The track is off a lane, which is off a hedge-canyoned road, which meanders slowly and peacefully from a Kent village. The village itself was so beautiful that Chris had been surfing Rightmove up to the moment they finally reached the scene. £1.8m for a farmhouse. The village was described as ‘tranquil’.
Even the finest estate agent in Kent would be hard-pressed to describe it as that today.
‘Mum said you had no Quality Street?’ says Donna. ‘The whole Christmas?’
‘No Quality Street, no Terry’s Chocolate Orange, no Baileys,’ says Chris. The foods of Christmas Past. Ghosts to him. On the plus side, he almost has abs now.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t propose though,’ says Donna.
‘Early days,’ says Chris. ‘And I’d have to buy a ring first.’
The smell hits them before anything else. The best estimate was the body had been here since late on the 27th. Five days ago now. Chris and Donna reach the car. A forensic officer named Amy Peach greets them.
‘Happy New Year,’ says Amy, carefully placing a bloodied headrest into a plastic container.
‘Glad tidings,’ says Chris. ‘This is Mr Sharma?’
‘According to his heavily embossed business card,’ says Amy. ‘And his monogrammed handkerchief.’
The bullet had passed straight through the driver’s- side window, and then straight through the skull of poor Kuldesh Sharma. The blood spattered on the passenger-side window had long since formed into rosé ice crystals in the brutal cold.
Chris can see by the frozen tyre marks that there had been two cars here. Two cars had pulled up down this quiet track, leading to nowhere, a few days after Christmas. For what reason? Business? Pleasure? Whichever it was, it had ended in death.
Judging by the tyre marks, Chris concludes one car had reversed back out, business over, back to life. The other had reached its final destination.
He surveys the scene. Fantastically secluded. No one for miles around. No CCTV en route – you couldn’t pick a better spot for a murder. He looks at the car window. The single gunshot.
‘Looks professional,’ he says. Donna is staring at the body. Has she spotted something that Amy Peach has missed?
Chris and Amy Peach had once shared a drunken night together after a colleague’s leaving party, and neither of them had been at their brilliant best. Amy had been sick on Chris’s sofa, but only because Chris had fallen asleep on the bathroom floor, wedging the door shut. They have been quietly awkward around each other ever since. No one would ever know, but their mortified dance would no doubt continue until one of them retired, or died. Better that than ever mentioning it.
‘That’s your job, not mine,’ says Amy. ‘But you’re right that it’s very clean.’
Amy is now married to a solicitor from Wadhurst. Chris had eventually had to get rid of the sofa altogether.
Further back up the lane, casts of the tyre tracks, preserved in the ice, are being taken as pattern evidence. If this was a professional job, these would lead to nothing. A stolen car wiped of prints would eventually surface somewhere. Left in a car park with no security cameras. Or crushed by the local friendly wrecker’s yard. Chris had learned a long time ago never to assume, but this has all the hallmarks of a falling-out between drug dealers.
Actually, not all the hallmarks. Drug dealers important enough to be killed would usually be driving a black Range Rover, not a red Nissan Almera. So perhaps there was more to this than met the eye.
‘I met him,’ says Donna.
‘Kuldesh Sharma?’
‘When we were investigating the Viking,’ says Donna.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘So recently?’
Donna nods. ‘Met him with Stephen. Elizabeth’s husband.’
‘Of course you did,’ says Chris. ‘Maybe we can keep Elizabeth and the gang out of this one?’
‘Ahh,’ says Donna. ‘The impossible dream. He was a nice guy. Did you really buy my mum gardening gloves for Christmas?’
‘That’s what she said she wanted,’ says Chris.
Donna shakes her head. ‘Every time I think I’ve got you trained up, I realize how far we’ve got to go.’
They walk back along the track together. Donna is deep in thought.
‘You thinking about Kuldesh?’ Chris asks. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No,’ says Donna. ‘I’m thinking, what’s the deal between you and the forensic officer?’
‘The deal? Nothing,’ says Chris. ‘We’re colleagues.’
Donna waves this away. ‘Sure, to be discussed.’
‘Not a word of this to Bogdan, by the way,’ says Chris. ‘He’ll only tell Elizabeth.’
‘I promise,’ says Donna. ‘If you promise me there was never anything between you and the forensic officer.’
‘They shot him in the head,’ says Bogdan, hunched over the chessboard. ‘A single bullet.’ Today is a good day. Stephen remembers him, and Stephen remembers chess. A nice start to the year.
‘Awful,’ says Stephen. ‘Poor Kuldesh.’
‘Awful,’ agrees Elizabeth, walking into the room with two teas. ‘Bogdan, I’ve given you only five sugars, you should cut down. New Year’s resolution. Any suspects?’
‘Donna says was professional,’ says Bogdan. ‘A hit.’
