Page 81 of 36 Hours

‘Then he’s just gonna have to whistle. I’ve done everything he asked; I’ve danced to his tune; I’ve probably lost my job, and it was all for nothing. A man still died, and I’m gonna be spending a long time wondering what I could have done to save his life. I’m not built for this shit.’

Stacey completely understood. The man they had been working around the clock to save was dead. A man they had never met had been killed because they had failed him. They hadn’t solved the clues early enough, or they hadn’t reached the locations on time. Every one of them felt responsible, and she guessed that’s where Frost’s frustration stemmed from.

‘None of us are built for this shit,’ she snapped. ‘You think we feel any different? We feel it every time we have a victim. We live with the rage and the grief and the sadness and the unjustness of it all. We take a breath and crack on in the hope we can prevent anyone else from getting hurt. We don’t run away.’

Frost paused at the door. ‘Yeah, the difference is you get paid for it.’

Stacey opened her mouth to argue further, but Frost was already gone.

She made a quick call to Jack on the front desk to make sure the insufferable woman was let out.

She replaced the receiver at the same time as Penn put down his.

His eyes were wide.

‘You’re never gonna believe what I’ve just been told.’

SIXTY-FOUR

6.40A.M.

‘We’re fucking nowhere, Bryant,’ Kim snapped.

Her colleague had dared to suggest they were going to find the bastard who had done this.

‘He’s one step ahead of us at every turn. He knows what we’re going to do and sets us up to fail every time. There’s no winning this game.’

Bryant backed off, knowing that her rage came from her inability to prevent what she’d just seen.

She’d been the closest to Hiccup when the train had hit, and she already knew the image would never leave her mind.

Minutes, not even a lot of them, and she would have had him away from danger.

‘You couldn’t have gone any faster if you’d known that train was coming, guv,’ Bryant offered before moving away from her.

That was something she’d never know for sure.

And the train, the damn train. Penn had called with the news that the train line had received a text message warning of a prank call that would ask to stop a train. They had assumed Penn’s call to be that prank and had ignored it. Lives had changed forever due to that decision.

The passengers had all been removed from the train by Inspector Plant and his team, and the driver was being treated by paramedics for shock. Despite the horror of his ordeal, her sympathy was in short supply for anyone other than the man on the tracks, who had never stood a chance.

‘Oh fucking splendid,’ she whispered to herself as Keats approached.

He took one look at her face and just nodded in her direction.

‘I’ll let you know if I find anything that will help,’ he said as he passed.

‘Thank you,’ she said, satisfied that Hiccup would be in safe hands.

One thing she’d always appreciated about the pathologist was that he knew when to leave her alone. As did her colleague, who walked silently beside her.

What neither of them could sense was the rage building inside her. Not only because a poor, defenceless man had been treated like a piece of meat, his life taken without a thought of its value. Hiccup had been disposable to their killer, a tool used to play the game. That thought alone sickened her to the core.

On top of that was the anger that no action was their own. Everything was being orchestrated, and they were just following his orders. He always knew exactly what they were going to do.

Kim was unsure if she’d ever had a case that had frustrated her more.

SIXTY-FIVE