‘My help?’ Karen wasn’t saying much, keeping her responses short and possibly still trying to decide whether to hang up the phone or not.
I pressed on. ‘I want to send Tempest Michaels to speak with you. You met him, didn’t you? We are closing in on who the Sandman is,’ I was exaggerating hugely, ‘but if we can narrow it down, you are the only person we know of who has seen him. If we could just send you pictures …’
Karen cut in over the top of me. ‘Look, I want to help, but Jane was adamant that I should tell no one where I am and move about if possible.’
‘Yes, we already tried Matilda Carpenter’s house,’ I let her know. ‘I understand your desire to be cautious, it is absolutely the right thing to do, but we are all working on this now. We have Jane’s notes and a whole team of people going through them. The police are lending officers to help us,’ I added, factoring in the probability of Jan joining us soon. I wanted to call Patience, but I knew she was working and already had a bunch of reprimands against her. Sneaking off to help me might get her sacked.
‘Okay,’ Karen snapped out angrily. I didn’t think her anger was aimed at me, but was born of frustration due to the situation she found herself in. ‘Do you think you can catch him?’
‘That is what we are trying to do,’ I assured her without committing anything. How could I? We intended to catch him, but until we knew more than we did, our chances were slim. That is where Karen came in. ‘We need your help to do it though.’
I had her on the hook and though I knew it was cruel to bring her out of hiding and to expose herself, we needed her.
‘I want Tempest to call me,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll give him my address and no one else.’
It was as good as I was going to get and I took it, thanking her for cooperating.
Disconnecting the call with another jab of the pen, I picked up my own phone and called Tempest back.
He answered before it even had a chance to ring. ‘Babe.’
‘I spoke with Karen, but she will only give her location to you. She knows your voice, I guess.’
He sniffed thoughtfully. ‘Right. Send me her number. I’m already in the car. I’ll go straight there and see if I can convince her to come back to the office with me.’
Dutifully, I sent him the contact details and crossed my fingers that she wouldn’t change her mind. We needed a break in this case and soon.
Would Jane’s phone provide it? I knew two chaps in the crime scene science lab who would help me out for a pack of donuts. If I could lift a fingerprint, and if the print was in the database, maybe, just maybe, we would find out who we were looking for.
I put on gloves and started with the fingerprint kit. With my eyes focused on that task, I asked Alice and Jagjit what treasures Jane’s laptop had yielded.
It had been another one of Jane’s clever IT ideas to install a central password override system. Each of us had our own passwords, but to protect us against exactly this type of event where the person who knew the password became unavailable, Jane created a secondary password. Using it would unlock the computer though I don’t think any of us had tested it live before today.
Jagjit and Alice were staring at the screen, the light from it illuminating their faces. ‘It doesn’t look like there is anything else here that we haven’t already seen,’ Jagjit let me know. ‘The file headings are all the same, but we are going through each one to double check.’
Leaving them to continue by themselves, I started to lay out the fingerprinting kit and made a call to a pair of chaps to whom I already owed a whole bunch of favours.
Tempest. Closing In. Friday, December 23rd 1812hrs
Karen Gilbert’s house is in New Ash Green which is near to nothing much at all. Though I had no idea where Karen Gilbert might be and thus which direction I would have to travel, I nevertheless chose to head back toward Rochester and the office when I left Harry Hengist’s house. There was more in that direction, including the motorways.
When my phone pinged with an incoming message, I had to take my eyes off the road to squint at the screen. Hilary was holding it for me to see. It was the highly anticipated message from Amanda, which was a few words plus a number highlighted in blue and underlined – a link to make a call.
Swinging my gaze back to the road, I said, ‘Punch it.’
Hilary dutifully did just that. My Porsche, apparently fixed and waiting for me to collect it – it had gotten a little busted up by some werewolves - was decked out with a hands-free kit and voice recognition. Not so the Lotus which was built before such things were dreamed of.
The number for Karen Gilbert rang once and was answered.
Timidly, a voice said, ‘Hello?’
I opened my mouth to start speaking but caught myself because there was something wrong.
‘That’s not Karen Gilbert,’ I said confidently. ‘This is Tempest Michaels. Is she there?’
I heard quietly exchanged words in the background, too indistinct to make out, but a moment later a new voice came onto the phone.
‘Tempest this is Karen.’ My memory matched the voice I was hearing to the one I expected. ‘Do you know someone called Amanda Harper?’
Nodding to myself in the dark, I admired how cautious Karen was being. ‘Yes. She is my business partner. Thank you for
