SIXTY-SIX

7 A.M.

‘Good to see everyone looking rested and refreshed after the weekend,’ Kim said, trying to lighten the mood in the squad room even though her own mood perfectly matched theirs.

She didn’t even get a polite chuckle for her efforts.

She took a breath. ‘We did our best, folks. We did everything we could to save his life.’

Although they all nodded, she knew they all felt that it had been for nothing.

She had sympathy for her team. To a point.

‘You wanna do a Frost and bail?’ she asked, opening her hands.

Initially, she’d been annoyed at the reporter’s departure, but on balance, it had placed extra strain on her team having her looking over their shoulders. She had been the middleman, but their killer knew who was running the investigation, and Kim was sure he’d find a way to contact her if he wanted to. Even without Frost, the rules of the game were clear. They found the boxes and followed the clues.

Except there were no more boxes and no more clues. There had been neither at the train station. Not finding a box was more worrying to her than finding one. It wasn’t over – she knew that. What she didn’t know, and what concerned her the most, was what was coming next. Whatever it was, she needed her team on board and ready for action.

‘So, anybody wanna bail?’ she prompted.

Everyone shook their heads.

‘Okay, then let’s get to it and catch this bastard.’

All three of them sat up straighter.

‘Right, change of focus. We’ve been dancing to his tune for the last twenty-four hours, and we have to continue to follow the clues, but we’ve got to be more proactive in finding out who this guy is. We’ve got to run this case our way. We know something else is coming, but what are your thoughts on our sicko? Who are we looking for?’

‘I know Penn disagrees, but I still don’t think our guy is a seasoned killer,’ Stacey said.

‘How can you say that after what he did to Hiccup?’ Penn asked.

‘If this was something he had a compulsion to do, then we’d have heard of this guy a long time ago. No other force has dealt with anything like it, so he’s not travelling. There’s a reason why he’s doing it now.’

Penn shook his head. ‘Don’t buy it.’

‘Okay, what about traits?’ Kim asked.

‘Tidy, organised, methodical,’ Bryant offered. ‘You couldn’t pull this off without an incredibly logical mind. There are the clues to write, the timings, the placement of the boxes, posting the clues, keeping everything in order. It’s a lot of work.’

‘What about the rules?’

‘He takes them seriously,’ Penn answered. ‘But he’s happy to break them himself. He gave us no chance to save Hiccup on the train line. He changed the rules of the game.’

‘But he didn’t really, did he?’ Stacey asked. ‘By making that call, he prevented us from getting extra time to find Hiccup. If you want to tip it on its head, we broke the rules by trying to save him after the allotted time. If we’d been there at exactly six o’clock, we could have saved him. The train comes through at two minutes past.’

Kim wanted to snap at Stacey to shut up, but the truth was she was right.

‘What about where he posted the clue for the cone? It wasn’t in the box,’ Penn argued.

‘He never said they would be in the boxes. No rule broken.’

A muscle tightened in Penn’s jaw. ‘Stace, I swear you’re doing my head?—’

‘Okay, guys. You’re going to have to agree to differ on this one,’ Kim said, breaking it up. ‘I think we can all agree that we’re not looking for a psychopath.’

‘Not that that helps at all,’ Bryant said. ‘Because very few psychopaths actually wear a sign or go around shouting it from the rooftops.’

‘Useful, Bryant,’ Kim noted.

‘Is there any chance he could be finished, guv?’ Bryant asked. ‘No box, no clue.’

She shook her head. ‘We already know there’s going to be a second victim. He warned us that this one would be missed. What did he mean by that?’

‘In his mind, Hiccup was low value, expendable. He took him to prove a point,’ Penn offered.

‘Which is?’

‘That the game is serious,’ Stacey replied. ‘To our killer, Hiccup offered nothing to anybody. It might be safe to assume that the next one will be the complete opposite.’

Kim nodded her agreement. ‘Go through any mispers in the last forty-eight hours and see if anything jumps out. Jack is under strict instructions to let me know of any new reports. We gotta keep ploughing through the names and the CCTV, guys.’ She focussed on Penn. ‘Did you start work on the warrant?’

A magistrate would sign off on them accessing Seekers records now they had proof that their killer was a known user.

He nodded. ‘Awaiting confirmation.’

‘Okay, obviously I need you to get cracking, and yes, I know I’m asking you both to clone yourself, but?—’

Kim stopped speaking as Bryant’s phone rang.

He raised his eyes upwards to indicate the call was coming from upstairs.

‘Tell him I’m on my way,’ she said, raising herself from the edge of the spare desk.

And she was, just via the female locker room, where she could at least splash some cold water on her face.

Woody had little patience for her mood when she was operating on her normal sleep patterns. God only knew how he was going to deal with her today.