sensing there was a deep layer of love beneath his irritation. This man was not taking lives in a sick, twisted rivalry with his sister. Their whole theory had been blown to smithereens.
‘Okay, Mr Nock, thanks…’ her words trailed away as something occurred to her. ‘You said something about “all of you”?’ As opposed to just the two of them, she thought. They had made a foolish assumption. ‘How many siblings are there?’
‘Four altogether. Ella’s the eldest and I’m the youngest, so I wasn’t really on her radar. If you really want to know how bad she can be, you should talk to my older brother. He hates her guts, and the two of them haven’t spoken for years.’
Ninety-Five
‘Nothing upstairs,’ Penn said, meeting Stacey in the hallway, ‘except a master bedroom, a comfortable guest room and a small boxroom for anything that doesn’t fit in the other two rooms. Guest room shows no evidence of being used recently.’
Penn had trailed his finger through a very light layer of dust on the bedside cabinets.
‘Nothing in any of the rooms downstairs either that I can see,’ Stacey said. ‘No sign of a child having been here, no wrappers or anything in the bins and they’ve not been emptied for a couple of days.’
Penn tried hard to quell the unease in his stomach. He remembered one time he’d been driving his mum and Jasper to a hospital appointment when his brother had an ingrown toenail. His mum had directed them by memory to the hospital, and despite her insistence he’d felt they were going the wrong way. Every metre he’d driven, he’d known he was going in the wrong direction and moving away from the destination.
That knowledge had stoked a fire of aggravation in his stomach, knowing they had an appointment to keep, that they were running out of time. And that’s how he felt now.
Somehow, somewhere they had taken a wrong turn; despite all the clues and pointers, this dog was barking up the wrong tree.
‘We have to be right, Penn,’ Stacey said, reading his expression, ‘Nothing else makes any sense.’
He knew Stacey was speaking with her brain and not with her instinct, but he couldn’t quieten his own.
Maybe his gut was guiding him wrong this time. He remembered what Lynne had said to him recently. He sometimes didn’t see the things that were right in front of him.
‘Okay, Stace, let’s swap. You take upstairs and I’ll do down here. Second sweep with fresh eyes.’
Stacey nodded her agreement.
With another murder imminent and a six-year-old boy still missing, they had to try and find something.
Ninety-Six
‘I’m not kidding, boss,’ Bryant said as they got in the car, ‘there was not one thing—’
‘I know. I believe you. I don’t think Andrew has hurt anyone. He’s the wrong sibling. If Ella is in some kind of twisted competition, it wouldn’t be with Andrew. He didn’t usurp her position; it would be with Steven, the next sibling born.’
‘Who also happens to be a sales manager for expensive holiday homes,’ Bryant noted as Kim took out her phone. Andrew had been kind enough to offer them his older brother’s phone number.
‘Straight to voicemail,’ she said as a low, deep voice kicked in. She ended the call.
‘Want me to head towards his?—’
‘No,’ Kim said, tapping the phone on her knee. Andrew had told them Steven lived on the outskirts of Bridgnorth. ‘Driving round trying to find siblings isn’t going to help us right now.’
‘But, guv, we might be on to something. We have to—’
‘I know, Bryant,’ she snapped. She too could feel the sand slipping through her fingers. They were running out of time. The response to the murder of Nicola Southall was imminent.
‘Maybe we have to stop focusing on the players and concentrate on the game,’ Kim said, picturing the wipe board back in the squad room.
‘Go on,’ Bryant said, switching off the engine and turning her way.
‘The crimes themselves come in pairs. The assault, the rape, the murder, they’re all pairs. Nicola Southall was the first of the pairing. How is our second killer going to respond? How are they going to match the challenge and in their own way surpass it?’
‘Another ex-soap star?’ Bryant asked.
‘Perhaps, but tracking one down and…’ Her words trailed away as the thoughts came thick and fast. ‘Not even a soap star, Bryant, but someone in the public eye. Maybe some other kind of celebrity?’
Their eyes met as he appeared to catch up with her.
‘Tyra Brooks, the footballer’s mistress.’
Kim checked her watch.