Bad Sister(86)

They started jogging. The men did the same.

‘When I say … take your shoes off … and run, Kelly.’

They briefly gave each other a wary look, both pale-faced and huffing. Only the adrenaline was keeping Connie moving.

‘Okay … now!’

They both stooped, taking one shoe off at a time, discarding them as they went – then began running. Connie could only hear her own heart banging, her own laboured breathing. Her lungs hurt, her feet, too.

They weren’t going to make it.

Were the men right behind them? She was afraid to check. It’d be better not to see it coming. How stupid to have taken this cut-through for the sake of a few saved minutes.

‘Shit, look.’ Kelly had fallen back. What was she playing at? She must keep running.

Connie slowed her run to a jog so she could follow Kelly’s gaze. The men were on the ground, way behind them now. They looked to be fighting.

‘What the hell?’ Connie bent over, hands on her thighs, taking in deep gulps of air. She was going to be sick.

‘Come on, let’s not hang around for them to stop and continue after us.’ Kelly took hold of Connie’s arm and together they jogged on until they reached the last corner that led on to Station Road.

Out of breath, panting and with no shoes, the two women merged in with the other people who were walking calmly, going about their afternoon in ignorance of Connie and Kelly’s near miss with a stranger in a black hoody.

‘They were my favourite shoes,’ Kelly said as they approached the train station.

‘How can you think about that at a time like this?’ Connie muttered. But then she remembered her antipasti platter. Would it be ruined?

‘Who were they, Connie?’

They were standing waiting on the platform for the next train to Coleton, and Connie pretended she hadn’t heard the question. She needed to speak with Lindsay – she couldn’t share any more information with this reporter. As grateful as she was for the fact Kelly had been with her during that frightening chase, she was still the enemy.

‘I suggest you hand that camera’s memory card over to the police ASAP, Kelly. It’s evidence.’

‘Sure.’ Kelly smiled.

Connie bet she would make copies first.





CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX


Connie


Ignoring Amber’s cries for attention, Connie headed straight for the fridge and opened a bottle of lager, glugging quickly and noisily, draining it within seconds. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood leaning against the worktop, staring down at her dirty feet.

What a bizarre turn of events. Who would’ve thought Kelly Barton would turn out to be her saviour? Although, to be fair, it wasn’t her who’d saved the day. She had the mysterious, unknown man to thank for that. Thoughts of Flint filtered into her mind. What Brett had said about his brain injury tugged at her consciousness, as if it was trying to make a link to something.

She slammed down the empty bottle and went to her paperwork on the shelf under the coffee table. She riffled through it, scattering sheets of paper in her haste. There they were. The drawings she’d done of the tattoos covering Hargreaves’ body. She found the one of the code: U2X51.

Could it be?

Snatching it up, Connie ran back to the kitchen. She got her bag, took out the antipasti – which, surprisingly, did not appear to be ruined – and then emptied the rest of the contents of the bag on to the counter. Taking her compact, she held the mirror against the paper.

Her breath caught.

It was still not altogether clear because some of the letters could be numbers and vice versa – but it was a start. This could be it.

The code had been written backwards.

The person who’d done the tattoos was the same person who’d been in her toilet at work.

The killer.

Horror mixed with excitement, her blood rushing through her veins, making her giddy. Hargreaves’ killer was after her, but at the same time, she knew Lindsay was going to be chuffed with this when she told her. A breakthrough. Finally, this might be coming to an end.

Connie rummaged in her kitchen drawers for paper and a pen.

She was going to crack this code.

The light had gone, now replaced with a shadowy dimness. Connie’s eyes ached. She got up from her crouched position over her laptop to switch the light on. She’d been poring over the numbers and letters, searching for all possible meanings on the internet for the past two hours. Now she had the sudden realisation that the original 5, once mirrored, could be interpreted as a 2, and the number 2 an S. This gave her 12XSU as the mirror image of the original tattoo.

Taking a deep breath, she punched this in the search bar and closed her eyes. Please give me something. She opened them. Nothing. A page full of random results that meant nothing. She wanted to scream. Maybe that was too obvious – the mirror image would’ve needed to be more complex for it to be a puzzle, so it wouldn’t be a straightforward code. She remembered one of her early thoughts about it – a cipher. A simple substitution cipher was worth a go. So, instead of 12 it would be the letter equivalent – L. X would be the number 24, S, 19 and U would be 21.

L241921

Connie typed it in.

Again, nothing.

She banged the table, cursing. It was so infuriating. She was so close, she felt sure. She tried it again, this time spacing the numbers into twos.