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‘Nah, I was just thinking my day couldn’t get any worse and yet here you are.’ She turned to her colleague. ‘Get the car started. I won’t be long.’
‘Anything from those names I gave you?’ Frost asked while taking a look at the fire which was the reason for her presence. As soon as she knew there was no one inside, she’d most likely be on her way and not bother to cover it at all.
‘Not really, and I don’t think this’ll make it into your next article.’
‘Unlikely if there’s no human element and especially because I might be on to something else. A bit closer to home for you to be honest.’
‘Ah, Frost, what little lies are you making up now?’
Frost tossed her long blonde hair behind her. ‘There are times when you really wish I wasn’t very good at my job.’
‘Luckily for me, those times don’t come around very often. Now if you’ve—’
‘See, I heard this rumour from a friend of a friend that you’ve been particularly interested in a hit and run from earlier this week.’
Kim felt the blood chill in her veins. She kept her face devoid of expression.
‘It didn’t take me long to realise the victim was a previous witness of yours, but given your inability to form emotional attachments, I knew it wasn’t that simple. Turns out the man has quite the record for stalking; terrorised one family for a decade. Nope, that still doesn’t explain your interest in his death. Gotta be more to it than that. And then silly me starts putting a few other things together, like you being off your game, except it’s not you off your game, is it? So now I’m thinking that Birch turned his attention elsewhere, and then I’m thinking I’ve got a pretty good story here that—’
‘Is completely fictional and the result of an underactive psychotic mind.’
Great, after all their efforts to protect Stacey’s name, her worst nightmare had managed to put it all together. Damn it.
‘Ah, it’s true then. I got it right. You did the thing.’
‘What thing?’
Frost shrugged. ‘I’m not gonna tell you about the thing, cos then you’ll stop doing the thing and I’ll never be able to rely on the thing again.’
Kim stepped closer. ‘You repeat one word of that bollocks to anyone and—’
‘Stop threatening me, Stone,’ she said, stepping away from the finger wagging in her face. ‘There’s an easier way to get what you want.’
Kim was reminded of an experiment Woody had done on her and Bryant a few years ago. He’d instructed her to open his fist. She’d tried to pry it open with her fingernails and brute force. It was when she’d reached for his paper knife that Woody had asked Bryant to do the same thing. Her colleague had simply asked Woody to open his fist. And he had.
‘Frost, I’m asking you to leave it alone – please.’
‘Okay, consider it done.’
‘That easy?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘She’s a good kid. I like her. Now, if it had been you…’
‘Bye, Frost,’ Kim said, turning and heading for the car. Her mind was already swinging back to the case.
She took out her phone, but the caller had beaten her to it.
‘Penn, I really need anything you can get me on the kid that shared a cell with Eric and Paul.’
She’d learned that the majority of the bullying had been from those two, but he’d been seen as an easy mark for abuse. There could easily have been incidents including all six of them.
‘I’ll keep trying, boss, but there’s something you need to know. The prison officer that fell down the stairs. He had a son. And we already know his name.’
EIGHTY-ONE
Today they had no such luck of bumping into the person they wanted as he left for his lunchbreak. Instead, they’d requested his immediate presence at the hospital reception desk via Belinda the receptionist.
With a surname as common as Jones, it had taken a while for Penn and Stacey to ascertain that Curtis Jones was definitely the son of Richard Jones, the forty-three-year-old officer who had fallen to his death down the north staircase at Welton.
