Snakes and Ladders by Adam Croft

Author:Adam Croft [Croft, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adam Croft

27

‘What the bloody hell you doing here this time of night, anyway?’ Jack said as he walked into the incident room, where DC Debbie Weston was waiting for him. He desperately wanted to ask her if the reason she was working late was because her sordid affair with the landlord of the Prince Albert had gone south, but he quickly remembered he wasn’t meant to know about that.

‘Working. Good job I was too, eh? It’s gone off to forensics, but here are the photos.’

Jack looked at Debbie’s computer screen. There was no doubting what he was looking at: a knife, which had been wrapped in plastic.

‘We won’t have results until tomorrow at the very earliest, but the team who recovered it reckon there are traces of dried blood where the blade meets the handle. If that matches Matt’s blood, we know we’ve got our murder weapon.’

‘Where was it found?’ Jack asked.

‘You won’t believe it. It’s a massive stroke of luck, if anything. A guy on Calderwood Street went out earlier to put a bag of rubbish in his wheelie bin. It’s bin collection day tomorrow, and his bin’s full, so he’s gone out with his stepladder, knowing he’s going to need to climb in and make some room. He lifts the lid, peers inside and sees this. I quote: “I knew it was odd straight away, because it was wrapped in a white carrier bag and I only ever use the same black bin liners.”’

‘Thank God for the anally retentive residents of Mildenheath.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Where was the bin?’

‘At the end of his drive, by the footpath. He keeps it round the back usually, and had only put it out three or four hours earlier. He likes to do it before it gets dark, he says.’

‘But Connor’s been in a cell all day. I think we’d have noticed if he’d popped out to chuck a knife in a wheelie bin.’

‘Could be an accomplice. Personally, I think the homeowner’s being a bit naïve in assuming it happened on the street. It’s totally possible Connor could’ve climbed into his garden and put it in at any point. I had a quick look on Google Maps, and his garden backs onto a public footpath and open fields. Connor could’ve come through the back gate or over the fence at any point.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said, sitting down on the edge of the desk. ‘But why now? There’s already been a bin collection in Mildenheath since Matt was murdered.’

‘Yeah, but only a day or two after. The knife would’ve been too hot then. And for all our killer knows, we were checking every bin at that point.’

Jack snorted. ‘Someone needs to do some research into police budgets, then.’

‘Quite. But the point is, they won’t have wanted to hang on to it for too long, but maybe they felt they couldn’t dump it so soon after the murder either, when so many people would be out looking for it. Two weeks isn’t a bad time for things to have cooled

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