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Ba
Ba
Blue and white was strung up between some of the hedges, blocking the roadway, and a fat copper was standing next to it, a local plod, warming his hands by rubbing them together and stamping his feet. He wasn’t acting it either; his nose was red and his top lip looked damp.
Ba
‘Saved us having to talk to each other for forty minutes though.’
Ba
Opening her own door she stepped out into the bristling cold. Harthill was on higher ground than the city and the air was thi
The Scene of Crime Forensic team would not be here for a few hours, not until it got light. There wouldn’t be any point in the dark. Unless Osama Bin Laden personally organised a massacre in the Glasgow city centre over the next few hours theirs would be the first crime scene they came to. In the meantime a crew of two were trying to pat out the dying fire, preserving what little trace evidence they could.
It was hard to put out a fire in a vehicle that would serve as evidence. Smother it in foam and you might as well wash it under a tap. Throw water at it and any accelerants would disperse and start an ancillary fire elsewhere. In the morning they’d do a fingertip search of the surround and lift the van without opening it, take it to a sterile environment for analysis.
‘Harthill,’ she said. ‘On their way to Edinburgh?’
Ba
‘Maybe they knew it from somewhere.’
‘Can’t exactly make that the basis of a search though can we?’ Ba
She was desperate to know but embarrassed to ask. ‘What else did Omar say?’
Ba
She shrugged and looked off towards the van. ‘I thought he was too.’
Mistaking consensus for intimacy Ba
He was freezing but still nervous, asked their names and rank and where they were from, jotting it longhand in his notebook, as if he was doing an exam. He probably didn’t have much crime scene experience. He must have been the same age as them, Morrow thought, early thirties, but his ruddy face and fatness made him look much older. People got old quicker in the country.
Sensing Ba
The moonlight was so bright she could see the shadow of marks in the frost: tyres from a car were picked out in the tarmac, a parked car had sheltered a rectangle from the ground frost and then driven away. She looked up the road, squinted, crouched.
Indistinct footsteps trailing back and forth to the car from the field, muddying one another, some deep zigzagged treads, like army boots, size eightish, some flat soled, like slippers, another pair of trainers. Disappointing: frost was a useless medium for prints.
Ba
The plod looked shocked and hurt, as if he had been reprimanded, and swung away to talk into his radio.
She looked away from the footprints and saw the press of tyre tracks. New wheels, clear zigzags and deep lines, which was bad. It was easier to match worn tyres to track marks, chips and wear in the rubber could be as effective as a fingerprint, but factory fresh all looked the same and there were only a few manufacturers.
Ba
Morrow took what she could from it: three sets of feet coming towards her, muddied by steps that were there already, perhaps meeting others who had been waiting. She looked back, sorting the impressions in her eye: two sets coming towards her, a scuffle of overlaps, but they looked like the same treads on the soles.
Finally Ba
He was good at this, she knew that, but was either trying to be friendly or intending to steal her ideas for his own. She almost hoped it was the latter. ‘Two gunmen,’ she said. ‘Same boots on. Thought for a minute they were met here but unlikely. Two big men, a driver and a hostage. They wouldn’t all fit in a car unless they were met by just one other guy. Only the army boots go to the driver’s door.’ She pointed back up to the large patch left bare of frost by the car. ‘They must have left a car here to pick up. We can check the CCTV at Harthill, see what pulls off earlier and match it with what pulls out later.’
Ba
She drew her finger along the tyre marks. ‘They didn’t reverse out, did they?’
Ba
He was going to steal that, she fucking knew it, he was known for it below ranks. Gaffers thought he was a genius.
‘That’s the third one this year, burnt out cars on my land.’ The farmer standing opposite her was wearing a Barbour coat and had a pissed-off, sleep-puffed face. His accent was almost impenetrable and Morrow found herself watching his lips for clues.
‘Is this your land, sir?’ she said.
‘It is my land, aye, aye, mine, yeah.’
‘Would you mind standing behind that tape over there? We’ve got frosty feet marks here and we’re trying to keep them good until the photographer gets here.’
‘But it’s my land.’
‘Ye can see my point though, eh?’ She gave the copper a look, tipped her head to the side to get the farmer out of the crime scene.
‘It’s my land,’ mumbled the farmer, unsure if he’d been reprimanded, but proactively a