Not more than five minutes into the trip, the car pulled over into a space in a row of vehicles lining the kerb.
“This must be the chippy,” Diamond said. “Damn!”
The screen had suddenly gone blank.
“It’s okay, he switched off,” Paloma said. “He’ll be going in to buy his fish and chips. We don’t have to wait ten minutes while they’re cooking it. The action should jump forward.”
She was right. The picture was live again and they were moving off.
“What time are we showing now? Eight forty-five. He will have put the packet on the passenger seat and is making for home.”
“If this was a film, we’d get an establishing shot of the fish and chips,” Paloma said. “I’m still not adjusted to this way of seeing things.”
“Mustn’t complain,” he said. “At least we have something. I wouldn’t have believed a drive through Trowbridge can be so full of interest. Nothing happens now until he’s almost home, but we’d better not fast-forward. I need to know the route he takes.”
“Took,” Paloma said. “This was yesterday.”
They came to a roundabout. “Wingfield Road, as I expected. This will take us out to Farleigh Hungerford and across the A36 to Hinton Charterhouse. If you don’t mind narrow lanes it’s the quick way.”
“It looks all the same without streetlights.”
“Well, it is between the villages.”
The headlights switched to full beam and showed the cat’s eyes for some distance ahead and little else except the occasional road sign until they crossed the A36, the main artery into Bath, swarming with traffic, and started up an even more narrow country lane.
“This is like watching paint dry,” Paloma said after some minutes. “I might leave you with the mouse and make the tea.”
“Don’t,” he said. “That was Wellow we came through and we’re almost at Combe Hay where the incident happened, or just after.”
“He’s driving too fast for my liking.”
Diamond had to agree. “The width exaggerates the speed, but I’m uncomfortable with it. He wants to get home now. He can smell those chips.”
The lights picked out a drystone wall and some buildings fronting the lane.
“We must be approaching Combe Hay. Something soon causes him to turn off into the field.”
“Too many turns. I’m losing all sense of direction. Even if you live here you could get lost in the dark.”
Diamond had stopped speaking. This was crunch time. The car was through the village and picking up speed again.
“What’s that ahead?”
The headlight had picked out a small patch of bright yellow. Someone in a high-visibility jacket was standing in the lane gesturing to the driver to make a right turn. The speed slowed from forty-five to below twenty. The identity of the figure was impossible to make out. And suddenly the light dimmed from full beam to dipped headlights.
“Why did he do that? So as not to dazzle the guy, I suppose.”
The car slowed as it approached the figure directing them through a gateway and into a field. The dipped lights caught the reflective tape on the jacket and sleeves, but wouldn’t show more than a vague impression of the person wearing them.
“Can we stop it and replay that bit in slow motion?”
“Now you’re asking,” Paloma said. She succeeded in stopping the video and placing them back about fifty yards.
“Infuriating,” Diamond said when it started up again. “So indistinct.”
“The image is only as good as the equipment. My computer isn’t the problem, but the dash cam can’t be all that good. They work on a continuous loop as far as I know. I suppose it degrades as time goes on, like the rest of us.”
“You’re talking like Wolfgang now.”
“Oh, thanks.”
She tried showing it frame by frame and that didn’t help much.
“He must be masked and hooded,” Diamond said. “You can just about see the whites of the eyes. There’s no lighter area where the face should be. It’s hard to see anything except the jacket. Any driver is going to do as ordered by an official-looking figure like that. Let’s look at the next sequence.”
So the narrative resumed again. The Range Rover turned right and entered the field, making the picture jig up and down as it moved over the uneven ground. It turned in a full circle and came to a stop at a slightly oblique angle facing the gateway.
“Can we go back?” Diamond asked.
“How far?”
“To when we came through the gate.”
Paloma judged it well.
“As he was turning I thought I saw something metallic in the shadow of the hedge,” Diamond said. “Could have been a small vehicle.”
“You’re too close to the screen to see anything properly,” Paloma said. “Move your chair back a bit.”
He watched the slow-motion judder of the image. “There!”
She froze the picture and caught, unmistakably, the sheen of metal.
“Not big enough for a car,” he said. “I think it could be a motorbike.”
“If it isn’t farm machinery,” Paloma said. “No, I think you’re right.”
“If I am, we know how one of them got here. This was a planned ambush. Can the video run on now?”
The journey was over, the Range Rover at a standstill, and for two or three minutes it looked and felt as if the show was at an end. The available light had dimmed even more, bringing a dishwater murk to the pixels that formed the image. Slight luminosity at either side suggested that the car’s sidelights had been left on.
“He hasn’t switched off the engine,” Diamond said. “He’s uncertain what to do next. At some point soon, he’ll step out.”
“We won’t see that,” Paloma said. “It happens this side of the camera.”
“That’s so infuriating. Hold on. Something is going on here.”
At the bottom right of the screen a domed shadow bobbed up briefly and went out of shot just as suddenly.
“The top of his head. He’s out of the car,” Diamond said. “This is him wanting to find out why he was taken off the road.”
And now some movement from higher up the screen, indistinct, but not for long. A dark shape emerged from the darkness and came into better focus, becoming recognisable as a human figure. It crept close enough to the car’s sidelight for the hooded head, shoulders and upper arms to be apparent. And there was something else — the flash of a blade.
Paloma caught her breath.
A scene of violence was enacted at the lower edge of the camera’s range. First, the top of a head, shifting left and off camera, as if Deans had backed or been shoved against the bonnet of the car. Then — with shocking clarity — the second figure close up, knife raised above shoulder height. For a moment the gloved fist gripping the knife took up the whole of the screen, the back of the hand and knuckles sharply defined. Then it thrust downwards.
Again and again.
“Dear God,” Paloma said, “we’re watching the murder.”
21
Diamond reran the sequence repeatedly. Paloma had been sickened by it after one look, so he took over the mouse while she went to the kitchen to make tea. He needed to check each detail. The attack seemed to end after five thrusts. The picture reverted to the view of the field and the hedge caught in an eerie stillness like a freeze frame except that the film was running. After a few seconds more, the footage ended, as if the camera was switched off. The time at the foot of the screen when Deans got out of the car was 9:20 P.M. The assault began fifteen seconds later and ended before the minute was up. The attacker merged with the shadows for much of the action, but was definitely masked, gloved and hooded. The knife was a dagger with a pointed end, purpose-built for stabbing. Hatred lay behind this attack.