what happens now?'
'D.I. Morrison is in this morning, I'll show it to her, see what she says.'
'She's often in here these days, when she's supposed to be off duty.' Amrita commented.
'Yeah, well, you know how it is.' he replied non-committally. It was all round the station that their boss had recently broken up with her long term boyfriend.
'Maybe she has her eye on you!' said Amrita mischievously.
'She'd be wasting her time, I'm spoken for,'He leaned in conspiratorially, 'But perhaps I could be tempted by a certain community officer?' and he wiggled his eyebrows ridiculously at her, making her laugh.
'You've got no chance, I'm far too good for you!' and she headed off, still laughing.
Detective Inspector Ann Morrison had watched the video three times, and was now staring at the blank screen, her lips pursed. Finally she looked at Ian Hopkins.
'What do you think, Ian?'
'I don't think it's of any benefit to us. Quite the contrary in fact. It would appear we have a bunch of nutters on the go, taking the law into their own hands. That won't go down to well with the management.'
'My thoughts exactly.'
She sat in silence for another short time.
'As I see it, we have three objectives here. One is ongoing, which is finding evidence to nail those responsible for Linda Hope's death. Secondly, we have to be seen to be responding to the accusations made on the video, so we pull Patterson and Darren Hill in for questioning. It won't help with the first objective, we're not going to get anything that way, but it covers our backsides. The third is, we have to find out who these vigilantes are and stop them. Agreed?'
Ian nodded, and said,
'There's not really a lot to go on as far as tracing these jokers is concerned, the video appears to have been shot on Patterson's own phone, and the quality is pretty poor. They're wearing overalls and masks, and their voices are disguised. They have gloves on, so I wouldn't hold out much hope of getting fingerprints from the phone, or anything else for that matter. We don't even know where it was filmed.'
'Perhaps when we speak to Mr Patterson he will be happy to assist us with our enquiries, help us to find those responsible for putting him through that terrible ordeal.' she said, deadpan, with hardly a hint of sarcasm.
'Yeah,' Ian laughed, 'and pigs might fly!'
St Catherines Road exuded an air of restrained affluence, with it's stone built villas sitting well back from the street. The wealthy merchants and bankers who built these houses were long gone, and new money had paid for most of the houses to be converted into commercial properties. Front gardens which once would have been lovingly tended by an army of gardeners had been paved over to be used for parking. Design consultants, architects, lawyers and others wishing to give an impression of solid dependability had their offices here.
Hillburns Property Developments occupied one such villa, an early Victorian town house with the minimum of changes to the exterior. Inside, the building impressed with stylish modern décor of the highest quality, with the usual office clutter kept to a minimum.
As was normal on a Saturday afternoon, the reception area was deserted, but in a plush office, David Burns was sitting at his desk, his eyes on a computer screen as he moved the mouse around, a smile hovering around his mouth as he clicked on file after file filled with the information he sought.
There was a knock on the door, then his partner stuck his head round,
'Hi George, come on in.'
'I was on my way to the football, thought I would call in and see how it was going Dave, got anything useful on there?'
'Sure have George, everything we needed and more, couldn't have been better. We should be ready to send out the first of the tenders sometime on Monday.'
'I always knew I could depend on you Dave, with your good looks and charm!'
'Well, we have a bit of work to do yet, but it's certainly looking good.'
'I'll leave you to it then, wouldn't want to hold you back. See you Monday.'
'See you,'
Content with the way things were progressing, George headed for the door, leaving David to carry on going through the files, still smiling to himself.
Chapter 6
Jackie Kingsley picked up the mail from behind the door, and flicked through the letters as she walked to the kitchen.
'One here for you, Liz.' She held it out to her daughter who was eating her breakfast. The envelope only had Liz's name on it, no address or stamp. She had received a few like that since the drugs incident, get-well-soon and sympathy messages from friends and neighbours just pushed through the letterbox. Liz ignored the outstretched hand, and with a sigh, her mother placed the letter on the table.
'Do you feel up to going back to school today?'
Liz shook her head.
'You'll have to go back eventually, Liz. You can't hide in the house forever.'
Liz continued to stare at the table in front of her, chewing slowly, then suddenly stood up, and almost ran up the stairs to her room, leaving most of her breakfast uneaten.
'Liz!' her mother called after her, then gave up, and slumped down in the chair Liz had just vacated. She picked up the letter, turned it over in her hands a couple of times. The name was badly written, with Kingsley misspelt. She tore it open, then stared in horror at it's contents. There was just a single sheet of paper with a crudely drawn matchstick figure of a girl with long hair, like Liz. There was a knife across her throat, with drops of blood in red ink. Underneath were the words, “OPEN YOUR MOUTH THIS IS WOT YOU GET”. Jackie jumped up and dashed to the door, looked up and down the street, but whoever had posted the note was long gone.
Ann Morrison's team, as expected, were coming under pressure from higher up, with Superintendent Campbell emphasising the need to clear up the Linda Hope enquiry as soon as possible in order to limit the fallout from the Benny Patterson video, which was now widely circulating on the web.
She emerged from the interview with Darren Hill feeling angry and frustrated. She had developed an immediate dislike for the cocky twenty-three year old, who, despite his youth, clearly felt that being a member of the most feared crime family in the area gave him the right to treat everyone, including the police, with contempt.
Dark haired and stocky, hirsute with muscular arms adorned with tattoos, and a bull neck, he somehow had the knack of making the most expensive designer clothes and gold jewellery look cheap and trashy. He liked
