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Kim wasn’t exactly sure of the appropriate response.
‘Okay, well, glad you found it,’ she said, grabbing her jacket.
Bryant waited until they were heading down the stairs. ‘Well, that was a bit weird.’
‘Coincidence,’ she offered.
‘Ain’t nothing Richard has told us that would explain away that. And you don’t believe in coincidences.’
‘Always an exception that proves the rule, and that’s all I’m gonna say.’
She chose not to mention the unease that had crawled into her stomach.
SIXTY-FOUR
‘Oh, bless her,’ Stacey said, spying Tiff standing in the corner of the theatre lobby.
‘You do realise that she’s a fully grown woman just a few years younger than you?’ Penn replied.
‘She just looks so lost and vulnerable.’
‘Which was exactly how she was supposed to look. She’s a police officer.’
Stacey turned her screen and showed him.
‘Okay, yeah, you’ve got a point. She looks about fourteen.’
‘Ah, here he comes,’ Stacey said, turning the screen back as the guy at the bar approached Tiff.
She paused the CCTV for a second and stood to reach for a Diet Coke beside the coffee machine. She’d placed them there so that each new can would give her the opportunity to look out the window, which gave her a good view of the car park and the main road.
It was barely 9a.m. and this was her second can. So far, nothing.
She was holding out real hope that her courage in confronting Terence Birch had done the trick. How she’d reached the other side of the road without her legs buckling she’d never know, but when she’d turned before entering the building, Birch had gone.
She’d returned to the sofa, downed half a bottle of wine and sat in silence, listening for any alien sound, until Devon had returned just after midnight.
She had woken with a fresh hope that it was all behind her and that Birch would have seen the error of his ways.
The flowers had been removed from her sight and placed in the bin in the ladies locker room.
And with that she was prepared to consider it a blot on the landscape of her happiness, keep it to herself and never think about it again.
She opened the can of Diet Coke and depressed the pause button on the footage. She knew exactly what Tiff’s conversation had been about so she focussed on the crowd. She wasn’t sure how she might pick out the blonde woman circled on the photo.
The camera angle was high and the people closest to the camera were only showing the tops of their heads. She could only see Tiff so easily because she was on the opposite side of the room.
Her gaze kept returning to the conversation over in the far corner. There was a subtle change in Tiff’s body language while talking to the guy. It was as though the tension had eased out of her and she was relaxing into the conversation. She credited Tiff on being a decent actress but she wasn’t that good. Her micro expressions were very revealing. She’d been telling the guy the truth about her grandmother and had opened herself up to all kinds of emotions; regret, sadness but above all else hope.
By the end of the conversation she was no longer the police officer tasked to do a job. She was the hopeful granddaughter hoping to connect with someone she loved. Now Stacey understood why Tiff had argued against the boss and Richard when they’d explained the techniques. Tiff had probably been hoping that the guy wasn’t the stooge. For Tiff’s piece of mind, Stacey wished she could give her that gift.
She watched as they parted company. Tiff headed towards the doors into the theatre with a tremulous look on her face.
The man approached the door to the gents and raised his hand.
Go in, go in, go in, she silently begged. It would be some confirmation that he wasn’t the stooge.
He looked behind to where Tiff had gone out of sight.
