evidence here in Brighton apart from those drugs. Whoever did this has come and gone without a trace.’
‘No witnesses, nothing on CCTV?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘What about this Sowerby?’
‘A weasel, sir, and we’re not ruling him out. However, we’re dubious he could plan something this slick. And motive is weak – Harvey-Ellis was a good customer. There’s always money but Sowerby swears blind he didn’t sell him out. For the moment we believe him.’
‘And he didn’t notice anyone who might have been setting this up?’ asked Maddy.
‘No one.’
‘Which leaves only the wife and daughter,’ nodded Maddy. ‘As I said.’
‘Not quite true, sir,’ said Grant. ‘But this is where it gets tricky. The ex-husband also has motive and, what’s more, he has professional criminal know-how.’
‘Opportunity?’
‘We’re not sure yet. He lives in Derby. But he does know Brighton. Two years ago he found out his daughter and stepfather were lovers and marched into Harvey-Ellis’s office where he assaulted him and threatened him with arrest.’
‘Sounds promising.’
‘Yes, sir. But he’s a serving DI in Derby CID. Damen Brook.’
Maddy made eye contact for the first time. ‘The Damen Brook? Of Reaper fame?’
‘The same.’
Maddy took a minute to process the information, then shrugged. ‘We must root out all bad apples, Detectives. That’s our job. Do what you have to do.’ He nodded at them both, clearly expecting this to be the end of the meeting. When they showed no sign of moving, he held out his hands. ‘Something else?’
‘We ran the combination of drugs through the database,’ said Hudson, deciding it was time to contribute. ‘The only recent incidence of those two drugs being used in a crime was during the last Reaper killings in Derby.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Maddy, this time unashamed to have it spelt out for him.
Hudson paused for a second to be certain there would be no misunderstanding. ‘We’re working on the theory that Brook learns about the drugs while working the Reaper murders and then puts the same drugs to use when he kills Tony Harvey-Ellis.’
‘Sounds reasonable. What’s the problem?’
‘If we clear Brook, it means Brighton may have had its first Reaper killing.’
The man listened to the music over the quietly chugging engine. He checked his map one more time then turned off the headlights to enjoy the music in the dark. Fauré’s Requiem seemed appropriate to the grandeur of the landscape, not that he could see much of it now, tucked away as he was in a side road that had been cut into the terrain to allow the US Forest Service to do its work in the thick woodland.
He ejected the tape, turned off the engine and stepped out of the car. He left the door open and allowed the light to illuminate his work as well as the thousands of excited insects heading for its unexpected balm. He produced a flashlight from a small rucksack and tucked it into his black boiler suit. Other items had already been carefully packed but the man extracted one and examined it. The 9mm M9 semiautomatic pistol was not his tool of choice – brutish and unsubtle things, guns – but when spur of the moment work raised its head, he would have to put it to use. He’d bought it from a pawn shop in LA last year but had never intended to fire it. Now that it was to be pressed into service, the man had to be sure he knew how to use it. He checked the safety lever again as the pawn shop owner had shown him and made sure that a bullet from its 15-round magazine was in the chamber.
When he was ready, he placed the gun back in the rucksack and pulled the bag over his shoulder. He reached back into the car to pick up the drink from the cup holder and closed the door quickly to extinguish the light.
In the dark he gazed at the cloudless heavens. All unnatural illumination now extinguished, the man marvelled at the son et lumière around him – the stars blinking like traffic lights and the Milky Way cradling all these celestial bodies in its opaque arms.
When he could bear to close his eyes to the majesty above him, his ears were invaded by nature’s symphony. Insects, crickets and cicadas set the rhythm, accompanied by the birds who hunted them. The hoot of owls was familiar, watching for the scurry of rodents. Other calls, cries, warnings and death rattles he didn’t recognise but the performance filled him with awe nonetheless – the cacophony of the forest as it lived and died. And all the time the damp smell of the timber filled his lungs, with an aroma unsurpassed by the sweetest perfumes as the ageless woodland exhaled all around him.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there in the night, composing himself for the task ahead, but it was difficult to pull away.
Eventually he flicked on his flashlight and started his walk to the forest at the edge of the tarmac. He could have driven onto the dirt track that wound its way through the trees but he couldn’t chance being heard. And if the ground was soft he would have run the risk of leaving an impression of his tyres. As usual he’d thought of everything.
As he set off, a pair of eyes shone back at him, but the animal wasn’t curious enough to stare for long and skittered away through the undergrowth. The distinctive three-note whistle of the Mountain Chickadee sounded nearby as it prepared to dip and dive for flying insects, but the man was now oblivious to all but the work in hand.
He walked steadily with the flashlight in one hand, drink in the other. It wasn’t the city terrain he was accustomed to and he found it hard going at first until he hit his stride. Twenty minutes of steady progress along the track brought the man to a clearing at the top of a small rise from which he could see a building next to the highway, bathed in moonlight below. He doused his light. The track he stood on wound back into the forest and took a leisurely and sinuous course that would eventually bring it out behind the main road. Before that though, the man could see a light from a house set back from the road – this was his destination.
Having recovered his breath, he made for the light. A few yards further on, however, he stopped. Another track, overgrown and near undetectable, wound its way off into the trees and would have been of no interest had the man not spotted a dark patch a few yards further along it. He edged closer and bent over the stain, flicked his flashlight on and touched it with his fingers. It was oil. He peered down the track as best he could. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, he fancied he could make out two lines on the ground that might have been flatter than the rest of the vegetation. He hesitated briefly, then crept along the track into the darkness.
A few moments later the track widened out into a flat and well-tended clearing, completely surrounded by high walls of rock and dense foliage. It was deathly quiet in this sheltered bowl and unnaturally hot. The man’s recently shaved head began to itch in the heat. He guessed that this might once have been a disused quarry or part of an opencast mine. But interesting though the geography might be, what drew the man’s immediate attention was the line of vehicles parked along the far rock wall. There were eight different vehicles in various stages of decay, from vaguely roadworthy down to rusted hulks, and, from what he could see, all were some kind of motor home. The newest he recognised – a bright yellow VW camper – and its tyre tracks were still visible across the well turned soil.
The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Something brushed his cheek and he opened his eyes at once. He shivered now, despite the heat. Maybe it had been a flying insect or a bird’s wing because no foliage hung nearby. Maybe. What he couldn’t