Chapter Four

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Still tired after his unplanned and unwanted late night visit to the festival, Stone nudged open the door and walked into his office. Burke was already there, with the coffee machine percolating merrily behind him; Stone wasn't surprised, somehow Burke nearly always beat him to the office. Stone supposed it was because his partner was single, and had no-one to delay him of a morning, whereas his wife invariably held him up with some last-minute issue that couldn't wait until another time, and which only he could deal with.

"Is that the witness statements from the festival?" Stone asked with a gesture at the stack of paper on his desk.

"If you can call them that." Burke poured a mug of coffee for his superior and carried it over.

Stone accepted the mug gratefully and dropped into his chair to start going over the statements; it didn't take him long. Apart from those he had spoken to at the time, none of the festival crew members, or the others who had been at the site at the time of the robbery, had seen anything; not one of them was able to add anything to what Stone already knew.

Frustrated, he tossed the last statement back onto the desk, where it joined the untidy pile of similarly useless statements. He sipped slowly at his coffee to give himself time to think and then he turned to his partner. "Any CCTV or traffic cameras in the area that might help us?" he asked, wishing they had more to go on than a brief, almost useless, physical description of the two robbers and the belief, expressed by Rose Leigh, that they had a slight accent. The description they had of the car was as helpful as that of the armed pair, leaving them to hope that forensics could come up with something that might lead them to the men they were after.

Burke shook his head. "I'd just finished checking that when you arrived. The nearest camera is three quarters of a mile away; it covers a traffic junction that's apparently pretty bad for accidents. I've requested the footage, but even if we find the car on it we won't be able to use it in court, it's too far away to be able to say for definite it's the same vehicle."

Stone dismissed that problem with a wave of his hand. Just then he wasn't bothered about evidence for court, he was more interested in identifying the car and the two armed robbers; proving it was them could wait until they knew who it was. "David Leigh and the others should be in later to give formal statements; with a bit of luck they'll have remembered something useful. In the meantime, I want to know about any Vauxhalls reported stolen recently, especially if they're an Astra and they're blue. We might get lucky and hit on the right vehicle."

Burke scribbled quick notes on the pad he kept handy by his phone. "How about putting out an alert for a possible abandoned vehicle," he suggested. "They might have dumped the car somewhere. A patrol might spot it."

"Let's get the description out to the local news as well." Stone suspected that if the car had been dumped, it would have been done in an out of the way place, where it was more likely to be found randomly by a member of the public than by a police patrol. "Just the car, not what we have on the pair, it's too vague at the moment, and I don't want to spook them."

"Okay, anything else?"

"Not unless you can think of something."

Stone settled on the corner of the desk opposite his subordinate and focused his attention on Detective Sergeant Mason; he didn't say as much, but since he had had to work during the night, when he was supposed to be off, he was glad to see that Mason was working beyond the end of his shift. "Tell me about the hit-and-run," he directed the man who had been after the promotion he got.

"Bugger-all to tell," Mason said, the dislike he felt for the man who had got the job he wanted there, as always, in his eyes, and just beneath the surface of his words. "Old geezer walking his dog got knocked down by some ignorant little prick."

"Any witnesses?"

Mason snorted. "Are you kidding? It was almost three in the morning on a Sunday, no-one was around, leastways, no-one who's gonna come forward." The knowing look on his face suggested that Stone should already have realised that. "I've got Chris and a couple of uniforms canvassing the area, just in case someone saw something, and I'm putting together a request for all CCTV footage from the area. I doubt anything'll come of it, though, it'll be a complete waste of time. Even if we manage to catch the bugger responsible, it'll just turn out to be some little punk out for a joyride in a stolen car, and he'll get away with a slap on the wrist and nothing more." His expression was one of disgust as he said that.

"Let's hope that isn't the case." Stone was just as frustrated as Mason with the minor sentences handed out to youths, regardless of the damage they did to people and property, who took cars for a joyride. "What's the old man's condition?"

"Not good," Mason said with a shake of his head, his demeanour changing slightly, the animosity he felt towards his superior disappearing, or at least receding. "He was still unconscious when I called the hospital a while ago; he's got a fractured skull, three cracked ribs, a broken arm and a broken leg. Traffic reckon whoever hit him must have been going at least forty-five, and they didn't even try to stop."

"Bastards!"

Mason could only nod in agreement of that sentiment.

"What do the doctors put his chances at?" Stone asked.

"Somewhere between crap, and make arrangements for a funeral," Mason replied in his usual callous way. "We don't even know the old geezer's name since he wasn't carrying any I.D. when he was found."

"Try and remember, Justin, he's not an old geezer, he's an old man who has had the misfortune to be in a bad accident," Stone said, though he doubted his words would have any effect on his subordinate. "Now, what are you doing to find out who he is?"

"Is there anything else to report?" Detective Chief Inspector Collins asked of his subordinate.

"Not at the moment," Stone answered, uncrossing his legs in preparation to leave his superior's office. "Hopefully, Justin will get a quick response to his appeal for help in identifying his hit-and-run victim, not that it's likely to help much in finding the person who ran him down."

"What about the gentleman who reported the accident? Could he possibly have been responsible?"

Stone shrugged. "You'll have to ask Justin about that."

"I will. What's your next step with the robbery?"

Before Stone could answer there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Collins called out.

The door swung open to reveal DS Burke, who quickly apologised for the intrusion. "Excuse me, sir, but I've got a possible lead."

"What is it?" Stone asked.

"I was talking with a couple of the uniforms," Burke said. "It seems that one of our favourite lags recently got himself some new ink."

Stone thought about who Burke would include on a list of their favourite lags – it wasn't a long list – and who would be of interest in regard to their current case. "You're not talking about the Ice-cream Boys, are you?" he asked, thinking of Ben and Jerry Logan, whose first names had resulted in them being given the most obvious of nicknames. When Burke nodded, Stone remarked. "They're out on license, aren't they?"

"Yes, they got out three, four months ago," Burke said. "I think they've both got about three and a half years, a little less maybe, on license."

Stone didn't doubt his partner had the information right, Burke was very good at that kind of thing. "So, which one of our pains-in-the-ass got the new ink?" It wasn't something he wanted to guess at for both seasoned criminals were fans of tattoos and had many adorning their bodies.

"Jerry, apparently," Burke answered. "According to PC Williams, he gave the Logans a tug the other week for a broken light on their car – not a blue Vauxhall," he said quickly, seeing the question in his superior's eyes. "He recognised the Ice-cream Boys and made a note of Jerry's new ink, he said it's an eagle, about two inches by three, on the left side of his neck."

Stone smiled at the news. "Shall we go and have a chat with Jerry then, and perhaps his brother as well?"

"Sure, we probably won't get much out of them, but it should put the wind up them."Burke was as keen to speak to the Logans as Stone; nailing them for armed robbery would, he thought, make up for the early releases Ben and Jerry had somehow secured.

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