He knew what she meant. Try police work, lady, he thought. He looked up at the door of the kitchens again. There was no one there. Why had he looked across there? He struggled to remember. Was someone there before, he wondered? He had a vague memory of seeing a figure there, but he was mistaken. The door was empty.

‘And his friends. Were they with him at the time? On the quad I mean.’

‘No. He was alone.’

‘Okay, thanks, Karen.’

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s it.’

When the constable looked up again to call up the next interviewee, he would have thought you were crazy to have said there had been a tall fair man in the doorway shooting hate at Daniel with aquamarine eyes. Daniel Hawk always remembered a face and he didn’t remember seeing anyone like that. Would swear on it.

‘Les Ivan, please.’

Daniel wasn’t surprised at all that his staff sergeant wanted to come with him to interview Sam Hunt. He’d been interested that the groomer driving the chair had gone home sick almost half an hour after the time of the boy’s death, but he became like a pointer dog spotting a wood pigeon when Daniel threw in the fact that Sam was an Indian. An Indian who grew up on Redhorn with him.

The detachment had never seen anything like this in its history. Edmonton had a team on its way. They would be there by midnight. The same bastarding team that should have been in Silver days ago to investigate Joe’s death. Craig winced when he heard how fast they were getting here. So now they were hungry to help were they? On the trail of not just one cop-killer, but a seriously psycho serial killer. Craig figured they liked serial killings in Edmonton. Made them feel like Harrison Ford instead of ordinary policemen doing routine donkey-work to find what usually amounted to a drunk who’d made one violent mistake. Good press in finding serial killers. And as if to prove the point the press were already baying at the door of the detachment and jamming the lines to find out why a bunch of country patrolmen would block the Trans-Canada both ways.

Craig didn’t want to waste any more time. He would have to go public with this soon. So when he’d wandered over to the big table and asked Hawk and Bell the standard anything stink yet? and got the snippet about Sam, he wanted to move fast.

‘Okay, Constable Bell. Yardly will sit in with you for the rest of the interviews. Hawk, you come with me. You got Hunt’s address?’

‘Sir.’

‘Get the Ford out front. I’ll be right there.’