Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(45)

‘Your thoughts?’ Penn asked.

‘I think she’s telling the truth. I think her initial response of covering for him was probably denial that he could do such a thing and then panic set in. She’s got kids to think of.’

‘I get that,’ Penn said. ‘I’d expect it but then why change your mind? She’s still got the kids and they’re still going to need feeding with him inside. It’s not even like she changed her story to “I can’t remember”. She went direct to “I lied and he wasn’t with me”.’

Doug shrugged. ‘Mate, my understanding of the female species is limited at the best of times but Irina Nuryef is on another level entirely.’ He leaned to his left. ‘No offence, Lynne.’

‘None taken but from my point of view she seemed equally as agitated and irate during both statements,’ Lynne offered. ‘I watched the footage back last night and I wouldn’t bet this cup of coffee on which one is the truth.’

‘Anything on forensics that we missed?’

‘Not that I can see. We got a warrant, found the tee shirt in a carrier bag hidden behind a toolbox. Chain of evidence is all good. Forensic tests confirmed the blood to belong to Devlin Kapoor. No margin for error, no inconsistencies. Tied up nicely with a bow on. How about you?’

‘Not so much,’ he admitted. ‘Took a trip back to the scene last night and there’s a problem with Drake’s witness account.’

‘How so?’ Doug asked.

‘You can’t see into the shop?’

‘What?’ they asked together.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘How did we not know this?’

The fact they’d never checked it had kept him up most of the night.

‘The shop is lit up like a bloody beacon on that stretch,’ Doug said.

Penn nodded. ‘You can see who is behind the till but you can’t see who is on the other side. Tried it from every angle and you just can’t see.’

‘Shit,’ Lynne said, while Doug’s questioning frown said he hadn’t yet accepted the fact.

‘Feel free to go back there tonight and prove me wrong, mate,’ Penn invited. ‘But how the hell he saw Gregor Nuryef there unless he was in there himself, I’ll never know.’

‘And could he have been?’ Doug asked.

Who the hell knew?

‘So, the question we were hoping not to have to ask is now front and centre,’ Lynne observed. ‘Who killed Dexter McCann, and why?’

‘Which is going to have to wait,’ said DI Travis from the doorway. ‘Irina Nuryef is in reception and will only speak to you,’ he said, looking right at Penn.





Forty-Seven





‘So,’ Stacey said, glancing across the room. ‘What’s your skill set?’

Please boss make it so Woody appears in the doorway to rectify the mistake, she thought to herself. She didn’t have time to play nursemaid.

‘I like digging,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘I do it all the time out on the street. I love getting to the bottom of something.’

After looking longingly at the doorway once more, Stacey resolved that if the girl liked digging she’d give her her very own garden.

‘Okay, we have two sisters involved in our current case. Belinda and Veronica Evans. Find me anything you can on either or both of them.’

‘You mean like birth, marriage, kids, that kind of thing?’

‘Anything at all,’ Stacey answered. She’d already checked and there was nothing there but it would keep the girl busy until the boss sorted this mess out.

In the meantime, she tried the contact number again for the Brainbox organisers, Mr and Ms Welmsley. She banged the phone down in frustration. The mobile number had gone from voicemail to permanently engaged. She’d left two messages already and a third would have bordered on restraining order territory.

Okay, so the rest of her work involved the Brainbox website. She clicked the tab with the website already open and began to explore.

Everything about the site appeared friendly, accessible and inviting.

She began noting the facts.

Brainboxes had started in 1961 and was a small collection of gifted children coming together for friendly games and competition.

Popularity grew and then fizzled in the 1970s and ’80s but burst back with new vigour in the mid ’90s with a new two-day programme, entrance fee, prizes and a minimum IQ score to gain entry.

Hmm, Stacey wasn’t sure how she felt about that last bit. She understood that the event was for child prodigies but not all kids were good at tests and, in all honesty, she hated anything for kids that excluded other kids. However, it was a private event and there was little anyone could do about it.

Looking over the years since its reinvention Stacey could see that the numbers grew steadily every year. In 1995 thirty-one children had been registered to attend but last year the number had risen to sixty-four. Clearly, gifted children were on the up.

She went to the gallery and saw that recent events had a mixture of photos and video, while the older ones had photos only.

She clicked on the images from the event the year before.

Beaming faces shone at her from the photos that had been staged in groups: all children, and then the ones taken throughout the events in different areas. Stacey saw chess, piano, a mental arithmetic competition, a spelling bee and then finally the big quiz at the end which featured the winners of all the smaller divisions.