The Kill by Jane Casey Page A

commented. ‘She’s relying on someone to be able to shoot straight. If I knew someone with a rifle was going to shoot at a car, I wouldn’t want to be within twenty yards of the target.’
    ‘Maybe she didn’t know how dangerous it was. I’m going to guess the reality of it was worse than she had expected. She must have been covered in blood, for one thing, and the noise would have been pretty disconcerting. I think that’s why she took the keys with her. Dazed, shocked, in a hurry, she goes on autopilot. Grabs her stuff, grabs the keys, locks the car and runs for it.’
    ‘On the road we’ve all been tramping up and down all night.’ Derwent swore. ‘No chance of getting any evidence from it.’
    ‘We might get something from the nearest car park,’ I said. ‘She’d have had to have her own transport for a getaway. She couldn’t have left the car on the road because you can’t park on the verge. And she wouldn’t have wanted to be too far from it because it wasn’t that late and there might have been people around to hear the shot.’
    ‘We have some witnesses,’ Godley said. ‘The couple who reported the shooting. You can speak to them later, Josh. But from what I’ve heard, they didn’t see anything conclusive.’
    ‘Sounds like a good way to waste our time when we should be chasing the lady who was sitting in the driver’s seat,’ Belcott said.
    ‘We do need to find her, but there is also the chance that she didn’t know anything about it,’ I said quietly. ‘Running away doesn’t prove anything. She might have been scared. She might have been afraid of being identified. Maybe she has a family too. She definitely shouldn’t have been doing what she was doing with a happily married man. There are lots of reasons why she might have wanted to avoid talking to us.’
    ‘So we find her and find out what her problem was.’ Derwent turned and looked at the trees behind him. ‘Have they found where the shooter was waiting?’
    ‘Not yet. But it’s getting light. It should be easier in daylight.’ Godley’s phone beeped and he checked it. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. Hammond’s superintendent is here. He’s going to deliver the news to the family. I said I’d go along too.’
    Derwent pulled a face. ‘Rather you than me.’
    ‘It’s never fun,’ Godley agreed. ‘Right. It seems to me we need to know if Terence Hammond was killed because of something he did or because of what he was. Because I’m not discounting the fact that he was a police officer yet. There are plenty of people who don’t like us.’
    ‘But we’re so lovable,’ Derwent murmured.
    Godley ignored him. ‘Chris and Dave, I want you to talk to Hammond’s colleagues. Find out if he was behaving oddly in recent times. Find out if there was any gossip about him sleeping with someone other than his wife. Find out if he’d had any threats made against him.’
    Pettifer looked mournful. ‘Boss, you know what you’re asking us to do. The guy is dead. We’re going to get punched. A lot.’
    ‘Stand behind Dave. He’ll protect you.’ Godley turned to Colin Vale. ‘Feel like watching a few hundred hours of CCTV?’
    ‘Can’t wait.’
    ‘Try to get footage from near the gates of the park so we can link any suspect vehicles back to this spot. We can be fairly accurate about timings because of the witnesses, so that should narrow it down for you.’
    ‘But there are five gates that allow vehicles out of this park and six pedestrian gates and it wasn’t that late and … I’m going to be watching a lot of footage,’ Colin finished. He actually sounded happy about it.
    Godley turned to Belcott. ‘Pete, I want you to dig into Hammond’s past. See if there’s any reason why someone would have a grudge against him. Check his personnel files, his old cases, any complaints made against him – the works.’
    ‘What about me and Kerrigan?’ Derwent asked, as if we had to work together.
    ‘I want Maeve to come