Harry sensed Liz standing behind him but didn’t take his eyes from the files. ‘Something’s nagging at me, you know? Like I’ve an itch I need to scratch, but I just can’t find it.’
Liz sat down to Harry’s left. ‘They were in a gang, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘John and that Barry bloke, and Nick. With three others.’
‘Yeah, I saw that,’ Harry said, scanning the pages of one logbook before closing it and quickly moving onto the next.
‘Right little buggers the lot of them,’ Liz said. ‘Can you imagine teaching kids like that? Always running off or causing trouble or whatever? And we think our job’s hard!’
Harry wasn’t listening. He’d found something. It was there, staring back at him, and a few dots were starting to join up. Not enough to take him all the way to the person responsible, but they had to be followed.
‘Liz,’ he said, ‘remember what Jaydn was saying about those re-enactors? Well, I think he might just have been onto something . . .’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harry had the rest of the team in front of him and at his side on top of a table, a laptop. It had just gone nine in the morning but looked darker than nine at night. Outside, the day’s weather had eased off just enough to downgrade itself from apocalyptic to your everyday torrential downpour, guaranteed to chill you to your bones and make you feel that everything was, in actual fact, a bit rubbish. The thunder had rolled on to go and pester another area of the country, but the sky was still as grey as the sea. Clouds tumbled into each other as waves, tossing hapless birds around like shipwrecked sailors.
To make sure that everyone was absolutely up to speed with what was happening, the team had gone through the case file and read through witness statements, as well as any other additional evidence or information that had come in, such as the paint found at the house of the third victim. And now it was time to be getting on with the day ahead. The only one not there was Liz, but she’d promised to be back for midday once she’d had a chance to get her head down for a while. Harry had been on the phone to the head teacher as well, but she’d been able to offer nothing more on what Harry had found in the files, in the main because she had only been at the school herself for three years, but also because there were no other files. What Harry had in front of him, well, that was it.
‘Right, then,’ he said, clapping his hands together in an attempt to get their attention, ‘we’re going to watch a movie!’
‘What about popcorn?’ Matt asked. ‘I can go and get some if you want? Can’t have a movie without popcorn.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve already sorted that,’ Harry said, then gave a nod to Jim. ‘You mind handing it out?’
Jim stood up and, from a bag at Harry’s feet, pulled out some bags of Spar’s own brand sweet and salted.
Harry was a little bit unsure as to why he’d gone to the trouble, as it wasn’t a behavioural trait most people who knew him at all would have immediately associated with him. But he was strangely pleased he had, as he watched everyone grab a bag and tuck in. He also hoped that if they were relaxed it would help them all think a little clearer.
‘First though,’ Harry said, ‘has everyone been introduced to our surprise new addition, PC Okri?’
Harry watched as Jaydn stood up, cast a rather large and imposing shadow over everyone, gave a small and embarrassed wave, then sat down again, clearly wishing that he’d just stayed in his chair in the first place.
‘From what I understand, he’s volunteered to come over from Catterick and join us over here. Not sure how long for, exactly, but I’m sure he’ll be very useful.’
‘At last,’ Jim said, ‘someone else to make the tea.’
‘And do the cake run,’ Matt added.
Gordy was first with the questions about what it was they were actually going to watch and asked, ‘So, what have we got, then? Dodgy home movies? Snuff?’
‘Well, no to the former,’ Harry said, ‘and it’s been pretty much proven that the latter is little more than an urban myth.’
‘Or so you say,’ Matt chipped in.
Harry folded his arms. ‘What we do have is something I had to find on the internet,’ he said. ‘And before any of you start whispering or rumour mongering, the reason I had to, is because that’s the only place I could find it. What we’re about to watch isn’t something you can buy anywhere. It’s simply not available. Also, I’m pretty surprised that I found it at all, because I wasn’t actually expecting to find it, seeing as I wasn’t looking for it. If you know what I mean.’
Jim raised a hand and received a nod from Harry, who was already pretty sure, from the looks on everyone’s faces, that no, they didn’t know what he meant, at all.
‘So how does this relate to the case?’ Jim asked.
‘Right, yes,’ Harry said. ‘I was looking through the files from the school and I came across a mention of a government information film.’
Harry could see only blank expressions facing him now, which was understandable, he thought, because he knew he wasn’t really making that much sense as yet.
‘It wasn’t the fact that it was a government information film that caught my attention,’ Harry said, ‘but its title.’ And that this, he
