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FORTY-SEVEN

‘You do know Russell’s going to be seriously pissed off.’

‘He’ll get over it.’

‘You reckon?’

Clutching the passes they’d been issued, Thorne and Tanner sat waiting in the palatial reception area of Fin-Cel Ltd.

There was enough designer furniture on display to fill a showroom, large pieces of abstract art on the walls and some kind of atrocious ambient music leaking from speakers mounted on spidery metal stands.

The forensic testing facility was housed in a large three-storey complex in an industrial park on the outskirts of St Albans, and if it felt like the headquarters of a decent-sized corporation, that’s because it was.

It hadn’t used to be.

A decade or so before, though the décor would have been far less impressive back then, the same building would have housed laboratories run by the Forensic Science Service, the origins of which dated back to the 1930s.

Funded solely by the Home Office and working exclusively for police forces, the CPS and other agencies nationwide, the FSS had provided both scene-of-crime and testing services since the early nineties and had, most notably, established the world’s first DNA database in 1995.

The cutting-edge forensic techniques developed and the expertise that had solved thousands of serious crimes over many decades had ultimately been judged worthless, however, when the bean-counters had weighed them against the amount the FSS was costing the taxpayer.

So, in 2012, David Cameron’s government did what it was good at and, despite protests from scientific experts and victim campaigners alike, the FSS was abolished and sold off wholesale to a variety of private companies.

Fin-Cel was one such; one among dozens of others currently providing forensic services to police forces, HM Coroners and the MoD among others, at a profit.

Looking around the lobby, Thorne marvelled at where some of those evidently sizeable profits were going. ‘Look, I don’t think what we’re doing is un connected to catching Alex Brightwell, is it?’

‘Back burner, Russell said.’

‘Whatever happened here with Priya Kulkarni’s sample has to be linked to what happened with Peter Brightwell’s DNA and that’s why Alex Brightwell’s been running around killing coppers. So, actually I think it’s very much connected. It couldn’t be more connected.’

‘I hear you,’ Tanner said.

‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘Can I be there when you explain all that to Russell?’

Thorne looked away and stroked the soft leather arm of his chair. ‘We’re not going to be here long. In and out, like I told him this morning.’

‘Yeah, ninjas, I remember . . . but you saw what he was like at the briefing,’ Tanner said. ‘Even if he shouldn’t, he feels personally responsible for what happened at Frankham, so unless we go back with something earth-shattering . . . well, I can’t see him being very understanding, that’s all.’

‘We just need to ask this bloke if he can put together a list of anyone who had access to that fridge on the day of the malfunction. That’s all. Lab techs, police officers—’

‘DI Thorne?’

They looked up to see a man they presumed was Matthew Parkinson raising a hand, before touching a pass to the electronic barrier and walking through.

He appeared to be somewhere in his mid-thirties; tall and what people a lot younger than Thorne and Tanner would call ‘hench’, with long hair and a tight AC/DC T-shirt.

Tanner nodded her approval. ‘I can see what Phil saw in him.’

‘I bet you can’t,’ Thorne said.

They walked across and introduced themselves and then, once the subtly produced warrant cards had been pocketed, they gently led Parkinson away from the main desk, out of earshot of the woman on reception.

‘Phil didn’t say exactly what it was you wanted,’ he said.

Thorne explained.

‘That’ll all be on file somewhere in the records department,’ Parkinson said. ‘Work sheets and visitor logs.’

‘Easy-peasy then,’ Thorne said.

‘I don’t have much to do with them, but I’ve got a mate who works in there, so yeah, it should be doable.’

‘We need it doing quietly,’ Tanner said.

Parkinson began to look a little nervous. ‘I don’t suppose you want to tell me why you need the names?’

Tanner glanced at Thorne, who nodded. Though Hendricks’s relationship with Matthew Parkinson had not exactly been professional, he’d been willing to vouch for him, which was good enough.

‘It’s in connection with an incident here three years ago.

Samples that were destroyed when a freezer broke down or got switched off. ’

Parkinson’s eyes widened. ‘Oh yeah, I remember all the memos flying about afterwards. A lot of people were very nervous that day.’

While Tanner carried on talking to him and handed over a business card, Thorne’s attention was drawn to the man in motorcycle leathers who’d just walked in through the revolving door carrying a large refrigerated bag.

Thorne watched him march up to the desk and exchange a few friendly words with the receptionist as he filled in paperwork.

When that was done, the man took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. It appeared to be a poster or flyer of some kind. He asked if it would be OK to stick it up somewhere, and when he showed it to the receptionist, Thorne caught a glimpse of a face that looked familiar.

‘Oh yes, I heard about that,’ the receptionist said.

Thorne took out his warrant card as he walked across.

The receptionist shook her head sadly as the phone on her desk began to ring. She picked it up, said, ‘Fin-Cel, can you hold?’ and leaned back towards her courier friend. ‘It’s just awful, what happened.’

‘Can I see that?’ Thorne asked.

Clocking the warrant card, the motorcyclist immediately handed the poster across, then threw a worried look at the receptionist, who was gawping, clearly curious, and continuing to ignore whoever was on the phone. ‘I’m not in any trouble, am I?’

Thorne stared down at the poster. He saw the name and understood why he’d recognised the man whose photograph was underneath it. ‘No, you’re not in trouble.’

‘It’s just a GoFundMe, thing . . . to raise a bit of money for his family.’

‘How did you know him?’

‘Daniel and me worked for the same company.’

Thorne turned and waved Tanner across. ‘Daniel Sadler delivered forensic samples?’

‘We deliver all sorts,’ the man said. ‘But yeah, that’s a major part of our business.’

‘Just to Fin-Cel?’ Thorne passed the poster to Tanner. He said, ‘Dave Holland’s suicide,’ then, while she looked at what he’d given her, he turned back to the man in the leathers for an answer.

‘No, we deliver to all the labs, and it’s them that pay us, not the police in case you were wondering.’

That was definitely not what Thorne was wondering.

‘Not that they pay us very much, mind you.’

‘So Daniel Sadler would have delivered samples to the lab in Bracknell?’

‘Yeah, like I said—’

Thorne was already turning away, shouting across the lobby as he and Tanner made for the exit; thanking Matt Parkinson for his time, apologising for having to leave in a hurry and reminding him to get in touch if and when he had any information for them.

Parkinson promised that he would, then shrugged and went back through the barrier, as the courier Blu-Tacked his poster to the desk and the receptionist finally picked up her call.

Thorne and Tanner pushed through the revolving door and walked quickly away from the building.

‘Fuck.’ Thorne was fighting the urge to run across the car park. ‘Earth-shattering enough, you reckon?’

Tanner already had her phone out. ‘You call Dave,’ she said, ‘and I’ll call Russell.’