Chapter 77
Seventy-Seven
‘We don’t even know where in Scotland his sister lives,’ Bryant said as they headed to the car.
Kim chose not to reveal that Daniel had tried to tell her and she had refused to hear it so she didn’t have to lie to her boss. How the hell was she supposed to know that the case was going to link back to the little girl?
All she knew right now was that Lucinda Butler could be tied to all three victims and could not be found. Before leaving, she’d left Stacey with strict instructions to find any link that connected Lucinda to any one of those original families.
‘I know we need to go north, so that’ll do for now. Why the hell did he listen to me?’ she complained. When she’d retreated to the Bowl, she’d made numerous attempts to call Daniel, but his phone was switched off, just as she’d instructed.
If he’d heeded the rest of her advice and left around four, he already had a two-hour head start.
Bryant stayed quiet until he joined the M5 motorway and then started asking the questions she was expecting. ‘How are we supposed to find one man and a child?’
‘Logic,’ she said with more confidence than she truly felt. ‘We know he’s heading to Scotland, and he’s going to take the fastest route which is the motorway.’
‘Correct.’
‘We know we’re looking for a red Peugeot 306 with a 2019 plate and an Arbury Peugeot Stourbridge sticker in the bottom-left corner of the rear window.’
‘Well, I didn’t know all of that, but it’s not exactly going to stand out.’
‘He’s not going to be going at high speed because he has a child in the car. We don’t have that problem.’
‘Debatable but continue.’
‘They’ve likely been on the road for a couple of hours and they’re going to need to stop soon.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She’s seven. She’s gonna want a loo break.’
‘To be fair, guv, they might already have stopped.’
‘Maybe not, my friend. Daniel would have wanted to put some miles between them and social services.’
‘All sounds good, but there’s over five hundred miles between us and the tip of Scotland. How will we know we haven’t gone too far?’
‘This is when we pray that our colleagues’ powers of deduction are as good as ours.’