Free A Taste of Ashes (DI Bob Valentine Book 2) by Tony Black

photographs from the board, passed them around. ‘We couldn’t make out if the marks were the work of one or two people.’
    Donnelly spoke: ‘If it was one, we surmised, one perp. But if it was two …’
    ‘Two sources for the marks means two people fleeing the scene, two possible perpetrators. Of course there’s no guarantees either way, could still have been one perp and a bystander, but that bystander may have been an accomplice or an active participant in murder.’
    DS Donnelly watched as the photographs made their way around the room. ‘Unfortunately, the dusters didn’t come up with much. They’re prints, for sure. But they’re too smudged to be decipherable. There’s a slight chance that some of the boffins in Glasgow might be able to enhance the limited info we have, blow the prints up so to speak, and look for matches but that relies on our perp, or perps, being on record. Sorry, boss, not what you wanted to hear, I’m sure.’
    ‘How far down the queue are we with Glasgow?’
    ‘They know it’s a murder job, they’ve assured us of priority.’
    ‘Well, thankfully there’s precious few Old Firm games at the moment, but I won’t get my hopes up.’
    ‘I’ll keep pressing them, sir.’
    Donnelly collected the photographs, returned them to the board. ‘The other aspect I was looking at was the murder weapon.’
    ‘How did that go?’ said Valentine.
    ‘Well …’
    ‘Oh, Christ. Go on.’
    ‘Nothing retrieved by uniform. They carried out a full eyeball of the grassy patch at the end of the street – and the path to and from – but nothing. It’s a well-trodden path, sir, main ingress and egress to the town centre for the scheme. I’d be surprised if anything showed up because it’s very flattened land, and grass of more than a few inches in height is non-existent.’
    Valentine looked at the DS. ‘The place was heaving with people on the night, kids running about all over the shop, if that’s even a fraction of the foot-traffic then I’d be surprised if a weapon lasted more than five minutes on that path.’
    ‘It’s Whitletts as well, if it’s not tied down it wanders,’ said DS McAlister.
    Valentine agreed. ‘All right, we’re not giving up just yet, before someone mentions magpies liking a nice shiny blade as well.’
    ‘Uniform went all the way into the town, sir. Along the banks of the river, they were pretty thorough. We had the bins too, before the scaffies emptied them out.’
    ‘And has anyone searched the River Ayr?’ said the DI.
    No one answered.
    Donnelly exhaled loudly, pursed his lips like he was about to whistle.
    ‘Is that some kind of reaction to the costs, Phil?’
    ‘We’d need divers for that, boss. A search of the river, I mean.’
    ‘Well I wasn’t expecting to do it with my old Woolies snorkel. Get on it, get the frogmen down there right away. If it glints, or has a pointy bit on the end, grab it.’
    ‘Yes, boss.’
    ‘And, Phil. Don’t mention this to Dino, she’s on a need-to-know basis. By that I mean needs to know bugger all unless it’s been run by me first.’
    DS Donnelly was writing on his clipboard, didn’t look up.
    ‘OK, Ally, what’s your story?’ said Valentine.

14
     
    As DS McAlister walked towards the incident board Valentine removed the cap from a red marker pen. There was a list of the chores he had handed out at the murder scene with the relevant officer’s initials beside them on the stark whiteboard. Under DS Donnelly’s tasks he drew a fat zero and underlined it, twice.
    ‘No disrespect to you, Phil,’ said Valentine, ‘you had the hard yards to cover for the rest of us.’
    ‘Appreciated, sir,’ said Donnelly.
    ‘But we have to keep a tally so that we know where we are.’ He paused as he returned the pen to the shelf below the board. ‘We’re a team, remember that, we work together not against each other, and our results are just that … our results. The only way we’re going to crack this is by