Tomek looked down at the bowl, then at Chey, then back at the bowl again. ‘Fuck’s sake. Why’d you have to say that? Now I just wanna throw it all over you.’
Tomek feinted the bowl towards Chey, and the young constable flinched out of the way. As he stumbled, his foot caught on the side of a desk chair and he staggered backwards, falling to the floor. The office erupted into a chorus of laughter.
‘That’ll teach you to take the piss out of my food,’ Tomek said as he made his way to the kitchen and began pouring it into the bin.
A moment later, Oscar entered behind him, standing in the doorway to prohibit anyone else from entering.
‘Morning, Sarge,’ he said, caution lacing his tone.
‘Morning, Captain.’
‘Have you heard the latest?’
‘That stepping on three cracks will break my mother’s back? Yes.’
‘No. About the DNA.’
Tomek stopped what he was doing and set the bowl on the kitchen counter.
‘DNA? What DNA?’
Tomek held his breath.
‘The DNA that was found at Angelica’s crime scene.’
Tomek’s eyes widened. He held his breath. ‘We’ve got the results?’
‘Seven o’clock this morning.’
Tomek shuffled closer to the constable.
‘And?’
‘We’ve got a match.’
Finally. After all his persistence.
Fuck you, Nick. And fuck you, Victoria.
‘And?’ he said. ‘Whose is it? Shawn’s?’
Oscar shook his head. A smirk crept onto his face.
‘The DNA found belongs to Johnny, Sarge. Johnny Whitaker.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Tomek pulled the car into Daphne and Roy Whitaker’s driveway. He leapt out before it had stopped rolling in park mode and, slamming the door shut behind him, he sprinted across the forecourt towards the Whitakers’ front door. He pounded his fists. Three, four times. No answer.
He tried again, this time leaning to the side and pressing his face against the living room windows. No movement.
First the hospital, and now this.
Tomek did not know where Johnny Whitaker was, and neither did the hospital. According to the district nurse, Johnny had been discharged several hours before, with no forwarding address or communication made to his next of kin, who happened to be his parents. Tomek had assembled a team and instructed them to visit The Prince Albert, in case Angelica’s brother had returned to his watering hole, but they’d found nothing, and were currently on their way to meet him now.
Tomek turned to the front door and pounded his fists on it again. Still nothing.
Just as he crouched down and opened the letterbox to scream through, the door flew open. Tomek stepped through without approval, and without waiting for his presence to register.
‘What the fuck?’ Daphne screamed as she was forced back by Tomek’s sudden and forceful intrusion.
‘Johnny,’ he said, almost breathless. ‘Where is he?’
‘Who?’
‘Your son.’
For a moment, a long, painful moment, Daphne said nothing, simply stared at him as though he’d asked her for the square root of a million.
‘Where is your son?’ Tomek repeated. ‘We need to speak to him.’
Still nothing. Perhaps it was the shock of his sudden presence. Or perhaps it was the steady realisation of what Tomek was asking: that the only reason Tomek could be asking for her son – again – was because they’d found something, something that connected him to his sister’s death.
‘Hospital…’ she muttered, her mind a hundred miles away.
‘Discharged. As of three hours ago. Now we don’t know where to find him. Have you seen him?’
Slowly, staring into the black space behind him, Daphne shook her head.
‘Where’s your husband?’
‘Outside. In the garden.’
Almost as if on cue, Roy Whitaker appeared in the hallway, wearing a pair of gardening gloves and a light green fleece vest.
‘Sergeant…’ he started. ‘What’re you—?’
‘He wants to know where Johnny is,’ answered Daphne.
‘Johnny? Again? Why?’
‘Because we have some more questions to ask him.’
‘About what?’
Tomek didn’t want to get into that right now, but he quickly realised it would be the only way to expedite the process.
‘Evidence,’ he said coherently, his breathing returned to normal. ‘We’ve found his DNA at Angelica’s crime scene. We just want to know how it got there.’
