for just the frame, Dobbie,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘And not restored models either. The ones getting silly money are original models that have been kept wrapped in tissue paper and bubble wrap for fifty years.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘I’ll be there, Dobbie,’ she said, knowing she had little choice. He had possession of the frame and, as she knew, that was nine-tenths of the law.
‘Fanbloodytastic,’ he said.
She could hear him smacking his lips as he salivated in anticipation.
She held the phone away from her ear.
‘And don’t you dare sell it before I get there,’ she shouted before ending the call.
She swallowed down her rage. She’d deal with Dobbie tomorrow. Right now, she had to study the second letter that was addressed to her.
She reloaded it to her phone and the words lit up the screen.
DI Stone
I told you that you needed to stop me. I begged you. I told you this would happen. I had no fucking choice. Do you not understand that? You have failed me, and you have failed the woman who is now dead. Her blood is on your hands. She is dead because of you, and you have to live with yourself just like me.
Well, DI Stone, I’m afraid I can’t help you any further. You fucked up. You didn’t catch me. I asked you to fucking listen to me. I thought you were different. I thought you got it, but I was wrong. I pinned my hopes on you to make this end and I should have known better. You’re just like everyone else. You didn’t fucking listen.
I cannot tell you what I am going to do next, as I do not even know that myself.
But you can be sure that more people are going to die.
Noah
Even she could see the difference in tone from the first letter. She had a murderer who had set his sights on her personally and now that murderer was very pissed off.
Thirty-Seven
Stacey leaned over and kissed Devon on the cheek. ‘Thanks, love.’
‘Want me to wait?’
Stacey shook her head. An immigration officer, Devon had been on a late-night raid. She’d walked in the door at 4 a.m., too wired to go straight to sleep, and had offered to drive Stacey to the prison. Stacey knew she should think about learning to drive, but in truth, the longer she left it the more frightening it became.
She yawned. ‘I could just pop my head down here for a…’
‘It’s not a sign, is it, D?’ Stacey asked.
‘Is what not a sign of what?’ she asked with a look that asked if she’d said that right.
‘The cake?’ Stacey asked.
Despite her fatigue, Devon opened her eyes widely.
‘Babe, we’ve booked a photographer, flowers, ushers, a DJ and catering without a hitch, but you wanna call it off because Aunt Abebi can’t make our cake?’
The smile behind her eyes spoke volumes of Devon’s tolerance levels when Stacey’s thoughts were carrying her away.
Truth was, there were still times she couldn’t believe that the gorgeous, intelligent, funny woman by her side had chosen her to spend the rest of her life with.
Devon reached across and squeezed her arm. ‘Babe, I’ll marry you in the high street with a bouquet of daisies, my camera phone, a supper from the chippy and a jam doughnut if it means you’ll become my wife, so…’
‘I bloody love you, woman, now go home and get some rest,’ Stacey said, leaning across and kissing her on the cheek. Devon wasn’t due into work until 2 p.m., so she could get some quality sleep in bed.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Devon said as Stacey got out the car.
She approached the entrance to the prison and looked back. She was not surprised to note that the engine on the Clio had been switched off and the driver’s seat reclined.
Devon was waiting for her.
She shook her head as that familiar glow ignited inside her again. She was a very lucky girl.
The entrance to the prison looked pretty standard to her, even though Stacey was not a frequent visitor to male prisons.
Featherstone was a category C prison housing approximately seven hundred inmates. Stacey remembered reading that in the early 1980s inmates of the prison were caught making forgeries of the work of Bernard Leach. At the turn of the millennium, the place was revealed to have the highest number of drug-using prisoners in the UK, with a whopping thirty-four per cent getting high on something, even if it was the beer they made using Marmite, fruit and vegetables. Stacey often wondered how such