Page 38 of Their Burning Graves
‘Not at all, but it wasn’t Sally, it was one of Tim’s classmates.’
‘I rang her back on the mobile number we have on record as his next of kin, of course it was her.’
‘I’m sorry but you didn’t. Tim opened the letter before his parents got home from work, and the next morning he stole his mum’s mobile and got a friend to phone the school pretending to be her. His parents had no idea what was going on with him, they also to our knowledge weren’t in the middle of splitting up.’
Ian’s mouth opened, then closed as he tried to process what he’d just been told. ‘They weren’t?’
Amy shook her head. ‘What we believe happened is that he got involved in this online game and that was taking up all of his time. We really need to know what it was and whether anyone else played it. For all we know his killer could find more victims this way, so we need to find him and stop him before anyone else gets hurt.’
‘Sorry, I’m trying to get my head around the level of deviousness Tim displayed. Who pretended to be his mum?’
‘I can’t disclose that, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble when there’s a lot going on. The night of the murders, Tim walked home with another older-looking lad. He may have been wearing a uniform but it’s hard to tell from the CCTV footage and he was wearing a hooded top. Can you tell us who his friends are, if he hung around with any older boys?’
‘I don’t know, in school he was good friends with Ava Rigg.’ He stopped talking and stared at Amy. ‘It was Ava, wasn’t it? She phoned up pretending to be his mum, that’s the kind of thing she would do.’
‘Like I said, I can’t disclose that to you. Can you write down a list of his friends, and is it possible to speak to them?’
Mr Mackintosh looked angry; he was annoyed that he’d been played by a couple of teenagers.
‘Well, I suppose you’ve talked with Ava; she lives near to Tim. Then there’s Josh, Shane, Carl, aside from them he kind of kept to himself. I don’t know about anyone he might have associated with out of school.’
‘Have you heard the name Isaiah? Did he ever mention any friends who were called that?’
‘As in out of the Bible?’
‘Maybe, we were thinking more along the lines of a mate called that.’
‘Definitely not. I’ll go and round up Josh, Shane and Carl though; you can use this classroom to speak to them.’
‘Thank you, we’ll need an appropriate adult, can you sit in?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t, I have class very soon; however, I can ask one of the TAs to sit in.’
He walked out of the door leaving them staring at each other. Cain smiled at Amy.
‘I think he’s really pissed that Tim got one over on him. Do you think he holds a grudge? If he does that poor Ava is going to have a miserable year at school.’
‘Surely not, that wouldn’t be very professional of him, and besides I never grassed on her for that reason. She has enough to contend with losing her friend. She doesn’t need some angry teacher breathing down her neck.’
While they waited for the Tim’s friends to be rounded up, Amy took out her phone and texted Morgan.
The teacher doesn’t know anything about Isaiah, but he asked if it was like out of the Bible.
Slipping her phone back in her pocket she looked around at the creepy mannequins, glad that she didn’t have to work down here alone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Morgan was alone in the office for a change, Ben had gone to speak to the DI, Amy had taken Cain to Tim’s school, and she was catching up on her emails. The desk phone began to ring.
‘Morning, CID.’
‘Morning, is this Morgan Brookes?’
‘It is, how can I help?’
‘It’s Bev, from the high-tech unit at headquarters. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve sent you an email with the images downloaded from the phone you sent in, for you to look at. There were only a few recent ones and an older album, so I’ve sent them all. Not like my phone where I’ve got almost two thousand that I can’t decide what to do with. I’ve also started working on the laptop that has had a fast-track request. It’s early days but I can tell you whoever was using this they were connected to the Dark Web a lot.’
Morgan felt a chill run down her spine at the thought of Tim using the Dark Web. She didn’t know a lot about it, but it couldn’t be a good thing. It was a hiding place used by child abusers, drug dealers, criminals, to name a few. The sick feeling in her stomach made her put her mug of coffee down.
