Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

turns out, I was in Bradfield Cross on Monday afternoon. When Bev went missing.’
    Carol groaned. ‘Why am I not surprised? Are you going to share it with us? Or shall we just play twenty questions?’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing changes.’
    ‘Actually, Carol, you might be surprised on that score. But this isn’t the time or the place for that conversation.’
    ‘There is no time and place for that conversation. Monday?’
    Slapped down again. Tony took a deep breath and picked himself up. ‘I was at a meeting in Bradfield Cross Hospital late Monday afternoon. I tend not to agree with the consultant there, Will Newton. The man’s a moron. I think he got his qualifications by saving up Coco Pops box tops. By the end of the meeting, I was furious. I stomped out of the meeting room. All I wanted was to get out of there before I said something that would only make everything worse.’
    ‘Did you go anywhere near the pharmacy?’ As usual, Scott was straight to the point.
    ‘I don’t think so. I was pissed off and I wanted to vent my energy so I walked home. I wasn’t really paying attention to my surroundings. I don’t think I passed the pharmacy but I don’t know whether I passed Bev.’
    Scott sat back in her chair and contemplated him. ‘Please tell me that’s all?’
    ‘Well, the other things are circumstantial.’ He spread his hands. ‘Nothing I’ve done. The sort of thing that could happen to anyone.’
    ‘But only do happen to you,’ Carol pointed out. ‘You said, “things”. Plural. What are we talking about here?’
    ‘I was trying to be helpful,’ he said. ‘After Paula told me about Bev, but before we knew she was dead, I thought I’d take a look at the supermarket where she’d supposedly been shopping. I needed some bits and pieces and I fancied the walk, so I went over to Freshco at Kenton Vale.’
    ‘It says on the custody record you live on a boat in Minster Basin. So you walked from the basin to Kenton Vale Road to pick up a few bits and pieces at the supermarket? That must be, what? Two miles?’ Bronwen’s deadpan delivery did nothing to hide her scepticism.
    ‘He likes to walk. It helps him think.’
    ‘She’s right. I do. And it does. And what it made me think is that this is a careful killer. Because the CCTV in the car park at Freshco isn’t great. There’s plenty of holes in the coverage. According to Paula, the body dump for Nadia was in Gartonside, where it’s scheduled for demolition and there are no cameras. And from what I can gather, Bev was found up on the moors in the middle of nowhere. So again, no cameras.’
    ‘And? There has to be an “and”, right? There generally is with you,’ Carol said, bitterness still evident in her voice. She wasn’t loosening up, he thought. He’d hoped they’d slip into old rhythms without realising it, but she was too watchful of herself for that. Time appeared not to have done much healing of her hurt.
    ‘There is. I bought more shopping than I’d intended and I got the bus home. And that’s when I realised buses have CCTV that films outside the bus as well as inside. Bradfield buses have fourteen cameras on each double-decker bus, did you know that? So I suggested to Paula that they take a look at the footage. Which they did.’
    ‘Was it helpful?’ Scott asked.
    ‘Oh yes. They got a bit of Bev on one camera. And they caught a few seconds of the bloke who was following her. It wasn’t much use for ID. Medium height, medium build, though he could have been a slim guy wearing bulky clothing. He was wearing a hoodie and he kept his head down. You can see he’s wearing glasses, but that’s about all. They told me they had footage of the man who abducted Nadia, and it was pretty much the same. There’s only one distinguishing feature.’ Tony looked down at the table. He hated this piece of information. In his head, it was the one that made him look guilty. ‘He’s got a noticeable limp. He limps with his left leg.’
    ‘Oh, fuck,’ Carol said. With feeling.
    ‘You have a limp?’
    Sometimes it was tempting to go for the crass one-liner. This probably wasn’t one of those times. ‘I had major knee surgery a couple of years ago. A patient attacked me with a fire axe. Someone else’s patient, I always like to point out.’
    ‘And you were supposed to have a second surgery to deal with the limp,’ Carol said. ‘I take it you’re still dodging Mrs Chakrabarti?’ She half-turned to Bronwen. ‘He