Kim looked at Stacey who appeared to be on the phone with Sophie from Land Registry.
She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Doing a reverse search right now.’
The square around the area Penn had drawn on the map was approximately twenty per cent residential, with the balance being rural. There were more than a hundred wooded areas within the scope, and any one of them could have properties hiding within them.
‘Get the forensic botanist on the phone,’ she said to Penn.
He called Ridgepoint as Stacey continued talking and Alison watched something on the playback.
‘Sharon Bairden, how can I help?’ said a pleasant voice on loudspeaker.
Penn gave the background of the case.
‘I’ve not had a chance to carry out a full analysis of the sample but there’s everything you would expect to find: road dirt, soil, oil deposits, petrol, cigarette ends, gravel.’
‘Is there anything you can tell us about the soil? Anything that would help us pinpoint a location?’
‘Well, there is one thing. I’ve found a tree seed, and there may be more. It’s distinctive because it lives on a catkin which looks like a caterpillar. This particular seed comes from the Betula pendula tree which—’
‘English name, Sharon,’ Kim said.
‘Sorry, to you guys that’s the silver birch tree.’
Penn was scanning the aerial view of the search area. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘The silver birch grows anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five metres, with a slender trunk. The tree has an open canopy which lets light through, allowing mosses, grasses and flowering plants to grow beneath them. It needs plenty of light and does best in dry acid soils.’
‘Sharon, anything you can—’
‘Look for white trunks. They’re easily visible through the light leafage.’
Penn zoomed in on something that looked promising, but there was no property anywhere nearby.
‘We’re struggling here, Sharon. Can you give us anything more?’
‘So far I’ve only found one of them. If I don’t find many more, then it’s not the actual trees you’re looking for.’
‘Come again,’ Kim said.
‘If the tyres had been amongst the trees themselves, I’d expect to find at least another dozen. If not we’re looking at a deposit.’
‘Of what?’
‘Not of what. By what. Birds.’
Kim and Penn looked at each other.
‘Birds will use almost anything to make nests. There’s every chance a seed could have been attached to a particularly good twig.’
‘But how does that help us?’ Kim asked.
‘Birds will travel up to one mile with bedding.’
‘So you’re saying find the right silver birch tree and our location will be no more than a mile away from where the seed was picked up.’
‘Stands a very good chance, Inspector.’
‘Thanks, Sharon,’ Kim said, ending the call.
‘Three specific areas, boss,’ Penn said. ‘Two quite close to Alvechurch, the other one around Belbroughton.’
‘Stace, what have we got around Alvechurch?’
Alvechurch was a village under the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire. With a population of just over five thousand, it was located in the valley of the River Arrow. The village was steeped in history, and had much to be proud of, but was probably most well known for being the home of Tracie Andrews, who infamously killed her boyfriend, Lee Harvey, in 1996, and then tried to blame it on a road-rage incident.
‘Give me one sec. Just one more minute. The report is coming through from Sophie right now.’
‘Stace.’
‘Got it. Harte owns thirty-seven acres of the valley between the village and the Lickey Hills.’
‘Properties?’
‘Looks like two, boss,’ Stacey said. ‘A barn and a small farmhouse. The rest is fields.’
‘Show me.’
Stacey enlarged it on the screen. The barn was only seventy metres away from the road into the village. The house was at the end of a half-mile lane.
‘No footpaths or bridle paths this side of the hills, boss,’ Stacey said. ‘No passing ramblers or vehicles anywhere near the farmhouse.’
Kim turned to Penn. ‘Is this inside your travel radius for the timeline on Monday?’
‘Just about, boss.’
‘Does it work with your clock theory?’
‘It does, boss,’ Penn said.
‘Okay, Bryant, looks like we’re going to Alvechurch.’
His phone tinged with the address and postcode for the property. Kim found herself praying that they were on the right track, and that Grace would sleep in her own bed tonight.
She reached for her coat. ‘Great work, guys, and—’
‘He’s lying,’ Alison said to her computer screen.
Kim’s head snapped round. ‘About what?’
‘The murders.’
‘Go on,’ Kim said, even though this was not something she wanted to hear.
‘There’s something not right. He’s happy to give as much detail as you like about the abduction. Believe it or not he shows micro-expressions of regret, but there is no detail and no emotion when it comes to the murder of any of the girls.’
‘Maybe he’s not up for reliving it in the same detail. It’s one thing to borrow a life, but it’s another thing to extinguish it completely,’ Kim offered.
‘But it doesn’t match. His demeanour when talking about the murders is much tighter. There’s a tension creeping into his jaw. His left fist has clenched twice. He’s rubbed at his nose more than any other time.’
‘Are you trying to say he didn’t kill them?’ Kim asked.
‘I’m not saying that for sure. I’m saying that it didn’t happen in the way he described.’
Kim felt the dread forming in the pit of her stomach. ‘What about sexual assault?’
‘Harte didn’t do that.’
‘But someone else might have?’
Alison shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Boss,’ Penn said. ‘What if Harte and Butler really were in it together? Maybe Harte abducted them and once he’d had his fill of looking at them, he allowed Butler to abuse them and then kill them.’
‘Given Harte’s reasons for taking the girls in the first place, that doesn’t add up. I know he’s just admitted to killing them but in a very quick, clean way. I’m just not sure about him allowing anyone to defile their beauty.’
‘But it would explain why he’s not giving a very convincing account of the murders,’ Alison argued.
Kim’s own sense of his warped integrity did not agree with the evidence, and she didn’t like where that thought led.
‘Shit. You know what this means, don’t you, guys?’ she asked, grabbing her jacket.
‘Boss?’ Stacey asked.
‘It means that Grace Lennard isn’t as safe as we thought.’
Eighty-Two
‘Is she okay?’ Penn asked, overtaking a bus that had pulled in to pick up passengers.
The boss had asked them to keep Grace on screen while he and Stacey headed over to Butler’s builders. The boss and Bryant were heading straight for the property.