Widows

Forensics were able to tell DI Resnick that the rear bumper of the bread van had been modified with a heavy metal bar strong enough to ram backward into the security wagon, and that there were still traces of the security wagon’s body paint on it. This was definitely the bread van used in the botched robbery.

There had been five days of intensive police work at Sunshine Bread, during which every man and woman in the company had their prints taken and compared to those found in the bread van. It was a long, tedious procedure, but Resnick was determined.

So far, no prints taken had revealed anyone with a criminal record, and all the prints in the van belonged to company employees. But someone had to have given Rawlins the keys to the site and to the van. Someone was crooked. During the week of the robbery, the fleet manager had been told that this van was in the workshop being repaired, so Resnick started with the two mechanics. Both denied any involvement, of course, and neither claimed to recognize the photos of Harry Rawlins, Terry Miller or Joe Pirelli. One of them, Resnick insisted, had to be a liar.

‘You can see it in their eyes, Fuller, and in their body language. He’ll not be a criminal mastermind, he’ll be a hard-up, scared little man who was slipped a couple hundred and will have been shitting himself since the robbery went tits up.’

‘Seems to me,’ Fuller argued, exhausted by Resnick’s ‘gut instinct,’ ‘that all he’s got to do is keep his mouth shut, seeing as Rawlins and his gang are all dead and there’s no one left to drop him in it.’

‘There’s the fourth man, Fuller. The fourth man can drop everyone in it because he’s got the ledgers. No, it’s one of the mechanics and I’m going to find out which one.’

Donald Franks sat in front of Resnick, twisting the oily rag in his hands. He was certainly nervous about something. Resnick had left Franks to sweat for what he judged to be the optimum length of time and was just about to start his questioning when the phone rang.

‘What?’ Resnick shouted down the receiver, then his face quickly softened and his voice lowered. ‘All right Alice, thank you. Yes, I’ll be back by four. I will. Alice, I will.’ Resnick hung up. ‘Keep a close eye on the time, Fuller,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got to get back to the station by four.’

Within minutes of starting the interview with Franks, Resnick discovered that he wasn’t nervous about being Rawlins’s inside man, but about slacking off work. He and the other mechanic would clock in together and then one of them would bugger off down the pub for the day. ‘Please don’t tell anyone, sir.’ Franks whimpered. ‘The jobs always get done. There’s just not enough work for two of us and we can’t afford to lose our jobs as well, you see.’

‘As well?’ Resnick’s eyes narrowed as he sensed an important lead coming his way.

‘There used to be three of us, sir. Len was sacked three months back. Me and Bob’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth. Please don’t tell anyone.’

‘Shut up,’ Resnick ordered. ‘I don’t give two hoots about you and Bob scamming your boss, but if you don’t tell me all about your mate Len, I’ll make damn sure your boss finds out everything.’

Franks told Resnick that Len Gulliver had been suspected of theft. Franks didn’t believe it for a second; he thought it must just be the quickest way to get rid of someone. On further questioning, Resnick discovered that each mechanic had his own set of yard keys cut in order to sneak off to the pub whenever work was light. So, if no one knew Gulliver had yard keys in the first place, it stood to reason that he could still have them now, meaning he could easily be the man who helped Rawlins steal the bread van. Resnick gave the orders to find and arrest Len Gulliver. For the first time in weeks, he actually thought they were getting somewhere. In fact, he was almost pleasant and put a tenner on Len Gulliver knowing the identity of the fourth man.

At Gulliver’s house, his wife said he wasn’t with her anymore, but her reluctance to let them in made Resnick think she was lying. She went on and on about the bread company treating her Len like a dog, worse than a dog in fact.

‘Fifteen years he worked for them and — just like that, finished, out. They made up some rubbish about him stealing, but you don’t slip someone two hundred quid to go quietly if you really think they been stealing from you, do you? Well, do you?’

Suspecting Len Gulliver had done a runner, and that she would protect him, Resnick thought it was pointless even asking where her husband was. He was about to leave when he decided to show Mrs. Gulliver the suspects’ photographs. Resnick was amazed when she said she recognized Joe Pirelli.

‘Yes, he’s been here,’ she said innocently. ‘He had some business with my husband. And this one—’ she pointed to the photo of Rawlins — ‘waited outside for him. I could see him from the kitchen window in a dark gray Mercedes-Benz.’