Page 31 of First Blood
‘Neighbours, workmates?’ Dawson offered.
‘Yep, well volunteered, Dawson,’ Kim replied.
‘Still need to know about phone records first and the CCTV second,’ she instructed. ‘I want to know more about this woman that Luke Fenton contacted on Facebook. What is she to him, is this the mother of the child who was in his home?’
Stacey nodded her understanding.
‘And Bryant, find out who is running the murder investigation in Wolverhampton.’
She had a meeting with Woody in ten minutes and she just wanted the heads-up on who was going to be doing the handover.
She reached for the phone as she stepped into the bowl. They really needed to find out what was on that second computer belonging to Luke Fenton.
Roy answered on the second ring.
‘Good morning to you, Inspector.’
‘Anything?’ she asked.
He paused.
‘Yeah, good morning,’ she offered as an afterthought.
‘Jerry’s working on the computer right now but it’s locked up tighter than a duck’s…’
‘Don’t you have software that can break in?’
‘You know, for a police officer you watch way too many cheesy cop shows. Yes, we have software and no sooner it’s been tested and implemented some spotty teenager comes up with a workaround. We have to make sure there’s no destruction software that will annihilate the data if we get too close to it.’
‘Annihilate?’ she questioned.
‘Using terms you can understand,’ he said, with a smile in his voice.
‘Yeah, thanks but if you’ve got nothing in the next few hours, I’m finding the nearest spotty teenager and sending him over to assist,’ she said, ending the call.
Her fingers began drumming on the desk in frustration. Whatever the hell was on that computer was important. Her mind pictured a hammer crashing down on it to open the whole thing up. But until they could access the info it looked as though they were all going door to door to find out more about the man.
She reached for her coat as her ears tuned into the conversation beyond her door.
‘So, what age did you make DS?’ Dawson asked Bryant.
‘Thirty-two,’ he answered, without looking up from his two-finger typing practice.
‘Jesus, that old. I got there at twenty-five,’ he crowed.
‘Good for you,’ Bryant mumbled.
‘You take the exam?’ Dawson pushed.
‘Yeah, I took it.’
‘More than once?’ Dawson asked, keenly, as though he was scoring points with every answer.
Bryant ignored him.
‘Cos if you fail it twice, statistically that means you’re never gonna…’
‘You wanna talk statistics, Dawson?’ Kim asked, standing in the doorway. ‘How about the fact that in the last five years Bryant has achieved a total of one hundred and forty-two arrests as opposed to your record of ninety-six. Or shall we talk about conviction records based on those arrests? Bryant’s arrests have accumulated a conviction rate running at ninety-three per cent against yours which is in the low eighties. So, which one of those statistics would you like to?—’
