Blindside - By Gj Moffat Page 0,62

in the mall. It was a standard working day for most people and the city wasn’t exactly built as a holiday destination – not unless you were staying there to use it as a base for the nearby ski resorts.

He spent an hour in the rental place, most of that time stuck behind a large American woman who insisted on telling the sales agent every detail of her flight down from Chicago and how she was visiting her sister who was ill and how her sister’s no good husband …

Logan zoned out.

After a brief attempt by the agent to sell him a convertible, Logan rented a Cadillac sedan with the biggest engine that they had. It sounded to Logan like it would be powerful enough for whatever Cahill had in mind. The agent gave him directions to the rental parking lot, where the cars were stored, and all the paperwork in a branded folder.

Logan walked the short distance to the lot in the crisp morning air and found the car with the help of one of the attendants who looked about as bored as a person could. He started the car engine and it came to life with a satisfying growl. He spent fifteen minutes getting used to the car’s controls and driving around the lot to acclimatise himself to the automatic gearbox, and also turning left and right from the ‘wrong’ side. When he was happy, he looked in the car’s Sat Nav for a local landmark to give him on-the-road-driving experience and settled for the Denver Broncos’ stadium – Invesco Field at Mile High – because it was a little outside the centre of the city.

The sky was clear again today and it was a pleasant drive to the stadium. He parked the car and went to the small museum to look around at old photos of the football team and learn about its history.

When he was back outside, his phone rang.

‘You get a car?’ Cahill asked.

‘Yeah. A Cadillac.’

‘Sounds good. Where are you?’

‘Out at the football stadium.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason. Just went for a drive. What about you?’

‘Back at the hotel. You coming here now?’

‘Sure. You get your errand done?’

‘Yes.’

‘Probably best if I don’t know what it was.’

‘You got it. Listen, I want to go see if we can speak to these people this afternoon.’

Logan was about to ask what he meant, then remembered it would be to check out the D. Hunter list that Bruce had e-mailed over last night.

‘Okay. I’ll head back now. Ten, fifteen minutes.’

Logan parked on the street near the hotel and bought a local newspaper – The Denver Post – before walking back to meet Cahill.

‘You should drive,’ Logan told Cahill. ‘You’re the native after all.’

‘Sure.’ Cahill nodded. ‘Think you can handle being my passenger?’

Logan looked at his friend and, not for the first time, wondered if there was a tiny spark of madness inside his head – the kind of spark that marked men like Cahill out as different from everyone else.

Men capable of going into battle and coming out the other side.

4

‘We got a hit on the semen sample,’ Murphy told Irvine, perching on the edge of her desk.

‘You sure know the way to a woman’s heart.’ She smiled.

He looked so pleased; Irvine didn’t want to burst his bubble by saying that she knew it would belong to Russell Hall. Let him have his moment.

‘Russell Hall,’ he said.

‘We know him. His name surfaced already.’

‘Is he in custody?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Depends on whether being in the care of the pathologist counts as being in custody.’

‘He’s dead?’

She nodded.

‘Killed some time last night or this morning out in the east end. I guess he made someone unhappy when he killed Lewski.’

Murphy put the DNA result on her desk and left. She felt kind of bad.

She went back to her notes from the review of the CCTV footage. Looked again at the licence number for Hall’s car. A thought struck her: how does a drug dealer finance a luxury car purchase? Probably not cash. That would arouse suspicion at the car dealership.

What if he had an outstanding lease or finance contract?

She accessed the force’s credit reference database and entered the details for the car. The search result told her that there was a loan on it for £10,000 through a little-known finance company. And that the loan was in the name of a company.

She checked out the company. Its registered office was located at an accountancy firm: Marshall Scott.

She was still for a beat. Then she