‘Higher moisture content in the second—’
‘The field,’ Kim cried out as everyone turned and looked at her. ‘Thanks, Doc,’ she said, ending the call.
At least one of the mysteries had been solved. The bones had been moved when the camping field had flooded a few years earlier.
She explained the lab results to the others as, once again, it seemed everything brought them back to the Cowley family.
‘I still think Fiona Cowley is the key to this,’ Kim said. ‘I don’t know why. Dale Preece is lying about Fiona not visiting their property, and I want to find her.
‘I need someone to check the CCTV around the Preece home to see if we can establish a direction of travel when she left.’
Johnson raised his hand and picked up the phone.
She turned to Lynda.
‘We need to look into all property currently owned by the Preece family. The Cowleys may well have access to a list and are exploiting it. We need to know where this fucking event is going to take place.’
No way she could use the word ‘hunt’ when her colleague, Stacey Wood, was involved.
EIGHTY-NINE
Stacey opened her eyes and groaned. Her head felt as though it was being pounded with a jackhammer. She could feel the nausea biting at the back of her throat.
She blinked her eyes twice to make sure they were open. The dense blackness around her was unyielding. She blinked again to try to adjust her eyes to the light. Tried to make out a shape, a form, a silhouette; but there was nothing.
She felt the trembling begin in her legs. The blackness all around her was stifling, suffocating, as though she was being held down beneath a blanket. She took huge gulps of air.
A wave of dizziness threatened to engulf her. She opened her eyes wide and fought through it.
She tentatively lowered her hand from her lap to the ground beneath her and felt around, furtively. Neither her hands nor her feet were chained. Therefore there must be no chance of escape.
She fought to keep her centre of gravity. The darkness was disorienting.
She remembered a film where the prisoner had been perched on a ledge. A foot or two in any direction and they would have fallen to certain death.
With her eyes out of action, she tried to employ her other senses. She listened keenly but the silence thundered in her ears.
The darkness was swallowing her, cloying, clawing at her hair, enveloping her.
The ground beneath was cold to her touch. Bare concrete with a light dust covering that she could feel on her fingertips.
She inhaled deeply, causing another rush of dizziness. Her eyes closed to ward off the pain. There was a faint smell of something stale in the air.
But despite the fog in her brain she could sense something. She couldn’t see, hear, feel or smell anything but there was a presence. Something else in the room.
She tried to remember any detail of her journey but the last memory she had was of bending down to retrieve the laptop.
She suddenly thought of her colleagues, her boss, and the emotion surged up inside her.
She could taste the regret of keeping her activities to herself.
A small voice questioned whether any of them had even missed her, but she knew it wasn’t true. It was the voice of the child that had felt left out, abandoned. The adult police officer knew they had already noted her absence. That same realistic adult also knew there was nothing they could do.
She had told them nothing, shared nothing in her attempts to prove herself, and she had proved nothing ? except she couldn’t be trusted alone.
Stacey blinked back the tears as the gravity of her situation wove itself into the blackness around her.
She hitched forward on her bottom, feeling around her as she went. The effort of the movement brought fresh pounding to her head.
The stars swam in the darkness. She swayed to the left and felt herself falling sideways to the ground.
She knew she was losing consciousness when the sound of the key in the lock startled her awake.
She heard a man’s voice, pleading, begging.
‘Please, I won’t say anything, I swear. Just let me go and—’
His words were cut off abruptly as she heard him being thrown to the ground.
The door slammed shut and a gust of air whistled around her body.
‘Hello…’ she said, tentatively. Whoever it was, they were in here together.
‘Stay the fuck away from me,’ he growled.
Her eyes were wide open in the darkness as she realised that she knew who it was. She hadn’t recognised the begging tone but she remembered the aggression.
What the hell was Gary Flint doing here?
NINETY
Every person in the room was either tapping furiously or speaking on the phone.
‘Stone,’ Travis said, ending a call. ‘Just checked with the hospital. Jeff Cowley signed Billy Cowley out of the hospital twenty-five minutes ago.’
‘Damn it,’ she said.
‘Tried both their mobile phones. Switched off,’ he added.
Oh yeah, she just bet they were. That family was in this up to their lying, deceiving eyeballs.
‘Got her,’ Gibbs shouted.
Kim stood behind him. He pointed to the screen and zoomed in on the number plate of the red Jaguar as it pulled in behind a blue transit van.
‘Two thirty driving through the centre of Hagley. What time did you see her enter the Preece house?’ he asked.
‘About one thirty,’ Travis answered.
‘And this is about six miles away in lunchtime traffic so she couldn’t have been there long.’
‘Keep going,’ Kim said, tapping him on the shoulder and walking away.
‘Bryant, contact Stacey’s mum. I want to know if she discussed anything with her over the last few days. Dawson, anything on the CCTV in Halesowen yet?’
Dawson didn’t turn but shook his head.
There was a petrol station camera at the top of the road that ran in front of the police station. A council camera covered the traffic island at the other end. Dawson was trying to crossmatch vehicles that passed one camera but didn’t pass the second, meaning they had pulled in somewhere. The travel time along the 40 mph stretch was seven seconds. It was a thankless, laborious task that would most likely yield nothing but Dawson had offered to do it anyway.
She stole a glance at the window and felt the anxiety kick up a gear.
‘Guys, it’s getting dark out there.’
A wave of acknowledgment travelled around the room.
She could feel the panic building in all of them.
She hit Woody’s number on her phone.
‘Anything, sir?’ she asked.
He had dispatched teams to both the Cowley farmhouse and Fiona’s home in case she turned up suddenly.
‘No, Stone, both places are in darkness. She’s not been there.’
‘Okay, thank—’
‘Stone, how’s it going?’
‘We’re making progress,’ she said, ignoring the empty feeling in her stomach.
‘How are you holding?…’
‘I’ll speak to you soon, sir,’ she said, ending the call.