‘I’m busy now, call you later.’

Cooper was also on his mobile. He looked up and said: ‘The old guy is coming down.’

Mick replied: ‘Why? I don’t want him here.’

‘He only wants to speak to the head detective. Won’t give up the tape otherwise. He’s coming down now with the constable.’

‘What took so long?’

Cooper asked the question, then said: ‘The old guy insisted that the constable watched the CCTV first.’

‘Why?’ Mick asked, concerned.

‘He wanted to give some commentary. The chap wants to be involved.’

If a cop had seen the video, he might recognise him, and that just wouldn’t do. Shit. Thinking quick, he said: ‘I don’t want the constable here. Just members of the investigation team. He can be of better use elsewhere.’ Cooper got on it.

They were standing outside a lock-up garage on a patch of grassland backdropped by a playing field, about 160 feet from the main road. Behind them, 100 feet away, were the rear ends of a row of houses, each garden with high hedges that blocked their view of the upstairs windows. And thus any view of the garages. Exactly the reason he had chosen the place. Yet here they fucking were. It clearly hadn’t been enough.

Mick and Cooper were watching the SOCO team milling around the Volvo in the second garage. The warped garage door was up only halfway, as far as the busted contraption would go. Today these guys wore respirators and face shields because they were dealing with a vicious chemical that Dave and Brad had used to sterilise the crime scene.

DC Gondal arrived and was let through the cordon. He almost jogged to his colleagues, which Mick didn’t like. His fear that Gondal had news was right on the money.

‘I got a couple of neat things on Brad Smithfield,’ Gondal said with a grin. ‘That Scottish henchman called Rocker, the murder you investigated? Not the only killing Smithfield’s name has been tied to. There’s another low life with a daft nickname. Robert Dunham, called himself Rapid. Drug dealer specialising in Buzz who got himself whacked in the proverbial dark alley one night just a week after the Rocker fiasco.’

He waited for a response. Mick, feeling the panic rise, could only think of: ‘Drug dealers get targeted all the time. Lucrative fodder for underworld taxmen and vigilantes. Give me more.’

‘His alibi was perfect: being interviewed by police about the Rocker killing. But shit sticks. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. And this guy, Rapid, had been known to deal out of Grafton’s nightclub.’

‘So?’

‘So twice, in two different murders and the nightclub robbery, the name Brad Smithfield has appeared as a person of interest. The sweetness is the way it all links to Ronald Grafton.’

‘That’s not really a link, is it? Dealers operate out of all sorts of nightclubs, and Grafton owned one of the most popular in London. I need more.’ More was the last thing he wanted, of course, but he was a cop investigating a triple slaughter and he had to be seen to be doing all he could.

Gondal pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket. Unfolded it slowly, like a guy playing on the tension to unleash something big. And big it was. Mick found himself staring at a printout from a website called About.me. A single-page user profile, like an online business card.

‘BRAD SMITHFIELD’ was the title. Below, taking up half the page, was a large picture of the man himself in jeans, T-shirt, dusty boots, a battered hard hat and a utility belt, kneeling before the corner of a half-built house, taking time out from laying bricks to grin at the camera.

‘JOINER, MASON, LANDSCAPER, ELECTRICIAN’ said big, bold letters under his name, and below that a button:

BROWSE MY PORTFOLIO

At the bottom was the personal stuff: HARD WORKER BY DAY AND GENERAL FUN GUY AT NIGHT, BRAD IS KNOWN FOR HIS SENSE OF HUMOUR AND BROAD SHOULDERS, A CHEEKY CHAP WHO…

‘Recognise the house?’ Gondal said, pointing. And Mick did. His heart sank.

Gondal said: ‘So Smithfield worked on Grafton’s nice woodland cottage, which meant he knew exactly where it was and what kind of place it was. Maybe he was a long-time employee the cops didn’t know about, and maybe he was in the loop enough to know that Grafton would flee there after his advance-fee fraud trial. He was questioned about the death of a dealer working out of Grafton’s club. He was suspected of the hit on Grafton’s nightclub. He worked on Grafton’s house. We need to pull this guy in for a chat. No more playing.’

‘Do it,’ Mick said, because now he had no choice. He knew Brad had been working on a website in order to find work, but he hadn’t expected the damn fool to post a fucking photo of himself at Grafton’s country abode.

For now, though, there was a more pressing matter.

A uniformed constable and an old man appeared at the cordon, thirty feet off. Mick turned from them. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Cooper bring the witness towards him. Thankfully, the cop who could potentially sink Mick was turned away. Mick relaxed.

The old chap was in a tacky suit, something he might have got married in fifty years ago. He didn’t look altogether there as he was introduced to the detectives. He was introduced as Alfie Tasker, from number eight, which was the last house on the row behind them. In his hands was a VHS tape.

‘You’re the boss?’

Mick nodded. ‘That’s the recording?’

‘Secured the perimeter, which is good,’ the guy said. ‘Have you got guys tracing cars seen in the vicinity last night?’

‘We’ll get it back to you, if you need it,’ Cooper said, with his hand out for the tape.

‘What happened to your ear?’ Tasker asked, pointing to Mick.

He touched it before he could stop himself. ‘What’s your camera quality like?’ With luck, the guy would admit it was bullshit. With luck, maybe they couldn’t distinguish faces.

‘Dark, wasn’t it? Council wouldn’t shell out their own hard-earned, would they? But it’s good enough to get these idiot vandals bang to rights. So tell me, what’re you going to do about them?’

They’d heard that this chap was annoyed by the constant vandalism of these garages, which needed knocking down anyway. Thought they could get away with their lark because nobody could see them because of the trees. They caused noise at all hours. Well, the old guy had fixed that problem. Mick glanced at the far end of the block of garages, some forty feet away. There, on the wall, was a tiny camera, aimed this way to watch all the doors. It hadn’t fucking been there six days ago when Mick and Brad had come here to assess the place for their needs.

‘This is more serious than vandals, Mr Tasker,’ Gondal said, annoyed. The old guy had called because of a media release about the murders in which the Volvo had been mentioned. Not vandals.

‘I know, I know. But they’re the same people, right? Have you dusted for prints?’

‘Can we have the tape?’ Cooper asked.

The old guy passed it over.

To Mick, Cooper said: ‘I know how we can get this hooked up, so we don’t have to wait for a transfer to digital.’

They were ready to go back to the station and view it. Which was bad. Mick felt panic rising further. He touched his ear again, and looked at the camera.

The old guy said: ‘Smells like drain cleaner.’

Sure was. A bottle of Devil Drain Dasher that Brad and Dave had splashed all over the car. Sodium hydroxide, no friend to forensics guys. But nobody knew that yet, and Mick wasn’t about to help them.

‘Caustic soda,’ the old guy said. ‘Good for burning up flesh. Sodium hydroxide, that’ll be it. That guy in Mexico who worked for a drug cartel, he used it. Three hundred bodies he got rid of. You got bodies in there?’

Gondal and Cooper grinned at the old guy’s fanciful mind, but Mick didn’t. No worry, because they’d discover the chemical used pretty soon, and you wouldn’t be able to do anything with that information. But still, it wasn’t nice to hear an old guy work it out in seconds.

‘Thanks for the tape,’ Cooper said to the old guy. ‘I’ll escort you home, if you like.’

But he didn’t move.

And then an idea. ‘Mr Tasker, you obviously have the ability to watch these tapes, right? Playback. You have a video recorder?’ Mick asked.

‘I do.’

‘Then how about we four go watch this thing right now, at your house?’

Tasker was up for it. Mick knew this guy wanted to be included. Maybe he was a former cop or just a busybody. Mick needed Gondal and Cooper to see it right now, too, because he could control that. He couldn’t if they chose to view it later, without him.

All agreed, the four of them headed for Tasker’s house. Mick touched his bad ear again, as if he needed a reminder of what was at stake. He needed a plan, quick, or his two colleagues were going to watch a video which showed him with the Volvo. When Gondal and Cooper had joined his team, he’d hoped they were sharp tacks. Now, he hoped for the opposite. Because if they worked this one out, there would be no glory.

‘I need something from my car first,’ he said.

He slipped the gun out of his glove box and into his pocket.