Chapter 26

Stacey tried to be kind to the environment where she could and work purely from electronic devices, but sometimes she needed to look at good old-fashioned printouts. Nevertheless, an internal groan sounded inside her every time the printer kicked into life.

Once Penn and Tiff had left for the post-mortem of James Nixon, she'd taken a minute to think about how best to try and cross-reference the mass of information that was available in different places.

It was clearly no coincidence that two pageant moms had been brutally murdered in the space of twenty-four hours, but to find links between the kids, moms, organisers, judges, make-up artists and dressmakers was going to take a lot of work. Finding just one event that both victims had attended was not going to help her. It needed to be condensed. And the only way she could think to do it was a grid system.

She'd narrowed it down to the seven most local events. To go national and international would include too much data, given that she had to record it across multiple years. Katie had only ever done the local pageants, so that was the logical place to begin her analysis.

According to the entrant rosters for the competitions, Katie had done all seven pageants from the years 2006 to 2013.

Stacey entered her name on the left-hand side and filled the grid square with her placement in each pageant. She moved on to the next line and entered the data for Toyah, who had started a year later and ended a year before Katie. Any squares for pageants Toyah hadn't attended were blacked out to show non-attendance.

Stacey allowed the smile to show on her face. She loved many aspects of her role, but her favourite was data analysis. Using numbers to paint a picture.

From just two lines of data, she could see that Katie had taken the whole thing more seriously. Her rankings were solid whereas Toyah's were haphazard. Sometimes she was top three, sometimes nowhere and sometimes not even attending.

If she could pinpoint every person who had been around the two mothers, would she eventually have a list that included their killer?

She grabbed the next pile of printouts and began adding to the list.

The ringing of the internal phone startled her.

‘Wood,' she answered.

‘Got a call for you,' Jack said before the line silenced for a second.

She introduced herself and gave her title.

‘Hello, it's Doctor Michaels from Bushey Fields. May I speak to Inspector Stone?'

‘No, but I can get a message to her.'

‘It's about Katie Hawne. I have an update on her situation.'

Stacey listened with a growing sense of dread.

This was not going to thrill the boss one little bit.