porn, got it,’ says Mark.
‘Is that a section in a porn shop?’ she asks.
‘Probably. Next to “clergy”.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to get it, you see,’ she says. ‘Does John Lewis do porn?’
‘If it did, it’d be exactly the sort of porn we’d like,’ he says.
‘Oh yes. John Lewis porn. That’s exactly it. No surprising or unpleasant orifices. Nice table lamps in the background should the mind wander.’
The cordon has gone, SOCO and the scene photographer having got what they needed.
‘How did they get him up there?’ Manon asks, looking up into the tree. ‘If it was murder, he must’ve cooperated. Pretty hard to get a fella up there if he doesn’t want to. Not like they built a scaffold.’
‘Ladder maybe. Could’ve kicked it away.’
‘Any indentations suggesting the feet of a ladder?’
‘Nope, but they might have scuffed the ground to cover it. What if they threatened him?’ Davy says. ‘Had a gun to his head?’
‘I’d say, so shoot me. Rather be shot than hanged, any day. Can take an age to die if your neck doesn’t break.’
‘He might’ve been coerced into the tree,’ says Davy.
‘Tricky thing to do though, isn’t it? I mean, if I were a serial killer, it wouldn’t be my first choice of MO.’
‘Serial killer?’ says Davy, who had just now felt as if his murder was being taken away from him, not just by Mrs Big Boots clod-hopping all over his scene, but by her suspicion it might in fact be suicide after all. And now she’s bandying the words serial killer about?
‘Well, this is the third hanging in as many months. They were all hung with the same rope. The rope is everything Davy. We need to be all over the rope.’
He wants to say, Do you think I haven’t thought of that? Do you think I’m not all over the rope?
The two previous victims, one man and one woman, were deemed to have taken their own lives following an investigation by local officers. He reminds her of this.
‘Why didn’t they refer it up to us?’ Manon asks.
‘Thought they could handle it themselves,’ Davy says.
‘Could they though? Could be murder. We could be talking about our third victim in a serial homicide.’
‘I think you’re getting a bit over-excited.’
‘I think we need to reopen those other two cases.’
‘Good luck telling Wisbech plod that.’
‘I’m not going to tell them,’ Manon says, smiling at Davy. ‘You are.’
She doesn’t let up as they walk to the car. Did they leave notes, these other victims? Were there witnesses to the deaths? Were there statements about the deceased’s states of mind in the run up to the deaths. CCTV? ANPR? Yes, yes, he wants to say, I’m on it. Give me a sodding chance, it’s only day two. And he is so, so tired.
‘You look tired,’ she says.
‘Thing is,’ he says, ‘you’d hang them to make it look like suicide, not murder.’
‘Yes, but it didn’t look like suicide, though. That note made sure it didn’t. Something just doesn’t fit about it. It’s a suicidal method, not a murder method, and yet the note just knocks it out of the park. Also, if I were coerced into a tree, with whatever threats, I’d just keep climbing – out of reach.’
‘There was a belt,’ Davy says, ‘next to his bed in the migrant house. A leather belt. If I wanted to top myself, I’d use my belt and the nearest bannister. No need to trek all the way to Hinchingbrooke.’
‘Yes, it’s very effortful,’ she concedes.
Then she’s back to her nagging. Locations of the bodies, how did they get to those locations, did they have help getting to those locations – they were quite remote, weren’t they Davy? Naggedy nag nag. It’s only day two, he wants to shout in her face. Back, the fuck, off.
‘If we were on TV,’ she says, the breath in her lungs pumped and lively, ‘we’d be in an office with some kind of glass screen with a giant interactive map on it and I’d stroke my finger across it to triangulate the locations. And we’d be wearing tonal outfits, Davy.’
‘Yeah, well, we’re not on TV, so I can offer you a biro and an Ordnance Survey map.’
‘Who’s this fella we’re going to see then?’ she asks, while Davy pulls away from the kerb. They are going to Wisbech police station for the interview.
‘Edikas. He’s the fixer. He runs the migrants on behalf of Vasil the Barbarian, the gangmaster. Tells them what’s what when they get off the bus. Vasil gets the cash. Bridget says salaries are paid into the migrants’ bank accounts, so it looks like there’s a paper trail, but their bank cards are taken off them when they arrive, so they don’t have any access to the money. Vasil uses their accounts to launder his funds.’
‘And why hasn’t he been cleaned out by Op Pheasant?’
‘No one will testify against him. Biggest problem Pheasant has is that the minute the migrants get away, they want nothing more to do with it. They hotfoot it back to Klaipeda and that’s that. Wall of silence, Bridget says.’
‘Oh, Bridget says, does she?’ says Manon, gurning with Carry-On innuendo. Trying to nudge-nudge him, without causing an accident. ‘How is Bridget?’
‘She’s fine,’ he says, flushing.
‘And what about Edikas’s own situation. Wife? Kids?’
‘Back in Klaipeda. He sends money back to them each month.’
‘What’s Klaipeda like?’
‘Baltic sea port, Lithuania’s third city. Lots of Russians, lots of jobs on the docks.’
‘OK,
