Nineteen
Carl West preferred solving crime riddles. He was not comfortable being baffled. As far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as a perfect crime. The perpetrator always left a clue that would undo him. All he had to do was find that clue. The trail in the Ford case hadn’t gone far enough to reveal that clue just yet, but it would.
The extortion threat had come to nothing. B&A bank had not received any further calls with instructions about where to leave the money. The extortionist had vanished, if he had ever existed beyond someone’s idea of a joke. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced his initial intuitive response had been correct. The murderer had simply been playing games with him. No-one took cash in a bag these days. Even the amateurs knew about t
