Текст книги "Scent of a Killer"

Автор книги: Kevin Lewis

Соавторы: Kevin Lewis
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

2

Stacey Collins emerged from the basement exit of New Scotland Yard and headed towards her BMW in the far corner of the underground car park. She switched on her mobile and checked the time, then hit a couple of buttons and held it up to her ear.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Stacey! I thought you were going to be tied up all morning.’

‘So did I! The meeting finished early, so I’ll head over and pick up Sophie now. See you in ten minutes.’

‘Oh.’

‘What do you mean “oh”. What’s going on?’

‘It’s nothing, dear. It’s just that …’

‘What, Mum? What’s happened?’

‘Promise you won’t swear.’

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Jack’s here.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Mum!’

Her mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He’s her father, Stacey. He has a right to see her. And she has a right to see him.’

‘Not like this. Not behind my back. You have to let me deal with this my way, I told you that. Jesus Christ. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get me into?’

‘What was the point of telling her, of telling all of us, and introducing them if you’re not going to let him be part of her life?’ Her mother was moving through the house with the phone now, trying to find a quiet corner to continue the conversation. ‘You can’t give with one hand and take away with the other. It’s just not fair. It’s not right.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘You’re right I don’t understand. Nor does your father. We don’t understand why you kept this from us for all these years. Why did you keep it from her? What on earth were you thinking?’

‘I wish I’d never told you anything. Any of you.’

‘Well, that just says it all. You have no idea how much you’ve hurt your father, do you? You don’t even care.’

Stacey bit her lip. The words cut her to the quick. She could hear her father in the background, grunting from the effort of manoeuvring his wheelchair around the furniture. She and her mother had offered to rearrange things to give him more room, but John Collins was as stubborn as a mule and had refused every time. Being in the wheelchair was one thing; living in a house that screamed disabled access rather than normality was more than his pride could take. ‘You know that’s not true,’ Stacey continued. ‘Look, I’m on my way. Don’t let him leave until I get there.’

*

Jack Stanley was in the living room sharing a joke with Sophie and Stacey’s father when she let herself into the house. She kissed her dad softly on the cheek but did not return Jack’s cheerful smile when he looked over at her. All she could manage was a terse: ‘We need to talk.’

Their physical relationship had been brief, a matter of a couple of weeks of playing around, followed by a single drunken night that Collins had long ago dismissed as a moment of weakness. She had discovered she was pregnant soon after Stanley’s arrest for the gangland murder and, feeling certain that no father at all was better than one in prison, had kept it from him.

Sophie had been born while Jack was still on remand. After his release he had asked her only once about the child. Stacey had lied about Sophie’s age to throw him off the scent, and Stanley had been kept in the dark ever since. She had finally revealed the truth a few weeks earlier.

Her parents’ bedroom was far from ideal as a venue for a difficult conversation, but with the door firmly closed it was the most private place in the flat.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Jack.’

‘Don’t worry, Princess. I wasn’t followed. Give me more credit than that.’

Stacey’s eyes widened.

‘I know I’ve been under surveillance,’ Jack continued. ‘But they’re easy to get rid of.’ He noticed the look on Stacey’s face and smirked. ‘What, you think you’re my only police source?’

‘I’m not your source at all,’ she protested. ‘This has got to stop. You can’t see Sophie any more. Not like this anyway.’

‘What are you talking about? No one is going to find out.’

‘They’ve already found out. They have pictures of the three of us together. That day we came round and I told you about her. I’ve had internal affairs on my back all afternoon. They could be outside right now. If they find out you’re here, I could get sacked.’

Stanley’s eyes fell to the floor in thought. ‘But if they already know …’

‘They don’t know you’re Sophie’s father and I don’t want them to know. It’s one thing having you as an unregistered informant; there’s no conflict of interest there. I can still be trusted. I can still do my job. I don’t think anyone is going to feel the same if they find out you’re the father of my child.’

‘You owe me,’ snapped Stanley, his voice getting louder. ‘I saved your arse with that kidnapped kid case. Let’s face it, you’ve built your whole fucking career on the back of my graft.’

‘And you’ve built yours by breaking the law. You’d be banged up if it wasn’t for me.’

They stared at each other for a few moments, breathing hard, neither one willing to back down. Finally Stanley waved a hand in the air dismissively. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. This is my daughter we’re talking about. You keep her a secret from me for thirteen years. Then, when you finally tell me and invite me to be part of her life, you get cold feet about it. You can’t turn the clock back. What’s done is done. You’re just going to have to find a way to deal with it.’

Stanley glanced at his watch. ‘Enough of this bollocks. I’ve got to go. I’ve got somewhere I need to be. But this isn’t over. Finding out that I have a daughter is the best thing that ever happened to me and I intend to make the most of it. Now I’m willing to be careful, I’m willing to take precautions, but that’s as far as it goes. You try to come between me and Sophie, and I’ll give you more trouble than you can handle.’

With a grim snarl on his face, Stanley pushed past Stacey, knocking into her shoulder as he headed for the door. When he pulled it open, Sophie was standing directly outside. Stanley’s face immediately broke out in a huge smile.

‘Hello, Princess. I was just coming to find you. I’m gonna have to go.’

‘Do you have to? It feels like you only just got here?’

‘My business won’t run itself. But cheer up. I’ve got a present for you. It’s in my bag in the living room. Come on.’

Before Sophie followed, she turned back and stared into the eyes of her mother. She would never admit anything, but Stacey knew she had probably heard every word of their conversation. Stacey opened her mouth to speak, but Sophie had already gone.

Three hours later and back at her own house, Stacey Collins stood outside Sophie’s bedroom, trying to summon up the courage to step inside.

She was racked with guilt and convinced that she was without a doubt the most terrible mother in the whole wide world. For years now the worst of her arguments with her daughter had almost always revolved around the fact that Sophie desperately resented not having a father in her life. Time and time again Sophie complained about the fact that her mother worked such unsociable hours and always, always seemed to put her job first. ‘But none of that would matter,’ a tearful Sophie would sob, ‘if I had a dad.’

Stacey had grown up with two parents who were always there for her, and, even when their own relationship hit a few bumps, stayed together for the sake of their daughter. Sophie had known no such security, and for years Stacey had decided that it was better to lie than to face the truth: that Sophie’s father had been right under her nose all along. But now that she had brought the two of them together and it was too late to turn back, Stacey found herself wondering whether, despite the aggravation, her original instincts had been the right ones.

Was a gangland father really better than no father at all?

She was only too well aware of the extent of Stanley’s criminal enterprises but she had purposely blinkered herself off from his activities. Now for the first time she had to accept that her daughter shared DNA with a man capable of the most inhuman acts possible. And the thought made her shudder.

There was no doubt in Stacey’s mind that Jack Stanley was fully capable of carrying out cold blooded murder. She was a hundred per cent certain that he had only been acquitted in the earlier case because the witnesses had been left terrified. God only knew how many other killings and deaths he had had a hand in. Yet all that Sophie could see was a man who bought her presents and had the time to spend with her that her mother did not.

She had finally relented to Sophie’s demands in a moment of emotional weakness, and at the time she had been convinced that she was doing the right thing. But now she was far less sure. What if Sophie found out the truth about her father? What if he ended up in the dock on another murder charge? Sophie could find herself despising them both.

Stacey’s mind drifted back to the forthcoming raid the SOCA officer had mentioned. Could it be true, and if so why mention it to someone who is suspected of passing on information to the target? She had said nothing to Stanley and had no intention of doing so. Her instincts told her it was a test, a kind of trap, but a part of her hoped it was for real. An arrest for drug trafficking would be the lesser of numerous evils. Sophie would be upset but at least she would get to know the truth about her father before the bond between them got too deep. It would be for the best.

Stacey knocked on the bedroom door and gently pushed it open. Sophie was sitting up in bed on top of the covers, her eyes shut and her head slowly bobbing back and forth.

‘Sophie, can we talk?’

There was no response. Ever since Sophie had become a teenager, Stacey had become used to the silent treatment. But upon closer inspection she realized there was another reason that her daughter had not heard her: two thin white wires led down from under her hair on either side of her chin and into her lap. Sophie was listening to the brand-new iPod Touch that Jack had given her.

Stacey moved forward and touched her daughter gently on the shoulder. Sophie’s eyes opened with a start, and she fumbled with the controls on her music player to turn it off before pulling the headphones from her ears, one at a time.

Stacey sat down on the bed alongside her.

‘Listen, Sophie, I don’t know how to say this. There’s no easy way, so I’m just going to come out with it. I don’t think you’re going to be able to see your father any more. Not for a while anyway.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘Nothing, nothing’s happened, but it’s just … there are things going on, things going on at work that you don’t know about, things I can’t really explain to you that mean it’s difficult, actually impossible right now.’

Sophie eyed her mother cautiously, weighing up her words. ‘You’re jealous?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Who’s being ridiculous? You are jealous. Of course you are. That’s why you never wanted to introduce him to me before. That’s why you want me to stop seeing him now. It’s because you can see how close we’re becoming, because he treats me like an adult, not like a little girl, he shows up your failings, it’s because –’

‘Just shut up and listen. You don’t know that man the way that I do. Jack Stanley is … he’s done some bad things in his life. Things that could get him into a lot of trouble. With my job, I can’t be seen to be associating with someone like that.’

‘But you’re not, Mum. I am.’

‘It affects me too.’

‘You just don’t want us to be together.’

‘That’s not true, darling. If I didn’t want that I would never have introduced you to him in the first place.’

Stacey sighed deeply and ran her fingers through Sophie’s hair. ‘I know you feel like you’ve missed out your whole life by not having a father around. And now that he is in your life you must feel as though I’m trying to take that away from you, but that’s not the case.’

‘It does feel like that.’

‘You have to understand that there are things about Jack, about your father, that you don’t know about. Things that have happened in his past that –’

‘Like him being in prison? He’s told me all about that. And you’re right, it’s in the past.’

‘There’s more to it than that. It’s dangerous.’ Stacey tried to think of the best way to put this, a way that wouldn’t give her daughter nightmares. ‘Some of the things that your father has done in the past, they’re the kind of things that can make a lot of people angry. I worry about you, and at the moment I just don’t know if it’s safe for you to be seen with him.’

‘But nobody sees us, not if he comes round to Nan’s.’

‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I just can’t allow that.’

For a moment it looked as though Sophie was going to cry, but then her resolve stiffened. She looked directly at her mother, tiny traces of moisture in the corners of her eyes. ‘I don’t want to do anything to upset you or get you into trouble, Mum. I mean, it’s great having a dad and everything after all this time, but I’ll never forget that you’re the one who brought me up. You’re the one I owe everything to.’

‘Thanks, Sophie.’

‘Though if you’d told him about me earlier, then he probably would have been around a lot more.’

‘Sophie!’

‘I’m just saying.’ Sophie looked down at the iPod in her lap. ‘Okay. I don’t really understand why but, if you really think I shouldn’t see Dad for the time being, then I won’t. But it can’t go on for ever. I want him in my life. I really do.’

‘And he will be one day. I promise.’

‘Okay.’

Stacey smiled, reached out with both arms and pulled Sophie into a huge hug. Their bodies pressed together and their chins rested on each other’s shoulders as they held each other tightly.

‘Thanks, Sophie. I love you. You’re the best.’

‘I love you too, Mum,’ said Sophie, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.

3

Tunde Okuma pointed a short, stubby finger towards the end of the line of cars parked along the quiet Peckham side street and sighed. ‘One day,’ he said with his thick Nigerian accent and a dreamy look in his eyes, ‘one day, my friend, I am going to have one of those for myself.’

His colleague Matt Dunn squinted over at the gleaming silver Mercedes and grinned. ‘You mean you’re going to give up work and start stealing cars for a living?’

‘Funny. But you won’t be smiling when my dream comes true.’

As long-suffering traffic wardens for the London Borough of Southwark, Dunn and Okuma always saw more than their fair share of cars. But in such a deprived area, luxury models like the Merc were something of a rarity. The local drug dealers and pimps had long ago learned that flashy motors brought too much police attention, while any resident able to buy one legitimately would do so only if they had a garage to park it in.

Up until then it had been a good morning. Between them the pair had issued five PCNs apiece, their first break was fast approaching, and to top it all off the sun was shining. However, the side street looked as though it was going to be a dead loss until Okuma reached the Mercedes. His eyes lit up immediately when he saw there was no ticket displayed on the windscreen.

‘Result,’ he said eagerly, reaching for the machine hanging from his belt.

‘Wait up,’ said Dunn, hurrying over from the other side of the road. ‘Better make sure it hasn’t dropped down somewhere.’

‘Who cares?’

‘It’s a nice car. And you know the rule. The nicer the car, the bigger the prick behind the wheel. I don’t want any trouble if the driver turns up and we’re still on scene.’

Trouble was something both men had come to expect as part of the job, but Okuma was by far the more wary of the two. The previous day he had been on patrol at a local authority car park near a busy shopping centre. He spotted a young woman in a filthy VW manoeuvring her car so badly that she ended up taking up the space of two bays. Okuma made his way over to her just as she was climbing out of the car, planning to ask her politely to repark her car so that he wouldn’t have to give her a ticket.

She wore ill-fitting lycra leggings and a faux leopard-skin top and turned to face him as he approached. He had barely opened his mouth when the woman began screaming at him, a stream of abuse and filth pouring out of her mouth. He was a prick, an arsehole, a fucking Nazi and more. She would not shut up and would not listen to anything he had to say. It was impossible to get a word in edgeways to explain that he was only trying to be nice.

Eventually, with a menacing-looking crowd beginning to gather in order to see what all the commotion was about, Okuma gave up and walked away, leaving the woman to think she had managed to get out of a ticket that Okuma had had no intention of issuing in the first place. It was the sort of incident that seemed to be happening more and more often, especially when the driver concerned had a nice car.

Since becoming a warden, Okuma had been kicked in the shins, spat at, had a tin of processed peas thrown at him and been called every name under the sun along with a fair few that seemed to have come from an alternative universe. The last time he’d ticketed a Merc the burly owner had threatened to cut his balls off. If Dunn wanted to hang about, Okuma decided it would be better for his colleague to take the lead.

Okuma stepped back as Dunn cupped his hand against the side window and peered inside. A fraction of a second later Dunn leaped back in surprise. ‘Fuck! Scared the shit out of me.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s someone inside. On the back seat. Looks like they’re sleeping. Must have been out on the town and got too pissed to drive home.’

Okuma stepped forward to see for himself. There was no mistaking it. A figure was curled up on the rear seat in the foetal position. The upper half of the body was covered in a thick woollen blanket. Two legs, visible only from the knees downwards, emerged from the other end. They were clad in dark trousers, grey socks and finished off with polished Oxford cap shoes.

Okuma began tapping at the window. ‘Sir, excuse me, sir, but you can’t leave your car here without a valid ticket.’ There was no response. He tapped louder. ‘Sir? Sir!’ Still nothing.

It was then that he noticed the small black cylinder on the inside of the window was in the raised position: the door was open. He tugged at the handle and was immediately hit by a wave of warm, fetid air. The smell of soft leather and wood polish was mixed with something unspeakably awful. Something unmistakable. Something no longer alive. The smell of decay. The smell of death.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he gasped.

Okuma was almost in a trance as he reached forward to grab the edge of the blanket with trembling fingers. He pulled it back. His eyes needed only an instant to take in the ragged skin at the top of the neck, where a grey ooze seeped out in place of a head, the cavernous opening in the centre of the bloated chest and the stiff arms ending in bloody, mutilated stumps.

Okuma turned away and threw up violently, gulping down desperate lungfuls of fresh air. Then he reached for his radio.

When the call about a headless, handless body had first come into the Murder Investigation Team office at Peckham, Collins had not been surprised that it had been assigned to one of the other DIs on the unit. It had been more than six weeks since her interview – or should that be interrogation – with the DPS; yet, despite receiving assurances that she would face neither criminal nor disciplinary charges over her dealings with Jack Stanley, she knew that she remained firmly in the doghouse so far as her superiors were concerned.

It was clear that DCI Anderson, the newly appointed head of the MIT, did not rate her as a detective at all, and the two cases she had worked on since he began had given her precious little opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

The first had been a so-called ‘self-solver’ – one of those murder cases in which the identity of the prime suspect is known from the outset and a full confession is blurted out soon after the moment of arrest. Even the most junior, inexperienced detective could not fail to get a result under such circumstances.

The second case had involved the drive by shooting of a shady businessman who had made so many enemies that it was almost impossible to whittle down the massive list of potential suspects. To make matters worse the victim himself, only lightly injured in the attack, had refused to cooperate, rapidly forcing the attempted murder investigation into a stalemate.

All of which made it hugely surprising that, less than an hour after his arrival at the latest murder scene, DCI Anderson had put in a request for DI Collins and other members of the team to join him there.

The obvious question – why? – played on her mind as she steered her BMW through the South London streets. In Collins’s experience, such an early call for more resources could mean only one thing: that the victim was a celebrity, somebody who mattered, and that maximum manpower was being called in to crack the case.

The first forty-eight hours of an investigation are by far the most crucial. Memories of potential eyewitnesses are still fresh, forensic samples have not degraded, and those responsible for the murder are still likely to have crucial evidence in their possession. By bringing in the whole team, Anderson was clearly hoping to get a quick result and therefore cement his position as the new team leader. Collins thought back to the Jill Dando murder inquiry, when more than a hundred detectives had been brought in to track down the killer of the popular BBC presenter.

Having parked at the end of the cordon, Collins made her way towards the line of blue-and-white tape that was stretched across the road. A crowd of nosy onlookers watched jealously as she ducked underneath and showed her ID to the Community Service Officer on guard. ‘DCI Anderson is waiting for you over at the mobile command unit,’ he said flatly.

Collins quickly spotted Anderson in the midst of a group of other officers outside the small Portakabin decked out in police colours that would be the team’s base in the early hours of the inquiry. Her own DS, Tony Woods, was already there, as were DS Richard Porter and DI Leonard Hill, the two officers Anderson had brought with him to the murder team. There were also a few DCs, and Collins silently cursed herself for being one of the last to arrive. The presence of a mobile command unit meant they were in for the long haul. She would have to call her parents and get them to look after Sophie for the evening.

Anderson was in his mid forties, well over six feet tall with the kind of slim, athletic build that suggested he either spent hours in the gym or was a sports fanatic in his spare time. Clean shaven, his dark, wavy hair had been styled into a smart-yet-fashionable cut. His deep hazel eyes seemed to flash with irritation as he spotted Collins coming towards him, and he took a long drag on the cigarette he had been smoking.

‘I got here as soon as I could sir,’ said Collins. ‘What’s going on? Who’s the victim?’

Anderson said nothing for a moment but just eyed Collins carefully as a stream of smoke slid out of his nostrils. ‘Don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Haven’t got a positive ID for any of them yet.’

‘Them? I thought there was only one.’

‘That’s because you’re late. Follow me, Collins.’

He set off at a rapid pace towards the large white incident tent that had been erected to cover both the car and its immediate surroundings. A box of protective paper suits, along with their accompanying masks and overshoes, sat outside the entrance.

Anderson and Collins both suited up before he led her inside, reminding her to stick to the makeshift path of plastic planks that had been laid out to avoid the crime scene being contaminated. Spotlights blazed away from the corners of the tent. Grim-faced forensic officers wearing knee pads carried out a fingertip search of the ground around the vehicle, while others dusted the doors and windows for prints. Blowflies were swarming all around and the stench of death was everywhere. Collins knew she would smell it in her hair and taste it in the back of her throat for the next few days at least. Every now and then there was a huge flash of light as the police photographer took another snap of the remains. Anderson steered Collins towards the back-passenger side door of the car, which was wide open.

‘This is victim one,’ he said. ‘Found by a couple of traffic wardens. Hasn’t been touched apart from having the blanket that was covering the upper half of the body pulled away.’

Collins held her breath and leaned towards the car to get a better look. With its missing head and open, empty chest cavity, the corpse looked more like a cattle carcass from a meat market than like anything human.

She could see the white of the bones along the edges of the hole where the ribs had been ripped apart and the ragged flaps of muscle and tissue hanging down inside like shredded curtains. There was no sign of the missing organs in the footwell or elsewhere on the backseat and precious little blood anywhere – a firm indication that the victim had been killed elsewhere.

The body was naked from the waist upwards. The lower half was clad in trousers that had been pushed down to just above the knees. In the place where the genitals should have been Collins saw only another gaping hole.

Having taken in all she could, Collins stepped back and Anderson led her towards the rear of the car, where the boot lid had been raised. Inside Collins saw two more figures that had once been human beings but were now reduced to something almost unbearable to look at.

The bodies, both naked, had been arranged top to tail, the limbs twisted into awkward angles to fit into the available space. Once again both were missing heads and hands, but this time Collins had a close-up view of the decapitations.

The tissues of the neck were severed all around down to the bone. The remaining bright red flesh had become wet and slimy, and seemed to pulse slowly as thousands of tiny white maggots moved across its surface.

Collins held her breath and gulped air in through her mouth to prevent her from throwing up.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped.

‘Looks like the MO’s the same on all three victims. Best I can tell they are all men of a roughly similar age. IC1s. I’ve seen this level of decomp before and it’s the same for all three. I’m working on the assumption that the bodies are a couple of days old at most. It’s gonna be a right git of a case. Triple killings like this are as rare as rocking horse shit.’

‘Do you think it could be some sort of gangland vendetta, a drugs hit maybe?’

‘That was my first thought, but that doesn’t square with the open chest cavities. The organs could have been taken as trophies or for some kind of ceremony. Either way, we’re looking for a seriously sick bastard.’

Collins cocked her head to one side as she looked at the corpses. Outside of the drugs world, the usual pattern for a serial killer was for the murders to take place one at a time and for the rate of killing to escalate over a period of months or years. For someone to begin with a triple homicide was unprecedented.

‘No one starts out like this,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘We should check the cold case files to see if there has been anything like this before.’

‘Already been done and we’ve drawn a blank,’ said Anderson. ‘Plenty of headless bodies and a few corpses with missing organs, but never the two combined. We’re breaking new ground here. Lucky us.’

Anderson glanced at his watch. ‘Initial briefing in ten minutes inside the MCU. Try not to be late again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

As she watched Anderson leave the tent, Collins briefly pondered the fact that it was a shame he was such an arsehole. If not, he would almost be her type. Just outside the entrance, Anderson was stopped by a tall, slender woman with chestnut-brown hair peeking out from behind the confines of a white-paper hood. Collins immediately recognized her as Dr Jessica Matthews, the Home Office pathologist with whom she had worked with many times before.

Anderson could only summon up a tight smile and brief handshake in response to the doctor’s cheerful greeting. Matthews entered the tent, closely followed by the Crime Scene Manager. Collins couldn’t help but notice that the pathologist even managed to look good in her protective disposable white boiler suit.

Although the situation continued to improve, the police force was still dominated by men and male values, and many of the women working within it seemed to think the only way to get on was to have bigger balls and more testosterone than their male counterparts. He-bitches, Collins called them. But Jessica Matthews was different, far more like Collins herself. Resolutely professional and with an air of absolute authority, she walked her own path and refused to be led by those around her. Collins liked and admired her enormously as a result. She was one of the few women she came across during her working life that she considered to be a friend.

‘Hi, Jessica.’

‘Hey, Stacey, lovely to see you.’

Collins looked over her shoulder towards the bodies in the boot. ‘Hardly lovely circumstances.’

Matthews smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. ‘Come, come, Stacey, we only ever meet at crime scenes or at the mortuary. There’s always a dead body or two close to hand.’

Matthews leaned in close over the two bodies in the boot and then did the same with the remaining corpse, her eyes dancing around as she quickly took in all the details. Collins was rooted to the spot, fascinated by the sight of the pathologist at work. Matthews half climbed into the back of the car, resting her knee on the edge of the seat and leaning forward so she could run her gloved fingertips lightly over the edge of the open chest cavity. ‘Well, no stomach, so no contents for me to look at, and no liver for me to take a reading from,’ she said out loud. ‘No head means no eyes, so no chance of a fluid check. Not enough blood on the seat to suggest death was in situ so there’s little point in checking lividity.’ She looked back at Collins. ‘Nothing like a challenge to brighten your day.’

The pathologist looked around the tent, seeking out the police photographer. ‘Have you got all angles on this?’