NINETY

4 P.M.

Jared showed them into his room for the second time. His landlady and fierce protector appeared to be nowhere in sight.

Kim wasn’t sure if he was surprised to see them or not.

Unlike the last time, Kim made a beeline for the gaming chair that nestled into the half-circle desk.

Bryant chose to stand, forcing Jared to take a seat on the bed.

Sometimes power dynamics were everything.

‘I think you know why we’re here,’ she said, chancing her arm that he’d just admit the whole thing.

‘Because you couldn’t resist my charm and good looks,’ he said with a cheeky grin that probably translated better through the lens and was completely lost on her.

‘No,’ she said flatly.

She held his gaze and waited a full minute before speaking again. It was long enough to see one of his nervous tells. His thumb tapped against his index finger as he waited for her to speak.

‘You been watching the news?’

‘Not much,’ he said.

The tapping paused and then resumed.

‘Did you know we’ve been chasing our tails around the Black Country after someone who is really starting to piss us off?’

He nodded but said nothing.

‘Trouble is, Jared, this thing has your fingerprints all over it.’

He wasn’t as surprised as he should have been but recovered quickly. ‘Thousands of people… okay, maybe not thousands, but a lot of people can make great trails.’

‘Yeah, but I have it on good authority that there’s a rhythm to these things, almost like a signature.’

Again, he shrugged, but the finger tapping was getting erratic.

‘You do know that an innocent man was tortured and killed?’ she snapped.

The finger tapping stopped.

‘B-But I didn’t… I mean I didn’t kill any?—’

‘Oh, Jared, it’s all fun and games until it’s not. I watched as a man was splattered across a train line because we were ten seconds away from saving him. Or rather what was left of him after our guy sent pieces of him back to us throughout the day.’

Most of the colour had dropped from Jared’s face.

‘How much trouble am I in?’

‘Did you do it?’

He shook his head.

‘Then not as much trouble as you could be. Best get to telling me the truth.’

He sprang up from the bed. ‘May I?’

She moved out of the way, now happy to sit on the bed.

If she was honest, she hadn’t had much hope of turning up anything here, but Stacey’s tenacity and gut instinct had paid off again. She just hoped it was enough to catch the killer before he had a chance to do it again.

‘I received an email. I don’t know who from. It was something like Jester and some numbers. If I remember rightly, he just wanted to play a bit of a prank.’

‘He told you it was aimed at the police, didn’t he?’

Jared hesitated before nodding as though still trying to calculate his culpability.

‘I didn’t think he was going to hurt someone,’ he defended himself as the printer to his left kicked into life.

He passed her the sheet of paper and then had the grace to look shamed.

Kim’s level of sympathy was evident in her next words.

‘It never occurred to you to let us know?’

‘I really didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought it was for a bit of a prank. I thought you’d have him in a couple of hours. And then I could see it was getting serious and I just wanted to stay out of it.’

Kim offered him a hard stare.

‘He just told me the places and asked me to write a clue to match them.’

And there it was. All the clues they’d found so far. All written by Jared. The list ended with the clue for the canal.

‘What’s next?’ she asked.

Jared shrugged. ‘That’s all he wanted. Said he’d take care of the rest himself.’

So, he’d wanted to put them back to square one at the station. He’d always known how it was going to end.

‘You gave him everything,’ Kim said, reading the notes below. ‘Absolutely bloody everything.’

Give a time frame for sense of urgency.

Give a good reason to keep interest.

Leave incentives to continue.

Use audio and video props.

Build in a halfway shocker.

Increase pace/urgency.

Make final prize more valuable and worth completing the trail.

‘Why? What was in it for you?’

He hesitated before answering. ‘I was flattered, I suppose. He said a lot of nice things. Said I was the best. I thought it was just a harmless joke. I didn’t know what he was going to do, I swear.’

Kim believed him, but she didn’t care.

‘He followed your instructions to the letter. His second victim is a heart surgeon due to save a child’s life in a few hours.’

Horror contorted his features.

‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’

‘There’s nothing, I swear,’ he said as his eyes filled with tears.

She said nothing more as she got up and left the room.

‘I think you got your point across, guv,’ Bryant said as they reached the car.

‘Good.’

‘He’s just a?—’

‘Don’t say it. He’s not a kid. He’s in his mid-twenties, and he’s part of the reason we’re in this mess. He’s an arrogant little shit who couldn’t help but flaunt his expertise and knowledge while knowing it was going to be used against the police.

‘I’ll bet there’s a YouTube video declaring himself involved in this before the day is out too. But you haven’t even realised what just happened in there.’

He waited.

‘That revelation has just blown this whole thing wide open. If our guy isn’t even in it for the fascination of the game, what the hell is he trying to achieve?

Knowing Jared wrote the clues just widened our suspect list. Up until now, we’ve been able to discount individuals based on the level of intelligence needed to pull this off, but the brains of the operation is back there.

Jared wrote a playbook, Bryant, which could be followed by fucking anybody. We can’t even say it’s someone interested in the hobby.

Our only chance now lies with Stacey and the rainforest of paper she’s trying to wade through. If she finds nothing, we’re fucked, and Jessica Styles is probably gonna be dead before we’ve even cleared our desks.’