Page 93 of First Blood

‘Take it, Carl. It’s urgent. I want this one done now.’

‘Marianne, it’s gone too—’

‘Take it,’ she said, thrusting the envelope towards him.

‘That copper is sniffing around. She wants to see me next.’

‘She’s gone, Carl. You can leave now. Get it done before…’

‘I’m not doing it, Marianne,’ he said, turning away.

Marianne realised she needed to change strategy. She had felt his indecision at the last envelope she’d handed him.

She placed a hand gently on his back. ‘Do you remember how much help you needed when we first met, Carl?’ she whispered.

His head dropped forward just an inch.

‘How scared you were; how you still cried yourself to sleep when you were nineteen years old. How the fear didn’t leave you even after your abuser was dead.’

‘I remember,’ he whispered.

‘These women have to feel safe, Carl. They can’t recover unless they feel protected. Just look at Louella and… and all the rest who have thrived and made good lives for themselves. They’ve overcome the pain, the fear to become successful. And that’s all because of what I… we’ve done here. We have to keep going,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘They’re relying on us.’

He said nothing for a full minute.

Finally, he turned and held out his hand for the name.

Chapter Eighty-Five

‘Got it,’ Stacey said, out loud even though the room was empty.

It had taken some time to plough through all the data that had been accumulating on her desk, but she had finally pieced together that the mobile number she’d been unable to account for on the call register of Luke Fenton had also been in contact with Hayley Smart.

She had found a deleted text message on Hayley’s phone from that same number as well as seventeen unanswered calls.

The text message had chillingly read

Come out, Come out, Wherever You Are

But there was one final piece of the puzzle before she could state something categorically, and she’d been thinking of the way she could get the information.

If she was as devious as Kevin Dawson, she could have probably devised a dozen different ways to be sneaky to get what she wanted. But her mind just didn’t work that way.

So, what else can I do? she asked herself.

In the absence of deviousness all that was left was honesty.

Okay, here goes nothing, she thought, googling the number she required.

Within seconds she was waiting for someone at West Mercia to answer the phone.

‘CID, please,’ she requested, once she pressed a few buttons and got through to an actual voice.

‘In connection with?’

‘A current murder enquiry,’ she answered simply.

The line went dead causing her to think she’d been disconnected.