Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

than he had yesterday. The dark shadows were still there, under his eyes, although nowhere near as noticeably today, but the biggest change was the return of his usual air of purposefulness. He’d lost that when the last of our leads had played out towards the end of last week. Since then, he’d been going through the motions and keeping on top of things with his usual efficiency, but the underlying drive that we were all so used to seeing had been absent.

Well, it was back now. McKinnon must have supplied him with some new leads to follow. I really hoped we had something more concrete to go on this time.

Once Conall’s ten minutes had passed, I tapped on his office door and let myself in.

“Bang on time.” His mouth twitched slightly as he looked up at me and his printer simultaneously spat out a few sheets. Yeah, I’d been watching the clock. He swivelled to pluck them from the tray and extended them in my direction. I took them off him and looked through them. Identical maps, outlined with a thick red border.

“Ballifeary Road?”

“Yes. That green dot is where our killer abandoned the car they were last seen driving. Every house within five hundred metres of there is within the border I drew in. Can you split the addresses into three groups and add address lists for us to check off please?”

“Sure.” My curiosity was aroused by that little titbit he’d so casually thrown out. “They were actually seen? Driving a car?” Had someone witnessed them placing Arnold’s head on display and called it in?

“A stolen car, yes. I’ll send you all that promised email soon, but could you please deal with the map thing before you dive into it?”

“Of course.” He was already focused on his screen again by then and the message was clear: This was not a good time for questions.

Back at my desk, it didn’t take me long to count up the properties we needed to visit, divide them into three clusters, and add a printout of address lists for each of them. Synchronised bleeps from all our computers announced the arrival of Conall’s promised email a couple of minutes after I’d finished with that.

It was brief and to the point, which was very much his style. Would we please use the link provided to add the new, shared, case folder to our desktops and review its contents before ten fifteen? With pleasure! I was dying to find out what had happened last night.

I opened up the video file first and tapped in the key to set it playing. From the markers on the play bar it looked like there were several clips strung together. The first one began with a view from maybe fifty feet up, tracking a car as it pulled into a car park. I recognised that place. It was the Premier Inn, west. The time and date stamp in the bottom left corner gave the time as just after three fifteen this morning. A man climbed out of the car, walked to the main entrance and went in. The view lifted and began to move up General Booth Road. This must be footage from some type of drone.

On the next clip, the timestamp read three forty, and the drone was higher up than before. I caught a glimpse of movement over to the left of the view and whoever had been operating the drone must have spotted it too because it dropped down for a better look. There wasn’t much light to see by, but I was pretty sure that was the same man I’d just seen entering the hotel. The camera lifted again and moved ahead of him, past the end of the footpath, coming out onto a decently lit street. It did a one eighty and dropped onto something. Our man appeared, walking towards it and got into one of the cars parked up there. Same man, different car.

I watched the drone follow him back past the Premier Inn and east towards the canal, falling behind as he speeded up. The next clip jumped ahead a few minutes. The drone was very close to the ground this time, approaching what must have been the beginning of that footpath. I know I jumped in my seat as it panned right and showed me Chris Arnold’s head mounted on that pole. A little LED light on the drone activated, bathing the dim scene in a wash of light. Behind me, I heard Collins swear softly under his breath. We must all have hit the play button within seconds of each other.

“It looks like there’s something sticking out of his eyes,” Bryce said. It did, although it was hard to see much detail. The forehead and upper face were a mask of caked, dried blood. There was one more clip to follow. Another few minutes had passed, but the drone had located the car which was empty. No, wait, if that was Ballifeary Road, it couldn’t possibly be the same drone. It hadn’t had time to get that far. There must have been two of them out there.

“Who the hell shot all this?” Mary Walker wanted to know. I thought I could guess the answer to that question.

I closed the video player and began to read through the reports that had already been added to the folder. There wasn’t much in there to get through just yet. McKinnon’s action plan for last night had been added in, but I’d already seen that. We’d had a lot of people pulling overtime in extra patrol cars last night. Our Area Commander had also written up a report on the actions that he had taken after DCI Conall Keane had called him with ‘fresh information supplied by our civilian consultant, Mr Shay Keane.’

Well, that confirmed my hunch. Shay had attached a brief statement with his footage, along with copies of the comprehensive collection of licences and certifications he’d acquired, permitting him to operate drones in