Page 81 of Stolen Ones

She had the feeling Kate Swift’s client could have been witnessed setting fire to her own grandmother and she’d still want a DNA test done on the matches.

‘We will get him, Ms Swift,’ Kim warned, opening the door to let her through.

‘We’ll see, Inspector. We’ll see.’

Forty-Six

Less than five minutes after letting Kate Swift onto the premises, Kim saw Mitch pull into the car park with the trailer.

Although the request had been put in yesterday, the team’s priority had been in searching the house. He’d assured her he’d be here bright and early to impound the car.

She would swear she heard her whole team sigh with relief when she headed out to meet him. She was like a ticking clock pacing around the squad room. They had just over an hour and a half before she had to go and release Harte without charge. Once that email landed in her inbox, her hands were tied.

She grabbed the evidence bag holding the keys to the Mercedes Estate as she passed by the front desk and met Mitch as he was positioning the tow truck.

‘Wanna go over it together before I hitch her up?’

Kim nodded and offered him the evidence bag.

‘Anything at the house?’ she asked while he completed the chain-of-evidence forms.

He shook his head. ‘We’re looking for something two feet square in a property the size of a small village. Nothing found to link him to Grace Lennard yet.’

Kim wasn’t expecting it. The timeline suggested he wouldn’t have had the time to take her to his home and then to wherever he’d stashed her.

If she was right about Steven Harte being the kidnapper, Grace Lennard had been in this car.

‘It’s very clean,’ Mitch observed, opening the rear door.

‘Too clean,’ Kim said. There was nothing in the rear of the car.

She considered her own car boot. There was de-icer and a scraper that never got removed during the summer months, a pair of muddy boots for when she took Barney for a walk in the rain, a foot pump just in case, a bottle of water for the occasional radiator overheat, amongst other stuff.

‘Mine’s got more crumbs than the floor of Greggs bakery, as well as tools, carrier bags and all kinds of shit that doesn’t need to be there. I treat my car like another room,’ Mitch said.

Most people did, Kim thought, looking around for the source of the sickly sweet smell that was now escaping from the confined space.

She found it in the front passenger footwell.

‘Summer rose air freshener,’ she said, looking around the front of the car. It was spotless – nothing in the door pockets, nothing on the console, nothing on the floor.

‘Excuse me,’ Mitch said from behind.

He reached in and opened the glovebox. Empty.

‘He prepared it beforehand,’ Kim said. There was no way he could have fitted in this level of cleaning between depositing Grace wherever he’d left her and arriving at the station.

Mitch moved to the back of the car, removed his glove and began to touch certain points above the wheel arches and behind the back seats.

‘Sticky. Four corners of the space. He taped some kind of covering and then threw it away somewhere. Reduces our chances of finding anything significant.’

Of course it did, Kim thought, but her mind was focused on the only thing that had been left in the car.

‘Check for urine,’ Kim instructed, patting the carpet in the back of the car. There had to be a reason for the air freshener. He’d been trying to mask the smell of something, and he’d had a terrified eight-year-old girl in the back.

‘Anything else?’ Mitch asked, closing the front passenger door.

Kim stood away from the vehicle, wondering exactly what else it could tell them. She’d already seen there was no satnav that she could interrogate.