Looking Good Dead

the fact that Nicholl was talking, Potting leaned closer to his face and asked, ‘Don’t suppose you heard the cricket score? I was trying to find it on the net.’

    Nicholl glanced up at him, shook his head then focused on his call again.
    Hesitating again, Potting dug his hands in his trouser pockets and repeated, ‘Well, I’m off then.’
    Emma-Jane raised a hand. ‘Bye, have a nice evening.’
    ‘Just about time to get home and back before tomorrow,’ he growled. ‘See you at eight thirty.’
    ‘Look forward to it!’ she said, a touch facetiously. Taking a sip of mineral water from a bottle, she watched him walk across the room, a shapeless man in a badly creased suit. Although she found him gross, in truth she felt a little sorry for him because he seemed so desperately lonely. She resolved to try to be nicer to him tomorrow.
    She screwed the cap back on the bottle, then resumed working her way through the statements from Reggie D’Eath’s neighbours, which had been taken down earlier today by the house-to-house enquiry team. She was also working on trying to find out more information about the white Ford Transit van that had been clocked outside his house the previous night by one of the dead man’s neighbours.
    Even though the D’Eath murder enquiry was being run by a different team, Grace believed it had enough relevance to Operation Nightingale for his team to be fully up to speed on all aspects of the enquiry at this stage.
    On her desk was the licence number GU03OAG. Its registered owner was a company called Bourneholt International Ltd, with an address, a PO box number, that she would not be able to check out until the morning. When she’d shown it to Norman Potting, earlier, he’d told her that more than likely it was nothing more than an accommodation address. That seemed likely as nothing came up for the name in a search on the internet.
    One of the phones on the workstation started ringing. Nick was still hunched over his desk talking into his mobile so E-J picked up the receiver. ‘Incident Room,’ she said.
    The voice at the other end sounded brisk but courteous. ‘Hi, it’s Adam Davies here from Southern Resourcing Centre. Could you put me on to Detective Superintendent Grace?’ Southern Resourcing was the call handling centre where all non-emergency calls were answered and assessed by trained handlers like Davies.

    ‘I’m afraid he’s out at the moment. Can I help you?’
    ‘I need to speak to someone on Operation Nightingale.’
    ‘I’m DC Boutwood, part of the Operation Nightingale team,’ she replied, feeling proud at saying it.
    ‘I have a gentleman by the name of Mr Seiler on the line phoning about a white van. I ran a registration check on the number he gave me, and it came up on the system that DS Grace has put a PNC marker on this vehicle. I thought he might want to speak to the gentleman.’
    ‘Is he the owner of it?’
    ‘No, apparently it’s parked outside his flat. He made a complaint earlier this evening – it was logged at six forty p.m.’
    ‘It was?’ Emma-Jane said, surprised, wondering why this hadn’t been picked up by anyone. ‘Please put him on.’
    Moments later she was talking to an elderly, irate man with a guttural Germanic accent. ‘Hello, yes. You are not the police officer I am speaking with earlier?’ he asked.
    Jamming the phone against her ear with her shoulder, the young Detective Constable was tapping the keyboard furiously. Seconds later she found the 6.40 p.m. entry, logged by a Detective Sergeant Jon Rye of the High Tech Crime Unit.
    War Driving. Sergeant Rye attended by phone .
    What on earth did that mean?
    ‘I’m afraid it is Sunday night, sir; a lot of people have gone home.’
    ‘Yes, and the man in the white van is outside my apartment again, stealing my internet. It would be good if he went home.’
    Stealing my internet? she thought. What on earth did that mean? But at this moment she was more interested in the van. ‘Can you read the registration number of the vehicle to me, sir?’
    After a moment, and agonizingly slowly, he said, ‘G for golf, U for – ah – umbrella. Zero, three. O – Oscar, A for alpha, G for golf.’
    She wrote it down.
    GU03OAG
    Suddenly, adrenalin coursing, Emma-Jane was on her feet. ‘Sir, let me have your number and I’ll call you straight back. Your address is Flat D, 138 Freshfield Road?’
    He confirmed that it was and gave her the phone number. She tapped it straight into