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‘And, although the office is open eight-till-six, the guys on the wagons don’t keep those hours,’ Tiffany said. ‘The depot is open twenty-four hours a day. Breaking into the office would be next to impossible.’
‘Could someone walk in unnoticed during the day?’ Poe said.
Barbara and Tiffany considered it.
‘Probably,’ Tiffany said. ‘We don’t carry much petty cash and everything else is pretty much logistics for the guys downstairs. Tachograph filing, manifests, sales and the like. Nothing of value so we don’t need strict security during the day.’
‘How would they do it?’
‘They’d have to check in with reception but they wouldn’t be escorted upstairs.’
‘Would a stranger hanging around the Christmas tree be noticed?’ Poe said.
‘Definitely,’ Tiffany said.
He thought about it for a minute. ‘Then he must have hidden in plain sight.’
The Newtown Road Industrial Estate was a five-minute drive from the flat. Rather than making Barbara get dressed, Tiffany said she would take them. CSI had finished with the office.
Tiffany let them in.
‘That leads to the warehouse,’ she said, pointing to a secure metal door. ‘We’re up here.’
She led them upstairs. The admin offices for John Bull Haulage were nondescript. A box-shaped main office had smaller individual rooms at the far end. Tiffany led them to a drab artificial Christmas tree. There was nothing underneath – Nightingale and her team had seized all the unopened presents.
‘Talk me through where everyone was sitting,’ Po
e said.
Tiffany did just that. She asked Poe to be Hodgkiss, Flynn to be Barbara and she played herself. She didn’t have a phone as it had been taken into evidence, so she held a stapler instead. They were seated in a horseshoe shape. She stood and told them what had happened.
‘I kept switching between dickhead’s face and Barbara’s. I wanted to get her telling him to fuck off but I wanted his expression more. I filmed her opening it, his response to her tipping the mug, then I caught the fingers falling out.’
Flynn checked the laptop to make sure the video Tiffany had recorded matched with what she’d told them. It did. Poe sat back down and looked around, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
He saw it immediately.
He also knew everyone else had missed it.
‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing at a chair away from the tree. It was loaded with cheap books and even cheaper toys.
‘Oh, that’s just the book man’s stuff,’ Tiffany replied. ‘Every now and then people come in and leave samples of heavily discounted stuff for us to order.’
Poe knew what she meant. The SCAS office was cursed with the same thing. There was always a table or a chair filled with tat. The modern-day equivalent of the travelling salesman would turn up hawking a load of shit, dump it in a designated place, leave an order form then return a week later to collect the money and leave behind what had been bought.
He removed rubber gloves from his pocket and picked up the order form. There were a couple of names written down. An envelope was stapled to the back. Poe could feel the weight of coins inside.
‘What is it, Poe?’ Flynn asked.
He held it up.
‘What’s wrong with this?’
She frowned. She knew him well enough to know he’d found something. She also knew he’d give her the chance to make the connection.
Tiffany got there first.
‘What type of weird-ass book man has a delivery date after Christmas?’
