‘No, Doctor A, you do it after something.’
She shook her head. ‘I will never understand you crazy Brits.’
‘What newspaper?’ Kim asked, ignoring this weird new dynamic between the two of them.
‘The one that was lying on the body giving the exact date and time.’
‘Oh funny.’
Doctor A turned to Keats. ‘Now?’
‘Yes now,’ he said, finally getting the high five he’d been waiting for.
‘I think I prefer you guys hating each other.’
‘Yeah, it’s a bit weird,’ Bryant agreed.
‘So there’s nothing more?’ Kim asked of them both.
It was negative responses all round.
Kim headed out of the morgue at speed.
‘Slow down, guv – I ain’t no Usain Bolt here. What’s up?’
‘We have nothing definitive, Bryant. We’ve arrested Harte for the murder of Melody Jones. Right now, we can’t prove it was murder or that it was Melody Jones.’
‘We can narrow it down ourselves,’ Bryant said, now matching her stride.
‘How so?’
‘Builder’s got to have records. It can’t have happened after the guy had filled in the hole. He planted trees on top of it.’
‘Bryant, there are days when you are worth your weight in gold. Let’s go see what Jenson Butler has got to say.’
Thirty-Two
‘Got anything else to eat, Stace?’ Alison shouted across the office.
‘Since you’ve already had my last packet of prawn cocktail crisps, my apple and emergency energy bar, it’s safe to say I’m all out. But, hey, you’re great for my diet.’
If Alison wasn’t one of her best friends, Stacey would hate her for her ability to eat more than a small village without putting on an ounce of weight.
‘I’ll nip to the canteen for a snack run in a bit,’ Alison said, turning back to the computer.
‘What do you make of him?’ Stacey asked. Her initial doubts about Steven Harte’s involvement were coming under fire with every new piece of information.
‘Hard to tell until I’ve watched more footage.’
‘Why have you turned off the sound?’
‘It’s distracting.’
‘What, listening to what he has to say?’ Stacey would have thought his words would have been of paramount importance.
‘I want to watch his movements, his expressions, his posture. Don’t you ever do that?’
‘What, watch TV with the sound off? Er… no, hearing the script tends to be necessary in following the plot.’
‘Believe it or not you can pick up a lot by just the expressions and body language.’
‘Okay, next time I rent a movie I’ll be sure to watch it with no—’
‘Oh, Penn, I love you,’ Alison said as her colleague walked in the door.
‘Wondered where you’d got to,’ Stacey said, eyeing up the booty in his arms.
‘Thought I’d best get some fuel before Betty closes it down for the night.’
Stacey could see he’d bought the last few cold sandwiches, sausage rolls, crisps and a selection of brownies and cookies.
Alison looked as though Santa had just dropped down the chimney.
‘Penn, I swear if you’re not married in five years’ time, you’re mine.’
He smiled as a little colour entered his cheeks.
‘Any luck on missing girls?’ Penn asked, ripping open a Mars bar.
‘Yeah, I’ve tapped into a list that gives me every outstanding missing child since ’96. Tells me what they were wearing and even what they had for breakfast.’
‘Cool, didn’t know you could do that,’ Penn said.
‘You can’t, dipstick, and I wish it were that easy.’ She consulted her notebook. ‘Did you know that in the UK alone over a hundred thousand children are reported missing every year? Of that number, roughly ninety-eight per cent are reunited pretty quickly, but last report by the missing persons unit stated that over fifteen hundred children are long-term missing, which means they’ve been missing for longer than twenty-eight days. Searching for up-to-date information is a nightmare because the data for each year differs.’
‘How can it differ?’ Penn asked.
‘Take the stats for 2018/2019. Almost seventy-six thousand kids were recorded missing by UK police forces; however there were over two hundred thousand incidents of missing children.’
‘Why?’
‘Because some children go missing multiple times per year.’
‘But your guy sometimes brings them back.’
‘Eat your cake, Alison, or tell me something I don’t know.’
‘Generally, most missing-children incidents are resolved quickly without harm. The majority of resolved incidents end within eight hours, with eighty per cent being resolved in twenty-four hours.’
‘Concentrate on the fifteen hundred,’ Alison said, looking away.
‘Why?’
‘Because the kidnapping of Melody Jones changed something in him. If she was the first murder, you can venture to say that any girls taken afterwards met the same fate. Something happened with Melody. Maybe it was his fear of being identified, but he crossed some kind of line. It’s unlikely he would have gone backwards and started returning them.’
Stacey didn’t disagree. The most prominent thought as she returned to her computer was: what did that mean for the fate of Grace Lennard?
Thirty-Three
Alex reached beneath her mattress and checked for her most prized possession – valued highly because it was a tool that was going to help her get what she wanted, and because it had cost her three weeks of her cigarette allowance. Not that she smoked, never had, but in prison it was currency, so you took it anyway.
She put the item back. She would need it soon but not today. It had to be presented at the right moment to have the effect she wanted. It needed to be the catalyst for everything to fall into place. She had to be sure that the recipient would appreciate it and know exactly how to use it.
Prisoners were pretty inventive when it came to fashioning weapons on the inside. One of the most common was a toothbrush shaped into a shiv. A more creative one was an eye gouger made of two plastic forks fastened together with the middle tines taken out. During her time she’d seen a razor blade comb. She’d seen a spiked glove made from gardening gloves and upholstery tacks. She’d even seen a paper shiv. A prisoner had ripped pages out of a book, wetted them down, rolled them super tight then dried them with salt. The result: a knife made of paper.
But Alex didn’t need any such weapon for the next part of her plan. She had her mouth and that was enough for now.
She had waited until visiting hours were over for the day to make her next move.
She knocked and entered the cell four along from her own.
‘Hey, Lisa,’ she said, fixing the fake smile to her face.
Appearing friendly and interested was exhausting for her. Because she was neither, it took great care and energy to fake it. It was like acting in a demanding role twenty-four hours a day. Oh, the relief when the lights went out and the mask came off and she could allow her facial expressions to match the ruminations of her mind.