Fatal Mercy by Duncan Wallace

Author:Duncan Wallace [Wallace, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-12T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“Bet you’re glad I didn’t tell you I took the phone now,” I said triumphantly as I showed her the text message from the mystery delivery boy.

“You smug git,” she chuckled as she read over the text message. “Are we going to go and meet him?”

“Of course, we are,” I said. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know…” she said, although she obviously had a reason for asking that. “Think about it for a moment.”

I took a minute to get out of the bubble of excitement that I was in and then thought about the situation from a more practical point of view.

We had apprehended the person that the delivery man met with every week. First of all, the delivery boy had missed their first meeting and rearranged it for the next day. The next day, they had left an envelope telling Jenkins to meet them at half-past five, but Paisley and I had arrested Gerald before he could. Then, he had messaged Gerald this morning to say where and when to meet.

Paisley was right. After all of that, it was obvious that the messenger was going to be suspicious as to what was going on with Gerald and why he hadn’t shown up last night, especially as he had been so angry about the delivery boy missing the drop-off the day before. So, that meant…

“It might be a trap for us,” I concluded.

“Aye,” Paisley said, and she seemed relieved that I had come to the same conclusion as her. “I reckon they know about us, and they know that we arrested Jenkins. So, they’re trying to corner us. This investigation has layers, and some of them are clearly darker than others. We don’t know what this man is capable of. For all we know, he’s not just a delivery boy.”

“But what if he is?” I asked as it was my turn to play devil’s advocate. “What if he just thinks Jenkins was really busy at the hospital and couldn’t get out in time to meet? It must’ve happened before if this had been going on every week.”

I picked up the phone and started to scroll through the text messages. Of course, the oncologist and the delivery boy had spoken on the phone more than via text message, but I wanted to see if there was any evidence of drop-offs being rescheduled.

Sure enough, a few weeks back in the messages, I found a thread where Gerald had apologised for missing a meeting, and they had decided when to meet the next day.

“Look,” I said and showed the texts to the policewoman opposite me. “This isn’t the first time this has happened. He might just think Gerald was too busy to meet him.”

“Maybe,” she sighed, but she didn’t sound at all convinced.

“Look, I’m not denying that what you suggested is actually what’s happening here,” I assured her. “For all we know, it could be a trap. But I don’t want to pass up this opportunity to get to the bottom of this case, do you?”

“No,” she admitted.

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