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Tuesday late afternoon

One advantage of being at the hospital was the abundance of taxis. Another was the improvement in Charlie’s leg. The rebandaging had eased the pain. Or it might have been the painkiller. Either way, by the time the taxi reached Llanfair police station, Charlie felt almost human. Until he wriggled out of the car, and onto his crutches, and was reminded that the explosion was less than twelve hours ago. He wanted to go to bed and stay there until he felt better, or at least less exhausted. Instead, he pushed the door open with his shoulder while trying not to drop his crutches. The team were assembled in the break room. Will pulled a chair out and Charlie fell into it.

“There’s cake in the fridge,” he said, and thankfully, there was.

Once the inner Charlie was restored by caffeine and sugar, Eddy reported that the two remaining Joshes had a lot to say. Not about themselves, but about Unwin and Josh Pettifor. Eddy had spoken to Josh Thomas, and Will to Josh Lineham. Both had been upset to hear about Unwin’s death and had nothing but good things to say about him.

Josh Pettifor got a more mixed reaction. As Pettifor hadn’t been positively identified, Will and Eddy had been careful not to say he was dead, just asked about him in general.

“Josh Lineham told me that Pettifor wasn’t bad looking,” Will said, “so he usually had a girlfriend. But apparently he was a cheat, and word got round. That made me think, so I had a poke about on a couple of dating sites, and it wasn’t hard to find him. Pettifor, that is. He’s on all the big ones. Haven’t looked at the more, erm, specialist, sites.”

“He means sex sites,” Eddy said with a grin. “No gay sites though. Women only.”

“Can we tell if he met anyone through those sites?” Charlie asked.

“Not without contacting the websites, and even then, I’m not sure they’ll tell us. But there’s a possible way to find out. I’m looking into it.”

Will looked shifty, which was quite an achievement for someone as innocent-seeming as Will. How had someone with his baby-faced looks survived this long in the police? Perhaps a result of spending his time in windowless rooms with only computers for company. Charlie decided not to enquire further.

“One more interesting thing was that we found Jeff Burton, and his alias, on a couple of dating sites, too.” Eddy said. “Also only looking for women if that’s significant.”

“Do me a favour,” Charlie said. “Look up everyone else we’ve spoken to on those dating sites. Maybe it means something, probably doesn’t, but look anyway. Don’t leave Unwin out. There’s always the possibility he met someone for a hook up.”

“What, Unwin’s family, Mr Hassan, the estate agent, Patsy?”

“Everyone. Including the manager of Mo’s Autoparts, who I hope I have an appointment with.”

“No problem,” Will said, looking cheerful at the prospect of spending hours exploring internet dating sites.

Eddy sent him a text with a phone number and an appointment, and then another. “Mitchell from Mo’s first, and then Pettifor’s ex. Sorry, sarge, but that’s back to Wrexham. She’s at work until late. Should I send you Pettifor’s parents’ address, too?” Eddy sounded hopeful. Charlie thought about the envelope with the unidentified man’s dental X-rays and nodded. He didn’t want to talk to the parents any more than Eddy did, but if it helped with identification, it had to be done. And he was going back to Wrexham anyway. He was going to need his car to make all those visits. He sighed and wished he hadn’t when his bruised ribs hurt.

Stop doing that. Breathe gently. Eat some more cake. Take another painkiller.

The manager of Mo’s Autoparts, Llanfair branch, corrected Charlie’s Mr Mitchell. “Mitch is fine,” he said.

They were sitting in Charlie’s car, mainly because there was nowhere else. Driving had proved less painful than expected: discomfort, Charlie told himself that’s all.

Mitch had been talking to the forensic investigators when Charlie arrived, telling them, he said, what things had been where, and what the unidentified lumps of plastic and metal strewing the collapsed building might have once been.

“I should have been here last night,” he said. “I’ll probably lose my job over it, though your people say there was nothing I could have done.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“I took a day off, promised to take my wife and kids to the beach, and the eight-year-old turned my work phone to silent. I’ve been called in too often on my days off so …”

Charlie could relate to that. He’d been known to turn his own phone to silent on occasion. “There really was nothing anyone could have done,” he said. “The place was flooded with petrol, and no one heard an alarm. The fire brigade will back me up, if you need help with your employer.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said. “You wanted to know about Josh?”

“Anything you can tell me, like why was he here, and is it likely it wasn’t him in the van?”

Mitch rubbed his hands through his hair and stroked his beard — longer and more straggly than Tom’s.

“The van was where he lived, so if you only found one … person, then it was most probably Josh. He worked for me when I needed him — covered holidays and sickness. Bright bloke, he could do pretty much all the jobs, but he didn’t want full time. He liked to travel. Went off for a few weeks every couple of months.”

Charlie didn’t get the sense that Mitch liked Josh, but rather that he was useful. The comment about only finding one person was interesting though. “Did Josh have companions? Girlfriends? Staying with him in the van?”

Mitch blushed. “Um, yeah. I had to tell him, not to, you know, in the day. People complained. And there were a couple of girls who came here, looking for him. It wasn’t … he didn’t treat women very well, I think.”

Which exactly chimed with what Will and Eddy had found. “No one regular then?”

“He went out with one of the staff here, Priya, for a bit, but she found he was cheating on her, so she dumped him. One thing, all the girls he slept with, they were mostly Black, or Asian. I overheard Priya saying some stuff about that being Josh’s thing.”

Charlie asked where he could contact Priya, and alarm flared on Mitch’s face.

“She wouldn’t … she works in the office … you can’t think …”

“I don’t think anything yet,” Charlie said, “I’m just trying to find out as much about Josh as I can.”

Mitch reluctantly gave Charlie the details.

They talked for a bit longer, but it was clear Mitch had nothing else to add. He got out of Charlie’s car and wandered back over to the wreck of his business, head down, hands shoved into his trouser pockets. If he was right that not attending the fire would lose him his job, then he at least had no motive to kill Josh Pettifor.

The phrase “ white men going with coloured women are betraying their race,” came into Charlie’s head as he drove towards Wrexham for his second visit of the day. He remembered Jeff Burton’s boss telling him and Ravensbourne that it was something Britton was in the habit of saying. Josh Pettifor preferred women of colour. Had that brought him to Burton/Britton’s notice? If Burton was behind the attacks on Muslim businesses, perhaps it had. If someone was as looney-tunes enough to spout that crap, were they also mad enough to kill? Mad enough to blow up a takeaway and burn down a car parts warehouse?