Hunted Read Free Page B

distance. What kind of weapon do you choose for its stopping power and for long-distance capability?’
    ‘It depends what you plan to shoot with it.’
    ‘A bloody elephant, by the looks of things.’ He shot a look at Claridge, only to see the MI5 man staring impassively back at him. Shelley drew back the remainder of the sheet, revealing the Y-shaped autopsy incision sutured to the groin. On Cookie’s side was a bullet graze. Shelley consulted the notes. ‘A smaller calibre. Evidently fired in haste. This one left stippling, but no soot, which means it was fired from closer range, probably a few feet away. So this came first, the kill-shot second. Either the assailant winged him and then changed guns to finish the job, or there was more than one assailant.
    ‘What clothes was he wearing when he was found?’
    ‘It’s in the notes. An anorak, jeans, sweater – none of it too fragrant. As you know, Major Cook was of no fixed abode. It appears he had been sleeping on the streets.’
    Shelley winced with a twinge of guilt. It had been over a year since he last spoke to Cookie. He’d tried Cookie’s old phone and what turned out to be a mothballed email account, and he’d sent a card at Christmas. But scraping a living, setting up in business, life with Lucy – all that had got in the way of being there for his old CO, making sure his friend was okay, watching his back. Until one day Shelley woke up and it hit him how longit was since they’d last spoken, and the alarm bells had started ringing.
    ‘Homeless then,’ he said. ‘And Scotland Yard gets a lot of homeless men killed in drug shoot-outs, does it?’
    ‘Remember: not my theory.’
    ‘Stomach contents . . . He’d eaten well. Steak, potato. He always did love his steak and chips. No presence of alcohol or drugs. It’s a strange kind of rough he was living.’
    Again he glanced at Claridge, who remained deadpan.
    ‘Look at this,’ said Shelley, waving the report at Claridge. ‘There was no blood on his clothes. No damage consistent with his wounds. What does that tell us?’
    ‘That he wasn’t wearing those clothes when he died.’
    There was something about Claridge’s voice that made Shelley glance over sharply. ‘That means something to you, does it?’
    ‘It might do. Maybe. I don’t know. Continue,’ said Claridge.
    ‘And look at these marks on his wrists and hands. Report says unidentified marks on the wrists, but that looks like handcuffs to me.’
    ‘You could have got out of those,’ said Claridge.
    Shelley threw him a puzzled look. ‘What makes you say that?’
    ‘You’re double-jointed. It says so in your record.’
    Shelley frowned, then returned his attention to Cookie’s hands, noticing patches of damaged skin. ‘Both of them have this . . . It’s a burn of some kind.’
    He reached and placed Cookie’s hands together, just as they would have been while handcuffed, and inspected the burns.
    ‘It’s as though he were holding something. Some kind of small explosion in his hands.’ He replaced Cookie’s hands by his side. ‘It says there was a splinter, too.’
    ‘Yes, it was sent to the lab for testing,’ said Claridge. ‘It’s since disappeared.’
    Shelley raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t seem surprised by that.’
    ‘I’m not.’

CHAPTER 6
    SHELLEY FOLLOWED CLARIDGE to an old BMW parked on a side street away from prying electronic eyes. Taking seats inside, they sat in silence for a moment or so.
    ‘How did he get there?’ asked Shelley, crippled with guilt that he didn’t know the answer himself. ‘How did he end up on the streets?’
    ‘He had a relationship break-up.’
    Susan , thought Shelley. He had never liked Cookie’s girlfriend. Loud and coarse, and the kind of drug addict they called a garbage-head, who’d take anything as long as it got her high.
    ‘He went travelling for six months,’ continued Claridge. ‘As far as we know, when he returned home he had been evicted from his flat