Tell No Tales by Eva Dolan Read Free Book Online Page A

crash site, the driver jumping out of the car, catching his foot on the seat belt, half tripping but managing to keep on his feet. Then he was running, fast, a small gang following, twenty or thirty yards behind him.
    ‘We lose them for a minute,’ Grieves said and switched to another view. ‘Then here on Dogsthorpe Road one of the cameras picks him up again. A couple of the men have fallen back.’
    She switched to a different view. A street of Edwardian villas, cars parked on the road, bins out on the pavement, everything shadowy and ill-defined, the street lamps only throwing out dim light, with long stretches between them.
    ‘Then at the end of All Saints Road he’s gone.’
    ‘Have we got any more?’ Zigic asked.
    Grieves shook her head, sending her bobbed red hair swinging around her face. ‘Our last sighting is at 06.08, sir.’
    ‘Plenty of time to get back home to Hampton and swallow the medicine cabinet,’ Wahlia said. ‘It’s a hike though.’
    ‘OK, Deb, why don’t you stay on this for a bit, see if you can find out where he emerges? If we’re lucky we might get his face on camera.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Wahlia moved away to answer his phone and Zigic topped up his coffee, took it with him into his office. He closed the door and dropped into his chair, the leather sighing under his weight.
    For a moment he did nothing, only looked at the photographs of Anna and the boys on his desk, smiled back at them automatically then felt stupid for doing it. Anna was taking Milan to the dentist today and he didn’t envy her it – last time he refused to open his mouth no matter how gently they all coaxed him, and then it was apologies and awkward laughter while Milan watched them all from under a furrowed brow, as if scenting a conspiracy against him. He was older now though. Maybe he could be reasoned with. Or bribed.
    Zigic straightened with a deep breath and dragged the keyboard towards him. He dug into the files until he found what he wanted. It was a short video clip, ten seconds long and four days old, retrieved from a security camera outside a halal butcher’s, a few feet away from the alley where Ali Manouf was kicked to death.
    His killer entered the shot from the right, his body made shorter and wider by the angle. He wore a black padded jacket, dark jeans and heavy boots which Zigic knew were spattered with blood and bone and flecks of grey matter even though he couldn’t see them. Enough gore to leave a trail of footprints. The man’s face was obscured by a balaclava with a fine gauze across the eyes; he was careful, wouldn’t even give them that thin strip for identification.
    He turned to the camera, drew himself up to his full height and raised his gloved hand in a stiff-armed Nazi salute.

9
    ‘ WE NEED A strategy for this,’ Marshall said, standing with his arms folded in front of the monitor, as footage from the hit-and-run on Lincoln Road played on a loop. ‘Just in case it’s one of ours.’
    ‘They are not ours ,’ Richard Shotton snarled. ‘Not even in this office, between us. We create distance and we maintain it. I will not tolerate any insinuation of links to those bloody jackbooted, tattooed oiks.’
    Marshall’s eyes dropped to the polished concrete floor. ‘No, sir, of course.’
    Shotton strode over to the office’s long glazed wall and stood looking out across the gravel driveway at the facade of the main house. His wife was coming down the front steps, her coat over her arm, slipping on her sunglasses as she popped the remote locks on her car. She waved to his driver as she climbed in and the man gave her a salute – their little joke. He clearly fancied her but Shotton couldn’t blame him. Forty-five years old and she was still a glorious-looking creature.
    She sprayed the side of the Range Rover with gravel as she pulled off, a few more dings for the battle-scarred beast. In the last few weeks it had taken heavy damage, kicked and slammed by protesters, the rear