‘Think that’s part of the job, isn’t it, guv? I’m sure I read that in a manual somewhere.’

  One of the five officers came over. ‘Are we taking him to Hastings, sir?’

  ‘Yeah. That’d be good. Thanks,’ Boyd confirmed.

  ‘What’s the arrest offence, sir?’

  Boyd’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? Take your pick. Assaulting a police officer. Packaging, distributing and selling counterfeit medicines. Probably fraud, tax evasion, health and safety contraventions, to name a few. Let’s go with the assault for now, shall we? And then we can add to that later on, once I’ve had a little chat with him.’

  They watched the officers lead Rigby towards the waiting patrol car. Boyd found himself watching Rigby’s feet. He had a distinctive, clumsy pigeon-toed walk.

  ‘You thinking about that CCTV?’ said Okeke.

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s not much to go on, is it?’ They watched as he ducked down and was shoved into the car. ‘I don’t think it was him in that footage, do you?’

  She shook her head.

  Boyd waited until they’d secured him in the back, then turned to face Okeke.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said, brusque and business-like. ‘Next house call.’

  Rye was every bit as expensive-looking as Boyd had been expecting.

  It looked like a village designed from the ground up by Thornton’s or Cadbury’s creative designers, and was the inspiration and muse, no doubt, for countless unimaginative watercolour artists. It was ridiculously pretty. He suspected this was how most mid-west Americans imagined how England looked – one large chocolate-box village in which little old ladies ran antique shops during the day and solved murders by night.

  He tried to grade the property values as Okeke’s satnav took them down the High Street. Holland Park price tags? Chelsea? SoHo even?

  They drove through the other end of Rye and out into a winding leafy lane.

  ‘Nearly there, guv. Keep an eye out – there should be a turning just up here on the right.’

  The driveway was marked by a pair of moss-covered stone lions sitting, weather-beaten but proud, high up on their stone pillars. The gravel drive curved gently to the left, finally opening up to reveal Nix’s house, an old flint-and-stone barn that had been completely renovated to within an inch of its life. The south-east facing gable wall was one big sheet of shimmering glass.

  ‘Looks like something off Grand Designs!’ Boyd commented. ‘Obviously financial advice is the place to be.’

  He was beginning to understand, and even empathise with, Jo Bambridge’s bitterness. Her old home was stunning. The garden around it would have been equally impressive if it had been given some TLC over the last few months. The lawn was shaggy and punctuated by clusters of weeds that had seized the opportunity to bolt for the sky.

  Boyd’s attention was drawn to a dark blue Volvo SUV parked around the side of the barn.

  Okeke saw it at the same time. ‘Nix’s?’

  ‘Jo said it was still here,’ said Boyd. He looked at her. ‘If Nix and his girlfriend went to Eastbourne together, they could have taken hers?’

  She shrugged as she parked their car beside it. ‘There were no unaccounted-for cars in the car park.’

  Boyd unclipped, climbed out and dropped down onto his hands and knees to look beneath the Volvo.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Checking for signs. Seeing if it’s been parked here for a while,’ he replied.

  He could see nothing that confirmed with certainty that it had been sitting in the exact same spot for three months. The tires didn’t look flat, but then that wasn’t necessarily a given.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Hard to say.’ He got to his feet and made an old-man oooff noise.

  Okeke chuckled. ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s a habit I’ve got into. It’s not an age thing.’

  She laughed again. ‘If you say so, guv.’

  Boyd led the way to the front door. Around the stone step, a crop of nettles pushed their way up through the gravel and flanked the burgundy-painted front door. Boyd reached into his jacket pocket for his warrant card with one hand and banged the iron knocker with the other.

  They waited in silence for a minute, then Boyd squatted down, lifted the letterbox and peered through.

  He reached up and rapped the knocker again, then put his ear to the open flap and listened very carefully for any sounds inside. He looked through the opening, down at the wooden floor, expecting to see the pile of junk mail that Jo had mentioned, but there was none.

  So someone had been home.

  ‘Hello! Anyone in there?’ he shouted. His voice reverberated around inside the house but provoked nothing in response.

  ‘What do you reckon, guv?’

  He stood up again. ‘Let’s go poke around the back.’

  He led the way to the right of the front door, along gravel that seemed to crunch far more loudly than it needed to beneath his large feet. The grounds were surrounded by mature trees and beyond the perimeter there was more woodland. It was truly isolated and perfectly private. The house was only half a mile outside Rye, but it could easily have been embedded deep within some rural wilderness.

  Unlike Duke’s Park Industrial Estate, it was eerily quiet without the distant and omni-present whisper of traffic. There was a breeze hissing through the bare branches of the skeletal winter trees, and the haunting sound of crows circling above them in the grey sky.

  What is it with bloody crows? He hated that dead-of-winter sound they made. Maybe he’d watched too many horror movies featuring ominous cabins in the woods on Prime – with crows, of course, loudly making their point that some poor unsuspecting bastard was about to be sawn in half.

  He reached the gable wall and peered through the plate glass at an expensively designed interior.

  ‘All right for some,’ huffed Okeke. ‘It’s like a bloody show home.’

  ‘Save up all your police pennies and one day, in a thousand years’ time, you too could have a place like this,’ Boyd deadpanned, keeping his eyes on the view within.

  Through the glass he could see carefully curated designer furniture and a slate floor that almost certainly would have had heating pipes beneath it. There were a few inexplicable shapes sitting on dark slate plinths, which he presumed, since they seemed to lack any apparent purpose, were objects d’art.

  They pressed on to the rear of the barn and found an extension, turning the barn into an L shape and forming two sides of a little croquet lawn. The grass here, like the rest of the grounds, was overgrown.

  The extension was one, long extravagant kitchen, which ended in an enormous sun lounge. Boyd made his way over to the French doors.

  ‘You gonna try them?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s entering without cause, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think so. Not really. Not a sunroom. I like to think of them as being more like a patio with a roof over the top.’

  ‘Uh, I’m not sure that’s a widely shared definition, guv.’

  He tested one of the French doors. It was unlocked. He pushed it open.

  ‘Guv?’ cautioned Okeke.

  ‘Do you hear someone inside?’ he asked.

  ‘Erm. No.’ She looked up at him.

  He raised a brow. ‘I’ll ask again. Do you hear or see something suspicious inside that gives you reasonable grounds to suspect that a trespasser or burglar might be on these premises?’ He cocked his head. ‘You don’t hear that?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well, I thought I heard something.’

  She sighed. ‘What? Maybe. All right. Yes, guv.’

  He pulled a face at her, pushed the door inwards and stepped inside. In order to satisfy his own conscience and tick all the appropriate boxes, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called out.

  ‘Hello! This is the police! We’re entering this property on suspicion that trespassing or a burglary is in progress!’

  Of course, there was no response.

  They crossed wooden floor of the sunroom and stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. There was a granite-topped central island large enough to put a small pool table on. It was cluttered with folders, printouts, dirty dishes and empty tin cans.

  Okeke wandered over to a bowl that looked like it had contained baked beans. She pulled a biro from her jacket pocket and dabbed at the dark sauce. It was thick and treacly.

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This isn’t washing up from three months ago. Just saying.’

  ‘Hello?’ he called out again. ‘Anyone home?’

  He exchanged a glance over his shoulder with DC Okeke.

  ‘Where are you going, sir?’

  He waved at her to keep quiet. Then he tapped the side of his nose, not entirely sure what message that was meant to convey to her other than that he wasn’t going to stand and chat with her about his next move.

  20

  He moved deeper into the kitchen.

  The electricity was still switched on. He could hear the hum of the fridge freezer. Away from the glass walls of the sun lounge it was getting gloomier. The overcast sky and the mature trees that loomed close to the back of the property gave the muted light a dusk-like quality.

  He found a switch, which, when flipped, lit up a row of concealed plinth lights. Very modern. Very snazzy, as his grandad used to say.

  On the counter beside him was a plate with grease smears and a half-eaten slice of eggy bread on it. There was also a mug, half full with milky coffee. He lightly touched the side of it. Still warm, and there was no skin on it.

  Someone had been here recently. Perhaps only minutes ago.

  All right, sod this, he decided.

  Experience – and, he liked to think, maturity – was getting the upper-hand over careless curiosity. Someone had been living in the house. Someone who presumably wasn’t Nix or his girlfriend.

  Thump.

  He stopped dead in his tracks and waited to see whether the noise was a one-off.

  Boyd’s voice dropped down to a whisper and he gestured for Okeke to retreat to the sun lounge. ‘Call for backup.’

  Moments later he heard her speaking in hushed tones to a response operator on the other end of the line.

  He heard it again. Thump. A definite footstep from somewhere further inside the house.

  Shit.

  It had been a bad day as far as being jumped by arseholes went, and those thumps sounded, to Boyd, like the sort of noise someone might make if they were attempting a stealthy exit. If he’d had a uniformed officer to hand, Boyd would have gladly taken their baton or pepper spray but, he realised with a sinking feeling, the situation was what it was. Here we go again. He reached for the greasy pan that was beside him, a skating rink of congealed white fat coating the bottom of it.

  ‘Police!’ he shouted loudly. ‘I know someone’s in here! You’re best coming out where I can see you! I have a taser in my hand!’

  He looked despondently down at the frying pan and inched his way towards the dimly lit end of the kitchen, towards a door on the right. It was half open and he guessed from what he’d been able to discern of the barn’s interior through the plate-glass wall that it must lead to the dining room.

  He pulled his phone out and activated the torch function. It wasn’t pitch-black dark, just gloomy, but he didn’t fancy stepping any further forward without a clear, illuminated look at exactly what he’d be walking into.

  He gently pushed the door a little wider and aimed the torchlight inside.

  It was a pretty luxurious dining room. The standard table, chairs and chandelier. Several meaningless million-pound splatters on canvas hanging on the walls.

  ‘Backup’s on the way, guv!’ Okeke called from the sun lounge.

  ‘Hear that, shithead?’ Boyd barked. ‘Probably you best stop fucking around with me and step out where I can see you.’

  Silence.

  Bugger it, he thought. This was turning into the second, really dumb thing he’d done today.

  He was about to back away from the open door into the relative safety of the already-explored kitchen when he heard the soft squeak of a trainer on a smooth floor.

  Stupidly, that emboldened him. ‘Look, mate. I can hear you!’

  Boyd took a step forward into the dining room. He stretched his arm out ahead of him, panning the torchlight left, then very slowly to the right.

  A white flickering blur came out of the gloom right at him. Whatever it was caught him a glancing blow off the side of his head. He went down sideways and onto his back.

  His phone clattered to the floor and landed torch-side up, casting a foggy circle onto the high ceiling above. Someone leapt into the pool of light and right over Boyd like a graceful gazelle.

  Instinctively he raised the pan and it struck something hard, making his arm go numb.

  The ‘gazelle’ sprawled on the ground, winded. Boyd sat up and fumbled for his phone. He picked it up and swung it around, just in time to see the figure scrambling to their feet.

  A pale-skinned figure, hoodie, jeans, trainers, lean, male – details he catalogued in the heartbeat he had before they disappeared through another door. He heard the slapping of soles on the ground, quickly receding into the distance.

  ‘Front door!’ he shouted.

  He was on his feet now and through the door, standing in a hallway with a wooden floor. Ahead of him he could see the figure, hood pulled up, wrestling to get the front door open, hissing and spitting curses under his breath.

  ‘Police! Stop!’ shouted Boyd.

  The front door jerked open, filling the hallway with pitifully dull daylight, and banged and rattled in its frame as the man shot out onto the gravel. Boyd hurried after him, still slightly dazed from the blow to the side of his head. He bounced clumsily off one side of the door frame and nearly lost his footing as he lumbered outside onto the porch and onto a coarse bristle shoe-mat outside.

  The man wrenched open the driver’s door of the Volvo, jumped in and pulled it shut just as Boyd’s body slammed into it. The engine roared as it started up and in the split second before the man found first gear Boyd looked down.

  His tie was caught in the driver’s door.

  Time seemed to stand still.

  He wrenched the knot down with both hands and backed his head out of the noose just as the car began to pull away, the front tyre kicking up a storm of sharp and stinging grit straight into his face as if he’d been peppered beyond lethal distance by a shotgun.

  ‘Fuuuck!’ he screamed, bringing forearm and hand straight up to protect his eyes from the rear tyre. Sharp gravel stones stabbed the bare skin of his wrist like shrapnel, stinging his scalp and forehead as they pinged off him at all angles.

  He collapsed back onto the ground, still cowering behind his arms, as the car sped away.

  He heard DC Okeke’s feet pounding across the gravel towards him. She was talking fast – clearly still on the phone to Control.

  ‘Dark blue Volvo SUV, registration number JHU… ends in a 6. A mile east of Rye.’

  He felt her hand grasp his shoulder firmly and then she gasped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shit! Officer down. We need an ambulance!’

  ‘I’m all right,’ grunted Boyd, his face still contorted but ready to test his sight by un clenching his eyelids. ‘Bastard tried to punch me in the face but missed.’

  ‘No, guv… Your ear!’

  ‘What about my ear?’ He reached up and felt something wet and flappy, dangling by his neck.

  ‘It looks like it’s actually hanging off, guv. You’re definitely going to need a paramedic to sew that back –’

  Her face faded to grey, and he was out before she could finish her sentence.

  21

  They emerged from A&E at just after two in the afternoon.

  Boyd was sporting a couple of stitches at the top of his left ear, with a large dressing that cupped his entire ear. He felt like he was wearing a bra on the side of his head. His forehead and cheeks were dotted with a constellation of little scabbed-over wounds where the gravel had caught him like shotgun pellets.

  The biggest wound of all, though, had been to his machismo.

  ‘I can’t believe I fainted,’ he grumbled at Okeke as she led him out of the hospital reception and headed across the car park towards their car. ‘Again.’

  ‘It was just shock, guv.’ She gestured at his neck. ‘I think you realised how close you came to being dragged off by that car.’

  Maybe that was it – he was fully aware that if things had gone slightly differently Okeke and a family liaison officer would now be telling Emma that her father had been decapitated in the line of duty and that she and Ozzie were on their own. He felt exhausted now that the fight-or-flight cortisol had deserted his bloodstream. It left him feeling as though he’d run a marathon.

  ‘And that knife was aimed at your head,’ added Okeke. ‘The man meant to kill.’

  ‘Any news on the Volvo?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  She shook her head as she opened the door to their car. ‘Nothing yet. It’s a high-priority alert on ANPR. If he’s still driving around, he’ll be spotted soon enough.’

  Boyd opened the passenger-side door, slumped down into the seat and reached for the seat belt. ‘If he’s smart, he’ll have dumped it and torched the – FUCK’S-SAKE!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Bloody seat belt nearly pulled my damn ear off!’ Boyd yelled, clasping his left ear.

  ‘Let me see.’

  He turned his head around so she could inspect the dressing. ‘No, guv, it’s fine. You just bumped it. Here, pass me your seat belt.’

  He gave her the clip and she eased the belt carefully around him.

  ‘Bloody thing.’

  ‘Shhh. Don’t be such a baby,’ she said as she clicked him in.

  ‘You need to work on your bedside manner,’ he muttered. ‘Anyway, have we got Sully and his bunny men over in Rye yet?’