Deadly Cry (DI Kim Stone #13) - Angela Marsons Page 0,86

one for each set of crimes.

Immediately, he could see that they were not identical. Some had more curves and others had more straight lines. He moved around them and found commonalities in some but not all.

He took a bandana from his pocket and tied back the curls that were already breaking free from the holding gel and falling over his eyes as he looked down.

The more he observed, the more his brain became overwhelmed with data and possibilities. He moved position and looked again. Sometimes just glancing away from a situation for a few seconds was enough to offer a fresh perspective. Still nothing jumped out at him.

He stroked his chin as he realised he was trying to solve seven different puzzles at the same time.

He’d already scanned the images and googled them, trying to match them with any kind of ancient symbols or hieroglyphs, but nothing had shown as a match.

It was too much, he realised, as his eyes darted from one sheet to another. It was overload, distracting.

He gathered up the sheets and placed them on the desk, holding back the first from the burglary over ten years earlier.

His cluttered brain breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at the single sheet, but something still wasn’t right. The scratches were separate but contained on one sheet of paper. There was no fluidity, no movement.

He had an idea.

‘You got any scissors, Stace?’ he said, stepping out of the Bowl.

‘Life ain’t that bad,’ she said, reaching into her drawer. ‘And there are easier ways.’

He took the scissors and stepped back into the Bowl.

He sat on the floor and cut out the individual scratches and discarded the surplus white paper.

His legs were formed into a v shape with the cut outs set before him.

Now he had the fluidity to move them around. Place them against each other, upside down and back to front.

He changed their position time and time again like a magician performing a hidden-object-under-a-cup trick.

‘Damn it, it’s still…’ his words ran out of steam as he put the first and last pieces together. The arcs of the two symbols together appeared to form a perfect zero.

‘Hang on one second,’ he said as the other pieces slid together in his mind’s eye.

He looked at what the scratches had formed.

‘No bloody way,’ he said, shaking his head at the simplicity.

He stood and reached for the rest of the sheets and began cutting as quickly as he could.

Eighty-Nine

‘How long’s he been in there?’ Kim asked, peering through the glass into her office.

Penn, sitting cross-legged on the floor, had acknowledged her presence with a wave before returning to his project.

‘About an hour,’ Stacey said. ‘Only came out for scissors and glue.’

‘What the bloody?…’

‘Boss, you know what he’s like trying to solve a puzzle.’

Yes, she did. And that was the only thing stopping her from storming in and kicking both him and his art project out the window.

Kim leaned against the printer cupboard at the top of the room.

‘Well, I hope once he collects his Blue Peter badge he can tell us how we find our guy Noah, who by all accounts, is a jolly nice chap.’

‘Who has no intention of stopping,’ Alison said, having read the response Kim had screen-shotted over to her.

‘But, boss,’ Stacey said, ‘there’s been a few developments here, and Alison and I think we might be dealing with—’

‘It’s a score card,’ Penn said, storming out of her office. ‘He’s keeping score with someone,’ he added, crossing the office with a sheaf of papers and sitting at his desk.

‘Penn, what the hell are?…’

Alison nodded her agreement. ‘That would make perfect sense with the conclusion Stacey and I reached about five minutes ago.’

‘Which is?’ Kim asked, getting whiplash looking from one to the other.

‘That we’re dealing with two killers, not one.’

Ninety

Kim could feel the frown forming on her face.

‘You’re telling me I’ve been gone a few hours and we’ve gained a killer?’

‘Makes sense,’ Penn said, holding the sheaf of papers while he wrote something on the board.

‘Noah told us everything happens in pairs,’ Stacey offered, taking the lead on giving her an explanation.

‘Of those pairs on the board, the phone that contacted Nicola Southall yesterday sent a text message to another phone saying “tick”.’

‘Like a clock?’ Bryant asked.

‘Nope, I think it’s tick like the game?’ Stacey said. ‘Which basically means you’re on or it’s your turn. I played it with my cousins as a kid. That message is followed by a similar crime within a day. It’s like goading, a