It had been a crappy afternoon. DS Clarke knew he wouldn’t be able to switch off that evening, not after all the Jules and Monty drama. But he also knew that if he asked his mother-in-law to do one more late-night babysitting job, she’d quite possibly kill him. So, he’d found the middle ground and had taken work home for the evening.
Kacey was tearing around in her Elsa dress, singing songs from that Frozen film, something about building a snowman? He tried to block out her squeals and shrieks as he scrolled through the messages in the forum. He hated to admit it, but Monty had made a good point about the TV Today interview. There were a lot of people who’d taken gross offense to Suzanne’s controversial position. One woman in particular was making her opinions heard.
DEBS4EVER21: It’s f*cking disgusting — talking bout being m8s with these perverts. Lock them up and be done with it. If she’s so friendly with em, she can go join!
CORAL1980: Don’t you think it’s time for a new approach, though? Might be the way forward.
DEBS4EVER21: I’m all 4 a new approach, but it should be ship em off to timbuktoo. I don’t want em near my kids and I don’t want em getting free shit thru charities neither. Why not use the money to support the actual kids?
CORAL1980: She said they’d do that as well, it was only one strand of the Walker Foundation which would focus on preventing abuse by working with the paedophiles.
DEBS4EVER21: Whatever luv. You lot go be buddies with the pervs. I’ll go and actually look after my kids.
The conversation escalated into a catfight about each other’s parenting skills. The DEBS4EVER21 account had been active on various forums, and she’d also been behind some of the nastiest tweets aimed at Suzanne over the last week. It almost seemed personal.
Clarke followed the instructions he’d been given by Jonesy in IT to trace the user of the DEBS4EVER21 account. As the computer worked its magic, he turned his attention back to Kacey, who was finally starting to tire.
“Ready for bath and a bedtime story, Kacey?”
He returned to the computer two hours later — one bedtime story had ended up turning into four — to find the results up on the screen. DEBS4EVER21 was in fact Deborah Knotwood, a single mother of five kids, two of whom were in the care of the local Authority. The other three were still known to Children’s Services under what they called Child in Need plans. From what Clarke understood, that was the step just below Child Protection proceedings. It looked like they’d been involved with Children’s Services on and off for years, so he bet she’d come into contact with Suzanne Walker at some point.
He glanced at his phone, which he’d left next to the laptop and was surprised to see it flashing. Six missed calls. He picked it up and opened the alert to see all six were from Rebecca. He called back immediately.
“Reynolds? What’s with the calls? Are you all right?”
“Finally! I was beginning to think something had happened. Are you okay?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m fine. I was just putting Kacey to bed.”
“I have news. I went by the Walkers’ house on my way home, just to pop my head in and see how Suzanne is doing, as it’s the week anniversary.”
His interest piqued at her tone. “And?”
“So, this young woman opened the door. I asked where Suzanne was, she said she was out, so I asked who she was, and guess what she said?”
Clarke shrugged to himself. “I don’t know. What?”
“She’s her sister.”
“Sister?” He frowned. He’d explicitly asked Suzanne about family support, and she’d denied having any siblings.
“Yep. I’m pretty sure she told us her parents were dead and that she had no siblings, right?”
“That’s right.” He scratched at his forehead, trying to figure out what this could mean.
“She’s obviously hiding something. Maybe your initial doubts about her were on-point. So, yeah, just wanted to let you know.”
“Thanks. Have a good weekend.” He hung up and stared down at the phone for a moment. A sister? Why would she lie about that? He shifted his focus back to the computer screen and quickly scribbled down Deborah Knotwood’s contact details before moving straight on to researching Suzanne Walker.
His mind whirred with conspiracies while he typed. Suzanne had lied about her family background. Clearly there was something that she desperately wanted to hide. He braced himself as the search engine did its job, wondering what secrets it might reveal.