The Coldest Blood

Reade sat on the console desktop, playing with a packet of Silk Cut. ‘As you know, we’ve been concerned about cannabis being sold to teenagers in Ely. It happened quite suddenly, about a month ago, and continued for nearly three weeks. There’s no fresh reports – but we’d like to nail this in case it’s just a brief pause in the supply.

‘We picked up a couple of kids out of their heads down by the bypass last Thursday. They’d done some glue, which is nothing new, but they reeked of dope. Let’s say we were sympathetic about their cases – and in return we got some information about the supplier. They said he sells out of a car after dark just here…’

Reade got up and stabbed a finger into a large map of the town centre. ‘Just here. Very clever – it’s one of several blind spots not covered by the CCTV cameras. But he wasn’t as clever as he thought. Just overlooking this bit of car parking is the rear of Boots – they got broken into a couple of times in the summer so they’d put up a camera of their own. And they keep the film.’

Reade played importantly with some buttons.

The big screen showed a deserted car park at night, a halogen security light reflecting on frosty tarmac. A car was already parked in the shadows, side on, the number plates not visible.

Dryden squinted, leaning forward. ‘Did we not see the car pull in?’

Reade shook his head. ‘The camera is timed. It comes on at 6.30 and the car was already parked up.’

A single figure in a knee-length hoodie moved in jerky spasms across the car park and miraculously appeared inside the car without having opened a door. A clock on the screen showed the time ticking by. A minute and thirty-two seconds later the figure was out, walking towards the camera, the coat’s hood pulled down low.

‘Customer number one,’ said Reade, freezing the frame. ‘Note the wedge-shaped badge on the jacket – it’s a designer label. Pretty rare, pretty expensive.’

Garry fingered his spots. ‘Did you get the kid?’

Reade nodded. ‘Well, we got a kid in an identical top. A week later in Market Square. He’d just had a hit and was trying to take his trousers off over his head.’

They laughed without mirth.

‘His dad didn’t find it funny when we took him home,’ said Reade. ‘Nice middle-class semi on the Lynn Road.’

Another figure appeared, moving across the tarmac like an animated clay character from children’s TV. Two others joined the first at the car window. This time the deal was over in twenty-five seconds.

‘It gets boring after that. Until 7.38pm precisely.’

Reade accelerated the picture forward, a dozen or more customers coming and going in a few seconds. Then the driver’s door swung open, a man got out, locked the car, and slipped behind a ventilating unit. A dark liquid stain spread out from the shadows, trickling towards a gutter.

‘Charming,’ said Dryden, as the man reappeared and Reade froze the frame. He was medium height, thin shoulders under a dark overcoat, one hand in a pocket, the other, massive, hung low like a weapon. The face was split between light and dark, the contrast too great to allow any ID.

‘It’s not much,’ said Reade. ‘I’ve got a statement you can use,’ he added, handing Garry a Xeroxed sheet. ‘It’s got the car make and model etc. When he drove off, the plate stayed in shadow.’

‘And the CCTV stuff had been destroyed? No way of following him out of the town centre?’

‘Right,’ said Reade unhappily. Garry nodded, having lost the plot.

‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, standing and pointing at the rear of the car. It was a four-wheel drive. The rear windows, all the windows in fact, had become clouded with condensation. But in one side pane there was a small black irregular patch of clear glass. ‘Can you run the tape back?’

Reade pressed the rewind. The drug seller retreated into the shadows, reappeared, and got into the car backwards. Suddenly the small black window in the misty pane was gone.

‘Someone else?’ asked Garry.

Dryden shook his head: ‘I think it’s why a lot of the kids didn’t get in the car. When the first punter got in you could just see a dividing mesh – between the back and the passenger seats. It’s a dog. Bit of security?’

Reade let the film run forward again.

‘Could we have a still?’

The detective rummaged in a file and produced a black and white ‘video-grab’ image. It was grainy and indistinct, but it caught some of the menace of the original footage.

‘Great,’ said Dryden, handing it to Garry. ‘We’ll give it a good run.’

Back upstairs Dryden waited until Reade had given Garry more data on local drug-related crime to boost the story before bringing up Declan McIlroy’s case. ‘There was nothing on calls, but have there been any reports of a bogus caller in High Park Flats – or on the Jubilee? Someone posing as a health visitor perhaps, or doctor. There was something on a bogus plumber – but that was out of town.’

Reade took them back to the deserted office. He rifled through some files on one of the desktops, then booted up a PC.