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“Any idea where the text came from?”
“According to the search we’ve done, Sonia Knight.”
“Her name keeps popping up,” said Gardener.
“Maybe she’s engineering everything,” suggested Reilly.
Cragg shook his head. “If that’s the case, she must be working with someone. I don’t think she has what it takes to arrange what we’ve found so far.”
“Maybe it’s Hobson,” said Reilly. “Maybe she’s been feeding him everything that Pollard’s been up to, and together they’re going to sort things out.”
“But where does Alex Wilson fit in, Sean? Why would Knight and Hobson butcher him, if their target is Pollard?”
“Maybe he knew something about them,” offered Cragg. “Stumbled on something that would implicate them both, which might mean another sentence in Armley. Or at the very least, something he could clue Hobson in on.”
“You could be right, Maurice. Especially as the phone’s been wiped,” said Gardener. “We need to find those two, and pretty fast.”
“It is still the same SIM card, isn’t it?” Reilly asked Fenton.
“According to the records, yes.”
“What about the other phone, the one we found in the shop?”
“Here’s the interesting thing. That’s Lance Hobson’s. The text you got on that one also came from Sonia Knight’s phone.”
“Has the memory on that one been wiped?”
“No. We’ve recovered all sorts of messages and conversations that have been recorded and saved. Most of them between Hobson, Knight, and Wilson, but there are others on there as well.”
“Okay, I want a full report on all those conversations, and all the text messages. Everything you can find on that phone, I want,” said Gardener. “Have you made a list of all contacts?”
“Yes, it’s all in the file. But there’s something else you might find interesting. All contact between Hobson and Knight dried up about a month ago. There have been plenty of missed messages on his phone from other people, but the first contact Knight made with Hobson in a month was this morning. Probably the message you received in Bursley Bridge.”
“Which suggests that either Knight and Hobson are plotting this together…”
“Or someone else is behind it, and he’s taken them both out already,” said Reilly.
“Possibly,” replied Gardener, “but why the message from Knight this morning?”
“To throw us off the scent,” offered Reilly.
“There’s something very strange going on here,” said Gardener. “We have one corpse, the involvement of two people who are nowhere to be found, and only one suspect, and nothing that adds up.
“Okay, Maurice, make the call to Armitage. We’ll pick him up and take him to Wilson’s flat. After that, we’re going out to Hobson’s place to see what we can find there. And somewhere during all that, we need to find time to call on Fitz and get the results of the post-mortem.
“Steve, carry on at the shop and see if you can find anything else. And put together a list of all the missed messages on Hobson’s phone, so we can do a follow-up. Maurice, when you’ve called Armitage, I’d like you and Sergeant Williams to update the ANACAPA chart and start going through the list of contacts from Hobson’s phone. I need to know what’s going on here. The deeper we get, the less information we have.”
Chapter Twenty
Robert Sinclair opened the front door and stepped into the plush-panelled hall, sighing loudly. A long, demanding day had taken its toll, and it was far from over. He had two more appointments for his private afternoon surgery.
The floor beneath his feet was parquet, complimented by pale Persian rugs. His walls were wood veneered to a height of three foot. Most of the expensive wallpaper above the dado rail was hidden by a variety of framed oils. There were two portraits, one his late wife, the rest landscapes. The paintings continued up the sweeping staircase and onto the landing above.
The huge Victorian mansion had been left to him in a will by an eccentric aunt. He’d spent some serious money on renovations, which had allowed him to set up his own private surgery. During the refurbishment, Sinclair had discovered that the house had vaults, one of which was large enough to accommodate a wine cellar, which he’d filled with a good stock of fine wines from around the world. In the basement, he’d had a fully functioning operating theatre installed for emergencies.
His housekeeper entered the hall from the kitchen, and in the background, he heard a voice on the radio. He knew from experience it would be Radio 2; she was an avid listener.
“Oh, Mr Sinclair, how are you? Yo
