Page 51 of Child's Play

Penn continued to write the timeline as his colleagues called out the facts.

‘Mrs Nuryef came in to recant her statement on the thirty-first,’ Doug added.

‘Got warrant on the first and found bloodstained tee shirt in shed,’ Lynne called out.

‘Got DNA back on the third November. And charged him on the fourth.’

Penn stood back and surveyed the board.

26/10 – Incident

29/10 – Ricky Drake identified

30/10 – Nuryef questioned

31/10 – Mrs Nuryef recanted

1/11 – Found tee shirt

2/11 – Got results of DNA

4/11 – Nuryef charged with murder

‘Ten days,’ Penn mused, tapping the marker pen against his lip. ‘We got it all wrapped up in ten days.’

‘A bloody long ten days,’ Doug observed.

‘Yeah, twelve hours every flipping day,’ Lynne agreed.

‘Textbook,’ Doug said.

Penn agreed. That was exactly the way cases were supposed to happen. Get a lead from an eyewitness, chase it down, question folks and find forensic evidence to support suspicion. Exactly how investigations were supposed to go. Except they very rarely did.

‘When it first happened we all agreed it looked like it was gang related, yeah?’

They both nodded.

‘Type of place, quiet road, no CCTV, time of night. All pointed towards—’

‘Except the murder,’ Lynne interrupted. ‘The Reed gang don’t normally kill folks. They run in, frighten the cashier with a big knife, take the money and leave.’

Penn knew that was their normal MO.

‘But things go wrong sometimes. Maybe Devlin Kapoor wasn’t so keen to hand over the money. Maybe he wasn’t so easily frightened. He was young, fit and healthy. Probably also pissed cos his dad’s business is suffering and wasn’t as compliant.’

Doug raised his hand.

‘What?’

‘Tee shirt in the shed.’

‘Put that aside for a minute,’ he said.

Doug and Lynne looked at each other.

‘So, why’d we stop even looking at the gang?’ he asked. His gut had definitely been steering him that way.

‘Ricky Drake is what happened,’ Lynne said. He gave us a name and—’