Read Online The Unkindest Cut by Gerald Hammond - Free Book Online

Ian looked over at DS Bright and nodded in acknowledgement that this was to be his job. ‘But, Jane, could
you
remove that chip from his back?’ he continued.
    â€˜Yes, I suppose I could. I put it in so I’d know roughly where to look for it. I could remove it from the same general area of a sheep or a horse so, given a patient who would accept an anaesthetic, I could take it out of a person. I would be breaking the law but I could do it.’
    â€˜Then we’d better include all vets in the circular. Who else?’
    The two men watched Jane hopefully while she thought about it. She felt as if they were waiting for her to sing or to do a conjuring trick. ‘Dentists, probably. ER nursing staff perhaps. If I think of any other profession, I’ll tell you.’
    â€˜Do that. And we’ll try to keep an eye on you for your safety, though I suppose you’ll be the last person he’d allow near him carrying something sharp. How close would you have to get to tell whether an animal had been microchipped?’
    â€˜Really close. It’s not as though I landed him with the sort of transponder they attach to wildlife. This is only designed to give a number close up. I don’t begin to get a reading until I’m almost touching the animal. If you were thinking of a scanner that could pick up the presence of a microchipped person in a crowd …?’
    â€˜I was.’
    â€˜Standard equipment wouldn’t do it. I brought my reader along to show you.’ She opened the plastic box she’d brought with her and put on Ian’s desk and drew out a neat instrument resembling an early mobile phone. ‘You should go and talk to Mr Ilwand at the TV and computer shop. He designs that sort of gear. I seem to remember that there was a gadget on the market some years ago for detecting microwaves if they were escaping from a microwave oven and endangering the cook. It had to be taken off the market because it was too sensitive. He might be able to cobble together something like that for you—’
    Jane was interrupted by a knock and the entry of a young man in plain clothes and plastic gloves. He had once brought her a shorthaired pointer puppy for neutering. He turned out to be one of Ian’s constables. He delivered a paper bag to Ian, gave Jane a friendly nod and departed.
    â€˜This,’ Ian said, ‘will be a selection from the rubbish swept up and emptied from the waste bins at Kempfield last night. We were lacking any starting point whatever. It seemed to me that our culprit either did or did not visit Kempfield in an attempt to establish some sort of alibi. If not, then we start with the comparatively limited number of people of suitable physique who were not present. But you said that he had stuffed a handful of your duplicates into his pockets and he would have had to get rid of them. I really couldn’t see him having a little private bonfire. And as long as he was walking around with his pockets full of your credit card slips he was marked. So I had my boys bag up the rubbish collected from Kempfield, separating out and discarding obvious irrelevancies like toffee papers. A couple of beat bobbies are looking in the town’s waste bins. Give me a moment for a glance at this little lot …’
    From his desk drawer he took similar gloves to those the constable had been wearing and drew them on. He sniffed the bag suspiciously and then tipped it out on to his unused blotter. ‘It’s a long shot. I don’t suppose there will be anything,’ he began, ‘but when you start with nothing—’ His voice broke off abruptly. There were more paper scraps than Jane would have expected. Ian took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and turned over two of them. ‘Credit card slips!’ he said. ‘No, don’t touch them, they won’t have been fingerprinted yet, but take a look and tell me if you issued them.’
    Jane was