SEVENTY-SIX

11.30 A.M.

The Hagley Obelisk stood close to the summit of Wychbury Hill and was a stone’s throw from an area called Lyttelton. At twenty-six metres high, it was visible for miles around and was accessible from public footpaths.

As far as Kim knew, it was a listed building, but that didn’t stop the question ‘who put Bella in the Wych Elm?’ being periodically spray-painted on it. It referred to an unsolved World War II-era mystery in which the decomposed body of a woman was found in a nearby wood.

‘Might just get this one ahead of time,’ Bryant said as they began the trail from Monument Lane. ‘But I wish our guy wasn’t so focussed on hills. I’ll need a bloody pacemaker once we solve this case.’

Kim smiled inwardly at Bryant’s in-built positivity that said they would solve this case. Quite frankly, their guy could send them up as many hills as he liked as long as they got Nazeera back at the end of the day.

They both chose to hang on to the breath they had and remained silent until they got to the top of the hill.

They reached the obelisk and walked around it.

‘Where is it?’ Kim asked, even though she knew Bryant didn’t have the answer.

‘It ain’t here, guv. Maybe we got the place wrong?’

She shook her head. She knew they had the right place, but where the hell was it?

‘It’s almost twelve,’ he continued. ‘It’s unlikely we’re the first people past here today. It might have been taken by someone else.’

Kim considered his point and shook her head. ‘There’s no purpose to having us in this game if we don’t get a chance to solve it.’

‘He does change the rules,’ Bryant observed, and he was right, but there was a fundamental basis to a game like this. There had to be a cat, and there had to be a mouse. Whatever gratification he was getting would disappear if they weren’t even in the game. And he’d gone to such lengths to have the police involved.

‘It’s here somewhere,’ she said. ‘Walk forward forty metres and walk round the obelisk anticlockwise.’

She would go clockwise looking in all directions.

A few minutes later, they met on the other side. Neither of them had spotted anything in the distance.

Think, think, think, she told herself. How could he leave something here to be found but not noticeable to anyone passing by? There was no way into the obelisk that she could see, and it had to be somewhere that she could access.

She looked more closely at the grass where it met the stone of the obelisk.

‘What?’ Bryant asked.

‘Look at this,’ she said, bending down.

There was a strip of grass approximately forty centimetres long that wasn’t as close to the hard surface of the obelisk base as it should have been.

She kneeled down. On closer inspection, she could see two faint lines in the grass that she would never have noticed from a standing position. The grass had been expertly cut.

She chose not to use the same painstaking technique as she grabbed at the turf and peeled it back.

Surprise was immediately followed by relief.

Surprise that she was looking at a plain white envelope in a cellophane bag, and relief that the envelope was not holding any of Nazeera’s body parts. Kim did not want to find any fingers.

‘Bloody hell, guv, how is tenacity not your middle name? I’d have been heading back down the hill ten minutes ago.’

She ignored him as she ripped open the plastic to get to the envelope. She didn’t have the time to run it by Mitch.

The envelope contained two items. First, the all too familiar card bearing the next clue.

‘“Locate the knots tied in the dark. Find my next by 3 p.m. or…”’ she read out.

The second item was a newspaper clipping from the day before. The headline screamed

JESSICA GETS A SECOND CHANCE

Kim growled. The bastard knew exactly what was at stake.