‘I know it’s difficult for you to speak, Henryk, but have you been having problems with anyone recently?’ Bryant asked. This was beginning to look more personal than a random attack.
His voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Normal… insults… we ignore… my wife… worries…’
Bryant held up his hand. Too much effort and too much pain for no useful information. He didn’t want to cause the poor guy needless suffering.
‘Could it have been someone from the pub?’ Dawson asked.
Henryk shook his head. ‘No drinking… no money,’ he said with a weak attempt at a smile.
‘What exactly were you doing there, Henryk?’ Dawson asked, finally favouring the direct approach.
Bryant knew they were thinking the same thing. Drugs.
‘Job,’ he said, simply.
Dawson looked up, and his confusion was clear.
‘Henryk, the Job Centre doesn’t normally open at ten o clock at night.’
He shook his head and winced again. ‘Not… that… kind,’ he said quietly.
His good thumb and forefinger rubbed together.
‘Cash… pay.’
Ah, thought Bryant. That made much more sense.
Immigrants, both legal and illegal, used the underground work channels to make money. It was estimated that as many as half a million migrants were being used by rogue gangmasters to supply cheap labour to the hospitality, construction and farming industries. Men and women were being placed in dangerous conditions with no training and low pay because they had families to support.
‘No… choice,’ he said with despair. ‘Wife… children… hungry…’
Bryant put aside his feelings of outrage. As a man, a taxpayer and a police officer he hated the underground cash working trade. But he’d also been the primary breadwinner for his wife and daughter for twenty years and could not be sure he wouldn’t have done the same thing to feed his family if he’d needed to.
Perhaps they were looking for people who knew where these workers were collected.
‘Did they say anything else at all?’ Bryant pushed.
He shook his head. ‘If that… lady… had not…’
‘Don’t think about that now, Henryk. You got a damn good beating but you’re going to be—’
‘But… I saw… the knife,’ he said, as a tear fell from his eye.
‘Your attackers had a knife?’
He nodded.
‘Henryk, how did you know to be there at that time?’ Dawson asked.
‘Text… message,’ he said. ‘I receive… text message.’
The ward sister signalled to them from the end of the bay just as Henryk’s eyes began to droop.
Boy, she had called that good. It was five minutes to the second.
‘Do you have the phone?’ Bryant asked, moving the chair back. Stacey might be able to track the sender.
Henryk shook his head, wearily. ‘Lost… stolen…’
Dawson nodded his understanding. He would check with the attending officers if a phone had been found.
They said their goodbyes and headed out of the ward.
Bryant paused as the door closed behind them.
‘A knife and a text message to lure him to the location,’ Dawson said.
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Bryant asked.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
Bryant sighed. ‘This is no ordinary assault. What we have here is attempted murder.’
TWELVE
Kim felt herself calming down once they were back in the car. Her car.
Now she felt like she was back in control. Driving the case forward at her own speed.
Travis made notes beside her.
The personable, pleasant man she’d seen in the squad room had been left there. The greyed out substitution had followed her to the car.
She couldn’t help wishing it was Bryant beside her. They would have been tossing ideas about, spouting theories, discussing, debating. Moving the case along.
Kim took the left turn towards the dirt road, sharply. His pen slipped, and he shot her an irritable glance.
He should already know that she ought not be left alone to make her own fun.
He slid the pen into the spine of the folder and closed it as she passed the pub car park that was holding the press. Tracy Frost was positioned at the front, talking to a kid in a colourful shirt beneath his Firetrap jacket. Tracy paused and offered Kim a slight nod as she passed by.
‘I certainly don’t miss that poor excuse for a human being,’ Travis said.
Kim bristled. Three months ago it might have been the one single thing they could have agreed on.
‘She’s not that bad,’ she said, remembering everything she’d found out about Tracy Frost.
‘The woman has no redeeming qualities at all,’ he insisted.
She knew his game. He could tell he had touched a nerve and now he wanted to prod it with a metal fork until she bit. He would happily lure her into an argument and then go running to his boss claiming she was being difficult. His boss would believe him. Hell, even her boss would believe him. She hated the joint investigation as much as he did but it wouldn’t fail because of her. Not on the first day.
‘And setting the precedent for the majority of this investigation, Tom, we shall agree to disagree.’
She saw the flash of disappointment as she parked the car.
She got out and headed towards the site, not caring if he caught up with her. When he did he was clutching the leather document holder like a safety blanket.
‘No one here needs insurance,’ she said, looking at his wallet.
‘You do it your way and I’ll do it—’
‘As awkwardly as you can,’ she interrupted.
Kim observed that there were at least twenty people milling around the small area, and yet, the voices were hushed, reverent, respectful. Ultimately they were dealing with a grave.
A white tent had been erected around the pit. This was for the purpose of preservation and privacy. The techs would be able to investigate the immediate area without the added complication of the elements. And although the press had been cordoned half a mile away, it was not unknown for a news helicopter to suddenly appear in the sky.
Black clad officers appeared to be searching the outer perimeter of the field, while the white suited techs had claimed the immediate area around the pit. She knew they would be looking for footprints, tyre tracks, even cigarette ends. Anything that might offer them a clue. It was procedure but she had to wonder at how much value this held when they had no clue how long the skull had been buried.
Kim would have liked to see the GPR team on site. They needed to know if there were more bones, but she understood the ground could not be further contaminated until the surface of the field had been thoroughly combed for clues.
Kim headed for the pit that had deepened by more than a foot since she’d last seen it, but little progress seemed to have been made with the excavation itself. The bones were not coming out of the ground, and without them she had no hope of moving this case forward.
Currently her victim had no name, no identity. A cause of frustration for her on any case.