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Chevening, so the search area is a twenty foot strip three miles long. I’ve known smaller needles found in bigger haystacks. As long as nobody’s pocketed it already, they’ll find it.’
    Donovan was frowning. ‘They’re only looking now?’
    Shapiro regarded him levelly. ‘Yesterday I was still waiting for SOCO to tell me if it was in the car.’
    Donovan knew he was being unreasonable. ‘Yeah – sorry. I just—’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜I don’t want him wriggling off the hook.’
    â€˜Yes, I know.’
    When Donovan left Shapiro said, ‘You know what that was about, don’t you? He doesn’t want people thinking Mikey Dickens got the better of him with anything smaller than a howitzer.’
    Liz chuckled. ‘Have you interviewed Mikey? What does he have to say for himself?’
    â€˜Not a lot,’ Shapiro said ruefully. ‘I saw him in the hospital: by the time he was fit to see me he’d already talked to his brief and she’d advised him to say nothing at that time. I wasn’t too bothered, he wasn’t going anywhere with cracked ribs and a hole in his leg. He was discharged this morning, he and his solicitor are coming in later today. Maybe we’ll have the gun by then: that should help loosen his tongue.’
    â€˜And if he’s still making no comment?’
    â€˜He can stew for a while, but sooner or later I’m having him for this. He’s not getting away with it just by keeping his mouth shut, not when Donovan had him in sight pretty well all the way from Kumani’s to where he crashed. He can’t claim he was elsewhere when they picked bits of the van out of him on the operating table!’
    â€˜No,’ agreed Liz, ‘he’ll have to come up with something a bit more imaginative than that.’
    â€˜He held me up at gunpoint, Mr Shapiro,’ said Mikey Dickens, straight-faced. ‘He rushed out of the garage, jumped in the van and pointed a gun in my face. He said Drive so I drove. What else could I do? What would you have done, Mr Shapiro?’
    Shapiro shut his eyes. He took two or three measured breaths. His broad face, which long ago learned to mask rather than portray emotions, became positively wooden. But when he opened his eyes again they pinned Mikey Dickens to his seat. ‘So Mr Kumani was robbed, and Detective Sergeant Donovan knocked down, by some other short, wiry individual with a liking for other people’s money and a propensity for violence?’
    Mikey met his gaze with wide-open, innocent, baby-blue eyes. ‘Gee, Mr Shapiro, I don’t know. What’s a propensity?’
    Sitting beside him in the interview room, the Dickens family solicitor dug Mikey in the ribs. The last thing she needed was him getting smart with Detective Superintendent Shapiro. Ms Holloway was new to Carfax and Browne, Attorneys at Law, but almost the first thing she was told was not to underestimate the town’s senior detective. ‘He only looks like a well-worn teddy bear,’ said Mr Carfax darkly. ‘He thinks like Machiavelli.’
    Ms Holloway didn’t altogether believe it, but she took the precaution of elbowing Mikey under the level of the table at which they were all sitting. She must have forgotten his damaged ribs – he winced and whined and looked reprovingly at her, which even a teddy bear could hardly have failed to notice.
    She cleared her throat. A woman in her late twenties, she hadn’t been in Castlemere long enough to switch her London lawyer’s power suit for the more casual version appropriate in the sticks. ‘Superintendent, you have my client’s statement. I understand this is a full account of the events of Sunday evening, but if you need him to elaborate Mr Dickens will be happy to oblige. He’s anxious to clear up any misunderstanding. He appreciates how things must have appeared to Sergeant Donovan, he has