A black car sped past the brightly lit forecourt and the officer’s finger hovered over the fast-forward button when Elise leaned even closer.
“Go back,” she said.
The black car reversed at speed and stopped.
“Look,” she said. “Going the other way, it’s Liam Eastwood’s white van. It’s got his logo on it—a dripping tap. He said he was at the Old Vicarage fire that night. Go back to the car park footage—was there a white van there? Was he there too?”
She could feel her face flushing. Liam had taken Charlie home two nights earlier. He’d known where Charlie was. Had he gone back to try to get his money?
“No white vans, boss. But he must have seen that SUV. He might have recognized it. Worth a tug. I’ll sort it out.”
“Actually, leave it with me. Look for the Volvo’s journey and keep me updated,” she said as she picked up her bag from her desk.
The phone started to ring as she walked back into her office.
“Afternoon!” DI Wicks sounded perkier every time she spoke to him. “Wasn’t sure if you’d be in today.”
“Couldn’t keep me away and sounds like it’s the same your end.”
“Beats admin,” Wicks said. “Anyway, I’ve been looking back over all the files and updating. And I think I’ve found an item from the burglary on a specialist website—a silver pillbox. We set up an alert at the time for the stolen goods in case any came on the market.”
“When was it put on the website?”
“Three months ago. It was on a list to be looked at.”
“Bennett had been out a while by then—is he selling stuff he stashed at the time?”
“That was my first thought but it’s all a bit complicated. It was sold by an antiques dealer in Hamburg.”
“And who sold it to him?”
“A local man who’d inherited it from his dad. He’s looking for the paperwork but he thinks his father bought it in November 1999. A couple of weeks before the burglary.”
“Before? Are you sure?” Elise’s mind was racing.
Fifty-six
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2019
Elise
Her DS listened in silence as Elise spelled out the CCTV evidence and DI Wicks’s discovery.
“Well, you’ve been busy for someone who was supposed to be doing yoga,” Caro said.
“I did do yoga, but it was all niggling at me. Where are you? I need to go and talk to Liam Eastwood about the black SUV and what he was doing up there that night.”
“I’m at home. I’m supposed to be taking my little girl to ballet.”
“Right.”
It sounded like the seventh circle of hell to Elise but they’d taken different paths after Caro took a career break to have a baby. Elise had gone to the hospital with a present and a pink balloon that was already beginning to deflate, and had known as soon as she saw her partner that there’d been a fundamental shift. For a start, she’d hugged Elise. A first. And there’d been a softness about the way she moved and spoke that Elise had never seen before. Caro had been all edges at work—“the sharpest tool in the box,” she used to joke—but she hadn’t been able to focus on anything Elise said about cases or the team. Elise had tried not to judge.
“Are you all right?” she’d asked one day after Caro came back off maternity leave. They’d been sitting in the locker room after her friend had stormed out of a team meeting over a stupid remark about breast-feeding.
“What do you mean? That new bloke was totally out of order.”
“Agreed. But walking out? Not your style.” Well, it wasn’t. “What’s happening?”
Caro laughed. “You have no idea, do you?”
“Well, tell me.”
And she tried but she got all choked up. Elise had never seen her cry before—not even after the date-stamping—and she put her hand on Caro’s back and patted it awkwardly.
“Sorry to cry on you,” Caro said, “but you’d be in bits if you’d had to change a toxic nappy just as you were leaving the house. Jessie was in her all-in-one and everything. When I got her out of that, it was everywhere. On her, on me, up my nails, on my bag. I had to change every item of bloody clothing. God, that child can shit for England. And then I couldn’t find the car keys.”
“Christ, what a nightmare! Are you sure you can cope?” Wrong thing to say . . .
“Don’t you start. It’s bad enough with the blokes. They’re calling me Mum now—have you heard? I’m not their frigging mother. I’m their colleague, their superior in some cases. I can cope. I’ve just got to be organized. Like you.”