Lethal Game by Charlie Gallagher

Author:Charlie Gallagher [Gallagher, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-09-24T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Joel swept back into the office already feeling like he needed to make up for time lost. There was a lot to do and he felt like it should start in the incident room. This was a loose name for it. Having secured a permanent space to work, he had then asked the estates team to create a separate room within it that he could use as the incident room – just like any professional murder investigation team. What they had come up with was a sound-deadened area made out of padded dividers on creaking metal feet. It was ‘make-do’, a phrase that already seemed to be dogging his detective career.

Eileen Holmans was already in this incident area, DS Rose a few steps behind him. Eileen knew the emphasis Joel placed on having everything up and visible to all and had made good use of the sound-deadening material, which was at least drawing-pin friendly. There was a whiteboard too, rattling on its splayed legs as Eileen ran a marker pen over its surface. The drawing pins held up images and information sheets, the scenes kept apart by using a different corner for each one.

‘What happens if we run out of corners?’ Joel said. Eileen took a moment to finish what she was writing, then turned smoothly on one heel, like she was still in her teaching pomp and addressing a class of noisy students who had just filed in.

‘You will just need to stop this madness before that happens, won’t you?’ she said, falling short of adding boy! to the end of her sentence to really give that school vibe. She continued, ‘The photographs from the scene this morning have all come through. I assume you have a story to tell me that goes with them?’

‘Well, you are in charge, Eileen!’ Joel got his usual glare-over-the-glasses as a prompt. ‘We have another victim. The similarities are very clear as you will have seen. The clothes he was wearing, the figurine, the map and phone number on the wall …’

Eileen thoughtfully chewed the end of the pen she was holding. ‘So are we saying serial killer here?’

‘No.’ Joel was a little caught out, the surprise clear in his voice. ‘This wouldn’t fit with that and we don’t really want to use that phrase either. This isn’t a Netflix series, we need to be toning the drama down if we can.’

‘Not yet anyway,’ DS Rose said to cut Joel down a little.

‘OK, so “not yet” is still “no, we are not using that phrase,”’ Joel said.

‘We need to be prepared for the press to call him that. We’re already getting questions coming in. There’s a sniff of two separate murders but with the same offender. When are we going to put something official out in the media?’ DS Rose had mentioned a press release early on for Joel to dismiss it. Now she crossed her arms like this time she would not be so easily dismissed.

‘I didn’t want to, not yet.

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