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‘Of course. Thanks so much for calling back.’
She’d been hoping she’d read the sergeant’s signs right and that he would call her back once he was on a break.
‘Yeah, I hope you understand.’
‘I do,’ Stacey assured him.
‘Also I wanted to check with one of my buddies. He’s retired now but just wanted to make sure I’d got the right person.’
So unofficially there was something, she thought, allowing her hope to grow.
‘If I remember rightly, he wasn’t a very likeable chap. Had a high expectation of police responsibilities in relation to his church. For the most part we just appeased him, but there was one time when we had cause to speak to him. A woman came in and made a complaint of assault. He’d pushed her and shoved her out of the church and on to the pavement, so hard she’d fallen and banged up her knee.’
‘How did this not result in a formal…?’
‘Complainant withdrew all charges. An hour after speaking to us she had a brick thrown through her shop window. She reckoned it was him. She was scared and withdrew any complaint. Changed her story to tripping and falling. Nothing we could do.’
There was no way Stacey would put intimidation beyond Father George’s many charms, but something else occurred to her.
‘You say shop window?’
‘Yeah, she’s gone now but she had one of those hippy shops in the High Street. It was all candles and crystals and stuff.’
‘She was a spiritualist?’ Stacey asked.
‘Not sure what you’d call her, but the tourists loved her.’
‘Anything else?’
‘That’s your lot. Not sure if it helps or not.’
‘It does, Sergeant. It really does. Thanks for taking the time to call me back.’
Stacey ended the call and immediately sent the boss a text message. When she’d finished, she looked up to see Penn staring at her.
‘Really sorry I’ve not been here to help, Stace. This thing kicked up a gear.’
‘I didn’t even know this thing was still a thing. I thought you were just updating the homeless guy on the man’s identity.’
‘I was, but…’
‘There’s always a but with you, Penn,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘But go on, I’ll humour you, and if your “but” is interesting enough, I won’t tell the boss you’ve been missing in action all day.’
‘He didn’t lose the bet,’ Penn said, retrieving some paperwork from his man bag.
Stacey found herself taking a couple of steps backwards to refresh in her own mind what Penn was talking about.
Richard reappeared, carrying the roses delivered earlier. The sight of them brought bile to the back of her throat.
‘I found a pint glass in the cupboard,’ he said of his impromptu arrangement. ‘Someone had thrown them in the sink.’
‘Just put them over there,’ she said, pointing to a space next to the printer.
‘Ooooh, special day?’ Penn asked.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ she said, sure her colleague could sense her increased heart rate. For a while she’d forgotten all about them and all about Terence Birch, but now he was front and centre again.
No, she wasn’t having this. He was not going to paralyse her thoughts so that she couldn’t do her job. She pushed him to the back of her mind and picked up on her conversation with Penn.
