Part 25 (1/2)

'Oh yes,' smiled the woman. 'The accent's a giveaway.'

The still countryside pa.s.sed slowly, the smooth growl of the Stag's engine blurring with the couple's discussion of Mrs Pearce's varicose veins and John Toma.s.son's rumoured affair with his secretary. Soon the Doctor fell into a deep sleep.

He awoke with a start just as the car pulled into a service station.

'This is where we'll have to drop you off,' said the man as the Doctor stretched and yawned.

'Thank you so much,' said the Doctor with genuine grat.i.tude. He stepped down on to the tarmac, taking in his new surroundings before turning back to the couple. 'It's rea.s.suring to know that there are still good people in the world,' he said.

Denman approached the research centre cautiously, guiding the car on to a patch of broken concrete edged by pale-looking buddleia. He switched off the engine, and breathed deeply to steady his chaotic thoughts.

Moments after he left the Doctor, Denman called an old friend who worked in the West Midlands. A final favour. The man had told him exactly where the laboratories were, and warned him about 'doing anything stupid'. Denman had ended the conversation with an impatient stab of his thumb.

There had been too much talking.

There wasn't much left of the buildings, the main one a splintered ma.s.s of blackened brick and metal. The sun made myriad patterns on the shards of gla.s.s that littered the ground around the lab. Some of the outlying Portakabins had survived, though all the doors and windows were now held shut with metal bars and padlocks. The area was still cordoned off by long yellow and black ribbons of hazard tape that warned of toxic contamination.

Denman stepped from the car. The research centre was right on the edge of a benighted industrial estate, and the wind chased the litter over a desert of cement and tarmac.

There were two policemen patrolling the area, but they only seemed to be there only to keep away local children. Denman waited for one young uniformed constable to pa.s.s, and then he sprinted towards the main building.

One of the window frames had been only loosely boarded up, and Denman tugged at the planks of wood with rough, impatient fingers. Then he pulled himself through, dropping down into a room that smelled like the aftermath of a barbecue. He remembered one he had organised earlier that summer, exclusively for the officers pursuing Shanks.

Denman had hoped that if they realised his interest in the case they would work still harder to put the man behind bars.

And Nicola had been wonderful, taking coats, handing out drinks, cracking stupid jokes with some of the younger officers. Everything his wife would have done, and more.

Denman lashed out at a blackened computer monitor with his foot, the slab of fractured gla.s.s at the front shattering.

On the far side of the room Denman noticed a filing cabinet that seemed largely unaffected by the fire. The metal was twisted and warped, but the drawers, with a squeal of protest, slid open.

'Jesus,' said someone behind him. 'What a racket.'

Denman spun round, fists clenched. It was Hill, his suit as immaculate as usual.

'Sir,' he added, apologetically.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?' asked Denman, his body still tense.

'I followed you. The grey Rover. Can't believe you didn't see me.'

'I've got a bit on my mind at the moment, laddy,' snapped Denman. 'You might have noticed.'

'Smoke?' offered Hill, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his jacket.

Denman shook his head. 'You haven't answered my question. Why did you follow me?'

Hill lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. 'It's time you came back to Liverpool.'

'Really?' snorted Denman. He turned back to the filing cabinet. 'It can wait.'

'But Shanks is dead. What more do you hope to prove?'

'You know your problem, Paul? You never see the big picture. You're too busy rooting around in the dirt.'

'And how do you work that out?'

Denman pulled a sheet of browned paper from the drawer, and made a show of inspecting it closely. 'The same way I'm working out that the business with my daughter was no coincidence.' He swung round to stare at Hill. 'We were this close,' said Denman, his thumb and forefinger almost touching. 'And then suddenly -' He slammed the filing cabinet shut. 'I find my daughter framed with some of Shanks's drugs.'

'How do you know they were his?'

'It's obvious, isn't it?'

'Maybe,' continued Hill. 'But like I say, he's dead, and I don't suppose you'll find anything incriminating here.'

'And you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?' said Denman, his voice a choked whisper. 'You being in Shanks's pocket and all.'

Hill tried to speak, but his words were cut short by Denman's relentless stare of accusation. His eyes were like a dead man's.

'Don't deny it, suns.h.i.+ne. You didn't come here because you wanted to look out for me. You wanted to make sure I wouldn't find anything linking you to Shanks. Correct?'

Hill puffed on his cigarette nervously, but said nothing.

'You were the one who told Shanks how close we were to busting him. Right?'

'I swear I didn't know what Shanks had planned. If I had -'

'I don't want to hear it. You played your part in the death of my daughter. Can you live with that?' Denman had walked towards Hill and was inches from the junior officer now.

Denman could smell the expensive cologne on the man's temples. 'You saw Nicola hanging there. You watched as they cut her down.' Denman removed the cigarette from Hill's mouth and hurled it away. 'Can you live with that?' he repeated.

Denman turned away abruptly.

Hill cleared his throat, as if Denman's staring eyes had robbed him of the power of speech. 'What will you do?' he asked in a tiny voice.