Read Pawn for Free Online

completely human, but most of all not exciting, and whatever else crime was, it was exciting.
     
    The entire thing made no sense. Barns tossed the new papers on to the nearest stack of old ones, wishing they’d all just go away. This latest report wasn’t shedding any light on the matter. It was just adding to the string of impossibilities. In fact all of the reports were proving less useful than they should be. Actually they were completely useless no matter how much analysis was done.
     
    The recording of the phone call had been analysed in depth. Every sound on it had been enhanced and identified, bullet shot by bullet shot. And in the end it could give them nothing, save for the fact that there had actually been someone shooting at their victim, and that the truck had in fact sped up as it approached. It spoke of desperation and murderous intent, but it gave not a single clue as to who or why.
     
    Paint scrapings from the remains of the car told them that the truck had in fact smashed into it, but not been significantly damaged. As for the colour, it was white. Exactly like another million goods vehicles on the roads.
     
    Even the photo, something that in the normal course of events should never have been taken, wasn’t helping as much as he’d hoped. It should have been a goldmine. A photo of a crime actually in progress. That was almost unheard of. It should have cracked the case wide open. Instead, though it was a miracle it had actually been taken at all, it was turning out to be a rather minor miracle. The image was blurry, too blurry to make out much of the perp’s face, though they could see the gun in his hands. The licence plate had been enhanced, that was the first thing the techs had done, but it lead nowhere. It was a plate that had never been issued, and now never would be. It was a fake. And as for the truck itself, it was simply a Canter, one of thousands on the roads, except that it now likely had some serious panel damage.
     
    A photo taken of criminal taken in the middle of the act, and it was useless. That just wasn’t fair.
     
    Ballistics reports could tell him that the weapon was an AK 47 variant. That didn’t exactly come as a surprise. It was the most popular assault weapon of the twentieth and the twenty first century and looked like retaining its status as such for the foreseeable future. But the gun hadn’t been used in any crimes that they knew of before, and if it was registered, which seemed unlikely, they still didn’t have the actual weapon.
     
    And as for the crashed car, that was a true nightmare. The techs had had a fit with it. They still were. In fact their reports were a full two foot tall pile sitting on the desk in front of him. With good reason.
     
    After pulling the broken drive shaft out of the ground and running it through any number of tests, they’d come to the startling conclusion that its failure was caused by metal fatigue! Metal fatigue on a car less than a year old. A car that was properly serviced and maintained. A model with absolutely no history of such a fault. It was a fluke. It was more than a fluke. The techs had told him again and again and again, it just couldn’t happen. Especially when it was only one tiny piece of the drive shaft that had apparently been fatigued. Every other atom of it was in perfect, unfatigued order. They’d tested that too, and then they’d sent away the parts for more detailed testing. And there was no way to cause it. Even if the shaft had been somehow deliberately weakened, and there was absolutely no sign of such a thing, there would still be no way to work out where and when it would actually snap.
     
    The crash meanwhile, if it had somehow been faked, was miraculous. Or rather it was miraculous that Mr. Hennassy had walked away from it. Only the fact that the car had come down harder on the passenger side roof than his, several times, had turned what should have been a fatal into a crash that he could walk away