Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(31)

‘Students, teachers, maintenance, cleaners. Pretty much everyone.’

‘I’ll need a list.’

‘We’re talking thousands,’ Felicity said.

‘Absolutely, but if it’s everyone who has access our killer will be on there somewhere. It’s not like we’re searching the whole world.’

Felicity began to pale before her eyes.

‘Did you say the call was made on Monday morning?’

Kim nodded with the sudden feeling this was going to be a bad thing.

‘Sorry, Inspector, but you may be searching the world after all.’

‘I’m not sure what?…’

‘Monday was our open day. We had literally thousands of people come through the doors.’

Kim closed her eyes in frustration.

Because it could have been any one of them.





Thirty-One





‘And he didn’t say what he wanted?’ Bryant asked, taking their drinks from the tray.

Kim shook her head. His text had said:

NEED TO MEET



* * *



NAME THE PLACE.





She had texted back ‘Barnett Hill’, a Wyevale garden centre, shopping village and café that wasn’t far from the border of the two constabularies. But in truth was much more their neck of the woods than his.

Clearly, he wanted something from her and he could do the mileage to get it.

‘Said he’d buy us lunch,’ she said, smiling.

‘You don’t normally eat lunch.’

‘It’s an event if Travis is putting his hand in his pocket.’

Bryant laughed and then sobered. ‘Hard to remember that a couple of years ago the two of you couldn’t be in the same county without squaring up and now he’s offering to buy you lunch.’

Oh yeah, the two of them had history. The five years they’d worked together had counted for nothing when she’d privately challenged him one day about his rough treatment of a suspect. Right before he’d punched her in the mouth. She had chosen not to report him and had only found out the real reason for his transfer to West Mercia when they’d been forced to work a hate crimes case together eighteen months earlier.

‘Bit of a bust at the college, though,’ Bryant said. ‘Really thought we had something, but with that many folks coming in and out we’re stuffed.’

Kim nodded her agreement.

‘Mitch is gonna be lucky to get anything helpful from the phone, but Felicity is going to send over some CCTV covering the event. You never know. We might get lucky.’

‘Except we have no idea who or what we’re looking for, so our killer could walk right up to the camera, give us the thumbs up and we still wouldn’t know it was them. We already know the CCTV around the Science block has been disconnected.’

‘Yeah, but how does our killer know all that, eh?’

‘Good question,’ Bryant said, as a squad car pulled up outside the front entrance.

‘He’s here and it looks like he’s in a hurry,’ Kim observed as he entered the double doors. Kim raised her hand, surprised to see him in a high-vis jacket.

His tight expression as he weaved through the tables towards them told her he didn’t want to borrow a cup of sugar or tap her up for a bit of intel.

His jacket rustled as he took a seat beside Bryant.

‘What you drinking?’ her colleague asked.

‘Nothing for me, thanks… gotta be quick and get…’

‘Hey, you promised lunch,’ Kim said, trying to lighten the tension in his face.

‘I’ll leave you the money but I’ve got a meeting with the Commissioner at two o’clock.’

‘Bloody hell, Tom, what’s going on?’

In all the years she’d known him, through the years she’d liked him and the years she’d hated him, she’d never seen him looking like this.

Tom Travis did a lot of things well, ran a team, solved crimes, toed the line, kissed arse but he didn’t do stress. Now she was intrigued.

‘This case in court this week; the armed robbery.’

‘What about it?’ she asked coolly. This was no longer about Tom Travis. It involved Penn. One of hers.

‘It’s a shit storm. Whatever Penn’s told you…’

‘Not a lot,’ she said, honestly.

He hesitated, took a breath. ‘The case is falling apart to be honest. Our only witness fucked up on the stand. The wife of the accused helped nothing when she testified. Even gave the impression she only changed her statement to get him back for cheating on her.’

‘Did she change her statement?’

Travis nodded. ‘Retracted her alibi.’

Kim balked.

‘She said he was home and then said he wasn’t?’

Bryant offered a low whistle. ‘Jesus. And she hinted on the witness stand that she did so out of jealousy?’

‘Not in so many words but the inference was there.’

‘And did she? Change her statement out of jealousy?’

‘I bloody hope not or we’re in even more shit than I thought.’

‘There’s more?’

‘Oh yeah, much more. Witness for the defence, neighbour of the accused who swears he saw and heard our guy at home the night of the murder disappeared yesterday lunchtime.’