Page 46 of Child's Play

Kim had no idea how many times the phone had been used since, or even if the call had any link to Belinda’s murder, but it was the best lead they had so far.

‘Who has access to this area of the building?’ Kim asked. The list of people couldn’t be endless which would give them somewhere to start.

‘Students, teachers, maintenance, cleaners. Pretty much everyone.’

‘I’ll need a list.’

‘We’re talking thousands,’ Felicity said.

‘Absolutely, but if it’s everyone who has access our killer will be on there somewhere. It’s not like we’re searching the whole world.’

Felicity began to pale before her eyes.

‘Did you say the call was made on Monday morning?’

Kim nodded with the sudden feeling this was going to be a bad thing.

‘Sorry, Inspector, but you may be searching the world after all.’

‘I’m not sure what?…’

‘Monday was our open day. We had literally thousands of people come through the doors.’

Kim closed her eyes in frustration.

Because it could have been any one of them.

Thirty-One

‘And he didn’t say what he wanted?’ Bryant asked, taking their drinks from the tray.

Kim shook her head. His text had said:

NEED TO MEET

NAME THE PLACE.

She had texted back ‘Barnett Hill’, a Wyevale garden centre, shopping village and café that wasn’t far from the border of the two constabularies. But in truth was much more their neck of the woods than his.

Clearly, he wanted something from her and he could do the mileage to get it.

‘Said he’d buy us lunch,’ she said, smiling.

‘You don’t normally eat lunch.’

‘It’s an event if Travis is putting his hand in his pocket.’

Bryant laughed and then sobered. ‘Hard to remember that a couple of years ago the two of you couldn’t be in the same county without squaring up and now he’s offering to buy you lunch.’

Oh yeah, the two of them had history. The five years they’d worked together had counted for nothing when she’d privately challenged him one day about his rough treatment of a suspect. Right before he’d punched her in the mouth. She had chosen not to report him and had only found out the real reason for his transfer to West Mercia when they’d been forced to work a hate crimes case together eighteen months earlier.

‘Bit of a bust at the college, though,’ Bryant said. ‘Really thought we had something, but with that many folks coming in and out we’re stuffed.’

Kim nodded her agreement.

‘Mitch is gonna be lucky to get anything helpful from the phone, but Felicity is going to send over some CCTV covering the event. You never know. We might get lucky.’

‘Except we have no idea who or what we’re looking for, so our killer could walk right up to the camera, give us the thumbs up and we still wouldn’t know it was them. We already know the CCTV around the Science block has been disconnected.’