Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,70

to keep people in their place.’

Audrey spluttered nervously. There was clearly more to this slip of the tongue, as Jack knew that Dolly was wily enough not to make idle threats. He left it alone for now and changed the subject.

‘Do you know where Barry is? Only he may have been the last person to see Mike, so we’d like to speak to him.’

‘I take it you know where he lives?’

Even now, amid so much grief, Audrey maintained her ingrained instinct to answer coppers’ questions with another question, to make sure she wasn’t giving away any secrets.

‘He’s not there. Barry’s not in any trouble as far as we can make out ‒ he may be able to help us, that’s all.’

Audrey necked the second glass of brandy as quickly as the first and said that she had no clue where Barry was. She also denied knowing Norma Walker, claimed to have never been to The Grange and to have only learnt about the train robbery from the newspapers. When Jack took the conversation back a decade further, to 1984, her demeanour changed – she become nervous, evasive and she developed that very familiar look of a criminal desperately trying to accurately recall an old lie. Jack asked about the Strand underpass robberies, one and two. He asked about the diamond robbery ‒ and he mentioned the names Terry Miller, Joe Pirelli, Jimmy Nunn and Harry Rawlins. Audrey leapt on to the defensive, saying that Mike was in the army when all of that went down, so why was Jack asking about them in relation to her boy’s murder?

‘You’re going to find his killer, aren’t you? He was one of yours, you owe him that much.’

‘I promise you, Mrs Withey, that the moment we find out who killed Mike, I’ll come back here and tell you personally.’

*

When Rob got home from finishing the repairs to the coach, Angela was sitting in the dark, holding a glass of wine in one hand and the small, worn teddy bear in the other. He moved round the back of her and wrapped his big, warm forearms around her shoulders. The thick black hairs on his arms tickled her chin ‒ something that normally made her smile and scratch her face ‒ but, this time, it went unnoticed.

‘The police have been round,’ she said calmly. Rob pushed his lips against her cheek in a long kiss to show her she had nothing to worry about. ‘He asked about the train robbery.’

‘We knew they would,’ Rob reasoned. ‘We’re in good shape. Everybody knows what they have to do.’ He held Angela’s hand, as she held the teddy bear. ‘I wish she could see you, Ange. Dolly would be so proud.’

CHAPTER 17

DI Prescott watched a young PC stepping from foot to foot and clapping his hands together in an attempt to stay warm. Prescott smirked – the poor kid looked like he was doing a Greek dance. Prescott, on the other hand, stood statue-still by the side of the muddy Range Rover. This was a big find and would allow him to legitimately get bang up to speed on the case.

Mike’s Range Rover sat in a field, tucked in close behind a tall hedgerow, about a quarter of a mile back from Rose Cottage. The fuel cap was missing and the tank had been siphoned almost dry; a sample of the fuel had been taken for analysis and Prescott was confident that this was where the accelerant for the fire had come from. Police tape protected the vehicle and the messy array of footprints that surrounded it. Rain had taken most of the evidence, but between the vehicle and the hedge the ground was sheltered, and SOCOs were getting some good casts from the footprints they found right next to the open fuel cap. With no keys in the ignition and no sign of hot-wiring, the immediate area was being searched – the keys could have vital fingerprints on them.

Prescott’s eyes narrowed as he processed the scene in his mind and tried to figure out the sequence of events.

Had Mike siphoned his own tank with the intention of burning down Rose Cottage? Probably not – because if the fire was premeditated, he’d have been more likely to bring a siphoning hose with him and not cut a piece from the one they found in the back garden, or just siphon the petrol into a container before he got there. Unless Mike had been to Rose Cottage before