Kitabı oku: «Tick Tock», sayfa 4
TEN
In an empty classroom, Perry was sitting across from sixteen-year-old Thomas Riley. Thomas was in the same year as their victim but in a different set of classes.
Nathan Stiller sat next to him. At Perry’s suggestion, he’d placed three chairs in a triangle without a table between them. Although everything he said would be written down, Perry didn’t want Thomas to think he was being interviewed. Thomas could be placed in a chemistry lesson with his fellow pupils and teacher at the time the murder took place, so the less stress Perry caused the better.
‘Do you know what’s happened, Thomas?’ Perry started, knowing that rumours were bound to be going around the school.
‘It’s Tom,’ the boy replied. ‘Is it true that Lauren’s dead?’
‘We believe so,’ Perry replied.
‘You believe so?’ Tom looked confused. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘There has to be an official identification of the body, but we think it’s her.’
Tom’s face became stern as he bit his bottom lip. Perry could see he was wrestling with his emotions, trying to keep his grief hidden.
‘I can’t go into detail, but I do need to ask you a few questions, Tom.’ Perry rested his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together as he leaned forwards. ‘You’re not in any trouble. Can you tell me when you last saw Lauren?’
‘This morning, a few minutes before classes started.’
‘Did you meet at school or before?’
‘At school. She lives in the opposite direction to me and gets a lift in. Her mum drops her off.’
Perry noted he was still speaking of Lauren in the present tense. ‘And was she okay?’
‘She seemed fine.’ Tom nodded fervently. ‘She came rushing over like her usual self. She was always late, so we never got a lot of time together in the mornings. It was just to say hello, you know?’
Perry smiled: he could recall a few times he’d had illicit kisses before the bell went off for lessons to start.
‘Do you know if she’d fallen out with any of her friends? Had there been any arguments lately?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Had she many close friends?’
‘She was always with the twins – Courtney and Caitlin.’
‘Piggott,’ Nathan added.
Thomas nodded. ‘Teagan Cole and Sophie Bishop, too.’
Perry wondered if Grace knew about Teagan. He made a mental note to check.
‘We were talking about going to the cinema this weekend, what we wanted to watch,’ Thomas continued. ‘That was the last thing we spoke about.’
‘So you don’t know of anything that had been troubling her?’ Perry asked one last time. ‘She hadn’t mentioned any problems at home, or at school?’
‘She didn’t like her step-dad much, but he seemed okay to me.’
‘What did she say about him?’
‘Just that he was always watching her.’
‘Was she worried?’ Perry’s senses went on to alert.
‘I don’t think so, but she said he was a bit strict. I think she missed her dad. She kept saying he didn’t tell her what to do all the time like Alan did.’
Perry relaxed a little then. ‘How long had you been seeing each other?’
‘About three months.’
‘Did you visit each other’s homes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t see anything to worry about?’
Thomas shook his head.
‘Okay, Tom, that’s all for now.’ Perry backed off, seeing the lad’s hands had started to shake.
The door opened and a man marched into the room. He was in his mid-forties, with the demeanour of a warrior ready to battle.
Tom got to his feet and rushed into his arms. ‘Dad, she’s dead.’ He burst into tears. ‘Lauren’s dead.’
‘It’s true?’ The man glared at Perry over his son’s head.
‘And you are?’ Perry asked, avoiding answering his question.
‘Oliver Riley. And you have no right to question my son without me being present.’
Perry nodded. ‘I agree, but we weren’t questioning him, and the headmaster was present too.’
‘The detective has been asking Thomas questions about Lauren, nothing more, Mr Riley,’ Nathan started, ‘and I was—’
‘I don’t care whether you were here or not. You still have no right.’ He let go of Tom. ‘Come on, we’re going home.’ He took out a business card and threw it on the table. ‘If you need anything else, contact me and I’ll bring along my lawyer.’
‘Mr Riley!’ Nathan followed Thomas and his father as they left the room.
Perry chewed his lip. He knew the anger from Mr Riley was reasonable. It was fear that made some people respond that way. Most fathers would be wary of their son getting the blame for something they didn’t do. He might be fearful they were going to stitch him up – people still thought the police did things like that. Plus Perry guessed that, despite his harsh demeanour, even Mr Riley could be feeling guilty that his son was okay and another child had been murdered. It was all reflexes.
Nathan came back into the room after a few minutes.
‘That was dreadful!’ he exclaimed, sitting down with a thump. ‘I’m sorry he was so sharp. He shouldn’t have been so rude.’
‘It’s understandable.’ Perry waved away his comment. ‘It’s a hard thing to get your head around.’
‘Especially when she was so young, with her whole life ahead of her. And you have no idea who it might be?’
‘We’ll have lots to go on soon.’ Perry wouldn’t be drawn.
They sat in silence for a moment.
‘Do you see many crimes like this one?’ Nathan asked quietly.
‘Thankfully, no.’
‘So terribly sad.’ Nathan stood up quickly. ‘I need to find something to do. Someone will want my help somewhere, I’m sure.’
Once Nathan had left the room, Perry sighed. So many ways to deal with grief. Keeping busy was one of them. It helped until the quiet set in, when everything came rushing back. It couldn’t stay away for long.
Nathan turned to Perry as he got to the door. ‘You will catch whoever did this, won’t you?’ He spoke in a distressed tone.
‘We’re on to it.’ Perry looked at him with as much reassurance as he could muster.
ELEVEN
When Grace returned to Dunwood Academy, it was just after two p.m. Nick dropped her off and went back to the station, while she went in search of Perry to see what he’d found. Whenever anything like this happened, she was reminded that he was a good second-in-command, getting everyone to come to him with details of what had been said, seen, suggested. She could imagine how upset he’d been when she’d pipped him to the post for the sergeant’s job last year. He would no doubt be promoted soon.
It was at times like this she remembered her team back in Manchester. DS Gus Banks, her line manager then, and the formidable DC Sandy Princeton, who she’d worked alongside. Sandy’s nickname was the Oracle, as she had a memory that could recall anything from cases gone by.
Grace could see both Sandy and Gus in Sam and Perry; she felt very lucky to work with them. She could have ended up with a lot of backstabbing and prejudice after what had happened last year when the truth had come out about her relationship with the Steele family. Things could have been so much worse, but instead, most of the team had stood by her. They’d lost one colleague when DC Alex Challinor had gone rogue on them and this now left them a man down. Sadly, Alex hadn’t been replaced owing to budget cuts, so they were always begging uniform to help out.
‘Anything new?’ she asked when she found Perry grabbing a quick coffee in the hall that was now serving as a canteen. It had been set up to accommodate both the public and the emergency services.
Perry shook his head. ‘No one from the class seems to have seen anything – at all.’
‘I guess our killer depended on that,’ Grace acknowledged. ‘It was a brave move to attack our girl in such an open space. Let’s hope the press release brings us something.’
Perry told her about Lauren’s friends and about speaking to Thomas Riley.
‘Did you see Teagan Cole?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I spoke to her earlier. Sophie Bishop, too. They were all close friends.’
‘What did Teagan say?’
‘That she and Sophie were back in school when they heard about what had happened.’
Grace updated him on seeing Teagan on one of Lauren’s photographs.
‘It’s a coincidence,’ he reassured her. ‘Not someone out to get you.’
She glanced at him over her paper cup as she took a sip of tea that she’d been given. ‘I hope so.’
They sat in silence, each with their own thoughts. At the next table, a group of uniformed officers had come in for a break. Their heads were as low as their voices as they huddled close together, rather than upset anyone around them with a badly placed comment or observation.
‘So, are we looking for a killer with a motive?’ Grace asked after a few moments. ‘Or someone who’s out for a bit of fun with us?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone playing a deadly game.’
‘Nothing would surprise me in this job,’ Perry admitted.
The mobile police unit had been set up outside and Sam had come over to help coordinate all the people they needed to speak to. Grace discovered that Sam had booked lots of appointments for the following day too, to wrap up anyone they’d missed. It was a tedious exercise, not only because there were a lot of kids, but also because most of them would know nothing. Yet someone somewhere might have noticed something suspicious and they didn’t want to miss anything that could be right under their noses.
The next three hours were taken up with speaking to staff and the pupils who had stayed behind to talk to them until parents had arrived, collating any of the house-to-house information for further action and responding to the general public as speculation about Lauren Ansell grew. Grace was hoping it would be possible that the formal identification would take place that evening, although that would very much depend on forensics.
Finally, after a press release had gone out, they were ready to go back to the station around five p.m. There was nothing more that could be done at the school that day and it was only fair to let the teaching staff go home. They needed rest. They would be devastated and it would be a long day for them tomorrow. All media attention would be on them and their school. Grace hoped there were no hidden secrets that were going to crop up and take them away from the real investigation. The public were always quick to assume the worst, and all kinds of dirty laundry might be aired, however irrelevant.
As she left the school grounds with Perry, Grace could see her partner, Simon, hovering around by the gate.
Even though their relationship was new, they seemed to have a non-spoken agreement to be mutually respectful of each other’s roles. They talked about ongoing cases, but there was nothing to push either of them to answer questions that they didn’t want to. Each had a job to do, maintaining a professional standard as well as keeping their relationship healthy. Grace hoped it continued, as she thought a lot of Simon.
From the look of him, he was finding this distressing, too. His shirt had sweat patches under the arms despite the cool day, his tie was askew and his choppy blond hair even messier than usual.
‘Thanks for the tip-off this morning,’ he said, taking her arm as they moved away from the crowds. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Even more harrowing when I knew the victim.’
She gave a faint smile. ‘How’s Teagan?’
Grace had only managed to have a very quick chat with his daughter when his ex-wife had turned up to collect her.
‘Still devastated, but at least she’s at home now.’
Since she and Simon had become an item, Grace hadn’t gelled with his daughter at all. Each time they met was a little harder than she’d anticipated, despite her best efforts. Teagan seemed to blame Grace for her parents splitting up, but Simon and his wife had been separated long before she’d met him. Even so, Grace was the first woman he’d formed a relationship with and that made her, in his daughter’s eyes, the spawn of the devil.
Simon ran a hand over his chin, stubble already forming since his morning’s shave. ‘I can’t believe Lauren’s dead, Grace. I’ve known her since she was five years old. She and Teagan met at nursery school.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she appeased. ‘It’s going to affect a lot of people, even if they didn’t know her. No one wants to send their child to school and not have them return.’
‘Worse, I can’t stop thinking that it might have been Teagan. She was in one of the other groups of girls to come down the lane.’
‘Hey now,’ Grace soothed, giving his hand a quick squeeze. She wanted desperately to kiss him and allay his fears, but she couldn’t do either here.
‘They’re having a meet-up in the youth club this evening,’ Simon said. ‘Teagan asked if it was okay to go along. When I said I’d prefer her to be at home with her mum, she accused me of putting my job first.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘I’ll be on call for a while now this has happened. It can’t be helped.’
‘You have to make people aware. Whereas we need to catch whoever did this so they don’t do it again.’
In the background, Grace could see Perry waving for her attention.
‘Time for me to skedaddle,’ she added. ‘We’re going back to the station for team briefing. Do you need a lift?’
‘No, I’m in my car. But I’ll stick around here for a while longer. See you this evening, at your place?’
‘Let yourself in if you get there first.’ She nodded. ‘It’s going to be a late one.’
TWELVE
Teagan Cole was in the kitchen having a standoff with her mum, Natalie.
‘But everyone will be there except me,’ she whined, pulling a face.
‘I don’t care about that. I just want you home with me tonight.’
Natalie walked across to her daughter and held out her arms, but Teagan rebuffed her, wriggling from her mother’s embrace.
‘I want to hang out with my friends. I’ll be fine inside the youth club. Cait and Court’s mum will collect and drop me off. I won’t be alone any time and I—’
‘No means no, Teagan, and that’s my final word.’ Natalie shook her head. ‘It’s not much to ask that you stay where I know you’re safe.’
‘You’d humiliate me by not letting me go?’
‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic.’
‘Pot. Kettle!’
Natalie threw her a warning look.
‘The twins need me,’ she tried once more.
‘I need you here.’
Teagan stormed out of the kitchen. Upstairs in her room, she flung herself lengthways onto her bed and located her iPad. Earlier, she’d sent a text message to Caitlin. Though she wasn’t allowed out, she had to speak to the twins. Caitlin had replied to say she’d call her in a few minutes.
Teagan was upset that she couldn’t go to the youth club with them. Everyone who mattered would be there and she’d really been looking forward to seeing Lewis because she wanted a hug from him. And it was the first major thing to happen like this in her life, so she wanted to be with her friends again, talk about what had happened.
Lauren had died and on top of that she’d had to be civil to Grace. As a person she was fine, but as someone who her dad was going out with, Teagan didn’t like that at all. Maybe if she hadn’t come sniffing around him, her parents might have got together again.
She rolled over onto her back and sighed. She was wise enough to know that her parents hadn’t been happy for a while, even staying together for her sake until she was older. She knew they were destined to stay apart and she didn’t blame Grace for it really. But it was hard to switch allegiances and she didn’t want to upset her mum, despite her seeing Adrian now.
She quite liked Adrian, although she would never admit it. Still, she’d be annoyed if he wanted to move in with them, and she suspected that would be the next move. She was only the daughter, after all. She had no say in who lived where, and it was only fair her mum and dad were happy, too. But she liked making their lives hell by comparing one against the other.
All of a sudden, guilt crept in and her eyes filled with tears. How could she be thinking of herself after what had happened to Lauren? Her friend was dead – murdered. What a selfish brat she must seem.
Her iPad alerted her to a FaceTime connection. She tapped the button to connect.
‘Hey,’ a Piggott twin said. ‘Courtney’s in the shower. She won’t be a minute. Your eyes look red. How are you, babes?’
‘I’m okay,’ Teagan acknowledged. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead. Earlier I was watching stuff about Lauren on the news …’
‘Me too.’
‘It seems weird to see our school on the TV. There are tons of flowers outside the railings.’
‘Yeah, we have some to bring with us this evening.’
‘I’ve got some here, but I can’t put them down until tomorrow afternoon. Mum wants to come with me.’
‘Well, I’ll take a photo of where we put ours and you can put yours next to them then.’
‘I can’t believe you can go to the youth club and I can’t,’ Teagan said, forgetting her earlier thoughts of remorse.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll call you when we’re there. You can hear all about it.’ Caitlin flicked her hair back. ‘Did you see the male detective this morning? Perry something.’
‘Yes. Sophie did, too. He said it was because we were all close friends with Lauren.’
‘We had a quick chat as soon as we got back to school after, you know. Then we waited for our olds to come before he spoke to us again. He was really nice, put us at ease.’
‘Well he would – you didn’t do anything!’ Teagan rolled her eyes.
‘But,’ Caitlin leaned forward and whispered, ‘apart from her killer, we were the last people to see Lauren alive, weren’t we, Court?’
‘Yes, we were.’ Courtney sat down on the bed next to her sister. She was wearing a pink fluffy dressing gown with a purple towel wrapped around her hair.
Teagan watched as Caitlin shuffled across the bed to make way for her sister.
‘Hey, babes.’ Courtney waved at Teagan.
‘Hey yourself.’ Teagan waved back. ‘I wish I could come out with you two tonight.’
‘I know.’ Courtney sighed. ‘I wish you could, too. It’s going to be weird enough without Lauren.’ She held in a sob as her sister gave her a hug.
Teagan heard a voice yelling in the background. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Gotta go, Tee,’ Caitlin said. ‘Mum’s shouting us. We’ll speak to you laters, yeah?’
‘Suppose so.’ Teagan tried not to feel dejected. ‘Do you both want to come around here tomorrow – Sophie, too? Now school’s closed …’
‘Yeah, we could do.’ Courtney nodded.
‘Laters, babe.’ Caitlin blew her a kiss and the screen went blank.
Teagan huffed. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t go to the youth club with her friends. Of course it would be safe after what had happened this morning.
But when she realised that one of their group would be missing, she burst into tears again. What were they going to do without Lauren?
THIRTEEN
Bethesda Police Station was situated in the lower part of Hanley, in the city’s Cultural Quarter. It sat alongside the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, the City Central Library, the Magistrates Court, the Stoke News, where Simon was based, and Chimneys, the station’s local pub. Work had also started on an apartment block, next to the two Smithfield buildings situated behind it. For the past few years, it had always been a hive of activity, noise and fanfare.
Like Dunwood Academy, Bethesda Police Station was an L-shaped building, but it was over three floors. Grace’s team was on floor one, a large open-plan office with several other teams in operation besides Major Crimes. Luckily, she sat at a bank of desks in the far corner, which meant slightly less noise.
She was in the incident room at that moment. She rubbed at her neck, trying to ease the pressure. It was just before six that evening and she was waiting for an early team briefing to start. The crime was the first of its kind to be connected to a school in the city and the national press as well as the Stoke News were already all over it. TV cameras were outside both the school and the police station. Grace resented their intrusion as much as she welcomed it, in terms of its necessity for information sharing and gathering.
Nick had given another brief statement on camera and they had a team waiting to man the phones, hoping the public might ring in and give them a lead. All it took was someone remembering something from earlier that morning. Jogging a memory, recalling anything different.
On the whiteboard in front of them was the recent photograph Grace had commandeered from Lauren Ansell’s parents. The schoolgirl’s face stared back at them, so full of life. It was hard to think she was dead.
Conversation was going on around her as people piled into the room.
‘I spoke to so many girls today who are going to be scarred by the death,’ Sam said to Grace. She had been at the school most of the afternoon in the mobile unit. ‘I know once I get home this evening I’ll be giving Emily a cuddle, even if I have to wake her up. I need to feel her beating heart next to me, hold her in my arms.’
Sam’s daughter, Emily, was eight years old. Sam was divorced from Emily’s father, but living with a new partner, Craig. Grace knew lots of parents would struggle with the death of a child – she certainly would have if she’d had any. It brought home to people how this sort of thing could happen to anyone.
Even having no children of her own, it made her think of her half-niece, Megan Steele, who she hadn’t seen since her mother’s arrest. Megan was the same age as their victim, although thankfully not a pupil at Dunwood Academy. Not for the first time, Grace wondered whether or not it was appropriate to get in touch with her but, as usual, she decided it wasn’t.
She glanced across at Perry, who was deep in conversation with another officer.
‘Frankie, you’re back with us!’ Grace said, her smile wide as she addressed the keen and eager young man in uniform. She’d asked for him as soon as the investigation had started, knowing there would be long hours and few staff to spare.
‘I am indeed, Grace!’
Frankie was otherwise known as PC Mick Higgins. Mick was drafted in to help whenever they were busy, but as it often became confusing with their DI being named Nick, after their last murder investigation had finished she’d asked if he had a nickname.
Mick had grinned. ‘They call me Frank.’
‘Frank?’
‘It’s not because I’m a boring old fart,’ he insisted, ‘but because I’m a chip off the old block. My granddad, Frank, was a beat bobby for thirty years.’
‘Would you mind if we called you that? Or, better still, Frankie?’
It had stuck immediately. Grace was glad he was on their team again. She would have liked him permanently after Alex had been sacked last year. One day she was sure Frankie would make a great detective, but for now, she’d settle with getting him on the larger cases they dealt with.
‘Okay, everyone,’ Nick said as he came into the room and sat down at the head of the table. ‘Welcome to Operation Middleport. Just to let you know, we’ve not yet had positive identification that our victim is Lauren Ansell, but I will be visiting the morgue later this evening to confirm this. Let’s see what we have so far. Grace, do you want to start us off?’
Grace cleared her throat. ‘Lauren was sixteen years old. Found strangled in a field near to her school. She was with a class, out cross-country running. According to her friends, twins Caitlin and Courtney Piggott, she’d lagged behind to tie her shoelace and they’d carried on walking. When she hadn’t rejoined them, they’d doubled back and found her unconscious, possibly dead by this time. We can’t be certain.’
‘Neither twin is known to us,’ Nick said. ‘But do you think it’s something they could have done and are covering up? Maybe an argument over a boy, or something silly.’
‘We can’t rule it out entirely until forensics are back.’ Grace shook her head. ‘Perry spoke to Caitlin and Courtney Piggott.’
‘I don’t think they had anything to do with the murder, because their teacher saw them come around the corner without Lauren,’ Perry said. ‘There wouldn’t have been much time to hurt her before or after that. They all have clean slates, too. Pleasant girls according to their headmaster and the teachers I spoke to. Lauren seems to be well liked, no obvious signs of being a loner.’
‘There were a fair share of teens outpouring their grief and there are flowers galore outside the school gates on the railings,’ Grace added.
‘Caitlin mentioned another teacher’s name, Jason Tranter,’ Perry continued. ‘Said that Lauren had a crush on him. I spoke to him briefly, asked him about it – he was quite embarrassed.’
‘How old?’ asked Nick.
‘Mid-thirties. He’s a good-looking fella; I reckon lots of the girls might like him. He also runs the school youth club.’
‘Okay, thanks, Perry. What else do we know about the parents?’ Nick looked at Grace.
‘They divorced nine years ago when Lauren was six. Her father, Richard Ansell, lives in Derby. I spoke to him first on the phone when I informed him of the death. He was in a meeting with several people at the time of the murder.’ She checked over her notes. ‘Lauren lived in Stanley with her mum, who has since remarried. Alan Gillespie. No more children.’
‘Did she visit her father?’ asked Sam.
‘Yes.’ Grace nodded. ‘She went regularly every other Friday. Everyone seemed to think everything was going okay for Lauren. She was doing well at school, had lots of friends and a happy home life.’
‘Both the twins and Thomas Riley suggested that Lauren didn’t get on with her step-dad,’ Perry said. ‘Should we look into it?’
Nick nodded. ‘And we have no CCTV outside the school?’
‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘Neither the lane nor the fields are covered. I’m going through the footage from the school cameras, but it’s very doubtful that our suspect would walk past the school to get to the fields, unless brazen or stupid. Although it has been known.’
‘They could have come on foot from any number of places,’ Perry added. ‘We’re searching out home CCTV from surrounding houses that back onto that field, seeing if anyone has any personal footage.’
‘The search team will widen their area tomorrow to cover the surrounding fields where Lauren Ansell was found,’ Nick continued. ‘They’re due to go across the lane and search the field opposite. Our killer could have run quickly across the lane and in the opposite direction.’
‘They could have run along the hedge in the field where Lauren was found, too,’ Perry noted, ‘and then come out on the lane further up.’
‘We spoke to the farmer who owned the field,’ Frankie piped in. ‘He hasn’t seen anyone hanging around lately, but he did say that lots of runners use it, walkers too, even though it’s private property, so he probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway.’
‘Unless he happened on the class, our killer must have got the information from someone.’ Nick nodded. ‘We don’t have much to go on yet, except a load of statements from teens who were running ahead of them.’
‘Where does the lane lead to?’ Grace pushed back her chair and got up to look at the map of Stoke-on-Trent that was on the wall by the side of the whiteboard.
Perry joined her, standing at her side.
‘It goes for about half a mile with farmland either side of it and then it comes to a T-junction.’ He tapped a finger on it. ‘There’s barely a handful of properties up there – the rest is green.’
‘And none of them saw anyone lurking around in the area?’ Nick questioned.
‘Nothing yet,’ Grace told him, checking through her notes. ‘We have more people to interview, though. There were so many of them – a lot were upset and some were picked up early. It will take most of tomorrow to speak to them all. Also, who would know about the cross-country run?’ she pondered. ‘Another pupil? Another teacher? Another regular runner? Or could it be a parent of one of the children who’d let it be known they were doing cross-country?’
‘I hated cross-country.’ Sam pointed at Grace. ‘I don’t know how anyone wants to run full stop.’
Grace smiled. She knew lots of her friends felt the same, but she loved the freedom of running. She couldn’t not run now. She enjoyed the quiet it gave her mind to work things out, the discipline to train to improve, pushing herself to aim higher with each session. It was frustrating that she still suffered from insomnia, something that no one in the team knew she had, but secretly she was pleased it gave her more time to run.
Insomnia was something left over from the days of Matt’s illness. The amount of times she’d lain by his side in the middle of the night, afraid to go to sleep in case he wasn’t alive the next day. The days that turned into nights at the end of his life, where she didn’t know dark from light. The weeks, months and now years that she’d failed to get into a regular sleep pattern again, more to do with her loneliness and grief. It was getting better now that she was with Simon, but at times it was as bad as those earlier days.
‘Sam’s keeping an eye on anything coming in from the press release and I expect we’ll be doing a further update this afternoon.’ Nick turned to look at Grace. ‘Keep the pressure up on speaking to people today. We need to build as big a picture as we can about Lauren, plus get a timeline of her movements before she died. The post-mortem should be with us early in the morning, hopefully.’
‘We’ll be going back to the school first thing too,’ Grace continued.
‘It’s staying open?’ Frankie frowned.
‘Only for us,’ Nick enlightened him. ‘Now that the mobile unit is set up, we can take first statements there and bring anyone into the station if we need to question them further.’
‘The youth club is still being held this evening,’ Grace added. ‘It doesn’t seem very respectful, but I can understand. The kids might need someone to talk to.’
