Breakneck Point Read online

  ‘What are you saying exactly, Ms Dymond?’

  Gripping my notebook, I utter words I never thought I’d ever hear myself say in a voice I don’t recognize as my own.

  ‘I’m saying this fingerprint was planted among the finger impressions that I took from the crime scene and was sent to the bureau without my knowledge.’

  There’s a silence that I want to last forever, but it’s quickly filled with a sound, almost metallic, like a ship’s girders bending and yielding to the sea just before it capsizes. It’s the sound of a mother who knows her daughter’s killer will walk free.

  It’s joined by other sounds and I can’t tell where the sobs end and the shouts begin. Then cheers. Loud cheers. And angry exchanges.

  In among the chaos, Stride is staring at me. His shaking head will come to represent many things: his conviction for perverting the course of justice, mass sackings and my own removal from Major Investigations after those left refuse to work with me, but mostly it speaks of his sadness that I’ve allowed a murderer to walk free.

  2

  Six months later

  Someone is going to get it in the neck. Big time. This is the third tree-lined track I’ve driven down so if this isn’t the right one, I’m calling it a day. It’s not as if it’s the crime of the century, for Christ’s sake.

  The narrow lane splays into a small copse, and there it is. Apparently, it was once a blue Nissan Micra, the pride and joy of a Mrs Jasmine Brownley, until its life took a turn for the worse and it was nicked by some scrote off the local estate to use as a plaything. I say apparently because its interior has melted to black plastic hillocks and its exterior is rocking black sootiness flaked with grey ash and rust.

  I take out my phone and punch the number of the police officer in charge of the case, if you can call it that, but it goes to voicemail.

  ‘PC 5831? It’s Ally Dymond. What do you think you’re doing sending me to this heap of shit? It’s burned out. Just like the last one you sent me to. How many times do I have to tell you? This isn’t CSI bloody Miami. I can’t take fingerprints from a car that’s been baked and left out in the rain for three weeks.’

  I ring off. This is the sixth wreck I’ve been sent to since I was sent back to division six months ago. If it isn’t an incinerated car, it’s a dilapidated shed where the chances of me recovering any forensic evidence are slim to none.

  I know it’s punishment for the Mainwaring case. Send her to the shit jobs and maybe she’ll get the message and quit. That’s their thinking. I get it. The fallout from the trial was nuclear. Dozens of detectives and administration staff were suspended or sacked. It led to what the top brass like to call a ‘root and branch’ review of Major Investigations that filled the local papers for weeks. I did nothing wrong, but I’ve still ended up at a rural outpost in the far north of the county because cops have a weird sense of justice. Sure, Stride fiddled the evidence, but, hey, he was just making sure Mainwaring got what was coming to him. Anyway, Mainwaring probably did leave fingerprints at the scene and the CSI missed them. For some, maybe most, Stride is a hero for sacrificing his career to catch a killer and I’m the enemy for letting Mainwaring walk free. There won’t even be a retrial because Stride broke the rules. That’s the way it is. Well, they can shove it up their corrupt arses, because I’m not going anywhere. I’m not the crook. I could have fought it, of course, but what’s the point when your colleagues won’t acknowledge your existence?

  I get my camera out and take a couple of photos, so it doesn’t feel completely like the wasted journey it is. Not that this will ever go to court. Sorry, Mrs Brownley.

  Back in the van, and the next job on my crime list makes me swear out loud. An allegedly kidnapped Cockapoo has turned up at a bus shelter. The officer dealing with it has returned it to its owner but took its collar back to the police station where it’s waiting for me to just ‘pop by and dust for prints’. Six years of investigating and solving some of the worst crimes imaginable only to be reduced to dog-nappings.

  The radio crackles into life.

  ‘November Juliet Two, we’ve reports of criminal damage to the public toilets at Morte Sands. Over.’

  I squeeze the handset.

  ‘OK, show me attending. Heading there now. Over and out.’

  Morte Sands is only five miles away from where I am now, and two miles further along the coast from the seaside town of Bidecombe where I live. While Bidecombe boasts a picturesque fishing harbour, it also shoulders the embarrassment of a neglected high street which everyone tries to pretend has its own charm. It doesn’t. There’s nothing charming about short-lease shops selling Christmas decorations in mid-July. Morte Sands, meanwhile, is the true jewel in North Devon’s crown. It’s a glorious three-mile stretch of nothing but the finest golden sand. On rare days when the sun is high and bright, it casts water in azure, and you’d think you were on the Med. The road leading there is hemmed by those famous Devon high hedges sprinkled with cow parsley and, at this time of year, tall nodding foxgloves.

  Mr Stavely, who owns the car park and its toilets, is already waiting for me when I pull into the car park.

  ‘Thank God, you’re here. What took you so long?’

  Ignoring him, I fetch my silver case from the back of the van and he leads me to the gents’ toilets, a grey block on the edge of the slipway leading to the beach. It’s still early and a sea fret lightly veils the breaking waves. Three metres and clean, I wish I was joining the trail of surfers trooping towards the white froth. Instead, I’m in a windowless toilet that reeks of piss, staring at a condom machine lying on the floor.

  ‘Look what the little shits have done,’ Mr Stavely groans.

  ‘Let’s see if they’ve left us anything.’

  Flicking open my case, I remove my thin-stemmed Zephyr brush from a plastic tube, unscrew the top off a pot of aluminium powder and load my brush with its contents.

  Tapping the excess off, the soft squirrel hairs splay and I begin twirling it across the machine, working my way slowly across the shiny white surface. A hundred silvery fingerprints emerge, catching the light seeping through the door Mr Stavely has wedged open to relieve the odour.

  Reloading my brush, I check the back of the machine and the pale patch of wall where it once hung. Both have been wiped clean as I suspected they might be. Mr Stavely isn’t going to like what I have to say.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he says, waving a hand over the fingerprints adorning the front of the machine. ‘Aren’t you going to take those?’

  ‘There’s no point. This is a public toilet, even if I get a hit on the fingerprint database, the offender will admit he came here to commune with nature. If they’d left prints on the back of the machine or had broken into it and left them on the inside, there might have been prints that would be very difficult to explain, but they haven’t.’

  ‘But their fingerprints will at least place them at the scene.’

  Amateur sleuths. The bane of my life. Hollywood has much to answer for.

  ‘I can also place you and I at the scene,’ I explain, returning my brush to its home and snapping my case shut. ‘It doesn’t mean we ripped a condom machine off the wall.’

  ‘So, you’re not going to do anything?’

  ‘No.’

  It’s not the answer he wants or is prepared to accept.

  ‘I know the Police Commissioner personally.’

  Judging by the number of times I’ve heard this line, the Commissioner has a very wide circle of friends.

  ‘I’m sure you do. However, given police resources are so stretched, I’m also sure the Commissioner would want me to spend my time and expertise on those crimes where we have a realistic chance of a prosecution, but please feel free to call him.’

  Actually, I’m not sure at all. The rare times I’ve found myself in the Commissioner’s company he has always struck me as a self-serving, pompous prick.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Megan.

  ‘Excuse me, I have to take this.’

  Stepping outside, I check my watch. It’s 8.15 a.m. No prizes for guessing what this is about.

  ‘Before you ask. No, you’re not taking a day off school.’ ‘But I’m really ill.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’ve just got a maths test. So get dressed and go to school.’

  Megan groans. ‘Honestly, Mum, I’m really sick. Can’t you come home and look after me?’

  ‘No, I’m working and there’s no one else.’

  It isn’t as if anyone matching the description of ‘father’ is going to swoop in and help. Julian fled the scene well before the end of my first trimester and I can’t even bring myself to think of her stepdad, Sean, and no one I’ve met on Tinder would ever be a contender for Father of the Year. Penny, my friend and landlady, is out on her boat today and the further I keep Bernadette, my so-called mother, away from my life, the better my sanity. Besides, Megan isn’t ill.

  ‘You said you’d have more time for me when you got kicked off Major Investigations.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ But she’s right. When I was sent back to division, the one upside was I wouldn’t be trekking to police headquarters every day and I’d be around more for Megan, but the previous CSI retired and now it’s just me covering seventy square miles of the moorlands and shorelands on my own. ‘I still have to work.’

  ‘So, what you’re saying is your job’s more important than your sick daughter?’

  ‘No, it isn’t because, fortunately, my daughter isn’t sick.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Anyway, I’m old enough to stay at home on my own.’

  I can practically see her tossing her long cinnamon hair over her shoulder, wafting disdain in my direction.

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t have time for this. Go to school.’

  ‘You never have time for me. You don’t care about me, you only care about your stupid job.’

  ‘If it weren’t for my stupid job, you wouldn’t be going on the school ski trip. I’m doing this for you.’

  ‘Are you?’

  For Christ’s sake, she’s relentless. It’s true that crime doesn’t keep office hours, and I’ve enough guilt to last a lifetime with all the parents’ nights and musical debuts I’ve missed, but that’s still not enough to let Megan skive off school whenever she feels like it.

  ‘Megan, just get your arse to school.’

  ‘God, Mum, you’re such a bitch. You can’t make—’

  My phone beeps, interrupting her.

  ‘I’ve got to go. It’s work.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  Megan rings off, leaving me wondering if she genuinely is ill and I should go home. I took a day off last week because she felt sick, but by lunchtime she was tucking into a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream and shading her eyebrows. I take the other call.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Major Investigations are trying to get hold of you.’

  My stomach flips like a teenager who’s just spotted her crush in the street. I loathe myself for it.

  ‘Major Investigations. Why?’

  ‘They’ve got a body down on Bidecombe Quay. They want you there right now.’

  I should tell them to stick it.

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  3

  Trisha plonks herself down next to him; her vast backside hangs over the edge of the low harbour wall. She’s so close to him her thigh brushes his and it takes all his will not to flinch in disgust. The woman has no concept of personal space. Without making it too obvious, he shuffles along the low quay wall.

  They’ve been there since seven. He doesn’t mind. He’s used to it. Besides, it could be worse. The sun is shining. The seagulls are swooping overhead. The boats are bobbing in the harbour. It’s going to be a beautiful day, the best in a long time, and, anyway, you can’t hurry these things. A few more hours won’t make any difference.

  Trisha wanted them to go get breakfast and come back later, typical of her to be so unprofessional, but he told her they should stay close as they could be called any minute. They won’t be, but he doesn’t want to miss the show.

  He’s never seen so many police officers, marching up and down the quay, with their clipboards, looking very serious, knocking on doors, questioning people like they know what they’re doing, when they haven’t got a clue. It’s very amusing.

  Trisha hands him a coffee he hasn’t asked for.

  ‘Reckon we’re going to be here for hours. Did you hear about my date with Bill from HR?’

  ‘No.’

  But he knows he’s about to. He’s had a ringside seat to Trisha’s love life – or rather, loveless life – ever since they partnered up three years ago and if he’s learned one thing it’s that she goes through men even faster than a box of chocolate eclairs.

  ‘We went to that new pub in Westlands Point, overlooking the sea. Dead romantic. I had the prawn cocktail and it came in a bowl as big as a fish bowl. Could barely finish it.’

  ‘But you did.’

  He looks at her. Everything about her screams round. Round body, round eyes, right down to the round dyed-red curls framing her round face, like a kid’s drawing. And loud. She’s so loud she hurts his ears. There’s a name for people like her. Larger than life, that’s it, but what it actually means is that the person is a fat, unbearable attention-seeker.

  As if to prove his point, she glugs her coffee and projects a gasp across the road in front of them, attracting a frown from a woman pushing a pram on the other side. She really is repulsive.

  ‘Yeah, but barely, Si. Then I had the steak which came with mushrooms, tomatoes and those giant onion rings. Bill chose exactly the same. His favourite, too, how weird is that? Reckon it means we must be compatible. Perhaps I’ve found my prince. God knows I’ve kissed enough frogs to fill a pond. Actually, a lake.’ Her throaty laugh is louder than her joke deserves, but then she becomes unusually thoughtful. ‘Never thought someone like Bill would go for someone like me. I know you think I’m a bit of a party animal, life and soul, always up for a laugh, but a lot of it is front, Si. I just want to meet someone I can grow old with. I think Bill could be the one. He said I was really pretty. No one’s ever said that to me before.’

  Well, he can certainly believe that. He blows the froth on his coffee and watches it migrate to the other side of the cup.

  ‘Trisha, I think there’s something you should know.’

  ‘What?’

  Shaking his head, he pretends to change his mind.

  ‘Forget it. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You can’t do that to me, Si. What is it?’ Her smile deserts her, but he’s in no hurry to reply.

  A second crime scene investigator van pulls up opposite them on the quay. He watches the driver’s door fly open and a leg already enclosed in a white forensic suit plant itself on the road.

  Its owner gets out. The petite frame, the coal-black hair that skims her shoulders, the pointed chin and generous lips – it’s her. It’s Danielle. No, it can’t be. That’s impossible and he knows it, but he can’t help but scrutinize the woman for further proof. He finds reassurance in her olive skin which speaks of the Mediterranean whereas Danielle’s was pale and she wore her hair stair-rod straight, not frizzy and uncontrolled like this woman. But the resemblance is uncanny, and much as he’d like to, he can’t take his eyes off her.

  The CSI opens the back of the van and retrieves a large silver case before slamming it shut again. He watches her march towards the end of the quay where a small crowd is huddled around the police tape.

  ‘Si, please tell me.’

  ‘What?’ Trisha’s nasal whining pierces his thoughts, dragging him back to their conversation. He turns to her, pressing his features into what he hopes passes for concern. ‘Look, I wasn’t sure if I should say anything. We’re friends, though, and, if it were me, I’d want to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘OK, but don’t shoot the messenger. I was in the lunch queue yesterday, behind Bill, and he was with a friend. They were talking about a bet they’d made.’

  ‘A bet?’

  ‘Yes. Bill’s friend had bet him twenty pounds he wouldn’t take you out.’

  Trisha’s shoulders drop.

  ‘A bet. He asked me out for a bet?’

  Her lower lip quivers and her big round eyes shine with tears.

  ‘Look at how upset you are. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.’

  She runs the back of her hand under her nose.

  ‘No, you were right to tell me. You’re a good friend. What a total shit that Bill is.’

  Turning away to hide his smile, his attention is caught by raised voices coming from the police cordon.

  * * *

  It’s early, but already there’s an eager crowd drawn by the half dozen police cars and the ambulance like it’s some kind of fairground attraction. Even the seagulls are excited, wheeling and whining overhead.

  But just as I’m about to lift the crime scene tape over my head, PCSO Christian Cobb steps in front of me.

  ‘I’ll need to see some ID.’

  Of all people posted to guard the scene, it has to be him. I’ve pulled Cobb up several times for touching stuff at crime scenes and I know he’s mates with DC Will Lockhart or just plain Will Lockhart, as he is now since he was sacked. I don’t want to make a scene, but a burned-out car and a wrecked condom machine have already used up my admittedly low reserves of patience and it’s not even 9 a.m.

  ‘You know who I am, Cobb, now get out of my way.’

  ‘Not till I’ve seen some ID.’

  ‘I mean it, Cobb. Get out of my fucking way or I’ll have you on school gate duty for the rest of your days.’

  The audience, a mix of tourists and locals, falls silent with anticipation. A dead body and a fight between the CSI and the PSCO on the quay all in one day, this’ll be talked about for years to come.

  ‘Let her through, Cobb.’ A weary voice cuts through our standoff. It belongs to a man in a badly fitting grey suit, his lower half obscured by a white forensic suit rolled down to his hips. He strides towards us, his jacket flapping at his sides like it’s trying to keep up while the constant breeze tries to make off with the thin strips of hair covering a bald pate. People who want great hair don’t live near the sea.