Page 69 of The Truth Will Out
She shook off the rain and asked, “What’s up?”
“This was left for us at the front desk by a youngster. He told the desk sergeant that someone wearing a hood asked him to drop it off.”
He held out a photo in his gloved hand. It was of the station car park. More importantly, it was focused on both Sam’s and Bob’s vehicles, taken from a distance. Scrawled across the bottom in smudged ink were the words,You brought the past into your present. Now watch it bleed.
Bob glanced at Sam as if he knew the answer to what the message meant. It was time to reveal the truth. “Let’s go upstairs. I have something I need to tell you.”
He huffed and puffed his way up the flight of concrete steps to the main office and threw himself into his chair. Crossing his arms, he demanded, “Let’s have it. I had a feeling you’ve been keeping me in the dark about something.”
“I haven’t… not intentionally. It’s only been a day or so since the first message arrived.”
“What message? Or should I say messages? Sam, we’re a bloody team. I should have been told. I know you’re suffering from trust issues at the moment, I get that, but bloody hell…”
“I was in the wrong. I’m sorry. You have every right to be mad at me.” She handed him the phone, and he read the messages she had received.
“Jesus, this is serious. Wait a minute… yesterday, when you rushed outside… why? What did you see?”
“I believe the killer was out there, watching me. I caught aglimpse of someone and decided to run downstairs to challenge the person, but they legged it before I could get there.”
“But you denied it, said it was your imagination when I suggested… Why didn’t you tell me? You do realise how dangerous that could have been?”
“I do now. It won’t happen again. You know what all of this means, don’t you?”
“Let me guess… that we’re closing in on him or her. For all we know, this Renshaw woman might be the killer.”
She nodded, a lump forming in her throat that she struggled to shift. Rather than break down in front of her partner, she made them both a coffee. While she was doing this, the rest of the team arrived. Bob took the pressure off her and filled the team in himself about the messages Sam had received.
“We need to trace the phone they came from,” Nick suggested. “I can do that, or should I say, I know a man who can do it for us.”
Sam gave him the thumbs-up. “Get on it ASAP, Nick.”
Nick’s friend came up trumps within an hour. The message was traced to a phone which was on and located at a derelict warehouse near the harbour in Whitehaven. Sam and Bob drove to the location. They found signs of someone having recently been there, but they were already gone. They were about to leave when Sam spotted something poking out from one of the crates.
“What’s this?” She removed a pair of gloves from her pocket and slipped them on. “It’s a folder.”
Sam opened it, and inside she found newspaper articles about Pendle House. Each of them had circles around a specific name: Claire Owen, Weller, Trigg, Rhys. And now… she rubbed at her eyes, not believing what she was reading. One more name she had not been expecting: Bob Jones. There was a final page that had one word written on it:
DECIDE.
Bob stared at her.“What does that mean?”
Sam’s mind was spinning. “It means we’ve run out of time.”
The killer was closing in.
They drove back to the station in silence.
Bob followed her from the car through the reception area and into her office at her request. He closed the door as she lowered the blind.
They both took a seat.
Sam glared at him, not knowing how to begin the conversation. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Why is your name in that file, Bob? The truth. Don’t give me any bullshit. I deserve to be told the truth, so tell me.”
Bob rubbed his hands together, his gaze fixed on the wall behind her. “It’s not what it seems.”
“Isn’t it? I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Sam, you’ve got to trust me. Doesn’t all our years working together as partners mean anything to you?”
