the water alongside him. The riverbank had later been searched but no such model was recovered.
Like the incident at Rosewood Grange, this whole thing read like an ultra-freakish accident, but two such events in two weeks – happening to the same person?
Heck pondered these unsatisfying facts later that afternoon as he parked his Peugeot in a car park to the rear of the Ploughman’s Rest, booked himself in, and took a single heavy travel bag up to the room he’d been allocated, which was small, cosy, and neatly furnished, its lattice-paned, ivy-fringed window overlooking the green.
When he came back downstairs, he spotted Gail Honeyford in the snug. A smart suit jacket was draped over the back of her chair and a glass of what looked like iced lemonade sat on the table alongside her, but again she was tapping away on her laptop. He hadn’t seen much of her after they’d been introduced that afternoon. Vacating the office for the pub was not unusual in CID circles when there was someone new in the team who needed ‘breaking in’, but it wasn’t often the case that you fled to the pub to try and get some work done. Had she felt she was more likely to make progress with whatever she was doing if she didn’t have to keep updating the new guy?
Heck wandered towards her, hands tucked into his jeans pockets. She watched him from the corner of her eye, but her facial language remained neutral.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.
‘Suppose it’s a free country.’
‘Was when I last checked.’ She glanced at him fleetingly, unamused by the quip. He pulled up a chair. ‘That was supposed to be a joke, by the way.’
‘Hilarious.’ She got on with her work.
‘We’ve really started on the wrong foot, haven’t we? Can I get you a drink maybe?’
‘No thanks.’
‘DC Honeyford … you ever heard the phrase “work with me”? I’m trying to be friendly here.’
‘Yeah, I appreciate that, and look …’ She sat back, her expression softening – which suited her. On closer inspection, she was peaches-and-cream pretty with fetching hazel eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve come over a little brusque. But you aren’t going to be around here very long, so I don’t see the point in us developing a relationship. Professional or otherwise.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we supposed to be forming a taskforce?’
‘That was the boss’s idea, not mine. I’ve already got this case covered.’
‘Okay, fine. In the meantime, you sure you don’t want that drink?’
‘I’m sure. Thanks.’
Heck strolled to the bar, where the landlord, a jovial, beefy-cheeked local man with a frenzy of ginger hair was happy to serve him a pint of Best. When Heck sat down again, DC Honeyford clucked with barely disguised annoyance.
‘Problem with the laptop?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Good; perhaps we can get on then. What’s the hypothesis?’
She glanced up. ‘Pardon?’
‘You’ve obviously done a lot of work on this, and I respect that massively. So what’s your main theory?’
‘If you must know, this is a murder – and it’s almost certainly connected to Lansing’s business affairs.’
‘You’re sure Lansing was the target, and not Dean Torbert?’
She glanced at him again, as if he was some kind of buffoon. ‘If it wasn’t Lansing, that model aeroplane attack was a hell of a coincidence.’
‘Coincidences sometimes happen.’
‘Torbert was a first-year university student. He hadn’t lived long enough to upset anyone that badly.’
‘How do we know he wasn’t the one with the grudge? Perhaps it was Torbert who tried to run Lansing off the road, and it all went horribly wrong.’
‘I’ve looked into that. They didn’t even know each other, let alone have a grudge.’
‘What’s the background on Torbert?’
She shrugged. ‘Spoilt little rich kid, boy racer … take your pick.’
‘How did he come to own a Porsche?’
‘Mummy and Daddy are both wealthy, and separated. Sounds like he bounced between them like a shuttlecock. They rivalled each other buying him expensive presents.’
‘A Porsche?’
‘Look – this is Surrey, stockbroker country.’
‘Where did Torbert actually live?’
DC Honeyford sighed, not remotely afraid to show how frustrated the persistent questions were making her. ‘With his mother. In a millionaire pad in Guildford.’
‘I’m not a native, but that’s nowhere near Reigate, is it?’
‘It’s not too far away, but I agree; it seems odd Torbert was over in that neck of the woods at such an early hour. No one knows what he was doing there. But it’s no crime to drive around the county, is it? I mean, he may have had a girl this way – or even a boy. Who knows?’
Heck mulled this over. If Dean Torbert had simply been another bored youth who got his kicks tearing up and down the country lanes in his latest souped-up toy, it reinforced the impression that his involvement in this incident was no more than a bit of tragic misfortune. In fact, it would have been odd from Torbert’s perspective if some kind of accident hadn’t occurred. As a uniformed bobby up in Manchester, where, as a rule, idle young men did not get high-powered cars for Christmas, Heck had still watched on numerous occasions as their mutilated corpses were cut from heaps of twisted wreckage after a night spent blistering the blacktop.
‘Torbert was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ DC Honeyford added, clearly hoping to bring the conversation to an end.
‘But overall, you still think this was murder?’
‘Of course it was. But whoever did it lured Lansing out into the oncoming traffic to try and make it look like an accident. Any speeding road user would have done the job. Look, DS Heckenburg …’ She seemed genuinely exasperated by his sudden appearance in her life, and had to take a second to compose herself. ‘This thing must be connected to Lansing’s professional life. He ran a chain of multi-million-pound companies. He’s worth a fortune, but his finances are a tangled web. I’ve been trying to penetrate them for the last three days.’
‘Who would stand to gain most from his death?’ Heck asked.
‘Why are you even interested? I thought you were only here to see if this was part of a series?’
Heck shrugged. ‘If you can prove to me that it isn’t, I’ll happily go home. Then I won’t have to stand here looking over your shoulder.’
‘You
