For a moment, he considered taking the kid’s body with him, before rejecting the idea. If he had been observed from afar, then moving the evidence held clear benefits, of course, but it offered just as many opportunities for mistakes. Despite the obvious need for headlights, bringing his own car, or the small white vehicle his victim had parked behind the cottage, near enough to load up, wouldn’t be that much of a risk. The lack of light, natural or synthetic, would cloak his activities well. Depositing the evidence elsewhere, however, was a much trickier proposition.

Here in this filthy cottage, a forensics team would have a job getting clean traces of anything at all. Shift the cadaver, though, and he risked leaving indelible clues in whichever vehicle he took, clues far more obvious in what would be a much cleaner environment.

Besides, if anyone had seen him or the kid arrive, it was too late to do anything about that now. At least he’d taken the precaution of parking his car well out of sight on another track, and forcing himself to wait inside the house for dusk to fall, so he could leave under cover of darkness.

He’d been here hours already, and no one had come to investigate.

Maybe this time luck was on his side.

23

The Sow and Pigs was a neatly modernized country pub with a grey slate roof, white painted walls and a tidy picket fence. Its prime location, filling one corner of the crossroads at the top of the hill on Cambridge Road, made it visible to passers-by from any direction, while the easy-access car park entrance would undoubtedly draw in a fair share of passing trade.

Including, perhaps, three soon-to-be-murdered Londoners.

Hawkins made a mental note, as she steered the Giulietta away from the pub on to Cold Christmas Lane, to visit it on the way back. After all, a stranger’s presence was far more likely to be noted in these rural outreaches than in London. If the three men had passed through at some point, it wasn’t hard to imagine weathered locals still moaning into their pewter tankards weeks later about trendy outsiders, and their lack of respect for the traditional boozer.

Hawkins slowed a short way along the narrow side road, forced to hug the pavement as a car passed in the opposite direction. The other driver was already on sidelights, reminding her that dusk wasn’t far off. She bent to gaze out through the top edge of the windscreen at leaden skies. They didn’t have long before they’d need torches.

She glanced at her navigator. ‘Where do we turn?’

‘Three-quarters of a mile, ma’am, black iron gates on your left,’ Chris responded without looking up from his phone.

‘Good.’ Hawkins turned back to the road, well aware of the shopkeeper’s instructions, but now reassured that her new TDC had at least been listening.