Page 171

Harrison nodded. “Right. Tell him to return my calls when he comes back.”

Levenson nodded. “Will do.”

Harrison returned to the scrapyard, where the final hours of the search disappeared beneath forensic updates, exhibit logs and repeated attempts to establish exactly who had access to the rear lock-up. By the time he eventually got back to CID, the first reports were waiting for him.

He reviewed the search return, authorised the urgent forensic submissions, then spent the next two hours pulling apart Davo’s account against the paperwork seized from his office. Invoices. Scrap collections. Contractor records. A battered carbon-copy access book recording vehicles admitted to the rear yard outside normal opening hours.

Most of it was exactly as dull as it looked.

Harrison worked through it anyway and he was halfway down another page when a date caught his attention.

The night Lauren Pike disappeared.

Harrison pulled the book closer.

A vehicle had entered the rear yard shortly after ten that evening. No customer name. No corresponding invoice or scrap collection. Just a registration number beside the time and a notation for after-hours access. So he ran the registration. That turned up a Black Audi A5, registered to a national vehicle rental company.

Harrison sat forward and submitted an urgent request for the hire details, then went back through the surrounding entries while he waited. Nothing else stood out. Deliveries that matched the invoices. Contractor vehicles he could account for. Routine business passing through the same gate.

Then, twenty-three minutes later, the return landed in his inbox. Harrison opened it. The Audi had been collected from a Hull branch three days before Lauren disappeared and returned the following morning. He checked the name on the hire agreement.

Roman Levenson.

Harrison stared at it for a moment before reaching across the desk for Roman’s statement. He found the relevant page. Roman had told them he’d finished work shortly after six that evening and gone straight home. Except a car hired in his name had been recorded entering Blackridge Autos four hours later. The same scrapyard where somebody had gone to considerable trouble to clean blood from the rear lock-up.

Harrison looked between the two records.

Roman had lied.

It didn’t tell Harrison what he’d been doing there. It certainly didn’t prove he had anything to do with Lauren. But it put Roman at a location now directly connected to the investigation, on the night Lauren disappeared, when he’d specifically told police he was somewhere else. Not to mention the Hull connection.

“Calder?”

His DS looked up from his desk.

Harrison held out the paperwork. “I want Roman Levenson located. Home address, work sites, vehicles, anywhere else he’s known to stay. Get uniforms moving.”

Calder crossed the room and took it. “What’ve you got?”

Harrison tapped the access entry, then handed him the hire details.

Calder read it and looked up. “You want him arrested?”

“Yes. On suspicion of involvement in Lauren Pike’s murder.” Harrison pushed Roman’s statement towards him. “And when they find him, seize his phone. Get it straight to Digital Forensics. Calls, messages, location data. I want everything preserved before he gets the chance to lose any of it.”

Calder grabbed his phone as he headed back to his desk. “I’ll get it moving.

Harrison watched him go before looking back down at Roman’s statement. One lie didn’t solve Lauren Pike’s murder. But it gave them somewhere to start.

He then glanced down at his phone, which remained stubbornly silent. He grabbed it and tried Jake again. Nothing. So he stood and slipped on his jacket.

“I’m checking something,” he called to the office as he left.

* * * *

Jake was fairly certain he was going to die in a fucking ceiling.

Not technically a ceiling, if he had to get all professional about it. More the old service space beneath the rooftop plant room, where the building’s ventilation ducts, pipes and cables had once been accessed for maintenance.