrile gloves.

  ‘If you could remove your jacket and just lift your shirt, please?’

  He pulled his shirt up and Dr Ho wheeled his chair forward and began gently prodding and probing the left side of his abdomen. Boyd couldn’t help wincing as his fingers worked around the side.

  Dr Ho’s eyes flicked up, catching his grimace. ‘Painful?’

  ‘A little uncomfortable, yup.’

  Dr Ho stopped and wheeled his chair back to his desk. ‘Right, Mr Boyd… I think it would be prudent to get a stool sample from you.’ He handed him the tube. ‘You can return the tube to the sample box at reception.’

  ‘Is this anything I should be worried about?’ Boyd asked.

  The young doctor pressed his lips together for a moment, considering how to present his thoughts. ‘Statistically speaking, Mr Boyd, you’re relatively young for this to present itself. Your age is…?’

  ‘Forty-eight,’ said Boyd.

  ‘Right.’ Dr Ho nodded, checking the notes on his screen. ‘You are approaching the statistical bell curve.’

  ‘For what?’ Boyd had a horrible suspicion he was going to regret asking that.

  Boyd arrived at the station, just after ten. He parked his Captur in the space next to Okeke’s beaten-up Datsun, locked up and entered the building. He waved his lanyard robotically at the desk sergeant and climbed the stairs to the first floor, more aware of that stitch in his side than ever before. He entered CID’s main floor and walked over to his desk, playing and replaying Dr Ho’s tentative, carefully phrased explanation.

  His phone had buzzed several times in his jacket pocket as he’d driven to work. It was Charlotte wanting to know how the appointment had gone. At some point, very soon, he was going to have to reply. And that reply was going to have to include those three scary words.

  Possible colorectal cancer. Although, to be fair, Dr Ho had said ‘worst case’.

  ‘Are you all right there, guv?’ asked Okeke. She seemed to be in a surprisingly perky mood this morning. She glanced at her watch. ‘Are we having a morning briefing?’

  ‘Yeah… I need a few minutes first,’ Boyd replied. ‘Give the others a coffee warning,’ he added. ‘Be in the Incident Room in, say, fifteen minutes?’

  The faintest trace of concern spread across her face. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He nodded, then forced a smile. ‘Just rally the troops for me, would you?’

  She nodded and turned away. His phone started buzzing repeatedly in his pocket and he pulled it out. It was Charlotte calling.

  Not now. He wasn’t ready for the conversation. And, in any case, it wasn’t a done deal. Only a possible one. He let it go to voicemail, then tapped out a texted reply.

  Have to drop a sample in later. Doctor wanted to tick ALL the boxes.

  He inserted an eye-roll emoji.

  Got a meeting right now. Will call you when I can x.

  16

  He’d been right about Hatcher. She turned up just as his team meeting started, with Sutherland in tow. She nodded politely at Boyd and waved him on, a signal to not mind her and continue as though she wasn’t there.

  ‘Right then,’ he began, ‘let’s start with you, O’Neal. Any joy at the storage unit?’

  O’Neal seemed pleased with himself this morning. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news, chief,’ he stated.

  ‘Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, shall we?’ said Boyd.

  ‘Well, we dusted the crates for fingerprints… and all we got were Beckett’s and Holmes’s prints. No others. Our killer is clearly very careful and forensic aware.’

  ‘Or was,’ added Okeke. ‘We can’t assume he’s alive, given that he allowed the lease to expire on the unit.’

  ‘We also can’t assume the killer’s male,’ cautioned Magnusson. Okeke looked irritated with herself for making that particular slip.

  ‘All right, so now let’s have the good news,’ said Boyd.

  ‘We found an old paper coffee cup crushed beneath one of the crates.’

  ‘An old coffee cup? Are you sure it was old?’ Boyd asked.

  O’Neal nodded and pulled out a printed photo from a folder. He slid it across the conference table towards Boyd. ‘It was within the imprint of the bottom crate.’

  Boyd picked it up and examined the image. O’Neal’s photograph included an evidence measure stick and he had made sure to include the rectangular outline of dust that indicated where the crate had been standing for years.

  ‘The logo on the cup is Nesso. I looked that up. It’s a small chain of coffee shops that went bust at the end of 2021. So, obviously, it’s been stuck under there for at least two years,’ O’Neal added.

  Boyd nodded and slid the photo back across the table. ‘Please tell me it had something on it…’

  Magnusson piped up. ‘There was a thumbprint on the plastic lid. I’ve swabbed the rim of the cup for traces of DNA and I’m just waiting on the result.’

  ‘I ran the thumbprint through our database,’ added O’Neal. ‘Unfortunately there wasn’t a hit.’

  ‘Well, if our killer was careful enough not to leave prints on the crates, then that’s no surprise.’ Boyd wandered over to the whiteboard and scrawled ‘coffee cup’ on it and drew a line linking it to ‘storage unit’.

  ‘I also ran the prints for Beckett and Holmes on Friday night,’ continued O’Neal.

  Boyd almost smiled. The mention of Friday night was obviously for Her Madge’s and Sutherland’s benefit. Evidently O’Neal had caught wind that there’d been talk about promotions and wanted it known that he was putting in long hours.

  ‘And?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Sid Beckett’s got some form for burglary. It’s going back a bit, mind.’

  That explained his discomfort during the interview around letting them ink him. Boyd made a note on the board. ‘Okay. Good work. Okeke?’

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Any luck on LEDS with similar MOs? Specifically, the pine cones?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Pine cones?’ queried Hatcher.

  ‘Pine cones,’ said Magnusson. ‘Inserted up the bottom. They had one each.’

  ‘Good God!’ breathed Hatcher.

  ‘Post-mortem,’ Magnusson added.

  ‘We’re working on the theory it’s an emotive message, ma’am.’ Boyd turned back to Okeke. ‘Has anything come back from Ellessey yet on any identifying marks on the bodies?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Okeke replied.

  ‘Then chase that, will you? We need an ID on at least one of those men if we’re going to get anywhere at all with this.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Minter? The bloke who owns the business…’

  ‘Gareth Jones, boss. I’m going up this morning to talk to him again; see if we can get any records he has on the unit’s owner. I’m not holding my breath, mind you, judging by the state of his office.’

  Boyd scribbled a question mark on the board beside Gareth Jones’s name. ‘You might want to quiz him on why he’s wrapping things up there and why he forgot to mention it to us.’

  ‘I’m planning to, boss,’ Minter replied.

  ‘Do you think he might have done it?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘Owning your own storage warehouse would be handy if you’ve got bodies to hide,’ said Boyd. ‘We’ll certainly look into any link or motive between Jones and those three. But if he had hidden bodies in one of his units, I doubt very much he’d have invited a bunch of people to bid on it. Anyway…’ He capped the marker pen. ‘Warren? Any luck on mispers?’

  ‘Nothing useful so far, sir.’

  ‘Any hits on Alan Smithee?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Warren shrugged. ‘Sure, some Alan Smiths, but no Smithees.’

  ‘It’s an odd surname,’ said Hatcher. ‘Sounds too obvious as an alias.’

  ‘It’s meant to be, ma’am.’ Boyd explained the use of it in Hollywood. ‘It’s meant to clearly be a fake name. As in “I’m clearly too embarrassed to be associated with this movie”.’

  ‘I see.’

  Boyd turned to look back at the whiteboard. ‘Our focus at the moment is on ID’ing those bodies. And I want all eyes on that. Any questions?’

  Hatcher stirred. ‘I notice you have “drug gang” on the board? Why’s that?’

  ‘We initially thought two of them were killed at the same time, ma’am. Which could have meant something other than a lone killer. However, the timing’s inconclusive. Dr Palmer said that two of the victims were likely murdered ten to fifteen years ago, but it’s hard to tell any more than that. Could be a few years or just months between them. But, definitely, given both bodies were stored in the same way, in the same kind and amount of road grit, there’s enough variance in their condition to indicate they weren’t done at the same time.’

  ‘Good God, not another serial killer in Surrey?’ She sighed. ‘We’re going to get a reputation.’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘I’m not sure it’s one in the classic sense, ma’am. It feels…’ He hated using that word; it sounded unprofessional and was the kind of word that belonged in the mouth of some improbably on-the-nose TV drama inspector. ‘It feels emotive. The insertion of those cones suggests that perhaps there was some sort of personal connection. My hunch is that our killer could have known these men.’

  ‘Well, we’re going to have to present this to the press in the next couple of days,’ said Hatcher. ‘But I really don’t want them going down the serial-killer route if I can help it.’

  ‘Then it’s important we mention that we believe the killer may have known his victims,’ replied Boyd.

  She nodded. ‘Fine. But it’s probably not a good idea to mention the pine cones.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Boyd said, looking around at everyone. ‘That’s a detail we’re keeping to this room.’

  17

  ‘Hello. It’s me again, I’m afraid, Mr Jones,’ said Minter, brandishing his CID lanyard in the doorway.

  Gareth Jones appeared to be in the process of tidying his scruffy little office. He sighed. ‘What now. Can’t you lot see I’m busy?’

  ‘Clearing the place out?’ Minter asked.

  ‘Cleaning up,’ Jones corrected.

  Minter stepped inside, uninvited. Gathering a stack of box files, Jones looked even more harried and irritable than he had last time.

  ‘Mr Jones, a little birdie told me that you’re wrapping the business up and closing down? And I said to myself, No, that can’t be right. Surely Mr Jones would have mentioned it to me when we had our chat the other day. So, I thought I’d come back over and ask you, man to man. Is it true? Are you closing down?’

  Jones dumped the box files on his desk. ‘Who told you that?’ he asked.

  Minter didn’t answer.

  Jones hesitated for a moment longer, then finally nodded.

  ‘And can I ask why that is, and why you forgot to mention it?’ Minter asked.

  ‘It’s no big secret,’ Jones replied tersely. ‘It’s just not making enough money to be worth my frigging time.’ He sighed again. ‘I need to focus on the farm or…’ He paused.

  ‘Or?’ Minter prompted.

  ‘Or I’ll risk losing the bloody lot.’

  ‘Are you in financial difficulty?’ Minter asked him.

  Jones looked at the detective sergeant with incredulity.

  ‘Have you ever tried running a farm, detective? Particularly in times like these, the supermarket buyers are squeezing the bloody life out of us. We can’t find British fieldworkers any more and we sent all the Poles home. There are no subsidies these days. And don’t get me started on the cheap unregulated produce that’s coming in from outside the EU. Add that to the price of fuel, and do I really need to go on?’

  Minter shook his head this time. ‘Right. But, again, you didn’t mention this last week.’

  ‘Because it’s none of your bloody business!’ Jones snapped.

  Minter raised his brows.

  ‘Look,’ Jones said. ‘I’m closing the units down because I’m selling off the land that the warehouse is sitting on. Because I need the money to keep the farm going. Or, like I said, it won’t be long before I don’t have a bloody farm to worry about.’

  His answer stacked up. Minter had noticed the farm machinery sitting idle and little sign of any activity given it was June.

  ‘Okay,’ Minter said. ‘So let’s move on to the reason for my visit today, shall we? I’ve come to collect everything you have on the person who was renting Unit Thirty-Seven. Alan Smithee, isn’t it?’

  ‘Right.’ Jones let out yet another deep sigh; this time accompanied with an eye-roll. ‘You could have bloody well asked me for that last time you were here.’ He nodded at the stack of box files.

  ‘It’s all paper records?’ Minter asked.

  ‘I’m not that good with computers,’ Jones replied, opening up one of the box files. ‘Unit Thirty-Seven, then… It’ll all be in here somewhere.’

  Okeke’s desk phone rang. She picked it up. ‘Hastings CID, Detective Constable Okeke speaking.’

  ‘Ah, just the person I’m after. Dr Palmer here,’ came the reply. ‘I’ve got something for you. We’ve been over the bodies in fine detail and finally picked up an identifying mark on one of them, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

  ‘What have you got?’ Okeke asked.

  ‘There’s a tattoo on the upper left arm of one of the bodies. This one, by the way, I’ve refined my post-mortem estimate to ten years. I’ve just emailed you a picture. It was incredibly faint and we had to play with various filters to sharpen the image.’

  Okeke tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear and opened her inbox. ‘Ah, okay, got it. Let me just open it now,’ she said.

  She double-clicked and the image expanded on her screen. She was looking at what appeared to be a heraldic shield with a lion holding a ball.

  ‘Looks like a rugby club logo,’ she mused.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ said Dr Palmer.

  Beneath the lion were several smudged letters: N. R. F. C.

  ‘I’ll save you the googling,’ Dr Palmer said. ‘It’s the logo for Norton Heath Rugby Club.’

  Okeke grinned. ‘Oh God, really? You’re a lifesaver.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’m still waiting on the DNA chromographs, but as soon as those come back I’ll forward them to you,’ said Dr Palmer.

  ‘Great, thank you.’ Okeke hung up and immediately googled the club. She navigated to the club’s modest one-page website where she found contact details for a Mr. Julian Hollander. She dialled the phone; it rang several times before finally tipping over to voicemail. She decided to leave a message.

  ‘Ah, here we go,’ said Gareth Jones. He pulled a few tattered sheets of paper out of the box file. ‘This one is the registration form for the client. Alan Smithee.’ He handed one of the sheets to Minter.

  Minter stared at the obviously self-made form with its misaligned entry boxes, typos and cut-and-paste terms and conditions. It was the original, though, and not some blurry photocopy, which was something. He immediately placed the dog-eared sheet on Jones’ desk and pulled a pair of nitrile gloves and an evidence bag out of his jacket pocket.

  ‘I need to bag that,’ he explained, carefully easing the paperwork into the plastic bag, sealing it and writing his initials and date on the bag. He peered through the plastic to read the various entries.

  Name: Alan Smithee

  D.O.B.: 12/06/77

  Date: 27/04/2012

  Payment details: cash, annually

  ID: driving licence

  Contact: 07439 123 657

  There was a scrawled illegible signature just underneath the terms and conditions.

  ‘Christ,’ said Jones. ‘Is that piece of paper important?’

  Minter nodded. ‘We might be able to get some useful forensics from it.’

  ‘I tried that phone number when he didn’t renew,’ said Jones. ‘I got a “this number isn’t recognised” message.’ Jones carefully handed him another piece of paper. ‘I took a photocopy of his driving licence too.’

  Minter stared at it. The quality of the scan was bloody awful. It was littered with the obligatory print smudges and flecks of a badly maintained photocopier. The driving licence details were legible, luckily. The tiny image of the face on the licence, however, was next to useless; all he could get from it was that the person was male and white with short hair.

  So, that’s our killer’s face, then.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Minter as he slid the scan into the same evidence bag. ‘Would you be able to recognise Alan Smithee if he walked in right now?’ he asked.