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Bryant lowered his hand.
‘Penn, can you work with Stace once you’ve put the other thing to bed and tucked it in?’
‘Hey, boss,’ Stacey said. ‘I got an address for the kid who was with Bradley Foster on the day he disappeared. Josh Adams lives on Hollytree.’
‘Which bit?’
Stacey pulled a face, indicating it was the worst bit. One of the three tower blocks that rose up from the centre.
‘Text it to Bryant.’
She saw the brief look of disapproval that passed over his face, but it was worth a ten-minute chat with the guy. They had nothing to lose, and if there was anything they could do to ease Rose’s loss then they would.
And while they were on the subject of nothing to lose.
‘Hey guys. If anyone has a camel coat, it’s worth checking the pockets.’
She was aware of the looks from her team as she headed into the Bowl to grab her coat.
They were wondering if she’d lost her mind, and she was half wondering if they were right.
FORTY-FIVE
Stacey let out a sigh of relief as the office emptied around her after the briefing. Richard didn’t know her well enough to recognise the tension she’d been holding and the supreme effort it had taken to appear her normal self.
She didn’t do well on little sleep at the best of times but last night she’d been unable to get the image of Terence Birch out of her mind.
When standing at the window, she’d blinked and he’d gone, leaving her to wonder if she had really seen him there at all.
Her logical, sensible brain had told her that she’d been seeing things. That there was no reason for the man to be outside staring up at her window. It was a view she’d enforced to herself while taking a shower.
She’d been about to call Devon and then realised how ridiculous it would sound that she thought she’d seen a man she’d interviewed recently, standing in a restricted area, staring up at their bedroom window.
No, she must have been mistaken, she told herself repeatedly.
She had dried herself, dressed and continued their evening as though nothing had happened. She’d pushed the food around her plate until it looked like she’d eaten something and pretended to watchDownton. She had no clue what had happened in the episode, and hadn’t even realised what she was doing until Devon asked her if she had a dodgy stomach.
‘No, why?’ she answered, feeling the heat flood her face as she retook her seat on the sofa.
‘That’s the third time you’ve been to the loo. You sure you’re okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ she’d reassured Devon with a squeeze of the hand.
She hadn’t been to the loo once. She’d repeatedly visited the bedroom window to take another look outside, either to see if he was still there or to talk herself out of what she thought she’d seen in the first place.
At around 11.30p.m., she’d feigned a headache and headed off to bed, where she had lain in the darkness playing the event over and over in her mind. She’d felt Devon get into bed an hour later and had been lying in the darkness long after. She guessed she’d dropped off somewhere around 3a.m., only to wake a couple of hours later to immediately check the window again.
Her conscious mind was trying to find all kinds of loopholes for what she’d seen, including trying to convince her that she hadn’t really seen it at all. With every hour that passed, the more convinced she became that the vision had been nothing more than a trick of the light.
Focus, focus, focus, she told herself over and over while looking at the rough notes of tasks from the boss.
Given what they’d learned about Father George’s hands-on approach to certain members of his congregation, she decided to start there.
She looked down the list of the placements and found herself gravitating towards the shortest stays. Gloucestershire was barely a year and wasn’t too far away. Although she knew that no criminal charges had ever been filed against him, she knew that complaints didn’t always result in a charge. Due to the time that had elapsed, Stacey knew trying to track down anyone from the church might be a problem, but she had a long shot she was willing to try. Just because Father George had never been charged didn’t mean he wasn’t known.
Gloucestershire Constabulary served 1,024 square miles and 637,000 people with approximately twelve hundred full-time police officers. She didn’t want the headquarters of the force. They probably wouldn’t know anything, but the neighbourhood station might. She searched for the details of his placement and saw that he’d been just on the outskirts of Tewkesbury. Tewkesbury had its own station.
She rang the number, not exactly sure what she was going to say. It was only when the line was answered that it came to her.
