Page 106 of Twisted Lies

‘Ah, Percy. Hi,’ she answered, hoping he was ringing because he had something.

She unconsciously crossed the fingers on her left hand for luck.

‘Right, I can’t tell you much. The computer was pretty toasted, but we were able to get a look at the deleted information files.’

‘Go on,’ Stacey said. This was more than they could have hoped for.

‘There’s a block of emails, deleted, about eighty messages back and forth, all binned in one dump a couple of weeks ago. I can’t get to the content, but I can tell you the recipient’s name was Amelia Dixon.’

‘Percy, you are an absolute angel,’ Stacey said, ending the call.

‘Well, Penn, looks like our teaching assistant did have something to hide after all. Jacob Powell was the man corresponding with our ex-Matrix employee.’

He finally looked up and then back at the screen.

‘And he also owns a white Transit van.’

Eighty-Nine

‘I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall for a spat between those two,’ Bryant observed once they were back in the car.

‘Oh yeah, talk about a rock and a hard place,’ she agreed. ‘They’re both pretty hostile and—’

Bryant smirked. ‘Oh, the irony.’

‘Bryant, it’s way too early in the day for—’

She stopped speaking as her phone rang.

She put it on loudspeaker as Bryant drove them towards the home of Sarah Lessiter.

‘Penn,’ she said.

‘We’ve got a link from Jacob Powell to Amelia Dixon, boss,’ Penn said. ‘He sent the emails and he has a white Transit van that entered the Hayes Trading Estate on Saturday afternoon and left at 7a.m. Monday morning.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Bryant said as she felt that familiar stirring in her stomach.

‘Okay, get the warrant and get over to his house and take the place apart.’

‘Already on it, boss,’ he said. ‘Registration number has been added to Bryant’s earlier description and recirculated.’

‘Good job,’ she said as Bryant pulled up at the home of Sarah Lessiter.

She wanted to get back to the station and follow up this lead of the teaching assistant. She wanted every pair of eyes and hands trying to find him.

She was doubtful of what she was going to learn from Sarah’s family when they were already closing in on their killer.

Ninety

Stacey sat back and stretched her blurry eyes wide as Penn went tearing out the door, clutching the search warrant in his hand.

Even though she was now alone, she could feel the excitement of the investigation moving up a gear. Good old police detective work had uncovered solid links between the teaching assistant and stolen information from Amelia Dixon. But in her mind the evidence wasn’t strong enough. All they could prove was that Jacob and Amelia had corresponded by email and that Amelia’s computer had gone kaput. Convenient circumstantial evidence that would not convince a jury that, even if true, had led to four horrific deaths.

They needed more links between killer and victims, they needed forensic evidence to tie him to each and every murder, or they needed a confession.

But a confession was not going to happen until they found him. Hopefully, Penn was going to find a link at the man’s home, and she would try to find the connections between him and the victims.

She re-stretched her eyes once more and went back to the phone records laid out on her desk.