‘I can’t believe you didn’t propose though,’ says Donna.
‘Early days,’ says Chris. ‘And I’d have to buy a ring first.’
The smell hits them before anything else. The best estimate was the body had been here since late on the 27th. Five days ago now. Chris and Donna reach the car. A forensic officer named Amy Peach greets them.
‘Happy New Year,’ says Amy, carefully placing a bloodied headrest into a plastic container.
‘Glad tidings,’ says Chris. ‘This is Mr Sharma?’
‘According to his heavily embossed business card,’ says Amy. ‘And his monogrammed handkerchief.’
The bullet had passed straight through the driver’s- side window, and then straight through the skull of poor Kuldesh Sharma. The blood spattered on the passenger-side window had long since formed into rosé ice crystals in the brutal cold.
Chris can see by the frozen tyre marks that there had been two cars here. Two cars had pulled up down this quiet track, leading to nowhere, a few days after Christmas. For what reason? Business? Pleasure? Whichever it was, it had ended in death.
Judging by the tyre marks, Chris concludes one car had reversed back out, business over, back to life. The other had reached its final destination.
He surveys the scene. Fantastically secluded. No one for miles around. No CCTV en route – you couldn’t pick a better spot for a murder. He looks at the car window. The single gunshot.
‘Looks professional,’ he says. Donna is staring at the body. Has she spotted something that Amy Peach has missed?
Chris and Amy Peach had once shared a drunken night together after a colleague’s leaving party, and neither of them had been at their brilliant best. Amy had been sick on Chris’s sofa, but only because Chris had fallen asleep on the bathroom floor, wedging the door shut. They have been quietly awkward around each other ever since. No one would ever know, but their mortified dance would no doubt continue until one of them retired, or died. Better that than ever mentioning it.
‘That’s your job, not mine,’ says Amy. ‘But you’re right that it’s very clean.’
Amy is now married to a solicitor from Wadhurst. Chris had eventually had to get rid of the sofa altogether.
Further back up the lane, casts of the tyre tracks, preserved in the ice, are being taken as pattern evidence. If this was a professional job, these would lead to nothing. A stolen car wiped of prints would eventually surface somewhere. Left in a car park with no security cameras. Or crushed by the local friendly wrecker’s yard. Chris had learned a long time ago never to assume, but this has all the hallmarks of a falling-out between drug dealers.
Actually, not all the hallmarks. Drug dealers important enough to be killed would usually be driving a black Range Rover, not a red Nissan Almera. So perhaps there was more to this than met the eye.
‘I met him,’ says Donna.
‘Kuldesh Sharma?’
‘When we were investigating the Viking,’ says Donna.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘So recently?’
Donna nods. ‘Met him with Stephen. Elizabeth’s husband.’
‘Of course you did,’ says Chris. ‘Maybe we can keep Elizabeth and the gang out of this one?’
‘Ahh,’ says Donna. ‘The impossible dream. He was a nice guy. Did you really buy my mum gardening gloves for Christmas?’
‘That’s what she said she wanted,’ says Chris.
Donna shakes her head. ‘Every time I think I’ve got you trained up, I realize how far we’ve got to go.’
They walk back along the track together. Donna is deep in thought.
‘You thinking about Kuldesh?’ Chris asks. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No,’ says Donna. ‘I’m thinking, what’s the deal between you and the forensic officer?’
‘The deal? Nothing,’ says Chris. ‘We’re colleagues.’
Donna waves this away. ‘Sure, to be discussed.’
‘Not a word of this to Bogdan, by the way,’ says Chris. ‘He’ll only tell Elizabeth.’
‘I promise,’ says Donna. ‘If you promise me there was never anything between you and the forensic officer.’
9
‘They shot him in the head,’ says Bogdan, hunched over the chessboard. ‘A single bullet.’ Today is a good day. Stephen remembers him, and Stephen remembers chess. A nice start to the year.
‘Awful,’ says Stephen. ‘Poor Kuldesh.’
‘Awful,’ agrees Elizabeth, walking into the room with two teas. ‘Bogdan, I’ve given you only five sugars, you should cut down. New Year’s resolution. Any suspects?’
‘Donna says was professional,’ says Bogdan. ‘A hit.’
‘Hmm,’ says Elizabeth, and turns to her husband, happy to see the spark in his eyes, so often missing now. ‘Kuldesh the type to get mixed up in things?’
Stephen nods. ‘Oh, absolutely. Kuldesh? Absolutely. I saw him the other day, you know?’
‘We saw him together, Stephen,’ says Bogdan. ‘He was very helpful. Very nice gentleman.’
‘Whatever you say, old chap,’ says Stephen. ‘Always up to something though.’
‘And they’d broken into his shop too?’ says Elizabeth. ‘Did I hear that correctly? Before or after they’d killed him?’
‘After they killed him, says Donna.’
‘Didn’t find what they were looking for,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Still, strange to kill him. What else did Donna have to say for herself?’
‘I’m not allowed to tell you,’ says Bogdan. ‘Is police business.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Won’t do any harm to have another brain on the job. Any witnesses at the shop? CCTV?’
Bogdan holds up a finger. ‘Wait!’ He takes out his phone, scrolls to a voice note and presses play. Donna’s voice fills the room.
‘Elizabeth, hello, it’s Donna here. I know that Kuldesh was a friend of Stephen, hello, Stephen by the way –’
‘Absolute cracker, that one,’ says Stephen.
‘Bogdan is under the strictest instructions not to share details of this case with you, so please don’t play your usual tricks –’
‘Tricks …’ says Elizabeth, offended.
‘He is aware of the consequences for him if he chooses to tell you details of the case. You are a woman of the world, Elizabeth, and you can probably guess what those consequences are …’
Stephen raises an eyebrow at Bogdan, and Bogdan nods in confirmation.
‘… so I would be enormously grateful if you could just let us get on with our job. Love to everyone, bye for now!’
Bogdan puts down the phone and gives Elizabeth an apologetic shrug.
‘Bogdan, she’s bluffing. If I were having sex with you, I would be shooting myself in the foot to withdraw it, look at you. No offence, Stephen.’
‘Oh, none taken,’ says Stephen. ‘Look at the man.’
‘I gave my word,’ says Bogdan. ‘Is my bond.’
‘God, men can be so noble when it suits them,’ huffs Elizabeth. ‘Bogdan, will you be here for the next couple of hours?’
‘I can be,’ says Bogdan. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to pick up Joyce, and pay a visit to Kuldesh’s shop. I don’t see that I have an alternative.’
‘You could just leave it to Donna and Chris?’
‘Honestly,’ says Elizabeth, pulling on her coat. ‘What a perfect waste of everyone’s time.’
‘Darling, you will enjoy it,’ says Stephen.
‘That is beside the point,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Give Kuldesh my love,’ says Stephen. ‘Tell him he’s an old dog from me.’
Elizabeth walks over to her husband and kisses him on the top of the head. ‘I will, my darling.’