He laughed. “You’ve made your point. Sorry, but I’m overruling you this time. I hope that doesn’t cause a rift between us.”
“No, it shouldn’t do. I trust you. I’m at fault for mollycoddling her unnecessarily. You go and have a good time.”
“We will, and you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t question how I bring our daughter up at least once a week.”
Katy’s mouth dropped open, and a pain developed in her chest as if her husband had just plunged a knife two inches into her heart. “What? I don’t.”
He laughed, perhaps realising he’d gone too far. “Sorry, I was only joking.”
Many a true word spoken in jest?
“I should hope so. I trust you implicitly, AJ, deep down you know that, right?”
“I do. Take it in the spirit it was meant, okay? Look, I have to go, Georgie is tugging on my leg to hurry up. I need to get her togged up, there’s a slight breeze out there today.”
“Okay. Take care and have a good time.”
“What? No added be careful at the end?”
“That as well. I love you. Thank you for taking care of our daughter so well, just in case I don’t say it enough.”
“You do. We love you too, don’t we, Georgie?”
“Yes, Mummy, love you. Daddy, I want to go now,” her daughter shouted excitedly.
“I have my orders. Will you be home the usual time this evening?”
“That’s the plan. I’ll tell you about my day when I get home.”
“Sounds ominous. Do you need to chat? I can hang around for another five minutes if you do.”
“No, you go. I was only checking in on my two favourite people in this world. Miss you, have fun.”
“We will. See you later.”
Katy ended the call and sipped at her coffee, her mind full of anxious scenarios that might crop up for AJ and Georgie at the adventure park. She shook her head to dislodge the images and refused to visit them again for the rest of the day.
She left her office and brought the team together. They went over the facts they had in place and Katy transferred everything to two whiteboards, ensuring they keep both crimes separate.
“Over here, we have the first victim, Jason Davis, whose car was torched. We’re aware what a vicious act that was and we believe we’re on the lookout for this young woman. What do we have on her yet? Anything?”
The team’s response was silence.
Dismayed, she shook her head. “I’m not liking your response.”
Charlie raised her hand to speak. “What else can we tell you? No matter how frustrating it is, the crunch is we have nothing.”
“Okay, let’s set that case aside for now and I want to bring you up to speed on the other case Charlie and I attended first thing. That of Bobby Simmonds. From the snippets of information we’ve managed to gather from his soon to be ex-wife and his parents, it would appear that the man was perhaps mown down by accident and left on the road to die. Except the pathologist is suggesting a very different scenario, that Bobby was driven over a few times.”
“Ouch, why? To be sure he was dead?” Patrick asked.
“Maybe.” Katy blew out a breath and circled his name. “Here’s what else we learned today, his parents are laying the blame solely at his wife’s door. Our problem is that we’ve already checked out her alibi. She was staying with a friend when the incident probably happened.”
“A friend who is willing to vouch for her whereabouts? From past experience, we know how that has worked out, right?” Graham raised a fair point.
“I know. That’s why we need to keep digging. Not only that, his parents in a roundabout way turned on us while we were there. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were doing their utmost to deceive us. I want to know what’s gone on in the family’s past. Maybe that’s the key here. The next step in this case is for me and Charlie to go and visit his place of work. We could have stayed out there and done that this morning, but I felt I had to bring you guys into the action first. Therefore, I’m going to request the usual from you for both victims. We’ll be working both cases at the same time. However, if one case turns out to be more worthy of attention than the other, well, we’ll give that one precedence, of course.”
“I’m just going to ask the most obvious question I can think of here,” Charlie began, drawing everyone’s gaze. “What if it turns out the cases are linked?”
Katy shrugged. “Of course it’s a possibility, however, let’s keep them separate for now until something definitive points us in that direction, Charlie.”
Charlie seemed peeved. “Mind if I check social media, see if anything shows up? Just to satisfy my own curiosity.”
“Go for it, if it’ll make you feel better.” Katy clapped and added, “Okay, you’ve got your instructions. I know it’s Saturday and we’re all a little jaded from working our butts off all week, but give it your all and hopefully we can get out of here early today. Don’t quote me on that though.” She smiled and dipped back in her office to retrieve her jacket. When she emerged again, Charlie was already standing by the exit. “Eager beaver.”
They arrived at the B&Q store on the outskirts of town in a large trading estate. Katy produced her ID to the girl sitting on the reception desk and asked to speak to the manager. The young woman made a call and told them to take a seat. Sara watched a number of customers go through the tills and tried to figure out what they planned to do with their purchases. She nudged Charlie with her elbow. “Sitting here, watching all this activity involving DIY is making me feel guilty, our place could do with a lick of paint
