Page 123 of 36 Hours

Again, he shrugged, but the finger tapping was getting erratic.

‘You do know that an innocent man was tortured and killed?’ she snapped.

The finger tapping stopped.

‘B-But I didn’t…I mean I didn’t kill any?—’

‘Oh, Jared, it’s all fun and games until it’s not. I watched as a man was splattered across a train line because we were ten seconds away from saving him. Or rather what was left of him after our guy sent pieces of him back to us throughout the day.’

Most of the colour had dropped from Jared’s face.

‘How much trouble am I in?’

‘Did you do it?’

He shook his head.

‘Then not as much trouble as you could be. Best get to telling me the truth.’

He sprang up from the bed. ‘May I?’

She moved out of the way, now happy to sit on the bed.

If she was honest, she hadn’t had much hope of turning up anything here, but Stacey’s tenacity and gut instinct had paid off again. She just hoped it was enough to catch the killer before he had a chance to do it again.

‘I received an email. I don’t know who from. It was something like Jester and some numbers. If I remember rightly, he just wanted to play a bit of a prank.’

‘He told you it was aimed at the police, didn’t he?’

Jared hesitated before nodding as though still trying to calculate his culpability.

‘I didn’t think he was going to hurt someone,’ he defended himself as the printer to his left kicked into life.

He passed her the sheet of paper and then had the grace to look shamed.

Kim’s level of sympathy was evident in her next words.

‘It never occurred to you to let us know?’

‘I really didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought it was for a bit of a prank. I thought you’d have him in a couple of hours. And then I could see it was getting serious and I just wanted to stay out of it.’

Kim offered him a hard stare.

‘He just told me the places and asked me to write a clue to match them.’

And there it was. All the clues they’d found so far. All written by Jared. The list ended with the clue for the canal.

‘What’s next?’ she asked.

Jared shrugged. ‘That’s all he wanted. Said he’d take care of the rest himself.’

So, he’d wanted to put them back to square one at the station. He’d always known how it was going to end.

‘You gave him everything,’ Kim said, reading the notes below. ‘Absolutely bloody everything.’

Give a time frame for sense of urgency.

Give a good reason to keep interest.