Witch Hunt by Ian Rankin

Author:Ian Rankin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-18T13:59:39+00:00

Roadworks impeded Elder’s progress on the route to Brighton. There were times when it seemed to him the whole road network of England was being coned off and dug up. He was sure he could remember a time when there’d been no contraflows. But of course there’d been less traffic then, too. It was taking him a little while to get used to Doyle’s car. It was fast and certainly nippy in traffic, but the clutch seemed to have a mind of its own. Doyle had complained when Elder asked for his car. But it was only reasonable. They’d travelled down in the one car - Doyle’s - and now that car was needed. Besides, as Elder pointed out, Doyle was staying in the town. What did he need his car for? And if a car were needed, he could always borrow one from the police.

‘So what’s stopping you doing that, too?’ Doyle had said.

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘I can’t see there’s any rush.’

Elder had already filled both Doyle and Greenleaf in on his planned trip, and the reasoning behind it, so he stayed silent and let Doyle have his grumble. As ever, Greenleaf wasn’t saying much. The silent type.

They looked like they’d been working together on interrogations for years. They looked confident, successful. They looked like a team.

‘If you scratch it,’ Doyle said at last, digging his hand into his trouser pocket, ‘if you so much as fart on the seat-fabric ...’ He held the keys in the air for an instant, not letting Elder have them.

‘Understood,’ he said. ‘It’ll get a full valet service before I bring it back.’

Doyle spoke quietly, spacing each word. ‘Just bring it back.’

Elder nodded. ‘Will do.’ He reached out his hand and took the keys from Doyle.

There was nothing for him to do in Cliftonville anyway. The note was already in the forensic lab. The paper and envelope would be analysed, since Witch rather than the barman had provided them. Sometimes you could tell a lot from a sheet of paper: brand used, batch number, when produced, where stocked. Same went for fibre analysis. They would take the envelope apart with surgical precision, just in case there was a fibre or anything similar inside, anything that could tell them anything about Witch.

Joe the barman had been little help. And so far no one they’d spoken to had seen or heard anything that Sunday night. The thing to do was get the local police involved and have them do the leg-work. Time was pressing. They needed to be in London. The summit would start on Tuesday; hardly any time at all to recheck security. A few of the delegations, Elder knew, had already arrived. Most would arrive over the weekend. The last to arrive, the Americans, would touch down on Monday morning. Thirty secret servicemen would protect the President. But they couldn’t protect him from a single sniper’s bullet, from a well-placed bomb, from most of the tricks Witch had learned.

Sitting in a slow-moving queue, Elder leaned forwards the better to scratch his back, just where it itched.

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