Page 27 of First Blood

‘Any idea when he left?’

‘Nine thirty,’ she said, definitely.

‘You’re sure?’

‘He not nice man. Glad to see him go.’

‘Okay, anything strange about his behaviour, different in any way?’

‘Yes, he rush out and he only eat half his meal.’

Chapter Twenty

‘Really gonna need that phone stuff, Stacey,’ Kim said, as they entered the squad room. ‘Pretty sure our victim got disturbed from his supper by some text or call or message from someone, cos he left in quite a rush. Also need to check for CCTV in the area. I’m guessing he was picked up. He had to get from the takeaway to Clent somehow, and if he’d booked a taxi he wouldn’t have needed to leave half his meal.’

‘Sent a follow-up email ten minutes ago, boss, but I’m not hopeful for a response before…’

‘Damn,’ Kim said, cursing much of the working world for finishing around 5p.m. Her gaze swept across the wipe boards on the wall noting information that hadn’t been there earlier.

‘What’s that?’

‘All I could get about the homeless man. His name, the fact he’d been genitally mutilated and that there was something about a bell found on his person.’

‘Bloody good work, Stacey,’ Kim said, surprised. ‘I’ll speak to Woody tomorrow and get the case from Wolverhampton. Given the similarities there’s no way it won’t get handed over to us.’

The first thing she’d do is get Keats to go over the post-mortem report to confirm they were the same killer, and then she’d start looking into Tommy Deeley’s background searching for links to Luke Fenton. Her mind was whirring with ideas but she could do nothing about it tonight.

‘Okay, in the meantime we’ve brought a present back from the victim’s home,’ she said, placing the computer on the spare desk. ‘Time to try and break the password and see what he’s all about.’

‘May I?’ Stacey asked, almost salivating at the laptop.

‘Be my guest,’ Kim said, stepping aside. She only knew a few password cracking basics that she’d been told about dates and names.

Stacey sat down and started typing.

Kim had collected laptops and phones that had taken hours if not days to crack. Such was the information guarded within. She was hoping this one was going to be like a window to the man himself.

‘I’m in,’ Stacey said, dejectedly. The laptop had presented no challenge at all.

‘Already?’ Kim asked.

‘More him than me,’ she said honestly. ‘His password is his first name and his date of birth.’

‘Oh,’ Kim said, feeling the constable’s disappointment. Something so easy to access was unlikely to hold anything valuable.

‘Can I just have a nosey around for a few minutes, boss?’

‘Of course, fill your boots,’ Kim said, grabbing the marker pen and updating the wipe boards with everything they’d learned that day.

‘Guv, shall I go get?…’

‘That would be great, Bryant, but from tomorrow we share.’

Much as she appreciated the stream of caffeine he was not going to become tea boy.

Kim watched out the corner of her eye as the constable’s fingers flew over the keyboard. Her eyes were focussed and her body hunched forward. Clearly the officer had the start of a fire in the pit of her belly, but the intensity of her stare, her concentration told Kim where both the skills and passion of this detective lay.

‘Permission to speak freely, boss,’ Stacey said, as Bryant entered the room with two coffees and a bottle of diet cola.