He’s trying not to make Silas sound stupid. Silas’s lack of a university degree never used to be a problem, but he is finding it increasingly hard these days, and not just because his boss happens to have a first from Oxford. Every new officer who joins the force seems to be a graduate, challenging his own education at the ‘university of life’, as his dad used to call it.
‘But Rob did visit Kate in hospital and is now her partner,’ Silas continues. ‘Don’t you think it’s a coincidence worth investigating if he was there that night?’
‘We don’t know who was there.’
Silas is not going to win this one. He hasn’t even tried to explain a possible connection between the gun used in Cornwall and Gilmour Martin, Rob’s double in Thailand, who has also been seen driving a Tesla. There’s only one thing left to try.
‘I think Rob might have visited here before the accident,’ Silas says.
‘Here, as in Gablecross?’ Ward asks calmly, but Silas detects the subtlest shift in his boss’s tone.
‘He was seen in the car park,’ he says. ‘The day before the crash.’
Silas has now established an exact date: 13 February. Jake said he saw Rob when he was coming in for a chat about his book, a meeting that Silas had written in his diary.
‘Do we know who he was visiting?’ Ward asks.
‘No.’
Ward lets the word hang in the air. No need to say any more, point out the further lack of evidence. There was no record of Gilmour or Rob having signed in to visit the station. Silas checked earlier. He’s had enough.
‘The Major Crime Team in Truro is struggling, sir,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t think the death in Cornwall was drugs-related. I’d like to take the lead on the case.’
‘I know you would,’ Ward says. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll talk to the SIO down there, see what he wants. And I’d rather you don’t go troubling Rob unnecessarily. He’s proving a very good friend to Swindon.’
A very good friend to Swindon. What the hell does that mean? All Rob’s done is put on an art show in the local hospital. Silas is about to ask when Ward knocks the wind out of him with a parting question.
‘How’s Conor by the way?’ he asks, standing up to signal that the meeting is now at an end. ‘Heard he’s fallen in with the wrong crowd.’
‘He’s fine, thanks,’ Silas says, doubling up inside. ‘We’re getting him help.’
‘Glad to hear it. Wasn’t sure if it was just more hearsay. You know how gossip can spread around here – like wildfire.’
The bastard. How much more does he know about Conor? Silas walks out of his boss’s office, keen to put some distance between them.
81
Kate
‘The weekend results were truly exceptional, you know,’ Ajay says, glancing up at Kate from across the kitchen table. His manner is forced, as if he’s playing up for the cameras. ‘You’re almost back to how you were before the crash.’
Kate tries not to think too hard about the words he’s just written in his notebook. Ajay is attempting to act normally and she must do the same.
He can see and hear everything.
The whole apartment must be wired up with hidden microphones and cameras. Is it the same with the house in Cornwall? Has Rob been monitoring her every move? This isn’t about her security. Something else is going on.
‘I missed one,’ she says, recalling the rapid series of faces she was shown down in Cornwall. She spotted Jeff but Brucie got away.
‘It was a hard test,’ Ajay says. ‘No one’s ever spotted both.’
She would have done in the past. And she wants to again. Ajay explains that she’ll be shown a mugshot of one person for ten seconds. She must then watch up to sixty minutes of real CCTV crowd footage and try to spot the person. Analysing CCTV is particularly draining, but she will do this final test – for Ajay. And also for her. She’s determined to recover – identifying Conor at the station in the village gave her a surprising thrill – but she never wants to revisit the police life she’s left behind. She just wants to paint people again, see them for who they really are.
‘Would it be useful if you also looked at some of my latest drawings?’ she asks.
‘Sure,’ Ajay says, ‘I’d like that.’ But she knows he’s humouring her.
‘And afterwards?’ she asks. ‘I must go to Brittany?’
He nods, but his manner’s become forced again, not like Ajay at all. He turns to his attaché case, open beside the laptop, and pulls out a circular device of some sort.
‘Rob wants you to wear this for the next test,’ he says, holding up what looks like a grey rubberised necklace punctuated with flat metal contact points. He places it on the table next to the laptop.
‘What is it?’ she asks, suspecting that it’s another fitness gadget that Rob’s company has invested in.
‘The latest wearable technology,’ he says, but he’s not looking at her. He’s busy on the laptop. ‘It measures various biometric data while you’re studying the CCTV footage. Blood flow through the carotid artery, that sort of thing.’
He stands up and comes over to her side of the kitchen table.
‘We’ll need to take this off,’ he says, nodding at her beach-glass necklace. ‘It might interfere with the readings.’
She lifts her chin up and unfastens it, then lets him slip on the rubber device in its place. His hands are warm, sweaty.
‘Comfortable?’ he asks.
She’s not listening. She’s looking at the image on Ajay’s laptop, her target mugshot. It’s a photo of Rob, staring directly at the camera. At least she thinks it’s Rob.
‘Are you ready?’ Ajay says, following her gaze and then glancing at his watch. ‘Ten seconds.’
She leans in to examine the photo more closely, searching the eyes for a clue. She’s no longer sure.
‘Is that Rob?’ she asks quietly, slipping a finger inside the neckband to loosen it. It’s too tight.
‘It doesn’t matter who it is,’ Ajay says. ‘You’ve just got to spot his face in the crowd.’
82
Silas
After Silas has finished with his boss, he picks up his laptop from the Parade Room and heads straight for the station’s main entrance. He knows the reception staff well. These people are on the frontline, dealing with the drunk and the drugged, the violent and the damaged, anyone that Response brings in off the streets.
‘Still coping with the fame?’ he asks ‘Bodie’, one of the two female receptionists who were recently featured in a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary about Gablecross. It’s not her real name but everyone at the station calls her Bodie.
‘Graham Norton this week, Hollywood the next,’ she says drily. ‘You know how it is.’
He waits as a pair of uniforms walk past, escorting a young homeless man out of the main door. It could so easily be Conor.
‘I need to look at the car park cameras out front,’ he says, once they’ve gone. ‘From February this year.’