‘I’m not concluding anything yet. However, if you press me, I’d say they were just two stooges caught up in something they knew nothing about.’

A fruitless search reveals nothing. Everything, all paperwork, computers and records, have been destroyed.

*

Archer and Quinn make the trip to St George’s, where the receptionist directs them to the ICU.

‘He’s in a bad way,’ says a nurse, a young Spanish woman. ‘We’ve cut away what was left of his clothes and treated him as best we could. Now we just have to wait.’

‘What are his chances?’ asks Quinn.

‘I couldn’t say, just yet,’ replies the nurse.

There is a sombreness in her tone that suggests she knows more than she is willing to admit.

‘Where are his clothes?’ asks Archer.

‘I don’t know. I expect they are in in a bag somewhere.’

‘I’d like to see them.’

‘Of course.’

Quinn says, ‘He was in a bad way. Don’t you think that might be clutching at straws?’

‘It’s worth a shot.’

The nurse returns with a clear plastic bag of charred clothing and hands them across.

‘May I borrow some gloves?’

The nurse hands across a box of blue disposable gloves. Archer pulls them on and begins to fish through the items in the bag. She takes out what looks like the remains of a jacket and turns it over. Something falls to the floor. A damaged pocket diary. She feels her heart quickening as she picks it up and pages through it. Josef Olinski’s name and company address are written on the inside cover. The pages are blackened but there are scant details, written in Polish, entered on the date the bodies were delivered to The Connection. A large tick has been drawn on the cabinet delivery date. There is also the scrawl of a mobile number.

‘Bingo,’ says Quinn. ‘Could be the killer’s number.’

Archer takes a photo with her phone.

‘Possibly. I’ll have my contact at the NCA run a check on it. There may be some more leads in this diary. I don’t suppose there are any Polish speakers at the station?’

‘Not that I know of. I’ll get the word out for a translator.’

‘In the event that Olinski makes it, we need a round-the-clock police guard.’

‘Leave it with me.’

Chapter 6

6

FOUR HOURS HAVE PASSED SINCE Archer and Quinn tried to put the flames out on Josef Olinski’s body. At the time, adrenaline and training had kicked in, forcing Archer to act quickly, and the gravity of what she witnessed hasn’t quite hit her until now. She feels a cold shiver inside, but keeps it to herself as Quinn fumbles with a cable connecting a laptop to the incident-room monitor.

‘Neha is on her way to Agata Olinski’s,’ he says as he shakes the cable plug, ‘and Os is looking into a translator.’

The monitor blinks into life.