SEVENTY-SEVEN

NOON

‘No way in hell,’ Stacey said, hoping that Penn was going to ask. Although the boss had called in the next clue, she was so close to having a lead to an actual identity.

‘What?’ he said without looking up.

‘I may have the van he’s using.’

Penn looked at her dubiously, and she didn’t blame him. With so much data and so many different time frames and cameras to search, it had seemed highly improbable to catch the same vehicle in two of the locations she was targeting. But she had done it.

The vehicle in question was an old red Citro?n van which had caught her attention the first time due to its ugly shape. To spot it again in the right time frame on another camera she was interrogating had to be more than a coincidence.

She tried to quell the excitement in her stomach. On neither of the cameras was she able to get a full registration number, so even if it was involved in the case, she could offer nothing yet.

But what she did know was that their killer had transported Hiccup from where he’d been tortured near Dunsley Hall to where he’d been tied to the train tracks.

She plotted the route from one point to another on the AA site. The fastest and most direct route was Bridgnorth Road to the Stourbridge ring road and then the A458 towards Old Hill.

There were cameras on the ring road, operated by Dudley Council.

She logged in and found the cameras she wanted. A couple of clicks and she was watching the ring road two hours before Hiccup was killed.

Due to the route, Stacey knew she was only going to see the rear of the vehicle, but the traffic was light at 4 a.m., and she’d easily be able to read the number plate.

She tapped her fingers, already knowing that if the vehicle didn’t show up, she had nothing.

Come on, come on, come on, she thought, and as if she’d willed it to appear, the ugly red Citro?n van was right in front of her.

‘Bingo,’ she cried before her elation died.

The number plate was obscured.

At first she thought he’d maybe used a product called a stealth plate. It was a transparent polycarbonate cover that, while clear to the human eye, acted as a mirror in the infrared spectrum. But a second look told her that the deception was even better than that.

She suspected he’d somehow fixed LED lighting above and below the plate, meaning any camera would struggle to pick out the details due to the bright light.

‘Did you just shout a bogie?’ Penn asked.

‘Shout a what?’

‘It’s what they call if you shout house at the bingo but you’re wrong, and the game continues. It’s called a bogie.’

Aside from wondering where in his head Penn stored all this information, she appreciated the irony in his words.

Yes, the game continued, and it seemed like their taskmaster had thought of everything.

She played the footage back again and again, and each time she saw something different. All she could do was go frame by frame until she could work it out.

As the van got further away, the light became less dazzling. Just before it left the shot of the camera completely, Stacey could see that some of the LED lights on the top right of the number plate were out, meaning that just for one frame, she had the chance of making out part of the registration.

‘Hey, Penn, what’s the name for when you call house and it was a bogie, but then you call it again and this time you’re not wrong?’

‘Err… not a clue.’

‘Well, find out, cos I think I might have done that.’