Page 40 of 36 Hours

More to follow.

She clicked it open to find she’d been sent the footage from the fork in the road. As requested, the time frame stretched from 10a.m. to 2.30p.m.

Stacey blew out air as she realised the task ahead of her, and most likely it would garner no result. Anyone carrying a backpack could have the box concealed and she’d never spot it. And it was going to take her four and a half hours in real time to watch the whole thing so she didn’t miss any possibility of catching their guy in the act.

Within seconds of the footage starting, the customers began to pass by the camera. Families paused, deciding which direction to take. Kids pulled on hands, jackets, anything within reach to guide the adults the way they wanted to go, and every parent seemed to do exactly as they were being told. Except one. A woman on her own with a pushchair and a child of about seven years of age stopped right in front of the camera to give the boy a good telling-off for trying to pull her left when she was determined to go right.

Stacey smiled as they went out of view and a family with more kids than she could count passed by.

She examined the belongings of everyone who came into the frame but paid more attention to men who were alone. There weren’t many of those, and very few were carrying anything big enough to hold the tin. As the initial surge thinned, she sped up the footage and stopped it only when a person of interest or a family with bags crossed the lens.

She couldn’t help but marvel at the number of parents that simply followed the lead of their children. When she’d been a child, she’d been attached to her mother’s hand and went wherever she was told.

The clock on the footage was now heading towards 1p.m. and Stacey had the feeling she’d missed it. Their sicko couldn’t have known how long it would take them to solve the previous clue, so he had to have made sure the box was there in plenty of time.

She went back to the beginning of the footage. There had to be something to give her a place to start.

She watched the same people pass by the camera again, but this time she scoured their facial expressions, their ease of movement, their posture, their demeanour.

The woman with the pushchair and child came into view, and she slowed the footage down. The boy was already pointing to the left when they came into shot, and his mother was shaking her head. The boy was growing more and more truculent, but her expression was determined.

Why was she so keen to head towards the reptile house when her son clearly wanted to go the other way?

The woman stepped away from the pushchair to scold the child, and Stacey zoomed in on the shelf that ran under the seat.

There was a bag, a folded blanket and beneath it what looked like a shiny metal box.

THIRTY-ONE

4.10P.M.

‘You just can’t say it, can you?’ Bryant asked as they neared the address of Jared Truss. ‘I’ve given you ample time, but the words are just not coming.’

‘What exactly would you like me to say?’

‘I’d like to hear “Bryant, I sincerely apologise for dismissing your observation about the noise on the tape, and I shall endeavour to treat your contributions with more respect in the future”.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said.

‘I am?’

‘Those words are never coming out of my mouth.’

Bryant shook his head in despair as he parked the car in front of a bungalow on the New Pool estate in Cradley Heath. The home seemed at odds with a twenty-five-year-old YouTuber.

They were about to speak with Eric Lane’s nemesis. The man’s biggest rival for title of Top Banana on the Seekers site. She was interested to see if he felt as strongly about Eric Lane as Eric did about Jared. Only then would she be able to assess if this particular battle of wills had got out of hand.

The door was opened by a woman who appeared to be in her mid-seventies.

‘Are we in the right place for Jared Truss?’

A smile lit her face instantly. ‘Yes, yes, Jared lives here,’ she said before a shadow fell over her expression. Kim guessed they didn’t look like her grandson’s normal visitors.

The woman turned to call him, but he had already appeared in the hallway.

‘Everything okay, Mrs H?’ he asked, hovering protectively behind her.

She turned towards him. ‘I think they’re police officers,’ she said in the loudest whisper Kim had ever heard.

---