Devon. Wednesday 21st October. 11.39 a.m.
It took Riley forty-five minutes to get to the remote piece of moorland where Perry Sleet’s car had been found. He brought Enders with him, aware the DC had an innate sense of direction and knew his way around the moor. Still, even Enders had trouble navigating to the exact spot, confessing that the northern part of the moor was pretty much unknown to him.
‘Pure wilderness,’ Enders said as they turned up a lane which climbed the side of a steep valley. ‘If matey boy’s gone a-wandering out here then he might not turn up for days.’
As they crested a rise, Riley’s eyes followed Enders’ hand gesture. The moor spread out before them in a splurge of greys and browns, not a tree or a building in sight. The terrain lay in great folds like a series of soft pillows plumped up and placed in a near endless succession as they tumbled into the distance.
‘Jesus.’ Riley shook his head. ‘According to Collier, the helicopter was out this morning. Didn’t spot anything.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me. Unless he was wearing some kind of high-visibility clothing, they could fly within a hundred metres and not spot him. Imagine he’s face down in a stream bed or at the bottom of a tor. Maybe he’s even gone down a mineshaft like that prison officer we found earlier in the year.’
‘His death wasn’t an accident, remember?’
‘And this is?’
Riley didn’t say anything. He just stared ahead as the lane curled left around a small hill and then ran down to a five-bar gate where a blue Audi A3 Sportback sat on the verge, a big ‘Police Aware’ sticker plastered over the windscreen.
‘Dead end.’ Riley eased the car to a stop twenty metres from the Audi. ‘And no farm or anything beyond that gate.’
‘So what was he doing here?’ Enders clicked open his door and a gust of wind instantly cooled the inside of the car. ‘Bit exposed for a spot of al fresco sex, I’d have thought.’
‘Takes all sorts,’ Riley said as he got out too. He pointed at the Audi. ‘Anyway, perhaps they did it in the car.’
‘They?’
‘Sleet and this Sarah woman.’
‘And then what? Her hubby arrives at an inconvenient moment and boshes Sleet?’
‘Something like that.’ Riley began to walk down the lane towards the gate. ‘If Sleet hasn’t turned up by the end of today, the car’s coming in for a good going-over. We’ll know more then.’
As Enders began to complain about their trip being a waste of time, Riley tried to focus on the surroundings. While remote, this wasn’t a good place for an assignation. You were out in the open and it would be pretty obvious what you were up to should anyone come along. On the other hand, who would come along? He asked Enders whether this was a good spot for walking.
Enders laughed. ‘Does it look like a good spot for walking? No. Too bleak. There’s no tors, nothing of interest. I doubt anyone but the most hardened would bother coming here. Besides, you’ve got ranges all around. Live firing. Weekdays most of the moor round this way would be off-limits.’
‘Army?’
‘Yes.’ Enders gazed around at the dreek weather. A thin mist of rain curtained sideways in the wind. ‘And much as I love the outdoors, I don’t think I’ll be signing up to yomp over this part of the moor any time soon.’
Was that it? Had Sleet somehow got mixed up in something he shouldn’t have? Had some Royal Marine training exercise gone horribly wrong? Riley put the thought from his mind and moved across to the Audi. Collier hadn’t said anything about the keys, but then, even if Riley had had them, he wouldn’t have risked opening the car for fear of contaminating the inside. He peered in through the driver’s window. As noted on the sheet of information, there was a cup of coffee in the drinks holder, the flask the cup had come from sitting on the passenger seat. It seemed unlikely Sleet had been indulging in a bout of passionate sex. More likely he’d poured the cup while waiting for somebody, or perhaps he’d simply come up here after his lunch at the pub in order to pass the time until his next appointment.
There didn’t seem to be anything untoward inside the car. Sleet’s jacket was lying on the rear seat. A briefcase poked up from the rear footwell. The report mentioned that the boot contained several boxes of samples and Riley recalled a wallet had been found in the jacket. There had been no blood or any sign of a struggle.
He straightened. If something had happened, it had happened away from the car. Riley looked to the sides of the lane. There was plenty of room to pull off the road, but none of the indentations in the grass appeared fresh. If somebody had arrived after Sleet then they had made sure their vehicle remained on the hard tarmac.
He peered back towards their own car. Imagined Sleet sitting drinking coffee and spying a vehicle in his rear mirror. He’d have placed the cup in the holder and got out of the car. He’d left his jacket behind, so he’d either expected the rendezvous to be over quickly or his emotions had overcome any thoughts about getting cold. If it had been a woman, perhaps Sleet had leapt from his seat and run to meet her.
Riley paced back up the road a few metres. He examined the verges again. Nothing except some pieces of litter. No, not litter. Confetti. Confetti?
He moved to the side of the road where several pieces of yellow and pink paper lay on the verge. Sodden with rain, they’d stuck to the sparse vegetation. He tried to get his head around what might have occurred here. Confetti suggested a birthday or some kind of a celebration. Then Riley thought of a present on a nest of the little pieces of paper. An item of jewellery? He imagined a woman opening a velvet case and seeing a sparkling ring, Sleet scattering a handful of confetti in the air as some kind of symbolic gesture.
‘Patrick?’ Riley knelt and beckoned the DC over. ‘What do you make of this?’
Enders strolled up the lane and hunkered down next to Riley. He picked up a couple of the pieces of paper.
‘From a hole punch, sir?’ Enders placed the pieces on his hand and examined them. ‘That’s my guess.’
‘Hey?’
‘They’ve been cut from a sheet of paper. Look, there’s letters on the surface.’
Riley stared down at Enders’ hand. Not letters, letters and numbers. And not from a hole punch either. Shit, he had it now. He glanced down at the ground and picked another piece from the grass.
‘Know what these are, Patrick?’ Enders shook his head as Riley showed him the pink dot on the end of his finger. ‘They’re AFIDs. Anti-felon identification tags. They’re ejected whenever a Taser weapon is fired. Each carries a code to identify the particular Taser which was used.’
‘Are you telling me this guy was Tasered?’
‘Look. Over there.’ Riley pointed to a clump of heather where a flash of yellow lay amongst purple flowers. Still on his knees, he shuffled closer, feeling the damp of the moor seep through to his skin. The sliver of bright yellow plastic looked something like a piece of disposable packaging. ‘That’s part of a Taser cartridge. Totally illegal for private use of course.’
Riley didn’t pick up the plastic. Instead he stood. This put a whole different slant on the situation. Not only would Sleet’s car need to be gone over by the CSIs, now they’d need a team up on the moor too.
‘So Sleet’s …’ Enders stood as well and turned his head back and forth. ‘Where?’
‘Fuck knows,’ Riley said.
The day had been long and largely fruitless, Savage thought as she traipsed across the car park about to head home in the gathering gloom. There’d been some excitement when it turned out Jason’s father, like Ned Stone, also had several convictions for assault, less when he was tracked down to a cell in HMP Exeter. As for Stone, he was certainly an unpleasant