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nine-nine-nine?’
    ‘Stevie Fullerton owns this car wash,’ McCallister replied. ‘His name isn’t on the paperwork – since the Proceeds of Crime Act he probably doesn’t officially own his own underpants – but everybody knows it’s his.’
    ‘At least when we notify the relatives it won’t be a shock.’
    ‘Why wouldn’t they phone an ambulance, though?’ Beano asked.
    ‘Four shots to the chest,’ McCallister said. ‘
They
didn’t need to take a pulse to know he was dead. Whoever they phoned must have told them to sit tight and say nothing.’
    ‘When did the ambulance get here?’ Catherine asked.
    ‘A good ten minutes after me. So when it turned up I kept the paramedics back from the body, made sure they never touched anything. Told them to deal with the witnesses instead.’
    ‘Well done,’ Catherine told him, privately taking back everything she’d said in the car. He had thought on his feet and acted to preserve the crime scene, ensuring the body was left in place.
    She glanced towards the Bentley, looking now almost head-on through the kaleidoscope of the shattered windscreen. She couldn’t see Fullerton’s face as his head sat too far forward, just a mop of artificially black hair, the dye job betrayed by a ring of grey roots at the crown.
    She caught another tang of something rank.
    ‘What’s that smell?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit early for him to stink, rotten as he was.’
    ‘It’s vomit,’ said McCallister. ‘Mrs Chalmers threw up just outside her car there. She’s okay now. She’s had a cup of tea and been checked out by the paramedics. Marginally more use than the other pair. They’re both pretty shaken up, but on top of that they’re bricking it in case they say anything they’re not supposed to.’
    ‘Was it you who IDed the victim?’
    McCallister nodded.
    ‘I checked with DVLA that that’s his reg, but I was only getting official confirmation. I recognised the motor – as somebody who sees him driving that thing about here all the time I knew it was him right away. Never seen him looking better, to be honest.’
    Catherine watched Laura make her way out of the kiosk, picking her steps carefully and similarly slaloming around what she now assumed to be Mrs Chalmers’s pile of puke. At least she’d held it in until she made it outside of her car, otherwise it would have been a hell of a valet job for some poor bastard.
    ‘Afternoon, boss.’
    ‘DI Geddes. An auspicious day, wouldn’t you say?’
    Laura glanced towards the Bentley.
    ‘Not for the late Mr Fullerton.’
    ‘You’d be surprised. It’s actually a very special day for him. His birthday, no less.’
    ‘Serious?’ Laura asked.
    ‘No kidding. It’ll save the widow a few bob on engraver’s fees for the headstone. She can just get ditto marks under the day and month.’
    ‘Well, somebody really pushed the boat out to give him a birthday surprise. I’ll never complain again about just receiving M&S vouchers.’
    ‘What are you getting in there?’ Catherine asked, indicating the kiosk. ‘Give me the Twitter-feed version.’
    ‘It’s mostly the woman’s Twitter feed so far. Metallica boy and Leatherface – that’s Andrew Gerrity and James McShane respectively – aren’t being entirely forthcoming, because—’
    ‘Yeah, we heard,’ Catherine interrupted.
    ‘Concerned about upsetting the master of puppets, as it were,’ suggested Beano.
    ‘More like pastor of muppets,’ Laura replied. ‘To be honest, you haven’t missed anything. You’d be as well stepping in.’
    Catherine didn’t like to conspicuously micromanage her detectives, or make them feel like teacher was looking over their shoulders, but today was different. Teacher would be looking over
her
shoulder on this one, so her instinct was to be more hands-on, which was why she had come down to the scene in person. She would do this and then back off. Paradoxically, the bigger and more important the case, the more she was