it? Not with anything rational.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hitchens. He pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket and looked at the transcript with an intelligent smile. ‘Which phrases were you thinking of in particular, Doctor?’
‘“A cemetery six miles wide”, for example. What does that have to do with anything? It’s too specific.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. “Here I am at its centre.” Also “the signs at the gibbet and the rock”. The most significant thing about these phrases is that all three of them occur in the second message, the one which is obviously scripted. In my opinion, he was making sure that he included those phrases. They were important, for some reason.’
‘“Six miles wide”,’ said Hitchens. ‘Do you think …?’
‘They’re clues,’ said Fry suddenly. ‘He’s left us some clues to a location. It’s a location within a six-mile radius of … Well, of what?’
‘His own position?’ said Dr Kane. ‘The place where he was making the call from?’
‘Of course. “Here I am at its centre.”’
She took off her glasses, and Hitchens did the same.
‘That would suggest he knew in advance where he was going to make the call,’ said the DI.
‘Is that a problem?’
‘Well, it isn’t the scenario we had in mind. We think he had the speech prepared, but not the location.’
‘It could be that he simply inserted an appropriate figure according to where he eventually made the call,’ said Dr Kane. ‘A six-mile radius? He might have driven around a specific area until he found somewhere suitable that he knew was within that range.’
Hitchens looked worried. ‘Damn it, he might just have been guessing at the three miles, in that case. How many people know even the approximate distance from one spot to another across the countryside? I don’t suppose he’s using GPS.’
‘And that’s only if he meant the distance as the crow flies, rather than the distance by road, which people might be more familiar with.’
Fry saw from the DI’s expression that he was starting to lose faith in his expert. Dr Kane seemed to be setting up more obstacles than she was helping to overcome. But experts loved to make things look more complex than they really were, didn’t they? It helped to justify their fees.
‘So what about the dead place?’ said Fry. ‘And the gibbet? The flesh eater?’
But the psychologist had begun to gather her papers together. ‘That’s your job, I believe. You have an individual here who’s trying to draw attention to himself, perhaps because he knows subconsciously that he needs help. Right now, he’s doing his best to assist you. His clues are a little obscure and ambiguous, certainly. That’s because he has to appear to be demonstrating his superior intelligence. But if you listen properly to what he’s telling you, I’m sure it will help you far more than I can at this stage.’
Dr Kane stood up ready to leave, then paused. She was looking at Fry, not at Hitchens, when she delivered her parting advice.
‘It’s generally true,’ she said, ‘that you can learn a lot by listening to what other people have to say.’
The regional manager for PNL Parking was called Hicks. Cooper found him in a cramped office on the street level with an attendant in a yellow fluorescent jacket.
‘We’re bound by all the rules, you know,’ said Hicks. ‘We have to register the CCTV system and make sure we’re compliant with the Data Protection Act.’
‘No one is suggesting you’ve broken any rules,’ said Ben Cooper for the third time.
But Hicks barely blinked. ‘Apart from anything else, footage won’t be accepted as evidence in court if we don’t comply with the rules,’ he said. ‘And registering the system means we have to deal with requests from people for copies of film.’
‘Do you get many requests?’
‘Some. A lot of them are too vague, though. They have to give us an idea of what time they might have been filmed, where they were and what they look like.’ He shrugged. ‘Most of them give up when they’re asked for details. They’re just fishing. And then there are some where we have to admit we didn’t film them at all, because the camera they saw was a dummy. Well, we don’t say dummy. We just say the camera wasn’t functioning at the time.’
‘And the camera on Level 8 would be one of those dummies?’ asked Cooper.
‘Yes.’
‘Has it always been non-functioning?’
‘For as long as I can recall.’ Hicks hesitated. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure it was installed like that. It’s a bit ridiculous really, but at the time it was considered more economical. Cameras were supposed to be a deterrent, as much as anything else.’
‘I’d like to see any requests you have on file for copies of film from the camera on Level 8.’
‘As I said, we don’t give out copies of film from that camera, because it’s non-functioning.’
‘Exactly,’ said Cooper. ‘You know that, and I know that. And anyone who’s ever requested film from it must know that, too.’
Hitchens got up to escort Dr Kane out of the building, leaving Diane Fry on her own. She watched them walking away down the corridor, the DI’s hand lightly touching the doctor’s elbow as he chatted to her about his student days in Sheffield.
Fry knew that seeing visitors off the premises would normally be a job the DI delegated to somebody more junior. But for Dr Kane, Hitchens was making an exception. Probably because she was an expert and had to be treated with respect. Probably.
To prevent herself from thinking about it any more, Fry lowered her gaze and found herself staring at the yellow highlighter marks on the transcript in front of her. She wished she hadn’t used yellow. Now that the colour had dried, it looked faintly rancid and unhealthy, like a four-day-old bruise or a urine stain. Pink or orange would have been much more cheerful.
But who was she kidding? Whatever colour she chose wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the sly, evil look of the words themselves.
I can smell it right now, can’t you? It’s so powerful, so sweet. So irresistible.
She left the DI’s office and walked slowly back to the CID room. Ben Cooper wasn’t at his desk, but Gavin Murfin and a couple of other DCs were in, and they looked up as she entered.
As usual, there was a whiff of pastry from Murfin’s direction. Steak pie or Cornish pasty, she wasn’t sure. Right now, she wouldn’t have been able to identify it. Another, more elusive smell was in her nostrils, something rancid, unhealthy, yellow and evil. It was a smell she knew would only get closer and couldn’t be dispersed by the ventilation system.
I can smell it right now, can’t you? … It’s the scent of death.
‘Let’s get the map out,’ said Hitchens, almost before he could get back into the CID room. ‘We need the Ordnance Survey map, Diane – White Peak.’
‘We could use the mapping system on the computer,’ said Fry.
‘That’s no good for a six-mile radius. We won’t be able to see enough detail at that scale.’
He cleared a table while Fry found a copy of the right map and they spread it out.
‘Wardlow is here,’ said Hitchens. ‘Now we need a ruler to measure three miles in each direction. Damn it, the village is too close to the edge of the map – we’ll have to turn over to the other side. Why is everything you want to look at on an OS map always too close to the edge?’