Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,36

took a sharp right turn, he lost control of his bike and careered into a parked car. Without thinking, Dolly jumped from her car, grabbed the blue bag and broken necklace from inside his jacket, and drove off, leaving him for the approaching sirens to deal with.

When it was safe to stop, Dolly pulled over. Her heart was pounding and she gasped for breath as the tears welled in her eyes. Her fists pounded the steering wheel as she tried to forget the sight of Shirley’s body, but she knew she never could. It was what she deserved. It was she who had called the police and caused the chaos. She had been so consumed by vengeance that she hadn’t given the bystanders a second thought. What had happened to Shirley would be an eternal torment that Dolly would take to the grave.

An ambulance roared past, siren blaring, and snapped Dolly out of her melancholy. She looked inside the dark blue bag and saw jewels sparkling back at her. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls . . . every gemstone you could think of, encased in gold and platinum. Dolly put the broken necklace – torn from Shirley’s neck – into the bag, pulled the drawstring tight, put it into the glovebox and drove home.

*

The signal box at the old rural track crossing in Aylesbury was now abandoned. The lower half of the small oblong building was mostly wood panelling with two very small windows; it seemed to be entirely separate from the upper half, which was accessed by an external flight of wooden stairs. All of the wood panels were a creamy colour, or used to be, and all of the trimmings were dark brown. Ridley stood in the middle of the disused railway tracks, looking up, oddly transfixed by the signal box. The upper half of the building was all windows, giving a 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside. Each floor-to-ceiling window was split into eight smaller panes of glass, separated by wooden beams in the contrasting dark brown wood. All of the glass panes had been smashed by stones, probably thrown from where Ridley now stood. He glanced down at the sea of heavy gravel beneath his feet and the temptation to see if he could hit a window was almost too much to bear. Laura frowned as she watched a very slight grin creep over his face.

‘I’m not a trainspotter if that’s what you’re thinking, Laura. But I did have a train set when I was a kid. I saved up for two Christmases and two birthdays to buy a signal box just like this one.’

Laura shook her head as Ridley reminisced. She couldn’t imagine he was ever a child. Then Anik appeared at one of the broken windows – ‘stinks of piss in here’ – and Ridley’s beautiful childhood memory was shattered.

Anik stepped out at the top of the external wooden stairs.

‘Stop there!’ Ridley shouted. ‘What can you see?’

‘Nothing.’ Anik shrugged as he glanced down at Ridley’s stern face. He looked around again. ‘The trees would have been lower back in ’95 but, even so, the bridge where the train was held up definitely can’t be seen from here. Can’t see the new housing estate either ’cos of the . . . the . . . erm . . .’ He made a wavy movement with his hand.

‘Terrain?’ Ridley guessed.

‘Yes,’ Anik agreed. ‘The terrain’s, you know, up and down. So, The Grange wouldn’t have been visible from here either. Not much is visible from here, to be fair. Nice view though.’

He walked down the wooden stairs, joining Ridley and Laura on the tracks.

The team then went their separate ways. Anik went to interview James Douglas, the signalman on duty the night the train was robbed. And Laura and Ridley went to interview John Maynard, the builder who had been helping to convert The Grange into a children’s home.

*

Jack was halfway through a 1 hour and 50-minute train journey from London to Taunton. He had his notepad out and was scribbling names down as he searched for various people in the HOLMES database and also googled news articles from back in the day. Jimmy Nunn, ‘Boxer’ Davis, Carlos Moreno, Joe Pirelli, Terry Miller: the same names kept coming up, over and over. The East End of London was definitely a different place back then. The criminal ‘underworld’ was actually quite visible, with everyone knowing who the key players were, who to stay away from, who not to cross. There was a definite hierarchy and it was