She looked around the CID room again, feeling that she was constantly searching for something that wasn’t there. No questioning voice came to her. Just Gavin Murfin’s tired rasp.
‘What are you lot talking about?’ he said as he ambled into the room and looked around at the assembled faces. ‘You look a bit too flippin’ serious for my liking. All those long faces are scaring me.’
‘We’re not talking about you, Gavin, anyway,’ said Hurst.
‘That’s a relief. For a minute there, I thought I might be dead or something.’
‘No such luck.’
‘You’ve got yourself confused with Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense,’ said Irvine.
Murfin sat down and poked through his desk drawers. ‘Well, it’s an easy mistake to make.’
Fry was watching him impatiently. ‘Have you got anything for me, Gavin?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll want to know. I’ve got a result on one of the cars seen by the motorist on Tuesday night. It was a BMW 5 series, with two people in it, a man and a woman. The registration number included the letters KK. The lady noticed that particularly because she’s Irish.’
‘Because she’s Irish?’
‘Apparently, in Ireland a number plate tells you which county a car was registered in. And KK stands for Kilkenny, which is where our witness is from.’
‘Do we have any matching vehicles in this area?’
‘Only one,’ said Murfin. ‘A red 5-series model with TKK in its reg. I’ve just got a name and address from the Vehicles database on the PNC.’
‘Wasn’t there a red car seen in the area at the time?’ asked Fry.
‘Yes, there was.’
‘Well, get out there and bring the owner in, Gavin. And take DC Irvine with you.’
Forty minutes later, Luke Irvine was sitting in the CID pool car on The Dale in Wirksworth. Gavin Murfin was in the driving seat. And from the scuffed look of its interior, Murfin had driven this car before.
‘So what do you say, Gavin?’ asked Irvine.
Murfin scowled at him and gave a petulant yank at the wrapper of his Snickers bar, ripping the plastic away from the chocolate like a man who wanted to commit murder.
‘I’m your mentor, not your minion,’ he said.
‘I’m just asking you. I’m appealing to your … well, your better nature.’
‘You don’t appeal to me at all. You’re not my type.’
‘Come on, Gavin. You’re being a pillock.’
‘That’s more like it. Now I know you mean it.’
Irvine slumped back in his seat. Was he the only one to be concerned about Ben Cooper? That night in the pub, Diane Fry and Becky Hurst had been nominated for the job of checking him out but had returned without any information. Hurst had seemed more worried about whether the cat had been fed. And of course Fry was just relieved to have gone through the motions, as if that excused her from doing anything else. Now Murfin was proving a washout.
They were waiting for a red BMW to appear. They knew they had the right house for the owner of the vehicle, because they’d spoken to his wife, who’d told them he was expected back home any time. When they got back to the car, Irvine had suggested to Murfin that she might phone her husband on his mobile and warn him not to come home while the police were there.
‘No,’ Murfin had said. ‘Didn’t you notice the smile on her face? I bet she can’t wait to see him in handcuffs in the back of a squad car. There won’t be any tears from her as she waves him off to the cells.’
‘What, her own husband?’ protested Irvine.
Murfin had snorted derisively. ‘You kids,’ he’d said. ‘You know nothing about marriage. Trust me, she’ll be the last one to think of warning him.’
They’d been waiting almost a quarter of an hour since then, and Irvine was starting to get impatient. Murfin wasn’t exactly fascinating company. In fact, Irvine wasn’t entirely sure he was awake most of the time. He seemed to have developed an ability to sleep for a few minutes at a time, with his eyes wide open. At first glance it looked as if he was fully alert, until you tried to make conversation with him. Then it was obvious that his brain was switched off. Irvine supposed it was a trick he might learn after another ten or fifteen years doing this sort of job.
Murfin grunted and began to fish around in his pockets for something. Evidence that he was present in spirit as well as body.
‘Do you know Wirksworth, Gavin?’ asked Irvine.
‘Nope.’
‘I thought you knew everywhere and everything. You’ve been around long enough.’