Page 113 of Child's Play

She held up her ID. ‘Mr Crouch?’

He looked beyond her to the reception to confirm this was who he’d been called to see.

Raymond nodded.

‘You want to speak to me about my car?’ he asked, looking towards the hotel entrance and the car park beyond.

‘Your car is fine, Mr Crouch,’ she said. ‘We need to speak to you on another matter.’

‘But…’ he said, glancing around.

‘Oh, never mind Raymond. He got it wrong. He’s very busy. We don’t want to talk about your car. We’d much prefer to talk to you about murder.’

Eighty-Three

Penn watched the school bus drive away, everyone on it going about their normal business while his own world was crumbling around him. He wasn’t sure what he expected them to do. Right now he knew he was on his own.

When the call had first come through from the school he’d decided to delay letting his mother know. Her ailing health could do without the stress. Especially when he’d been convinced that he could locate Jasper in a few short minutes, but the hours were growing since his brother had last been seen. His fear for his brother’s safety was now very real, and the call to his mother was inevitable.

‘He’ll be fine, he’ll be fine, he’s a sensible kid, he’ll be fine,’ he chanted to himself as he took out his phone. He had to convince his mother that everything would be fine and that he would find Jasper. But first he had to convince himself.

He hesitated before making the call, feeling as though he had failed her somehow. That he had been responsible for his brother’s disappearance. He wished that Jasper had simply wandered off on foot. Limiting the distance he could travel. In a car, he could be anywhere by now.

‘Where are you, buddy, and who are you with?’ he whispered.

The events of the week began to circle in his brain. The coincidence of his brother going missing during the week he was reviewing an old case. Everything he’d uncovered had confirmed that Gregor Nuryef was not responsible for the murder of Devlin Kapoor. He’d been about to tell Travis that he thought the murder was related to the Reed gang and that was a whole new set of problems for them all.

His mind started to unravel the ball of string that had just started to come loose in his brain. Had the Reed gang got wind of the internal investigation and worked out that he was going to point the finger at them? Did they know they were his first suspicion before the evidence against Nuryef began piling up?

The panic notched up a gear. If he was right, he knew these people would think nothing of disposing of Jasper, to teach him a lesson; but then he’d have nothing left to lose.

No, if they had him it was to bargain, to force his hand, to back off and leave the investigation alone.

But where was the call? Where was the contact from the Reed gang to tell him what they wanted, to threaten him into keeping quiet? He checked his phone again. There was nothing new. His last text message was from Mitch. Just confirming all of his findings on the tee shirt. He hadn’t read it because he’d already been told.

But there was something different about seeing the results listed in bullet form. There was something clearer about the information once removed from the doubt about Gregor’s innocence or guilt.

It brought a clarity he’d not had before and the events of the week suddenly fell into place.

He knew where his brother was.

And more importantly, who he was with.

Eighty-Four

The two of them followed Damien back to the great hall, where his daughter was sitting at one of the tables beside the woman she’d seen reading a book in the restaurant the night before.

Damien sat where his jacket and bag had been left beside a laptop open on the next chair. He closed the lid as he sat.

She took a seat on the row of chairs in front, and Bryant stood, glancing around the room.

‘Your daughter?’ Kim asked as the little girl turned and gave him a wave.

He winked and waved back.

‘Yes, Matilda is having a private lesson.’

‘The woman is a tutor?’ Kim asked.