Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

Preston Street bus station. A mere five-minute walk from his mooring. It was a no-brainer. He waited while a handful of shoppers boarded ahead of him. He knew he didn’t have the correct change; boarding the bus would involve sighs and moans from the driver, and not in a good way.
    As he expected, the driver tutted and muttered all the way through the process of issuing a ticket and changing a twenty-pound note. Tony raised his eyes to the heavens, seeking patience.
    What he found was something quite unexpected. Mounted above the driver’s seat was the familiar CCTV monitor. Tony had never studied it before; if he’d ever given it any thought, he would have assumed it would show only the interior of the bus. But the reality was very different. The screen was split into nine sections, showing upper and lower decks, the entrance and exit doors and the rear of the bus, to make it easier for reversing, he presumed. What he hadn’t expected was how much of the outside of the bus was under surveillance. A wide-angle lens revealed the whole width of the pavement, extending as far as the plate-glass windows of the store; another showed the roadway on the far side of the bus. Tony imagined that if it was blown up on a single monitor it would be possible to read number plates. Maybe even identify drivers.
    ‘How often does this service run?’ he asked the driver, who was dropping pound coins one by one into his waiting hand.
    The driver gave a weary sigh. ‘Every twenty minutes from seven in the morning till ten at night.’
    ‘Is this the only bus service that runs into the supermarket?’
    ‘Do I look like Google? Go and sit down so I can get moving.’
    ‘Can I stand here and watch the monitor?’
    The driver pointed to a sign on the Perspex screen that protected him from his passengers. ‘Can you not read? No passengers beyond this point while vehicle is in motion. That means sit down and leave me alone. You can do that, or you can get off.’
    Tony perched on the edge of a double seat already occupied by a large elderly woman with two bulging bags that seemed to contain only potatoes and biscuits. ‘Miserable git,’ she said. Seeing his startled face, she giggled. ‘Him, not you. There’s two other buses stop at Freshco, love. The thirty-seven runs down through Kenton to Kenton Vale then back round to Colliery End. Every half-hour, I think. And there’s a little ring-and-ride coach that serves the estate. It doesn’t have a timetable, as such.’
    ‘Thanks. That’s very helpful.’
    She looked at him curiously. ‘It’s a funny question, though. Why are you so interested in the buses?’
    ‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘And I can’t really explain it. But it’s all about different ways of looking at things. And how you don’t always think about the things you think you know about.’ He smiled. ‘A lot of what I say doesn’t make sense. But don’t worry, I’m perfectly safe.’
    She gave him an appraising look. ‘Are you sure about that?’
    He shook his head, rueful. ‘Probably not.’

31

    T here was an air of excitement in the incident room when Paula got back to Skenfrith Street. ‘What’s up?’ she asked one of the DCs on her way to Fielding’s office.
    ‘They keep their CCTV for a month at the Trafford Centre. Pat Cody’s picked up the vic on it. And it looks like they’ve captured the killer on camera too.’
    ‘That’s great news. Is he emailing it across?’
    He shook his head. ‘He’s got it on a memory stick. He’s on his way over with it now.’ He offered a tentative high-five and Paula returned it. Even if high-fives were childish American nonsense, building bridges was the key to settling into a new nick. Make friends with your underlings, build a bulwark till you’ve figured out how to make the DCI happy.
    DC Black had something else to add. ‘Devon and Cornwall got their arse in gear too. They’ve interviewed Pawel the Shit and the bad news is he’s alibied rock solid for that Saturday and for Friday through to Tuesday morning this weekend. He was either at work or shagging the arse off one of the chambermaids. No way he had enough time between shifts to get up here and dump Nadia’s body.’ The news didn’t come as a blow to Paula. She’d never had any conviction that Pawel had the heft for this kind of crime.
    She found Fielding at her desk, intent on her computer screen. The DCI barely looked up when Paula walked through the open door after a