Bryant put his foot on the accelerator.
‘No, don’t chase him,’ she warned. ‘He’s looking for somewhere to hide. If he drops the bike and goes on foot, we’ll never catch him.’
She tried to think quickly. ‘Carry on to the end of the road, do a right and then a left.’
If Chater had any sense at all, he’d be riding to the far west of the site that backed on to a steep bank leading to the canal towpath, but the way he was heading meant a half mile of straight road first.
As they cut across a hardware store car park and landed on the stretch of road, Chater came into view, aiming right for where she’d thought he would.
‘Catch him up,’ she instructed.
Bryant hit the accelerator again.
Chater looked behind.
‘Faster,’ she barked.
The sound of the sirens told her that squad cars had entered the estate, but she knew they would never catch up with him now.
It was just them.
‘Get alongside him,’ she said, letting down her window fully.
The bank was two hundred metres away.
‘Guv, what are?—’
‘Pull over,’ she screamed once she was level with Chater.
‘Pull over,’ she repeated, shouting into his surprised face.
One hundred and fifty metres.
‘Guv, don’t do anything—’
‘Stop the fucking bike,’ she cried.
One hundred metres until he dropped the moped and ran.
The moped nudged ahead.
‘Get me closer,’ Kim said, breathlessly.
‘Don’t do what I think—’
‘Bryant, I already asked him nicely,’ she said, turning in her seat.
Fifty metres and she was back level with his upper arm.
She hesitated for just a second and then remembered the radio message that had described Mr Singh bleeding back at the shop.
Twenty-five metres.
She grabbed the handle and opened the car door, nudging him in the thigh.
Bryant hit the brakes as the moped was falling to the left away from the car.
She threw open the door and scrambled out. Chater got to his feet and began to run towards the bank.
The sirens were coming at her from all directions as she closed the three metre gap between them.
She launched forward as he reached the foot of the hill.
‘Gotcha,’ she cried, tumbling on top of him. The solid zip of her leather biker jacket dug into her stomach and his back.
He groaned and struggled to get out of her grip.
She turned him over and looked into the face behind the Perspex visor.
‘Okay, you little shit,’ she said, straddling his stomach. ‘What you been up to this time?’
‘Gerroff me, bitch,’ he said, wriggling his hips like Ricky Martin.
She tightened her thighs around his ribs. ‘Where’s the knife, Paul?’
‘Weren’t no knife,’ he protested.
The denial from his lips was quick, but his eyes did not agree.
‘Where is it, Paul?’ she asked, tightening her grip on his wrist.
‘Told yer, weren’t no fucking knife,’ he shouted now that the courage of his conviction had caught up with him. ‘Just wanted some fags, didn’t I?’
Kim felt the anger surge through her at the picture of an innocent man bleeding back at his own shop. His life hanging in the balance because this little scrote didn’t want to pay for smokes.
‘So get a job and buy some,’ she said, tightening her grip as a squad car pulled into the kerb at an angle.
She looked to her colleague who was now standing against the car with his arms crossed. ‘You know, Bryant, I bloody hate people who think the world owes them something.’
‘Shall we take him, Marm?’ asked one of the arriving constables as a second squad car pulled up.
She nodded and raised herself from the ground to her five feet nine height and picked a twig from her spiky black hair. She turned her attention back to the man on the ground. ‘You’ve always been a dick, Paul, but now you’re a dick with a knife and that’s gonna put you away for a long, long time,’ she hissed, handing him over. ‘The knife will be on this estate somewhere, guys,’ she said to the constables.
‘That ay gonna solve all yer problems, pig,’ Chater smirked. ‘There’s plenty more like me out there and they’m coming…’
‘Oh, I know that, but as one supermarket likes to say, Paul: “every little helps”.’
She walked over to her waiting colleague, who was quietly shaking his head. She rubbed the dirt from her hands and smiled. One less scumbag on the streets.
‘Okay, Bryant. Now you can go home to your dinner.’
TWO
Doctor A surveyed the row of faces before her and tried not to sigh out loud. Her colleague from Aston University was on his way to Dubai to advise a group of newly appointed police officers on the first stages of excavation.
And she was in the middle of a field in the Black Country with a group of apathetic students wearing the Monday morning expression that she was too professional to show. Oh, where were the eager young minds with spongy brains desperate to soak up new information? That would have made the job allocation easier, she thought. The next request for archaeological consultancy in a warm, sunny climate had better have her name on it.
‘Okay, gathering round,’ she said, waving her hands forward.
‘She means gather,’ offered Timothy, her assistant.
She pursed her lips at him. Yes, she sometimes mangled certain words in the English language but if they hadn’t understood that simple instruction, there was going to be trouble ahead.
While she had been busy spraying the outline, two metres by one metre, the fourteen students had broken away, forming small groups and huddling together, hands deep in pockets, shoulders hunched against the early November seven degree temperature. Although the wind was chilly, it was not biting. She would like to take these youngsters to her home in Macedonia on the Balkan Peninsula where cold air masses travelled from Russia and hung in the valleys, plunging the temperature to minus twenty.
‘Who can name me tools in the forensic archaeologist’s toolbox?’ she asked, opening the bag beside the shovels.
‘Camera,’ said one, yawning.
‘Sketchpad and pencils,’ offered another.
‘Tweezers and swabs,’ said yawner.
‘Torch.’
She nodded as the most obvious responses were called out to her. The enthusiasm was short-lived as their brains needed to change gear to search for more answers.
‘Don’t forgetting we are crime scene,’ she prompted.
‘Tape.’
‘Disposable clothing.’
Doctor A nodded again, and looked down at the rectangle of grass.
‘So, are we ready to begin?’ she asked, reaching for the shovel.
They looked from one to the other as they stepped forward.
‘Da mu se nevidi,’ she whispered under her breath.
Doctor A stole a glance at Timothy, who made a cross-eyed expression at her. He had learned enough Macedonian to know it was her cry of frustration.
‘Is there anything we should be doing first?’ she repeated.
‘Clean your tools,’ called out one student.