Free Desperate Measures: A Mystery by Jo Bannister

seen. He prepared a witness statement, which Saturday, under a kind of weary protest, signed. They had a certain amount of difficulty with the witness’s address, until Hazel volunteered her own, fervently hoping that Mrs. Poliakov would never get to hear of it.
    “You going to arrest him now?” asked Saturday, adding with a fine disdain, “The dirty bugger.”
    “I’m certainly going to bring him in for questioning. And seize his laptop.” DI Gorman glanced at Hazel. “The problem is, of course, that he’s had time to cover his tracks.”
    “It’s pretty hard to erase things from a hard drive so completely that an expert can’t find them,” Hazel pointed out.
    “This isn’t some middle-aged creep running a second life from his back bedroom,” said Gorman shortly. “He’s a professional man.” He might have said more, but there were things he would say to Hazel that he wouldn’t say in front of the teenager.
    “I know who he is,” retorted Saturday. “Charles Armitage. Every file on the desktop had his name on it, for God’s sake. I also know what he is.”
    Gorman scowled. “All right. Well, Mr. Armitage is also a well-connected professional man. If he needs technical help, he can buy it. If he needs the kind of technical help that’ll keep its mouth shut afterward, he can buy that. And if he needs a steamroller to flatten his old laptop and give him an excuse to buy a new one, well, he works on building sites every day, doesn’t he?”
    “We’d still have Saturday’s statement.” Doubt was seeping into Hazel’s voice.
    “Yes,” said Dave Gorman. He said nothing more. He didn’t have to. If it came to a straight choice between believing responsible, professional, middle-class Charles Armitage and believing a street kid who needed to borrow an address to put on his witness statement, a jury that found Saturday’s evidence credible would probably believe in unicorns and the tooth fairy as well.
    The DI got up. He opened his door and waved to a passing constable. “Show Mr. Desmond the way out, will you?” But as Hazel went to follow, he shut the door again, almost in her face. She turned, startled, and his expression took her completely off guard. Intense, concerned, a hint of dread pinching the small muscles beside the eyes. “You don’t know, do you?”
    Hazel stared at him in astonishment. “Know what?”
    “It’s been all over the Internet all morning.” Gorman pursed his lips. “But I suppose you’ve been busy.…”
    “ What’s been all over the Internet?”
    “Your friend Ash,” said Dave Gorman, and Hazel’s stomach dropped into her boots.
    She dragged up a heard-it-all-before voice to hide behind. “What’s he done now?”

 
    CHAPTER 10
    F IFTEEN MINUTES LATER DAVE GORMAN leaned forward and turned the screen off. The absolute silence that washed back into the small, untidy room was almost tangible.
    He waited for her to say something. But Hazel had lost the power of speech. She’d almost lost the power of thought. She just sat there in stunned silence, staring at the blank screen with gritty, dry eyes, as if she, too, was waiting.
    For what? For Gorman to give a sudden chuckle and say, “Don’t look so serious, it’s just a joke”? For the door to bang suddenly open and all the people who thought they owed her a slap to pour through it blowing whoopee whistles? For the DI to advance a kindly hand as far as her trembling wrist and say, “Don’t worry, we won’t let it come to that,” and mean it?
    None of those things was going to happen, and somewhere in her tiny icy heart Hazel knew it. Those few brain cells that were still operating knew it. It wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t Meadowvale getting its own back, and Dave Gorman wasn’t going to say that he was in a position to prevent it. The most he could say, the very most, was that he’d try to prevent it; and though she waited, achingly, he didn’t even say that.
    What he