Page 116 of Dying Truth

He groaned but followed suit.

‘It’s around here somewhere,’ she said, as they both rested on their stomachs and lowered their heads to the ground.

‘I’ll take the benches over there,’ he said, nodding to the right.

‘Thanks for nothing, buddy,’ she said, realising she’d been left the two vending machines. She would need to get her hand right under there amongst God knows what. But she knew it had to be around somewhere. Either he had thrown it before falling onto the tracks or someone had kicked it out of sight during the initial chaos.

She crawled closer to the drinks machine on the left. The plastic skirt around the bottom was slightly higher, offering more room for her hand.

She closed her, eyes and slid her hand beneath the skirt. Immediately her fingers met some kind of wrapper that she flicked out of the way. She placed her hand palm down and began to pat the floor in a grid-like formation, careful not to miss an area. Her thumb landed in a pile of sticky liquid that she didn’t even want to identify.

She rearranged her arm and turned her head. Bryant was trying to hide a satisfied grin.

She frowned. ‘You’ve got it, haven’t you?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘You did say I should let you get your hands dirty now and again.’

She growled at him and pushed herself to a standing position.

‘Here, it’s clean,’ he said, passing her a handkerchief from his pocket.

She gave her hand a good wipe before giving it back to him. She took the smartphone from her colleague and touched the home button. Surprisingly it spurred into life as all Monty’s icons and apps appeared on the screen.

‘No password?’ Bryant queried.

Kim shook her head as she sat down on the bench.

‘He wanted us to find this,’ she said, scrolling through his call register.

‘You think he took his own life out of guilt?’ Bryant asked.

Yes, that was exactly what she thought.

‘But why not just come to us and tell us the truth?’ Bryant asked.

‘Because of that bloody oath he made years ago,’ she said with disgust.

Having scrolled back to the day before Sadie’s death, Kim found no call made to or received by any name she recognised.

She pressed on his text message icon and her eyes widened as she saw the header for the top message in the box.

The stream held seventeen messages and was entitled ‘Welcome back.’

Eighty

Stacey replaced the receiver and leaned back in the chair, stretching her neck.

The boss had sounded a bit miffed that she would struggle to identify the person who had sent the messages to Monty Johnson’s phone with a pay-and-go handset. With frustration, the boss had explained that it was all there. A message stream that detailed the instruction to kill Joanna Wade along with a promise that the club would welcome him back with open arms. The sender had even told Monty where Joanna would be and at what time.

Stacey had understood but the sender could have admitted to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby while riding Shergar and she still wouldn’t have been able to find out who sent it. And the boss’s final sentence telling her to go home had sounded like an order instead of a suggestion.

Stacey checked her watch. Yes, she had been at her desk for thirteen hours. Yes, she was also mindful of the boss’s words during her appraisal. And yes, she really should think about going home. And she would have done if she hadn’t hit on an old student record, hidden in the Heathcrest archives.

She reached into her bag and took out her mobile phone. Her call was answered on the second ring.

‘Hey babe, just ordered Chinese and am filling two wine glasses with—’

‘I’m gonna be late, D,’ she said, using her pet name for Devon.