---

It was 8 a.m. and Robyn stood in front of the whiteboard, blocking out the racket coming from the other side of the office. Matt and Mitz had joined her there and were close enough to have a conversation without shouting over desks. Robyn winced as Shearer yelled something into his phone. He’d been extra vocal since his arrival ten minutes earlier. He slammed the phone onto the table and muttered something to Gareth. Without warning, he pushed back from his desk, leapt lightly to his feet and moved swiftly towards the door.

Gareth was a few seconds behind him. He paused to speak to Matt. ‘Bloke dead on a golf course. Maybe he got hit by a golf ball.’

‘Roger Jenkinson,’ said Robyn. ‘Lives just outside Yoxall. He might have dated Tessa Hall for a while. Her friend Juliet said Tessa slept with at least one of the men on the quiz team but doesn’t think it was Anthony. Liam Carrington claims he stayed well away from Tessa so that only leaves Roger Jenkinson. Can you find out about him and talk to him, Mitz?’

‘Will do. I’ve spoken to Tessa’s parents but they don’t know anything about a new boyfriend. I also found out they gave her the deposit for her house and have been paying half the mortgage for her. She’s their only child and they wanted to help her out. Totally devastated about her death. Sara Hall, her mother, could barely speak to me for tears. I thought I might go and visit them personally.’

‘Good idea. They must be in a wretched state.’

Robyn’s phone vibrated. It was Anna, who, along with David, was at Tessa’s house, searching for anything that might lead to the identity of her boyfriend.

‘I think we found something relevant – a contract note concerning an offshore account in Grand Cayman for Schrödinger Securities.’

Robyn slapped the palm of her hand on the desk in front of her. ‘Photograph it and send it across immediately. Great work.’

‘We’ll bring back everything we think’s relevant.’ Anna rang off and Robyn rubbed her hands in satisfaction.

‘Matt, Anna’s sending across some new information concerning Tessa Hall. She might have been hiding money offshore. Obviously, we need to find out how she got it in the first place. Might be a trust fund from her parents or her lover. Mitz, talk to her folks. This might change how we handle this case. Up until now, we’ve been looking for a lover or some link to Henry Gregson. Now, we could be looking for somebody who uncovered this information and either blackmailed her or wanted a part of it.’

‘You got it.’

Robyn threw her pen towards Matt, who caught it deftly. ‘Matt, make the necessary additions.’

Matt gave a mock salute and removed the pen cap with a flourish, adding ‘offshore account’ next to Tessa Hall’s name.

Robyn’s attention flitted back to Henry Gregson. She still harboured doubts about Libby’s boyfriend Tarik, who’d been in the vicinity on the day. Her instinct screamed he was withholding information, and not only was he in a relationship with Libby, there was also the matter of his brother, Nadir, beaten up at school by Henry and his friends. Seeking revenge for the attack on his brother years before was an unlikely motive, but Robyn had come across stranger cases. If Tarik already harboured a grudge against Henry, he might have been easily persuaded to attack the man. Robyn wasn’t yet ready to discount Libby completely as a suspect. She might be behind the murder and have involved Tarik.

With that, Robyn left the busy office, headed for her Golf and programmed JJ Parts in Cannock into her satnav.

It took some considerable time to find the premises at the end of an almost deserted street filled with unoccupied buildings, boarded up and scrawled with graffiti. It turned out to be the smallest of garages, almost no bigger than an ordinary double garage, and shuttered up, with an ugly brick extension attached to its side. The door to it was locked and it was only after incessant banging on it that a short, barrel-chested man in overalls appeared. Robyn held her warrant card to the grimy glass and he unlocked the door.

‘Brett?’ she asked.

‘That’s me.’

‘I’m DI Carter. We spoke on the phone earlier. I understand Tarik Akar was here Tuesday afternoon.’

Brett squared his shoulders and scratched at his cheek. His button-brown eyes were unusually bright and darted uncomfortably around the bleak office, resting on a tatty grey plastic chair. ‘He was here.’

The office, if you could call it that, didn’t feel used to Robyn. Apart from the chair, the only other piece of furniture was a shabby square table that looked like it had been rescued from a skip. There weren’t the usual notices on the walls advertising services or price lists. An old tyre leant against the tall counter that separated the room from the closed workshop door. Behind the counter was a dusty shelf, housing several small boxes of spark plugs and other accessories. For Robyn, who took her own car for regular services and was used to garage waiting areas, this one felt false. Brett was shuffling uncomfortably as if he wished she’d leave.

‘And what was the reason for his visit?’

‘He came to collect some parts,’ Brett replied, squeezing his nose with his thumb and finger. ‘For Mike.’

Robyn pulled out a notepad and pen. ‘Can you confirm he came to collect a distributor for a VW Passat?’ She watched carefully as he digested her words. She had deliberately set him up, knowing full well that was not what he’d said. Brett fell perfectly into the trap.

‘Yeah. That’s right. For a VW Passat.’

‘And you had to send out for one because you had the wrong one in stock?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes had moved from the plastic chair to a pile of boxes stacked in one corner of the room.

‘How many mechanics work here with you? It’s not a very big place.’

‘Only one other guy – Steve. He’s out at the moment.’

‘Would you mind if I took a look around?’

‘There’s nothing to see,’ said Brett, too quickly for her liking.

‘You’re not working on anything at the moment?’

He shook his head. ‘Bit quiet. Don’t do much on a Saturday. Just tidying up. There’s been an oil spillage out there. Don’t want you to slip over or get messed up.’

Robyn nodded. There was no doubt he was hiding something. The location of the garage, hidden away on an abandoned industrial estate, and the general set-up inside, led her to wonder if there were illegal or dodgy dealings going on.

She thanked him, left the office and drove to the next street where she parked her car between a Ford Escort and a van. She doubled back to the garage on foot, padded silently to the shuttered door and listened to the faint voices and hammering coming from inside. Brett had lied. There were two men inside working on a vehicle. She found a spot in the doorway of a brick building, close to the garage, where she waited, listening to distant traffic and trying not to pay too much attention to the smell of stale urine. Ten minutes passed, then ten more. She stamped away the pins and needles in her feet and then cocked her head to one side to make out a new noise. It was the whirring of metal shutters as they were raised, followed by the growl of an engine starting up.

She dashed forwards, her body blocking the path of the Porsche being backed out. Brett spotted her in the rear-view mirror, braked and dropped his head into his hands. The man working the opening mechanism tried to drop the shutter again, but Robyn pressed forwards, stopping to take in the number plates recently unscrewed from the vehicle on the floor. It took no time to work out what was really happening in the garage. She held up a finger to the man. ‘Don’t think about running. We’ll track you down in an instant.’ She tugged at the driver’s door handle and opened it. Brett didn’t look up.

‘If you’d like to get out of the vehicle, sir, we can talk about exactly what happened on Tuesday the fourteenth.’

---

It didn’t take long to extract a confession. With officers en route to Mike’s Motors to arrest the man and his employees, Robyn listened in silence as Brett told her the truth.

‘It’s Mike’s operation. He gets requests for certain makes and models of vehicles to be nicked, and sends out a couple of guys to steal them. I get a call telling me what to expect in the garage, and when. Once the vehicle comes here, we respray it, or make a few modifications, swap the plates for false ones, and then it gets shipped off to Mike’s contact.

‘Sometimes we have a few issues with the cars. If there’s a real problem, Mike sends over one of his mechanics to sort it. We don’t have those skills. We took in an Audi Sunday. Needed to turn it around quickly. Got it ready for Tuesday morning as instructed and started it up to put it on the trailer and move it, but the engine cut out. We tried to fix it but it wouldn’t go. I rang Mike, who said he’d send Tarik over to look at it. Tarik got here about lunchtime, but the bastard thing wouldn’t work. Took him a good few hours to fix the problem. We got it loaded around 4 p.m., after he’d gone.’

‘So how long was he here?’

‘From twelve forty until almost four.’

‘The whole time?’

‘Yeah. He didn’t go until it was working. Moaned about it taking so long.’

Robyn signalled for the officer by the door to take Brett away. She’d cracked a case, only not the one she wanted to resolve. It appeared Tarik Akar was in the clear and Robyn was facing a dead end.

---

The office was as busy as when she left it. Matt was coming to the end of a phone conversation. Mitz, with his back to the door, was also on the phone, and so deep in conversation he didn’t hear Robyn return.

‘Okay, thank you very much. If you could send that all over, that’d be a huge help. Thank you, sir.’ Matt ended his call and immediately sprang up, notepad in hand.

‘Schrödinger Securities is set up in Grand Cayman and only has one company director, Tessa Hall. It has assets equivalent to about a million pounds. If you’re going to ask me how a nurse got her hands on a million pounds, I won’t be able to answer.’ He relaxed against the desk, his chin supported by his open hand.

‘She can’t have saved it all from her wages,’ said Mitz. ‘Maybe it’s from an inheritance, or a windfall.’

Everything about Mitz smacked of perfection, from his shining black hair and immaculate, squared-off nails to his shirt, impossibly white and neatly tucked into black trousers that appeared to be freshly pressed no matter what time of day. Aspects of his attire reminded Robyn of Davies, who would never leave the house without a belt and gleaming shoes. That, in turn, reminded her of the conversation with Amélie. She forced such thoughts from her mind.

‘When was the account set up, Matt?’

‘Only last month. January the tenth.’

Robyn flicked through her notes on Tessa Hall, puzzling over where the money had come from.

‘What did you learn from her parents, Mitz?’

‘They spoke regularly on Skype and Tessa would drive down to see them some weekends. Good, loving daughter. Never been in trouble. She wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and be a paediatrician but decided she couldn’t face years and years at university after school, so opted for nursing. Enjoyed going out. Had lots of friends but after a bust-up with a boyfriend last year, decided to move away to the countryside. Tessa hadn’t told them about any new boyfriends recently although she did tell them she’d been given a present – a kitten. I haven’t spoken to them about this offshore account, obviously.’

‘She had a bad break-up?’

‘I asked about that. I don’t think so. They were together five years and she’d had enough of the relationship. She dumped him. He was clingy and kept pestering her, so she decided to move out of the area. Mum and Dad agreed and helped her out financially. Since then, he’s found a new girlfriend and moved to New Zealand with her.’

Robyn sighed. ‘Not him, then. I wonder who bought the kitten. Could be the same person who bought the Valentine’s card. We’ll have to ask her parents about the million pounds.’

‘Want me to go back and see her folks?’

Robyn paced the floor, almost colliding with a desk, and grunted. Tessa was hiding the money for a reason. Why? ‘Yes. We have to find out where it came from.’

‘I’ll be subtle.’

‘I know you will. This could all be a huge shock to them.’

‘I’ve not got hold of Roger Jenkinson yet.’

‘You stick with Tessa’s parents first. And when you get hold of him, see if you can get a surname on the other man on the quiz team – Anthony.’

She glanced at the mess in the far end of her office. Another week of Shearer was almost impossible to bear. This latest development was a huge surprise and she wasn’t sure how to proceed. Certainly they still needed to talk to Roger Jenkinson but first they really needed to find out who was Tessa’s boyfriend. And as for Henry Gregson, she’d hit the buffers yet again. With Tarik, and probably Libby, out of the frame, she was only left with Lauren and the mysterious jogger to consider. She picked up a pencil and chewed at its end while she wondered what to do next.