But breaking into a building without a warrant is a different matter entirely. Patrice is perched on a parking bollard, with a perfect view of the wine warehouse, Sussex Logistics and the entrance to the business park. Chris waits a while, until an old lady in a red coat disappears from view. To his surprise, he finds that the window has already been forced open. Who knows how long ago, but it would take a brave, or a very foolish, person to break into this particular warehouse. Chris chooses not to reflect on which of those he might be. The window leads him into a small storage room filled with cleaning products. No alarms so far.
Slowly opening the door of the room, Chris finds himself in a large, open hangar, stacked with boxes along the far wall. Filled with what? There are three raggedy sofas arranged in a horseshoe shape around a television so old it isn’t even flat screen. Whoever uses these sofas is not here now. His footsteps echo on the concrete floor, and his breath steams in the cold air.
At one end of the hangar, metal stairs lead up to a wooden Portakabin office, forming a mezzanine level. Chris can see a padlock on the door. Finally, some security.
Chris decides to leave the boxes for now and head up to the office. What is he expecting to find? Phone numbers? Anything, really. Anything Elizabeth doesn’t have, he realizes. Has it really come to this? Compelled to outmanoeuvre a pensioner for the sake of professional pride?
Perhaps the heroin will just be sitting there? Won’t he be a hero then?
No one is in the building, but he treads lightly up the latticed metal stairs regardless. On a small semi-landing he sees cigarette butts, and on the door of the office he sees what looks like dried blood. Old though – hopefully there’s not a fresh corpse behind the flimsy door.
Chris might have to force the lock. Will that finally raise an alarm? There’s been nothing so far, which seems odd. Chris feels the padlock and, as he does so, it opens in his hand. The door is unlocked.
Chris stands, motionless, for a long moment, just listening. No sound from inside the office. From the hangar, just the erratic, metallic clang of the winter wind against the closed loading-bay doors. He presses down on the door handle and kicks the door open, very gently, with the side of his right foot.
Still no alarm.
Chris sees filing cabinets, as he was hoping, and the corner of a wooden desk.
Walking into the office, he sees the whole of the desk. And, behind the desk, in a high-backed ergonomically friendly office chair, is Dom Holt.
With a bullet hole in his forehead.
‘So I can’t phone this in, you see,’ says Chris. ‘Because I shouldn’t have been here.’
‘Gotcha,’ says Ron, as he and Joyce scrutinize the corpse of Dominic Holt, with the detached air of people pretending to be professionals. ‘And we were the first people you rang?’
‘Of course,’ says Chris.
‘The very first?’
‘Elizabeth wasn’t picking up,’ says Chris.
‘I can’t believe Patrice was your lookout,’ says Joyce, returning to sit with Patrice on a small sofa.
‘It was pitched to me as a date. I was all for it,’ says Patrice.
‘It’s a bit like an escape room,’ says Joyce. ‘Joanna did one with work, but she panicked and they had to let her out. She once got stuck in a lift in Torremolinos and it’s stayed with her.’
‘I was only going to be in here for five minutes,’ says Chris. ‘Have a rifle through the files, see if I could find any numbers, any contacts.’
‘That’s illegal, Chris,’ says Joyce. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘Do you know, Joyce,’ says Chris, ‘after I found the corpse, I thought better of it.’
‘Amateur,’ says Ron. ‘What are we doing here though?’
‘I need a favour,’ says Chris. ‘I need someone to pretend that they heard a gunshot, and then rang me. To explain why I’m here. You can say you were doing the wine tour and popped out for a breath of fresh air?’
‘Lying to the police,’ says Ron. ‘Yeah, Elizabeth would have been good at that.’
‘We’ll be good at it too,’ says Joyce. ‘We don’t always need Elizabeth.’
‘Where is she, by the way?’ Patrice asks.
‘Usually best not to ask,’ says Ron.
‘So is someone on their way?’ Joyce asks.
‘Now that you’re safely here, I’m going to ring the SIO from the NCA,’ says Chris. ‘Jill Regan. I’ll tell her I got a call from a distressed member of the public and I broke in and found the body.’
‘How long might they be?’ asks Joyce. ‘Do you think?’
‘They’re all in Fairhaven,’ says Chris. ‘Twenty-five minutes?’
Joyce looks at her watch, then looks at the filing cabinets. ‘That will do us just fine. Let’s get started on these files.’
‘We can’t touch those files now,’ says Chris.
Joyce rolls her eyes and pulls on her gloves. ‘What would Elizabeth do?’
‘If I let you look at the files, you’ll play along with the plan?’ asks Chris.
‘You’re not going to
‘You’re even speaking like Elizabeth now,’ says Patrice.
‘Palpable nonsense, dear,’ says Joyce, and they giggle together.
