Stacey tried to pretend she wasn’t pissed off.

She’d never been one to sulk but being kept away from the questioning at this stage when it was her own efforts that had spotted the duplication in the DNA records had left a definite sour taste in her mouth.

‘Bloody Dawson,’ she said, kicking at the leg of the desk.

He’d taken the printout as well as her glory. She knew deep down that the boss always knew who had done what, but that logic did not sit well with her current mood.

She had already spent half an hour searching the Heathcrest archives for the list of students pertaining to the registration numbers on the DNA printout, entering all kinds of keywords and search criteria, but with more than 300,000 documents on the mainframe, she couldn’t even get a list of results below five figures.

The boss had asked her to start looking for any scandal surrounding any of the male teachers around the time Lorraine had been a student. Stacey could understand why she was asking. It stood to reason that if someone in authority had been having a relationship with Lorraine there was a good chance they’d done it again.

And this was why she was no good at stropping, she realised. Her brain was always ready to offer her a balanced alternative view.

She sat back in her chair and pictured Devon getting in from work, kicking off her shoes and making a pot of tea. Only she could find a girlfriend with an addiction to a cup of tea.

She reached for the phone to give her a quick call. It was bound to sweeten her mood. The phone began to ring before her hand got there.

‘Wood,’ she answered.

‘Constable, I have a lady down here that’s looking for Dawson,’ Jack said.

‘Good for you,’ she said to the custody sergeant.

‘Says she really needs to speak to him,’ Jack persisted.

‘He’s not here, Jack,’ she explained. ‘I’m sure you saw him tear out of here about half an hour back.’

‘Can’t say as I did but this woman seems jumpy as hell and won’t speak to anyone else. Said Dawson’s been looking for her, about Heathcrest, and she won’t say any more.’

Stacey frowned. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Mrs Forbes is all I’m getting.’

The name registered somewhere in her brain.

‘Okay, on my way,’ she said, replacing the receiver. The call to Devon would just have to wait.

Stacey headed down the stairs and let herself into the reception.

Jack nodded to the only person around.

Mrs Forbes was standing so close to the automatic doors Stacey could see that the sensor kept trying to kick in to open, detecting her presence. A full-length brown camel coat dropped from her shoulders to her ankles. A grey woolly hat covered her head with just an inch of red hair peeping out from beneath. She was either regretting walking through the door or was eager to get out and she hadn’t even spoken yet.

‘Mrs Forbes,’ Stacey said, approaching with her hand outstretched. She still wasn’t sure who she was, but the name had seemed familiar and Dawson had obviously been trying to speak to her.

‘I’m afraid Sergeant Dawson isn’t here right now. I’m his colleague, Detective Constable Wood. Do you want to come through?’

The woman hesitated and glanced outside before nodding. ‘Just for a minute, my husband is waiting.’

Stacey smiled reassuringly as she keyed herself back into the corridor.

‘This way,’ she said, leading the woman along the hallway to interview room one. ‘We can talk in here. Can I get you a coffee, tea, a cold—’

‘Nothing, thank you, I’m fine.’

She looked anything but fine, Stacey thought, as she watched the movement of her hands clenching and unclenching in her jacket pockets.

Stacey sat down and invited the woman to do the same thing. She shook her head. ‘Your colleague, he visited my old house looking for me, well, for Harrison, actually.’

Of course. Stacey remembered now. He’d called her to see if she had any other address for the Forbes family, and she’d been too busy with the boss’s work to help. This was the third kid who had left Heathcrest during the middle of the year.

‘My name is Katherine Forbes, Harrison’s mother.’

‘Thank you for coming in, Mrs Forbes. I don’t know if you’re aware that we’ve been investigating—’

‘I’m aware,’ she said, offering nothing more.

‘My colleague has been rather interested in the secret clubs at Heathcrest and particularly in why some students just seemed to disappear mid-term. Harrison was one of those students, Mrs Forbes. Was there some kind of incident?’

‘Incident,’ she spat as her face suddenly spurred into life. ‘Is that what you’d call it? My son’s life in ruins is an incident?’

Stacey was instantly sorry to have caused offence but as she didn’t know exactly what had happened she had no clue what they were talking about.

‘Mrs Forbes, I don’t have all the details of your—’

‘Isn’t that why your colleague called by the house?’

‘All I know is that one term Harrison was at Heathcrest but the next he wasn’t and that my colleague was keen to find out more about it. Can you tell me why, Mrs Forbes?’

‘Because he was tackled, officer, on the hockey field. Both knees smashed by two of his classmates while playing a sport.’

Stacey balked. ‘I’m so sorry to hear—’

‘An accident, they called it,’ she said, coming closer. Seeing the rage in her eyes Stacey found herself sitting back in her chair. ‘The teachers and kids. A tragic incident of overzealous play. My child is sixteen years of age and will never walk unaided again.’

‘But, still, he has—’

‘Without distance running he has nothing. It was his passion. It was his life. The injury was intentional, officer,’ she said.

‘Was it jealousy?’ Stacey asked. Perhaps someone had wanted him off the sports team.

The woman shook her head.

‘And you moved house because of—’

‘Of course not. We moved because of what happened later.’

Stacey sat forward. The kid had been permanently disabled and there was more?

‘On the day that we collected Harrison from the hospital we had a car accident. We were a few miles away from home when a white transit van overtook us at speed and then slammed on his brakes right in front of us. We ploughed straight into the back of him. If my husband hadn’t automatically slowed down, we would all be dead. And that was the intention. The driver and van were never found.’

Stacey tried to process what she’d heard.

The woman shuddered. ‘My whole family was in that car.’

‘So, are you saying all of this happened because someone was jealous of his athletic ability?’

‘Of course not. It was punishment.’

‘For what?’ she asked.

‘Refusing the card.’

‘“Refusing the card”?’ Stacey queried. Now she was lost.

‘Turning down the groups,’ she explained. ‘An ace of spades was left in his bed. He gave it back and said no.’

‘And?’ she asked as dread began to form in her stomach.

‘If you know anything about that damned place you should know by now that no one refuses the card.’