Still, perhaps the faintness of the line means I’m almost clear. I feel fine after all, apart from a general sense of frowstiness created by too much fast food, too little exercise and very little fresh air.

  He looked out of the window of his tiny first-floor flat at the garden which belonged to his neighbour downstairs, and sighed for lack of outdoor space. Then he made yet another cup of tea and went back to his laptop. He was beginning to hate that screen too. Quite apart from square eyes, he felt he had spent hours staring at images and spreadsheets and contributed next to nothing to the investigation. He itched to be back at work properly and preferably actively.

  He was checking through his notes from the day before, absently scratching through his beard as he did so, when he had an idea.

  He’d checked on the movements of Nick Waters’s pickup until he was sick of the sight of the registration plate. He felt he could track its every movement, on the major roads at least, for weeks, and all he’d achieve was to confirm what they already knew: that Waters was near both the previous arson sites at the right times, but couldn’t be tied specifically to either. He’d also located the tow truck, currently sitting in the forensic garage in Wymondham, on the roads leading to Elveden. But that was hardly surprising since that was where they’d found it. It didn’t seem to be linked to the Downham Market fire, and while he had seen evidence it was on the A11 prior to the Silfield fire, it was hours before.

  Flicking through his notes brought to his notice the what3words reference they had shared with Suffolk police to no avail.

  I wonder? he thought, and taking a slurp of tea he turned back to his screen. Might be worth a quick look.

  He started to check ANPR records for that night, down the A11 between Silfield and the location near Felixstowe specified in the what3words code. It took some time, but eventually…

  ‘Bingo,’ he whispered to himself, finding two references either side of the Fiveways roundabout. Then he checked the times. Odd! Even with bad traffic that took him a long time. He must have stopped.

  It was the work of moments to look up contact numbers for the various food outlets on the big roundabout, and he hit lucky with his educated guess as to which the driver of the tow truck might have used. McDonald’s not only had some very effective CCTV coverage of their car park and approaches, but they also saved footage in the cloud for at least a month.

  ‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘Can I see footage for the early hours of the first of August between…’ He went back to his screen to check the two times he’d identified, and passed them on.

  ‘How do I know this request is kosher?’ asked the voice at the other end of the line, rather suspiciously. ‘We want to help the police, of course we do, but how do I know you are the police?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll get Control in Wymondham to send you an official request. If you still have any concerns, you can look up their phone number and ring them yourself to check. Is that OK?’

  ‘I think that would be better, yes,’ said the voice, and rang off.

  Having alerted Control to the need for the official request, and Jill to the fact that he’d asked for one, Bill went to forage in his galley kitchen for something to eat. Surveying the depleted supplies in his small fridge-freezer, he made a mental note that a new online shopping order was required, and settled for beans on toast. By the time he’d eaten his lunch, his phone was pinging with incoming messages.

  ‘This what you’re looking for?’ asked McDonald’s, with an accompanying three images. Two were of a tow truck bearing a Range Rover and towing a Kawasaki Mule on a trailer. One was of a man in the tow truck, paying for his McDonald’s meal at the drive-thru window.

  Bill forwarded the lot to Jill with a muttered ‘Eureka!’ to himself, then settled to checking for the tow truck further south and east. It quickly became apparent that, later in the morning, the vehicle was heading north again; but as far as he could tell, it didn’t seem to stop until it reached Norwich. Bill picked up the phone to Jill.

  ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked without any preamble.

  ‘That he made that what3words rendezvous near Felixstowe?’ said Bill.

  ‘Absolutely. Either way, we have him clearly linked to the vehicles missing from the burned-out store at Silfield. Well done, Bill. Very well done.’

  When Jill passed the message on to Greg, he reiterated the compliment. ‘That’s very well done of Bill,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a chat with Ade Waters. If I judge him right, he’ll probably fold a lot easier than his brother. And worst case, we can play one off against the other.’

  ‘He’s not here yet, Boss,’ she said. ‘Norwich police only collared him this morning. I rang, and they’ve still got him, mainly because they couldn’t spare anyone to bring him over here. Shorthanded,’ she said in mitigation.

  ‘OK. In that case, we’ll talk to him tomorrow when Jim’s back. For now, get yourself home, Jill. I’ll head off as well, as soon as I’ve rung Bill.’

  Congratulating a delighted Bill, while important, took only a moment, leaving Greg free to worry about the continuing silence from Chris.

  After two more text messages and a phone call that went to answerphone, he gave in to his fears and rang Suffolk police, hoping he wasn’t going to be paying for his interference for the next ten years, then hoping that he would.

  The first reaction from the Suffolk exchange was to offer to take his number and, ‘DI Mathews will ring you when she’s free.’ Just before they rang off, he interrupted and used his rank to get a little further up the food chain.

  After a lot of hanging on and various irritating pieces of on-hold music – why on earth whale song? Greg wondered – he eventually found himself talking to DI Richards.

  ‘Hi,’ said the voice. ‘I’m afraid I’m not part of DI Mathews team, but I’m all you’ve got at present. What with Covid infections and contact pings, there’s hardly any of us working today, and those that are, are mainly working from home.’

  Reflecting that that wasn’t a piece of intelligence he’d want shared too widely if he was part of the Suffolk management team, Greg explained that he’d been trying to contact Chris, but had no luck, ‘…and there’s a message I really need to get to her,’ he said.

  ‘All I know is that she’s out on an operation and not readily contactable,’ said Richards. ‘If you give me your message, I’ll try and get it passed on.’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ said Greg. ‘I’ll keep trying, thank you.’ A thought struck him just as he was about to ring off, and he added, ‘Are you the DI Richards we contacted a couple of weeks ago, about a possible rendezvous near Felixstowe involving stolen vehicles?’

  ‘That’s right.’ The voice was instantly guarded. ‘We were shorthanded then too.’

  ‘Yes.’ Greg waved the objection away, even though his interlocutor couldn’t see him. ‘It’s just that we’ve new evidence that the stolen vehicles were indeed taken in that direction in the early hours of the first of August on the back of a tow truck. Obviously it’s too late to intercept,’ he said, unable to resist rubbing it in just a little, ‘but it might be worth asking Felixstowe Port Authority to take a good look round for the specific vehicles – a Range Rover and a Kawasaki Mule. You have the registrations from the previous alert, although I appreciate they’ve probably been removed or changed by now. I can resend all the info, including the VIN numbers, if that would help.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Richards. ‘I’ll see what we can find at Felixstowe.’

  47

  Sunday 9 August 2020

  No contact Saturday evening. No contact Sunday morning. Now Greg was seriously worried, and leaving messages just wasn’t cutting it. Which was why his first port of call Sunday morning was Margaret’s office. If his rank didn’t have enough pull, maybe hers did. And Greg was, by now, beyond embarrassing himself.

  So I might look an idiot. Whatever! I’d rather be an idiot and know Chris is OK, than live with this gnawing anxiety any longer.

  It hadn’t helped that his subconscious had seized the opportunity to spend the night serving up unpleasant memories of what had happened to their colleague Sarah when she’d been taken hostage. It was, therefore, with considerable disappointment that Greg found Margaret’s office to be empty.

  He smacked himself in the head with frustration.

  Of course, it is Sunday! Why on earth would she be in?

  He turned to head back toward his office, not sure where to turn next, when a woman passing by said over her shoulder, ‘She’ll be in later.’

  ‘What? Who? The Chief Super?’ he asked.

  She turned. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She’s coming in later this morning. I’d come back later,’ and disappeared round the corner.

  ‘Later,’ Greg repeated to himself, and went back to the incident room to catch up with Jim.

  He found Jill taking photos and papers off the board at one end of the room. He was just in time to see Nick and Ade Waters dropped into a file.

  ‘I thought I could start clearing this lot up,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ agreed Greg. ‘Where’s … oh, here he is,’ he said as Jim backed through the door carrying three coffees clutched precariously in his hands. He managed to get them down on the nearest desk without disaster, and reached in his pocket.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got three bacon rolls as well,’ said Greg, picking up one of the coffees.

  ‘You wish,’ said Jim. ‘Not on a Sunday apparently, at least not in this new Covid world. This is the best I could do.’ And he produced three KitKats.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jill. ‘By the way, Bill’s coming in today. He says he tested clear this morning, so he’ll be here in an hour or so.’

  ‘Good,’ said Greg, pushing thoughts of Chris to the back of his mind. ‘OK, priorities for today… Jill, chase up where we’ve got to on identifying body number three, and I’ll catch up with you later. Jim, you and I are having a little chat with Ade Waters, and then probably another with his brother.’

  ‘Have we got something new?’ asked Jim eagerly, round a mouthful of chocolate wafer.

  ‘Ah, yes, you won’t know yet. Bill came up trumps. Come in here and I’ll bring you up to date.’

  ‘So,’ said Greg after filling Jim in with the latest news, ‘I’m hoping that leaning on Ade will deliver us Nick as well. I don’t think Ade’s as strong a personality. Ready? And are you OK to play bad cop?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Jim, crumpling his now empty paper cup in his hand and throwing it in the bin.

  The duty solicitor sitting with Ade Waters was yet another strange face to Greg, apparently hauled in from his usual beat at Great Yarmouth magistrates’ court. Clearly that service too was suffering from a shortage of personnel. His mind still turning to Chris every few minutes, he missed the name but thought it didn’t really matter – it would be on the tape. As agreed, Jim kicked off.

  ‘So, Mr Waters,’ he said, flicking through paperwork in front of him. ‘You’re about to be charged with murder.’

  ‘What?’ Ade was horrified. His already pasty face went, if anything, a shade whiter and he shot to his feet.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Jim, and waited in silence until he complied. ‘Haven’t you been told?’ asked Jim.

  Greg intervened. ‘I don’t think Mr Waters has seen the latest evidence,’ he remarked quietly.

  ‘Well we’d better remedy that,’ said Jim. ‘Here you are, Mr Waters, or may I call you Ade?’

  He pulled an A4 photo out of the pile and turned it to face Waters. It showed a tow truck carrying a Range Rover, and was dated 1 August 2020. Jim pointed to the registration plate clearly visible in the photo.

  ‘This is your tow truck, isn’t it?’ he said. Ade was still speechless. ‘You can see the number quite clearly,’ said Jim. ‘You can also see the Range Rover on the back, the one stolen from Leyton Farm Estate near Silfield on the evening of the thirty-first of July. The evening when the estate yard was set on fire and the grain store exploded, killing the grain store manager. Hence the murder charge. I must press you for an answer, Mr Waters,’ he said. ‘For the tape, you understand.’

  ‘Not me. It wasn’t me,’ said Ade. Then gathering confidence he said, ‘Someone else must have been driving the truck.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Jim. ‘And who might that have been? You didn’t report it stolen, so presumably that someone was driving it with your consent?’ After a pause he added, ‘Don’t struggle to rack your poor brains for an answer. You see, we know who was driving the truck.’ He pushed a second photo in front of Ade Waters. ‘You see here,’ he said, pointing. ‘This is you, isn’t it, paying for your McDonald’s meal, in that same truck, on that same occasion? Look, this one’s time and date stamped too. I hope you enjoyed that burger,’ he added, ‘because you’re going to pay dear for the decision to stop there on your way to Felixstowe.’

  Ade looked as though he was about to be sick on the table but swallowed hard. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he managed.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Jim. ‘Look, we’ve got your truck, we’ve got your truck carrying the stolen vehicles. We’ve got you in the truck. What more do we need?

  ‘Adrian Waters, I’m charging you—’

  ‘No, stop!’ said Ade, overruling the attempted intervention from his solicitor. ‘OK, I’ll admit, I drove the vehicles down to Suffolk, but I don’t know anything about Felixstowe and I wasn’t at that farm you said. I didn’t set fire to it. I didn’t. I wasn’t there, and you can’t pin that on me. You can’t.’

  ‘You think not?’ said Jim, pressing home his advantage. ‘You had the stolen vehicles on your truck! You were photographed taking them toward Felixstowe.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ burst out Ade again. ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘I think what my colleague is struggling with,’ intervened Greg, ‘is how did the vehicles get from the Leyton Estate farmyard to your truck if you didn’t drive them? And who else could have lit the fire that covered their movement. You see what I’m getting at? If it wasn’t you, who was it?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Boss,’ said Jim. ‘Look, we’ve got him cold on transporting that car to Suffolk, no doubt about it. We can run with this.’

  ‘Wait,’ shouted Ade. ‘Just wait. Let me think!’

  ‘What about?’ demanded Jim. ‘Either you tell us who it was, if it wasn’t you, which I doubt. Or we charge you anyway.’

  ‘It was Nick,’ burst out Ade. ‘It was Nick, OK? I knew he was going to create a distraction, but I didn’t know it was going to be a fire. I didn’t know anyone was going to die. I don’t think he planned that either. He’s not like that. That was an accident.’

  ‘You’re stating, for the record, that the man who lit the fires at Leyton Farm Estate and stole the Range Rover and the Kawasaki Mule, which you delivered to Suffolk, that man was your brother Nick Waters?’ asked Jim.

  Ade was crying now, tears washing silently down his face. ‘Yes. It was Nick,’ he said. ‘But he didn’t mean to kill anyone, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘We’ll be back,’ said Jim, rising to his feet. ‘Interview suspended…’

  Outside, Jim and Greg exchanged delighted, and relieved, looks. ‘Let’s see if we can get a complementary confession from the other Mr Waters,’ said Greg. His phone buzzed as he entered Interview Room 2, but he ignored it.

  ‘Mr Nick Waters,’ he said, taking his seat at the table. ‘You understand you’re still under caution?’

  ‘And?’ asked Nick.

  ‘We’ve been chatting to your brother Ade,’ went on Greg. ‘He’s been very interesting, hasn’t he, DI Henning?’

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Jim. ‘Positively inflammatory, I think you’d say.’

  Nick looked wary, but his solicitor, the rather tired-looking Mr Streeter, looked merely weary. Greg wondered how many hours he’d been working.

  ‘I think you’d better explain to Nick just how interesting his brother has been,’ said Greg.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Jim. ‘The starting point was that tow truck you took to Elveden, Mr Waters. That was your first mistake, reusing a truck you’d already used at a previous fire. Even worse, that it belongs to your brother, because obviously we started looking at him, and his truck, rather carefully. Anything to say yet, Mr Waters?’

  ‘You haven’t asked a question yet,’ remarked Mr Streeter.

  ‘No more I haven’t,’ agreed Jim. ‘Here’s a question then. Given that we have photos of your brother driving that specific tow truck, on the first of August, all the way to Suffolk, and pictures, moreover, of the Range Rover stolen from Leyton Farm Estate that night sitting, large as life, on the back of that truck, how do you think the car got from the farmyard to the truck? And who set light to the yard?’

  There was a long pause. Then, ‘No comment,’ said Nick.

  ‘Oh really?’ said Jim. ‘Your brother was a lot more forthcoming. He says—’

  The door opened and Bill came in.

  ‘Not now, Bill,’ said Jim and Greg, almost in chorus, both equally irritated at the ill-timed interruption.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Bill, ‘but there’s an important message for you, Boss.’

  ‘It can wait,’ said Greg shortly. To his surprise, Bill stood his ground.

  ‘No it won’t, sorry, Boss,’ he said. ‘You must come now.’

  DCI Geldard leaving the room,’ said Greg, and marched over to the door, towing Bill after him.

  ‘It better be good, Bill,’ he said as soon as they got outside.

  ‘It’s not good, it’s bad, Boss,’ said Bill. ‘The Chief Super wants you. There’s news about Chris and it’s not good. She said I wasn’t to come back without you.’ He was talking to empty air. Greg had gone.

  48

  Sunday 9 August 2020 – disaster looms