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They were from a Hotmail account and Stacey instantly pressed the view button, then scrolled to message and headers, which gave her a page of code. Her gaze instantly picked out the IP address.
Normally, once she had the IP address, she could approach the virtual private network and try to force them to give up the information by court order, but on this occasion she didn’t need to.
She checked her findings again.
Well, that didn’t make any sense.
FIFTY
Penn made a quick call to Stacey to say he’d been delayed and then headed into Stourbridge library. He could do what he wanted to do on his phone, but unlike his brother, he couldn’t negotiate a mobile keyboard as quickly or effectively as a real one.
He took the end computer in a row of three and typed in the month that Barry Sharpe had gone missing, and then he added Halesowen Town FC fixtures. Two videos came up. The first match was against Kidderminster Harriers and it had been a draw at one all. The second was a match against the Wordsley Wasps, and Halesowen had lost by one goal. The stats told him the goal had been scored in the seventy-seventh minute by Trevor Rollins against goalie Peter Matheson.
Penn dragged the cursor to the seventy-sixth minute and watched as Rollins worked his way around two defenders and then shot the ball into the net.
Penn sat back in the chair wondering what the hell he was thinking. He was sitting here watching a home-made video of two local football teams, while trying to make something out of nothing.
He shook his head before watching it again. No matter what his logical mind said, his gut was telling him he was on to something.
The second time he watched it, he didn’t feel it looked as natural as his first viewing. There was a pause, a stutter.
He watched it once again with the speed slowed down, only this time he wasn’t watching the guy with the ball; he was watching the one in the goal. Peter Matheson’s eyes never left the ball as it worked its way towards him. Both defenders were defeated and then it was just the striker and the goalkeeper.
Rollins paused.
Matheson paused.
But the slowed-down footage revealed that they didn’t reanimate at the same time. Rollins was just one second ahead of the goalie, who dived for the ball that swept past his fingers into the back of the net.
Penn kept the tab open and did a second search on Halesowen Town FC and the goalie’s name.
He watched the goal attempts in the four games previous and not once had the goalie hesitated for even a millisecond before committing himself to a save. He was on the floor, in the air, using every inch of his body to protect the goalmouth.
He returned to the footage of that one fateful game, and after watching the previous saves, Penn was more certain of one fact than he was of his own name.
Peter Matheson had thrown that match.
FIFTY-ONE
It took them a good ten minutes to walk from the home of Nancy Houseman in Baker Street to the edge of the woods where Bradley Foster had been abducted.
‘They said I’d go quicker if I had this new hip,’ Nancy said, putting all her weight on the walking stick. ‘They said it’d loosen up but it’s still stiff. Damn liars.’
Kim had offered to bring her in the car but she’d refused, saying she hadn’t yet completed her step count.
‘It was around here, wasn’t it?’ Kim asked as she stopped walking.
‘A bit further. I’d just come out of Jean’s, which is number eleven.’
Four houses down from where Kim had been standing.
‘And you first of all said that you’d seen a van?’ Kim clarified, already feeling this was a waste of time.
‘Well, no, I think I was asked about the van before I said I’d seen one. I saw the boy come thundering out of the woods on his bike, cos me and Jean were stood here talking for a few minutes. The police officer told me there had been a van over on the layby, so I nodded, but I didn’t remember seeing it. I knew she’d got the wrong end of the stick and it mithered me, so I went back to the police station to put her right. I’m not saying it wasn’t there, only that I can’t remember seeing it.’
Kim was no wiser now, but she had a sudden thought.
‘Was Jean interviewed?’
