Pop Goes the Weasel | страница 122

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘She was wearing a hat, it covered her face a bit.’

‘Like a baseball cap?’

Alfie nodded. Helen sat back on her haunches. They could ask him some more questions – about her height and build – but it would be hard to get a positive ID off him. He was only six, after all.

‘What did she do?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What did she take?’

Helen shot a look at Alfie’s mum, then lowered her voice.

‘Something very special.’

Helen looked at his face so full of curiosity. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that he would never see his daddy again.

Helen was so engrossed in her chat with Charlie that she didn’t hear Harwood coming. An increasingly frustrated Charlie had spent days trying to run PussyKing’s true identity to ground – he was Bitchfest’s principal contributor and should have been easy to find. But because he never used a home or office computer and was adept at creating fake addresses via encrypted IPs, PussyKing remained forever just out of reach. Helen and Charlie were debating their next move, when:

‘Could I have a word, Helen?’

It was said with a smile, but without warmth. This was a public summons in front of the team and was designed to send out a message. What that message was Helen wasn’t yet clear about.

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,’ Harwood continued once they were in her office. ‘I know events are moving fast but I will not tolerate this breakdown in communication. Is that clear?’

‘Yes. Ma’am.’

‘This only works if every link in the chain is connected, right?’

Helen nodded but privately wanted to tell her to blow it out her arse.

‘So what’s been going on?’ Harwood continued.

Helen brought her up to speed with the developments in the hunt for Lyra Campbell, the work being done at the old cinema and the latest killing.

‘No body yet but we believe the victim is Simon Booker, former paratrooper and veteran of Afghanistan.’

‘A war hero. Bloody hell.’

Helen sensed it was the possible headlines that were upsetting Harwood, not the man’s fate. She concluded her briefing, then moved to excuse herself, but Harwood stopped her in her tracks.

‘I had lunch with the police commissioner today.’

Helen said nothing. Was this another front opening up?

‘He’s very worried. The investigation is already massively over budget. The cost of surveillance alone is huge and has yielded nothing. Then there’s the extra uniforms, the overtime, the auxiliary SOC team and the dogs, and to what end? What concrete progress have we made?’