Page 33 of Twisted Lies
‘Morning, folks, hope you all slept well,’ Kim said once her team was fully assembled.
The response was a collection of affirmative noises.
She had worked on her new project for a couple of hours, taken Barney for his late-night walk and then worked on the bike some more, hoping exhaustion would rid her mind of the images she’d seen. Every time she closed her eyes, the picture of Keith Phipps’s scorched and tortured body had thundered into her mind. She had attended countless crime scenes during her career. She had seen bodies in the most horrific states, but for many she had been able to console herself that the victim’s end had come quickly, that their suffering had been minimal. Never had she been faced with such a slow and horrific torture where there was no such consolation. Added to that knowledge was the basic understanding of the pain. All of them had been scalded by hot water at some point or sustained a minor burn from a hob or cooker and knew how uncomfortable it could be. Magnify that by a thousand and she suspected it wouldn’t come close to what Keith Phipps had suffered.
She’d finally given up on sleep when a dream of a pig roast had woken her at 5a.m. quicker than an adrenaline shot.
‘Good, let’s get to it. By the end of the day, I want to know everything there is to know about this family, and I don’t care who you need to sleep with to get it.’
‘Boss, I’m a married woman,’ Stacey said with dramatic mock offence.
‘Yeah, Stace, you might have mentioned that a few hundred times,’ Kim said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s all on you then, Penn.’
‘Cool,’ he said, taking the tie-dyed bandana from his drawer. It was his way of resigning himself to a day spent primarily in the office. If he ventured out, he would lose the bandana and apply some of the magic potion that kept his blond curls at bay.
‘Okay, between the two of you I want those vehicles in and out of the trading estate whittled down to something sensible. I want you to track down the vehicle that assisted the Phippses in moving so quickly, and I want to know where the family is now. We need to confirm they’re safe and find out what they’re trying to hide.’
‘What about after lunch?’ Stacey asked with a smile.
‘Get the medical records for the whole family, and once you’ve done that you can do some searches on similar incidents elsewhere. Enough?’
Stacey laughed out loud. ‘Gor it, boss.’
‘Sounds like they need me to stay and help,’ Bryant offered.
‘Oh yeah, Bryant, with your technical skills I’m sure you’d be a huge asset to them.’
‘We’re good, Bryant,’ Penn offered with a smile.
Bryant clutched his heart, as though mortally wounded.
‘Sorry, Bryant, but you’re coming with me back to the crime scene,’ she said, pushing herself off the desk.
And she had just one important call to make before they got there.
Twenty-Five
Of course, the perception of journalism was nothing like the reality, Frost mused, as she typed the place name of Preston into the electoral register.
She’d once dreamed of the glamour of hopping on planes and trains with a moment’s notice to cover a breaking story. The excitement and adrenaline of picking up a thread that led to an original piece that won prestigious awards. Writing something different to the facts every other tabloid or station was covering. Yes, that might be the experience of some of her peers, but it wasn’t true for her.
In her case, there were many hours desk-bound, chasing down basic facts and figures. Not quite so glamorous. Added to that she’d never figured on being a detective or fathomed just how monotonous that could be.
Sometimes information didn’t fall into your lap as easily as you wanted it to. Sometimes it was like digging a grave with a spoon.
Like now. There was nowhere she could go to find out where Ariane Debegorski currently lived. An old Instagram account had shown the woman at various beauty spots and places of interest around the Midlands. All searches of the electoral register locally had turned up nothing.
Further interrogation of her old social media showed her with friends who had visited from Lancashire. Logic told her that if a woman was scared enough to move out of the area, she might move somewhere with some familiarity, some people that she knew.
So she’d focused her search in the north-west of the country and was working her way through as many place names as she could find. It was one of those jobs that you felt might not get done before retirement; but then what if the next place you tried yielded a result? Using the advanced search, she could enter an age range to narrow the selection, but still she could search only by town and not county.
And so she continued to consult her map and type in the names.
Pendleton
No results found
‘What?’ she said out loud as her phone began to ring. ‘Oh,’ she mumbled, seeing Stone’s number flashing on her screen.
