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.There was a sheaf of newspaper cuttings about the Rylands and the press photo of Mariner emerging from the bombing, along with features from previous years, including the arrest of the teacher Brian Goodway for the murders of Ricky Skeet and Yasmin Akhtar.It was the information McCrae had used to find Mariner in the first place.‘But where the hell is McCrae now?’ Knox demanded, looking around him as if the man might suddenly emerge from the shadows.‘He must have another vehicle, or he’s hired something,’ Coleman surmised.‘He’s taking a hell of a risk.’‘Maybe that doesn’t matter, because he’s long gone by now.And he has no idea that we’re onto him.Get uniform to take his photograph around local car hire firms.Get people at home if needed.’‘And what about DI Mariner?’It was the question they’d both been avoiding.If McCrae had made his escape, he’d be unlikely to encumber himself with a prisoner.‘He needs Mariner silenced,’ said Coleman, calmly.‘He has no reason to keep him alive.’‘But if he’s not in the house, or here in the car, where is he?’‘We know that Mariner came back to the house yesterday afternoon.If McCrae was lying in wait, where would be the easiest place to dispose of a body in the immediate vicinity?’ Like clockwork they both turned in the direction of the canal.‘We need to get some divers down here.And make sure Anna stays away.She mustn’t know.’Tony Knox was becoming a liability, Coleman realised.It was close to midnight and they were both on the freezing canalside under a dome of floodlights, watching and waiting as the small team of divers began their gruesome task.Periodically, Knox leaned over, yelling orders, even though he wasn’t in charge.Only a matter of time before either he fell into the icy water, or got punched in the face by an exasperated diver.Coleman walked over to him.‘Why don’t you go inside and check on forensics.Phone the labs and see if they’ve come up with anything.You’re not helping here.’For a moment Coleman thought Knox was going to put up a fight, but after a moment’s hesitation the constable did as instructed.Inside Mariner’s house, Knox used his mobile to put a call through to the labs.He tried the vehicle workshop first, but it was too soon for any fingerprints.‘We’ve found something of interest though.’‘What?’‘Two dog hairs from a Border terrier.’Eleanor Ryland had a dog, Fliss Fitzgibbon had said so, which would mean that McCrae might have been to see Eleanor Ryland, too.What were the chances that he had murdered her as well? The possibility did nothing to reassure Knox.Ringing off he next tried the central lab who had taken numerous samples from the house.‘Have you found anything?’‘Nothing conclusive,’ was the frustrating reply.‘But we found something odd.I took some residue from a footprint on the rug in the hall.You can probably see it if you look.’ Knox went back to the hall.Sure enough there was a faded print on the beige runner, halfway along.‘It’s going out of the house,’ Knox observed.Coleman appeared, giving a brief shake of the head to indicate that nothing had been found, waiting while Knox finished the call.‘Yes, strange in itself,’ the SOCO was saying.‘And what I assumed to be soil turns out to be coal dust.’‘He’s got a woodburner,’ Knox said.‘That’s the point.It burns wood, not coal.May be nothing of course, but I just found it puzzling.’ He rang off and Knox relayed the conversation to Coleman.‘Coal dust?’ he said.‘So where the hell would it come from?’‘This cottage used to service barges,’ said Knox.‘I remember Mariner telling me that once.The barges would have burned coal on their stoves.’‘So there must be a coal store somewhere.But where?’‘McCrae had the plans to the cottage in his flat.’ Knox ran up the stairs, two at a time, grabbed the plans and was back, breathless in less than a minute.Spreading the papers out on the table it took a few seconds to make sense of the drawings, but then Knox saw it.‘It’s right under our feet,’ he said, calmly.‘There’s a cellar.’Coleman mustered all those remaining in the house.‘Check inside and out.We’re looking for the entrance to a cellar.’It wasn’t easy.A circuit of the exterior revealed nothing that would lead them underground, and all the interior doors opened onto storage space, including the deep cupboard under the stairs, which was piled high with boxes of papers and miscellaneous junk.But it was while flashing a torch around it that Knox noticed the drag of fingerprints in the light layer of dust covering one of the boxes.Pulling out some of the cartons into the hall allowed him to get a better view of the cupboard’s interior walls, and there he saw the hinges and bar-catch of a door.‘It’s here! Help me clear this junk out!’ he yelled, and was immediately inundated.On the edges of Mariner’s consciousness the pounding had become a constant, loud and insistent, Mariner’s pulse racing and signalling the end.It was to be the last thing he heard
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