LITMIR.BIZ

      3

      Torches …

      The thought of torches brought me out of a fitful sleep. They had to have had light.

      I called headquarters in Carmarthen after breakfast. Bryn wasn’t around, but I got someone to check the transcripts of the group’s statements. Torches were mentioned. The story was that the pimp and the girl had made off with them when they did their runner.

      But, according to Bryn, there had been no confrontation with the pimp. They had paid over the agreed fee up front when they arrived at the hut, and waited for the good times to roll. The girl had said that she was just going outside to use the minibus to prepare herself. Next thing they knew, both girl and pimp had managed to sneak off in the minibus.

      Sneak off? I couldn’t see it. The guy could hardly have gathered up the torches without declaring some sort of intention. No matter how smashed you were, you would know the party was finishing when the lights went out.

      It was like the parked minibus, the neatly stacked rubbish in the hut, the tart’s missing telephone number … Disturbances in the details. Their story was frayed at the edges. But the smell coming off it wasn’t bad enough for Jack Galbraith to keep it open. I recalled his parting admonition, warning me off any direct approach to the members of the group.

      The upside of having to investigate crap cases in the boondocks that no one else wants to touch is that it gives you the autonomy to invent leads that will take you to wherever you want to be.

      Which, on this Monday morning, was the service station outside Newtown where the minibus had filled up with diesel. And where they had managed to add Miss Danielle to the roster.

      I showed the manager my warrant card and told him that I wanted to see the security CCTV coverage for Saturday night.

      He looked at me warily, and for a moment I thought he was going to tell me that it had already been erased, or that the cameras were only there for show. ‘You people have already been to look at it.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Last night.’

      ‘Two big guys? One wide, one Scottish and grumpy?’

      ‘Yes.’

      So Jack Galbraith and Bryn had diverted here on their way home. Taking this seriously. But they hadn’t called me. If there had been anything on the tapes to justify action, they would surely have contacted me.

      I persuaded the manager to run the tape for me, and settled down in front of the dirty monitor in the cleaner’s cupboard that he called an office.

      I felt a small flutter of anxiety below my sternum. Crazy. I didn’t know this woman. She hadn’t existed for me thirty-six hours ago. And she was probably some junkie hag, back in Cardiff now, just where the story placed her. But we had made the same sort of mistake with Regine Broussard. I wasn’t going to let it happen twice.

      There was no denying I was nervous. I was about to get my first sighting of her, and I couldn’t shake off a sense of something that shifted between romance and doom.

      I fast-forwarded through the tapes to get to the point where the minibus arrived at the service station. Business was slow. The forecourt was empty when it pulled in, the CCTV image grainy and stuttering. The driver got out and proceeded to fill the tank. No one else got out of the minibus. No other cars there either, so no witnesses to trace through the DVLA computer.

      It happened too quickly. She was there just after the driver screwed the fuel cap back on and walked out of shot to go and pay. I rewound and watched again. I hadn’t missed anything. She just appeared, no approach. It was as if the tape had jumped or stalled, editing that segment out.

      I peered at the screen. It didn’t help. The picture quality was terrible. A baseball cap. Blonde hair bunched through the gap at the back. I moved in as close as I could, but couldn’t tell if it was the cap that I had found. Her facial features were a blurred soup of pinkish pixels over a knotted scarf tucked into a puffy, red, down-filled jacket. About a hundred and sixty-two centimetres, I gauged from the relation of her shoulders to the roof of the minibus. A large rucksack sagging one shoulder.

      She was on the far side of the minibus from the camera. Head bent, as if she was in conversation with someone through the sliding door on the side. She tossed her head back, her face turning into the camera, the smile pronounced enough to register as a big, happy smudge. Then she slid her rucksack off, handed it into the minibus and climbed in after it.

      I knew the rest of the story. She didn’t escape.

      I had just witnessed a transaction. Something had been negotiated between the woman and some of the men in the minibus. But what? A lift or a fuck?

      I went back to the counter. The young cashier glanced up from a magazine. She seemed tired, dark circles under her eyes, bad complexion, the mix of colours in her hair making it look like she had fallen into a chemistry set.

      ‘Were you working Saturday night?’

      ‘Some of it,’ she said, an edge of suspicion in her tone and eyes.

      ‘Can you have a look at this?’ I moved to the side to create enough room for her to get into the room and see the image that I had paused on the screen.

      She stared at it blankly.

      ‘This is at half past nine. Did you see this woman getting into that minibus?’

      She shook her head. ‘No. I was clocked off by then.’

      ‘Who was on duty?’

      ‘Him.’ She cocked her head towards the manager, who was stacking shelves.

      I pulled a face in frustration. The manager had already told me that he hadn’t seen her.

      ‘Helly Hansen …’

      ‘You know her?’

      ‘No. Her jacket – it was a Helly Hansen.’ The covetousness in her voice surprised me.

      ‘I

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