Page 124 of 36 Hours
Leave incentives to continue.
Use audio and video props.
Build in a halfway shocker.
Increase pace/urgency.
Make final prize more valuable and worth completing the trail.
‘Why? What was in it for you?’
He hesitated before answering. ‘I was flattered, I suppose. He said a lot of nice things. Said I was the best. I thought it was just a harmless joke. I didn’t know what he was going to do, I swear.’
Kim believed him, but she didn’t care.
‘He followed your instructions to the letter. His second victim is a heart surgeon due to save a child’s life in a few hours.’
Horror contorted his features.
‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’
‘There’s nothing, I swear,’ he said as his eyes filled with tears.
She said nothing more as she got up and left the room.
‘I think you got your point across, guv,’ Bryant said as they reached the car.
‘Good.’
‘He’s just a?—’
‘Don’t say it. He’s not a kid. He’s in his mid-twenties, and he’s part of the reason we’re in this mess. He’s an arrogant little shit who couldn’t help but flaunt his expertise and knowledge while knowing it was going to be used against the police.
‘I’ll bet there’s a YouTube video declaring himself involved in this before the day is out too. But you haven’t even realised what just happened in there.’
He waited.
‘That revelation has just blown this whole thing wide open. If our guy isn’t even in it for the fascination of the game, what the hell is he trying to achieve? Knowing Jared wrote the clues just widened our suspect list. Up until now, we’ve been able to discount individuals based on the level of intelligence needed to pull this off, but the brains of the operation is back there. Jared wrote a playbook, Bryant, which could be followed by fucking anybody. We can’t even say it’s someone interested in the hobby. Our only chance now lies with Stacey and the rainforest of paper she’s trying to wade through. If she finds nothing, we’re fucked, and Jessica Styles is probably gonna be dead before we’ve even cleared our desks.’
NINETY-ONE
4.30P.M.
‘Bloody hell, just when I think I’m getting somewhere, the paperwork changes to something else,’ Stacey said.
She’d taken a cursory look through all four boxes supplied by Seekers to see if she could discern any kind of organisation at all. She’d found the exact opposite. It seemed like Ryan Douglas had printed everything he could find, thrown it all into the air and then put it all back into boxes.
Out of all this data, she wanted only one thing. The payment details of the account named Jester674.
She gave her tired eyes a brief rest and glanced over at Penn. ‘Anything from those Scrabble pieces?’
‘Not yet,’ he said, rearranging the tiles. She’d never been any good at board games, so it hadn’t been too difficult to decide who was doing what job.
He had the tiles laid out in a line across the length of his desk.
She stretched her legs and went to go look over his shoulder.
She counted twenty-seven letters: LCTEYGMHNCTOLISMVUEAUNIUBKR.