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them’s poaching I suppose. That’s why they sell to the Elver Man. He comes down here just for a few weeks. Buys up everything the lads catch and disappears again. All cash, no questions. Is big business down here, is elvering.’
    ‘Why did Kevin have all that money on him then? The police say he had over £ 200 in his pockets. That’s an absolute fortune for a lad like him, surely.’
    Lauren shrugged and took another bite. ‘His mother says ‘twas his subs for the Watermen. Seems like Kevin didn’t trust the banks so he carried it around with him.’
    ‘Okay, who or what’s the “Watermen”,’ asked Alex wearily.
    ‘Now that don’t make sense,’ said Lauren. ‘Watermen’s a Carnival club. Big one too, one of the oldest and most important . No way would they let someone like Kevin join, not if he had a thousand pounds. I reckon they was just fobbing him off, asking for such a big sub. They never expected him to raise it.’
    ‘Well, it’s given the police a motive,’ said Alex sadly. ‘They told me he was charged with robbery with violence as well as murder.’
    Lauren shook her head, ‘Whole thing’s just stupid,’ she said. ‘I know Kevin’s several sandwiches short of a picnic but even he’s not dumb enough to rob the Elver Man, kill him and then fall asleep in the van. Something’s wrong there I reckon.’
    ‘I must say I don’t have Kevin down as a murderer,’ Alex agreed. ‘The police seem happy enough though. What do they say – method, opportunity and motive? They’ve got two of the three and they reckon the poor man was stabbed withsome sort of curved blade, like a fishing knife. Kevin’s got one of those so it doesn’t look too good for him.’
    Lauren screwed up her sandwich paper and lobbed it into the bin. ‘Well, I don’t think he did it and if the police can’t see that maybe we should try to find out ourselves. We can’t just abandon the lad. He won’t stand a chance in prison.’
    Alex peered at her second sandwich, sniffed it and decided not to bother.
    ‘I don’t know. It’s not exactly my job. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
    Lauren slid off the chair, excited at the prospect of a new challenge.
    ‘Come on, we’ve got to try. Someone probably saw him out on the riverbank for a start. We could ask around. What harm can it do?’
     
    ‘That may be how they do things in London,’ said Garry Wilkins, putting a sneer into the name of the capital city, ‘but it is not acceptable behaviour in Somerset.’
    Alex sat in front of her Senior’s desk and nodded. She had long ago decided silence was the best response with Garry. He worked himself up into quite a state if contradicted and tended to take his anger out on the team at random.
    ‘Brawling in the waiting room! We’re lucky you’re not being accused of assault. What were you thinking?’
    Alex tried to look contrite and waited until Garry started again. It was obvious he had no interest at all in what she might have been thinking.
    ‘God, the people we appoint. You don’t know the area, you don’t know the job, the way you dress – and that terrible old car of yours.’
    Alex struggled with the temptation to point out she couldn’t afford a better car after five years at university and she always wore a skirt (reluctantly) into court. Besides which, as she said to Lauren later, taking a new car into some of the areas she had to visit was just asking for trouble.
    She wandered down to the front office, still smarting withthe injustice of it all. To her surprise, Pauline, the senior administrator, opened the door and invited her in to the back office tea-room, a rare honour. Lauren and Pauline brewed fresh coffee and sat her down whilst the other office women smiled and greeted her like an old friend. When Garry rang down demanding to know where she was, she heard Pauline offering a vague story relating to an emergency call-out necessitating her absence for the afternoon.
    ‘Don’t worry about