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‘On my way,’ she said, heading for the door.
TWENTY-NINE
Kim took the time to check the news headlines on the way back to the station, in lieu of checking the PNC once she was back in her office, to see if there had been any updates about Terence Birch.
The nagging voice in her head urged her to contact Vik, but she wasn’t sure how to do it without raising suspicion.
Ah, sod it, she thought as she took out her phone. Her need to know by far trumped her fears of how it might look to her old colleague.
He answered on the second ring.
‘You again,’ he said. She couldn’t tell if his voice had a touch of humour or an edge of irritation. ‘You always were like a dog with a bone.’
‘Yeah, just at a loose end and wondered if you’d found anything at his home I should know about?’
‘Like what?’
Jeez, he wasn’t making this easy for her.
‘I dunno. Just anything out of the—’
‘I’m just messing with you. I get it. Sometimes we get attached to witnesses during big cases. I get your concern, and you know we’re going to do everything we can to find whoever did this. We’re actually on our way over to his place right now,’ he said, and Kim’s heart skipped a beat. ‘I’ll give you a call if there’s anything to report.’
‘Cheers, Vik,’ she said, knowing their next conversation was going to be very different.
‘Shit is about to get real,’ Kim said as Bryant pulled into the station car park.
‘As we knew,’ Bryant said quietly.
They got out of the car, and although Kim had said little to Bryant about the two men awaiting them, she was already pretty sure these were the first of many false leads that would be coming their way thanks to the Sentinel. She’d deal with them swiftly and get back to the investigation.
‘Go check in with the others while I get rid of these timewasters,’ she instructed as they entered the building.
‘Got it, guv,’ he said, key coding himself through the door.
She approached Jack’s glass partition. ‘Okay, which one killed someone?’ she asked, taking a look at the two men who sat with two spare seats between them.
The man on the left was in his early twenties, wearing jeans and a blue tee shirt. A sports jacket lay on the seat beside him. His curly black hair brushed the top of his collar. He was leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees.
The man on the right wore black trousers and a white shirt and hadn’t looked up from the book he was reading.
‘Guy on the left,’ Jack said, pointing with his pen. ‘Name’s Philip Drury.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, heading over and standing between the two of them.
‘Mr Drury?’
Both men looked up, and the man on the left nodded. She turned to the other one. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
‘Take your time. I’ve just got to the good bit.’
He held up a book entitledThe Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language.
Kim wondered what the good bit was actually going to be.
She said nothing and motioned for Drury to follow her through the locked doors.
She passed interview room one which was engaged – with the sexual assault, Kim guessed. She guided Drury into interview room two, and indicated for him to take a seat as she did the same.
