Page 53 of Stolen Ones

‘Sir, forgive my interruption, but Steven Harte has been in control of everything since the minute he walked into the station. He is well aware of our scope while assisting us with our enquiries. I’ve cracked a hundred eggshells while tiptoeing around him in case I make a mistake with which he can beat us later, and I can still, hand on heart, state that he will not share anything he doesn’t want to. I need him here by force not choice. I need the freedom to question him properly.’

During her speech, she could see that some of the tension had left his face.

‘Not one mistake here, Stone. I’m warning you.’

‘He’s with Jack right now.’

After arresting him, Bryant had led Harte to the custody officer, who was advising Harte of his rights. Jack would ensure that someone would be informed of his arrest and that he’d be offered free legal advice. He’d be given the opportunity to view the Police Codes of Practice, offered medical attention if he was feeling ill and be shown a written notice informing him of his rights about regular breaks for food and use of the toilet.

Kim guessed Steven Harte needed no such guidance, but there was a sense of relief that when Jack was done with him he’d be in a cell not the interview room.

‘You do realise that you’ve destroyed any chance of him leading us to Grace Lennard?’

‘He wasn’t going to,’ she replied. ‘We’ve kept him on watch from the minute he left the station yesterday until he returned this morning. If she isn’t in his house, he has her somewhere that she has access to food and water or she’s already—’

‘Let’s not give too much thought to the already possibility,’ he said, rubbing his head again.

He sighed. ‘Leave the search warrant with me. It’s going to take some creative wording to get a signature and I think you’ve got more than enough to do.’

Kim knew the restrictions that lay before her. If she didn’t find something concrete soon, they would need to seek the permission of a superintendent to extend the detainment for a further twelve hours or a magistrate to keep him up to a maximum of ninety-six hours. If he wasn’t charged in that time, they had to let him go. She already knew that getting any kind of extension based on what they had now was going to be like pissing in the wind.

‘You’ve got twenty-four hours, Stone, to come up with something good, so you’d better get out of my sight and make them count.’

Thirty

‘So by three tomorrow we need to charge him or release him?’ Penn asked, frowning.

Kim knew he perfectly understood police procedure, so he was repeating her words in a ‘need to get this to sink in kind of way’.

‘We gotta get something, guys. We can’t get this close and then release him. There’s a little girl out there somewhere and we can’t rely on Steven Harte to tell us where she is.’

They all nodded their agreement except for Alison.

‘Thanks for following my guidance in there. Good job,’ she said, holding up her two thumbs.

Kim raised an eyebrow.

‘But to be fair you weren’t going to get anything out of him.’

Kim already knew that. ‘And the next time you give me advice, make sure it’s something I can actually do. How much of that you expected me to take, I’ll never know.’

‘I got enough to make a start.’

‘Good, now what you got for me?’ Kim asked.

‘Boss, me and Penn are already looking to see if Melody was his last victim,’ Stacey said as Penn walked over to the board.

‘So far every abduction seems to occur in two-yearly intervals. He took Libby in ’92 and released her in ’93. He took Suzie in ’94 and released her in ’95. He took Melody in ’96.’

‘So you’re thinking the murder of Melody marked some kind of change in his behaviour towards the girls but that he might have taken another one in ’98?’

‘Looking at it, boss,’ Stacey confirmed.

‘Okay, stay on it, Stace. Penn, I want a list of every inch of property he owns.’

‘Okay, boss,’ Penn answered.

Kim turned to the behaviourist. ‘Alison, study every minute of footage we have and find me something I can use. We have to be able to control this.’