Condemned, R.C. Bridgestock [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

to answer the call. Suddenly, there was a loud crack as the phone slipped through her fingers and hit the floor. Charley swore under her breath. Now the screen was likely to be broken and the phone call might have been urgent. Annoyed with herself, she picked it up off the floor.

Head slumped against the car’s headrest, she exhaled and released her hold on the phone. She closed her eyes, and clenched her jaw. When she opened her eyes, it seemed lighter. She looked down at the screen as it lit up and rang again. Putting the phone to her ear she looked across at the horizon to see the morning sun had broken free from the clouds.

‘Charley, it’s Eira from Forensics. Sorry for the early call, but I’ve some exciting news that I knew you’d want to know immediately.’

Charley felt her heart miss a beat. Her eyes were on two crows on the roof of her house. Their beady eyes were trained on the rubbish bin, they wouldn’t miss an opportunity today, and neither would she. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘We’ve obtained a DNA profile link on your male found shot in the head at Crownest.’

Charley raised her chin to see her hooded eyes and pale cheeks in her rearview mirror instantly turn brighter and glowing. ‘How sure are you that it is a match?’ she said eagerly.

The SIO could hear the smile in Eira’s voice, ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s a match all right.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, on the back of a sigh of relief.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ Eira chuckled. ‘I don’t know how he fits into your enquiry though.’

‘Why? Have you run it though the database already? Who is it?’

‘Yes, your deceased is one Faisal Hussain.’

Charley was silent.

‘You okay? Charley, you’re very quiet. Are you still there?’

‘I wasn’t expecting that. He’s just come into the periphery of the enquiry.’

‘Well, it’s definitely him,’ she said.

Charley slammed both hands on her dashboard. ‘Result!’ She shouted so loud that the crows in the trees took flight.

Chapter 28

Charley couldn’t wait to get to the Incident Room, and as soon as she arrived she was reeling off instructions for enquiries that required urgent attention.

‘I want the other identifying factors, the metal plate from Hussain’s leg, and the enquiry into the teeth, to be continued,’ she told the team at the morning briefing. ‘They’ve been started so they may as well be concluded. They all add weight to the evidence.’

Ricky-Lee entered the office late to the sight of Tattie pouring tea into his favourite mug. Annie shuffled up to allow him to pull up a chair at the table. He puffed his chest out in an exaggerated manner. Annie tried her best not to stare at the overnight tan, and his muscles on show in his white short-sleeved shirt while he dug into his bag, from where a strong smell of bacon emanated. ‘Can I tempt you to a sandwich? I got several from the shop,’ he said, with a wide smile.

Wilkie looked at the Rich Tea finger between his finger and thumb, and slowly, but purposefully, put it back on the plate that Tattie was offering him. ‘That does smell good, I suppose the biscuits can wait.’ Tattie smirked.

Charley tucked into her sandwich, but her eyes showed suspicion. Ricky-Lee showed her a smile of perfectly white teeth. There was a twinkle in his eyes.

Wilkie let out a groan of appreciation. ‘I think this is the best bacon sandwich I’ve ever had,’ he said to Ricky-Lee.

‘Do you think that Hussain had caught up with the Dixons’?’ asked Annie.

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ said Wilkie. ‘Why else would he end up dead, in a tunnel behind a fireplace, in a stranger’s house?’

Annie pulled a face. ‘Wonder if he had a gun with him to avenge his uncle’s death when he found them?’ she said.

Wilkie chuckled. ‘Yeah, well it serves him bleedin’ right if his plan went tits up, and he ended up the victim.’

Annie cocked an eyebrow. ‘The Dixons were obviously faster on the draw that day.’

‘Or had they been expecting Hussain?’ said Mike.

Annie scowled. ‘How come? As far as we’re aware, he wasn’t an associate, was he?’

Ricky-Lee rolled his eyes in her direction. ‘He means someone gave them a tip-off.’ Annie gave him a shove.

‘Raglan?’ said Mike.

Charley had listened to them before speaking.

‘We’re making assumptions,’ said Charley, not sure whether she was talking about her assumption of why Ricky-Lee appeared to be on top of his game this morning, or about the enquiry. ‘Where’s the cabriolet, his mobile phone, and the rest of his personal property, including the gold rings Miss Finch talked about?’

‘The Dixons were not the type to hang on to things, I would suggest,’ said Wilkie. ‘They’d be sold on before his body was cold.’

‘Probably,’ said Charley. ‘Find out if the cabriolet was registered to Hussain. If so, the automatic number plate recognition system seems to be a good place to start finding out where he might have travelled, and when. Who knows what the Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras will have picked up that would be useful to us?’

‘Maybe we’ve found out the real reason why the Dixons left Crownest suddenly, and it’s not the story that Raglan told us about his threatening them and their leaving. That was all bravado,’ said Mike.

Charley picked up a pen, and threaded it through the fingers of her hand. ‘I understand that Raglan doesn’t appear to be a physical threat without a gun, but what doesn’t sit right with me is that if the Dixons did the deed without anyone else to help them, how the hell would they know about the tunnel behind the fireplace?’

Ricky-Lee shrugged his shoulders. ‘We know Hussain was shot with a weapon that the Dixons are known to have used before, because the gun has been linked to the previous armed robberies, but I’ve been thinking that to dispose of a body at the house they were renting was taking one hell of a risk, don’t you think?’

‘I agree,