Broken Homes

me, guv,’ I said. ‘I thought that TV was totally kosher. I genuinely believed that it fell off the back of a lorry.’
    ‘He’s not going to nick from us,’ said Lesley. ‘Besides, I told him to look after Toby. Reinforced our cover.’
    It was a good plan. If any of our neighbours suspected we were old Bill, spending five minutes with Zach would disabuse them of that notion.
    ‘Do you still have that app that finds coffee shops?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t need it,’ she said. ‘There’s a retail park on the other side of the junction.’
    I was just going to suggest that we head over there when one of the Traffic police knocked on our window.
    ‘Got something for you,’ he said and handed me a number on a scrap of paper. It was the index of the white van. The witnesses to the body dumping had given Traffic a time frame and so it was just a matter of checking the automatic cameras until something popped up. I thanked him and called in IIP on the index. While we waited for that to come back, we headed to the retail park and spent half an hour in a Sainsbury’s the size of an aircraft assembly plant stuffing the go bag with water, snacks and sandwiches.
    Then we sat in the Asbo with bucket-sized cardboard cups of coffee, just about drinkable if you put enough sugar in, and went through the results of the IIP as it relayed to us down the phone.
    Our white van was owned by a limited company with a trading address in what looked like, on Google Maps, a farm in the middle of nowhere. It had been reported stolen by its owners at nine fifteen that morning, but their statement suggested that it might have been missing for two days or more.
    ‘Convenient,’ said Lesley.
    Clever criminals steal their getaway cars before doing a big job, but it’s a bugger if you’re just popping into town for something small, say for a bit of criminal damage, so you might use your own or a mate’s. The problem there is if things get a bit out of hand and your mate, say hypothetically, starts mysteriously drowning to death in the back and you have to dump him at a road junction. Then you might need to create a bit of plausible deniability. Not with us, you understand, because we’re naturally suspicious bastards, but with magistrates, juries and other innocents. So you report it stolen and, if you’re sensible, you torch it in some remote location.
    Obviously sometimes, just for the novelty value, the vehicle really is stolen.
    We agreed it might be worth checking out the farm in Essex so we called Nightingale to let him know. He told us to be careful.
    ‘Yes, Dad,’ said Lesley but only after Nightingale had hung up.
    So, with my trusty native guide by my side, I started up the Asbo and set course for the dark heart of Essex,
    We got off the M11 at junction 7 and sat behind a caravan for about half an hour, which gave us plenty of time to weigh up the alternative joys of fresh farm produce and/or cheap warehousing space. It was enough to push even me into taking a risky overtaking opportunity that caused Lesley to clutch the handhold and swear under her breath.
    ‘What do you expect to find?’ asked Lesley once her grip had unclenched.
    ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘But Nightingale is right, the Faceless Man’s just a criminal. He makes mistakes. We only need to keep chipping away at this network he’s built. Sooner or later we’re going to find a crack we can exploit and then, crash, we can bring the whole thing down.’
    ‘Or some farmer’s had his van stolen,’ said Lesley.
    ‘Or that.’
    What I hate most about the country is that it’s so hard to tell what anything is before you get there. Dutifully following the satnav we headed down a series of narrowing country lanes until we suddenly came to a halt in front of a metal five-bar gate. Beyond that was a muddy yard surrounded on three sides by an old brick barn, a building that looked like a warehouse that had been redressed for a post-apocalyptic dystopia and what appeared to be a pebble-dashed council bungalow uprooted from some northern housing estate by a tornado to come crashing down in the wilds of Essex. For all I knew, it could have been anything from a pig farm to a really down at heel outdoors activity centre.
    ‘You’re rural,’ I said to Lesley. ‘Do we park here and go in, or do we open the gate and drive in?’
    ‘Park here,’ she said. ‘That way no one can escape while they think we’re not looking.’
    ‘The farmer’s not going to