‘But if she kept blocking him, how did new messages from non-friends get through?’
‘They sit in message requests. Facebook, for example, holds all your messages from non-friends in a separate file. You only see them if you go looking.’
‘Did she go looking?’
Stacey nodded.
‘So what’s the point of blocking?’
‘It’s a need to know,’ Stacey said. ‘You’re still compelled to read the messages, not least to see if they give you a clue. In the last one he did mention a café that she’d been to with friends.’
‘You think he could have followed her?’
‘Absolutely. I think Rozzie had herself a real-life dangerous stalker.’
‘You think her parents knew?’
‘No, she was seventeen years old. There’s no police report, and I think her parents would have insisted. Looks to me like Rozzie kept all this to herself.’
That was a lot for a seventeen-year-old to deal with alone, Penn thought.
‘Maybe she thought her mum had enough problems.’
‘But what exactly was Helen dealing with? We know she suffered from depression, like millions of others. She had a difficult anniversary to face, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t like she had a rush of new problems to deal with,’ Penn asked.
‘Maybe they weren’t that close, and Rozzie struggled to share things with either of her parents,’ Stacey proposed. ‘There’s no mention of her mum or dad on her social media.’ Stacey paused. ‘So that’s me. What have you got?’
Penn pulled one of the diary sheets towards him.
‘Listen to this. “I never stop wondering where you are. I loved you so much. I let you down. My grief consumes me.”’
‘Bloody hell. That must be her outpourings for the child that died. She really didn’t ever get over it, did she?’
‘The clippings I’ve got have no date, but there’s one thing I don’t understand.’
‘Go on,’ Stacey said.
‘If you’ve lost something so precious, don’t you overcompensate and go extreme on what you’ve got left? At the time Helen lost that middle child, she already had twins, and following the loss, she had two more children. According to the boss, she doesn’t appear to have had a close bond with any of her children.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Gotta be honest, Stace, I haven’t got a bloody clue, but something doesn’t smell right between Helen and her kids.’
FORTY-FIVE
Doctor Raymond Cutler kept a surgery in the building of the West Midlands private hospital in Colley Gate.
The call ahead had won them a twenty-minute window he had at 4.40p.m. Kim wasn’t sure if he had another client at 5p.m. or if he was a real stickler for leaving on time. And she had a minute to spare when they were buzzed into the waiting area.
‘Go ahead,’ Leanne said, taking a seat in the reception. It was an area where she could monitor anyone coming into the building.
After Kim showed her ID, the receptionist pointed to a hallway that curled around the greeting desk.
‘Feeling a bit like a trio that just lost their least favourite friend, guv,’ Bryant said once they were out of sight.
‘Speak for yourself,’ she said, following the sign to Doctor Cutler’s office.
‘Bit different to Russells Hall, eh?’ Bryant continued.