Deep Cover by Peter Turnbull

here.’
    â€˜So go and buy another one, an identical one, then no one will ever know, will they?’
    â€˜I will have to tell Mr William,’ Dunwoodie squeaked.
    â€˜No,’ Brunnie turned back and faced Dunwoodie, holding eye contact with him. ‘No. No. No. For your own sake . . . no.’
    â€˜For my own sake?’ Dunwoodie’s face paled.
    â€˜Yes, for your own sake.’ Brunnie remained stone-faced. ‘Lock up the office and go and buy a watering can from the hardware shop. A watering can identical to this one, and return and place it on top of the filing cabinets.’
    â€˜Simple as that,’ Yewdall added.
    â€˜You know, fella,’ Brunnie continued, ‘I don’t know what you think of your boss, but I can tell you that it won’t be the same as what I think about him. So go and buy another watering can and mention our little and very brief visit to no one.’
    â€˜No one,’ Yewdall added, ‘no one.’
    In the car, driving southwards in slow moving traffic, Yewdall glanced to her left at the residential houses and occasional shop. ‘Any more stunts like that,’ she said, ‘and you’ll have us both put against a wall and shot.’
    Brunnie grinned. ‘You put the idea in my head, but at least we’re going to find out who Pilcher really is, and Dunwoodie will be safe if he buys another watering can and keeps his mouth shut.’
    Yewdall turned to him. ‘If,’ she said coldly, ‘if, it’s a big if . . . a very big if.’
    Vicary smiled. It was serious. Very serious, but he managed to smile. In the margin of the report on Michael ‘Irish Mickey’ Dalkeith’s blood toxicity, which spoke of milligrams per millilitre of alcohol being present, John Shaftoe had clearly anticipated Vicary’s bewilderment and had written in a neat hand, ‘sufficient to knock out a horse’. Vicary said ‘Thank you’ aloud and laid the toxicity report to one side, and picked up the post-mortem report, also submitted by John Shaftoe, in respect of the shallowly buried, skeletonized corpse which was found beneath Michael Dalkeith’s frozen body. The post-mortem findings had been compared to information on missing persons and Vicary saw that, worryingly, quite a few women of about five feet tall in height had been reported missing, and were still missing, in the Greater London area within the last fifteen years. The vast majority, however, were very young – teenagers or early twenties – but one, just one missing person’s report stood out as being the most promising potential match to the post-mortem findings. Rosemary Halkier was thirty-five years old when she was reported missing some ten years earlier. The mother of two children, she had been reported as a missing person by her father with whom she was living at the time in Albert Road, Leyton, which was, as if fate was helpfully intervening, very close to Vicary’s route home. If he left the tube train just one stop earlier than usual, he could very easily call in at the Halkier household, make a brief enquiry and then walk home from there in less than fifteen minutes. Vicary glanced out of his office window. He noted the sky to be low and grey but, thankfully, it was not raining, and as such it made a stroll from Leyton to Leytonstone on a dry winter’s evening seem very inviting. Very inviting indeed. He stood and worked himself into his overcoat and screwed his fedora hat on to his head. He signed himself ‘Out – not coming back’, and walked out of the Murder and Serious Crime Unit. He took the lift to the ground floor and exited New Scotland Yard by the main entrance in front of the triangular sign which read, ‘Working for a safer London’. He took the District Line to Mile End and there changed on to the Central Line and, as he had planned, left the tube at Leyton.
    Albert Road