Detective Chief Inspector Jason Forrest had a body like a rugby player’s, wore a bespoke suit and had an old scar down his left cheek. He looked as if he’d been persuaded at gunpoint to let Quill and Lofthouse into his office this morning. He asked a lot of questions about the exact purpose of Quill’s ‘special squad’ and rolled his eyes at the imprecise answers he received.
‘Come on, why should I ask you lot to help with my investigation?’
‘Because if there are features you find hard to explain—’ began Lofthouse.
‘How do you know that?’ He sounded bemused to the point of anger.
Lofthouse looked to Quill. Quill told him about Ross’ search strings. The DCI’s expression grew even more nonplussed.
‘Why are you interested in words like “impossible”?’
Quill had his explanation prepared.
‘Following the Losley case, we’ve been specializing in crimes with an occult element to the motive.’ The look on Forrest’s face suggested that Quill was barking up the right tree.
‘We’ve been given access to . . . advanced sensor . . . techniques, the details of which we can’t go into. It gives us a bit of an edge.’
‘You jammy buggers. We could do with that technology for the riots.’
‘We’re trying it out. Maybe other units will get it soon.’ ’Cos you’d really enjoy that.
Forrest considered for a moment longer, looked again to Lofthouse and finally gave in.
‘All right, I’ll formally request that your team assist in the investigation. You’ll get access to the crime scene after it’s been forensicated, and to witness statements and evidence. I’ll be overjoyed for you to help out my very stretched staff by interviewing persons of interest. I’ve already lined up searches at Spatley’s offices, both in Whitehall and the Commons, but if you can think of anywhere else to search, I’ll okay that too.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Quill . It was already occurring to him that his lot would not need just to find different places to search , but to go over the same places, given their advantage of having the Sight.
‘So, here’s the problem.’ Forrest opened the file on his desk and placed some gruesome crime scene photos in front of Quill and Lofthouse. ‘We have a car surrounded by witnesses for the whole time frame in which a murder could have been committed. We have CCTV footage of that car throughout . We have enormous coverage of the incident on Twitter, loads of social media photos . No one gets in, no one gets out. One of the two men in the car is brutally murdered . The other maintains he didn’t do it. Incredibly, we have some reason to believe his account – because we can’t find the weapon. The driver, Tunstall, has some of Spatley’s DNA on him, but only what you’d expect from him getting in the back to try and help Spatley after the attack, as he told us he did. I suspect,’ he finished, looking up from the photos, ‘this may well be how the word “impossible” popped up.’
Quill was making a determined effort not to smile; his target nominal had appeared on the horizon. There was something in the photos that was literally shining out at him, which Forrest and Lofthouse could not see. His team had, brilliantly, finally, a case of their own.
‘Is there any chance, sir,’ he said, ‘that my team could take a look at that CCTV footage?’