Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

here,’ she snapped. ‘I’m in your line of command and when I ask you a question relating to an ongoing case, I expect an answer.’
    Cody flushed. It wasn’t an improvement. ‘No disrespect intended, Sarge.’ His heavy eyebrows lowered in a frown.
    ‘He’s always making daft jokes,’ his mate chipped in, trying to defuse the atmosphere.
    ‘And you are?’
    ‘DC Carpenter, Sarge.’
    ‘I love jokes, me,’ Paula said conversationally. They climbed the stairs in a tight knot. ‘Only thing is, they need to be funny. Bear that in mind, Cody, and we won’t fall out. Now, tell me what we’ve got. Save the full briefing for the boss. Just give me the bullet points.’
    He grunted, but told her what she wanted to hear. ‘Nadia comes out of the cinema and walks out to the car park. Her car’s a way off because she parked up earlier when the place was hopping. A bloke tails her across the car park. He’s carrying a metal box, like a camera case. She opens her boot to put her shopping in the car. He comes up behind her. You can’t really see what goes on but he tips her in the boot, puts the case in the boot, leans over her for a minute or so. Then he gets in her car and drives off.’
    ‘We’ve asked the DCI to put a request in to the National ANPR Data Centre to track the car,’ Carpenter chipped in, sounding more excited than anyone should at the thought of data mining. ‘All the roads round the Trafford Centre are well covered. We should be able to track him without any problem.’
    They walked into the incident room together, greeted by a few whoops of delight. Fielding came out of her office and gave a couple of handclaps. ‘We’re all set up, Cody. Get that memory stick plugged in and let’s see what we’ve got.’
    Everyone settled down to watch the interactive whiteboard and someone turned off most of the lights. ‘Here we go,’ Cody said. It was as he had said. Nadia emerged from the cinema and walked through to the car park a level below. As she stepped outside, she put her bags down to fasten her jacket against the cold. The line of small buttons took a few moments to close. Paula recognised the jacket from the lab. Pity there was no prospect of counting the cuff buttons at this level of definition. Nadia walked forward out of shot. Next out was a couple, the man with his arm round the woman’s shoulders. They were laughing and talking, paying no attention to their surroundings, unaware that a third figure was walking close behind them, head lowered, hard to see. He stayed tucked in behind them till they moved out of shot.
    ‘The next camera picks Nadia up on the diagonal. Here she comes. Bottom right,’ Cody explained. Head down against the wind, Nadia was cutting across the almost empty car park at an angle. How often have I done that without a second thought? Paula felt a frisson of fear as the figure following Nadia entered the frame.
    Fielding took centre stage now. ‘Look at this guy. Study everything about him. Look at that case he’s carrying. Commit him to memory.’
    Which sounded great except that there wasn’t much to commit to memory. It was dark, the lighting was designed to help people find their cars, not to allow CCTV operatives to make like Martin Scorsese. All you could definitively say about the stalker was that he was medium height, medium build, wore glasses with thick frames and owned a jacket whose hood, pulled forwards, almost completely obscured his face. He kept his head down; he was clearly well aware of the risks of being captured on pixels. The rectangular case in his hand seemed quite heavy, though that fact offered no clue to its contents. Nadia disappeared from the top left of the screen, followed by the man. Even the gender was a presumption, Paula thought.
    The third camera was the one that had picked up the action. Nadia’s car was close to the limit of its field of view, so again, there wasn’t much detail to be seen. She unlocked the car as she walked, taking the keys from her handbag. As she opened the boot, the man suddenly speeded up. ‘He takes something from his pocket,’ Cody said, his voice rising with excitement.
    ‘We think it’s a taser,’ Fielding said, watching Nadia put her shopping in the hatchback boot.
    ‘Where’s the confetti?’ Hussain asked.
    ‘Not all taser cartridges contain confetti,’ Paula said. ‘Usually it’s only law enforcement who use it, so there’s a record.’
    ‘And she kind of crumples forward