‘Wait one minute,’ Kim said as her colleague started the engine. She wanted to see the effect of her warning.
Sure enough, a few minutes later Daniel appeared with a jacketed Ava. He buckled her in the front passenger seat and then took the wheel.
He started the car.
Kim watched with interest as he seemed to be taking the time to weigh his options.
After a couple of minutes had passed, he switched off the engine, got out, opened Ava’s door and began to empty the boot.
Twenty-Six
Stacey always tried hard not to make personality judgements based on political beliefs. She was having to remind herself of that as she worked her way through Joe Butler’s social media accounts.
Her first course of action in his background check had been to establish if the man was known to them. Given his rage at Ashley Reynolds over the custody case, she’d been surprised that he was nowhere to be found in the system. Clearly, he had a temper, but it appeared that he was full of empty threats.
Scrolling through his social media revealed a family man with hundreds of posts of his boys: out on day trips, the zoo, the beach, on holiday, just messing around and of them sleeping peacefully. There was no question that he loved his boys to death. He appeared to be a great dad, and Stacey had to work hard to remember that as she scrolled past post after post of right-wing content.
Her head knew that it didn’t make him a bad person, but her gut always reacted unfavourably to people who supported politics based on division and hate. In her experience, such organisations focussing on a minority would only turn their attention elsewhere once the goal was achieved. As a paid-up member of a couple of minority groups, they made her nervous, and she always remembered her mum walking just a little bit quicker past the houses with a BNP sticker in the window.
It wasn’t that she felt that illegal immigration was a problem that shouldn’t be addressed, but through Devon, an immigration officer, she also got to hear about the other side of it. The personal side of it, the stories that didn’t make the headlines.
Only two weeks ago, Devon had been sent to interview a woman who had fled from Afghanistan with two children. She’d lost one child on the crossing, and the other had died beside her in an unventilated van bringing them to the Midlands.
‘How bad must life be to risk that?’ Devon had asked with sadness.
Stacey had no answer, but she could recognise desperation when she saw it.
Joe Butler could not, and his constant support of a divisive political party somehow coloured her view of him no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Not normally prone to stereotypes, she really couldn’t help feeling the man should be known to them in some capacity.
Was he really able to control his temper that well? Had he never once lost control and landed himself in hot water? Not even a scuffle outside a pub in his younger days?
She continued to scroll and found a post of the man and his two boys standing in front of a 3 Series BMW. The caption stated simply ‘new car’ and all faces beamed at the camera. It was very cute, but it was the personalised number plate that caught her attention – B7 PJB.
Did that mean Joe was his middle name?
She scrolled back up to his profile information, but there was nothing but Joe Butler mentioned anywhere. Clearly the man did not like his first name and used his middle name for everything. She pored over all his posts, searching for a clue as to his first name. There was no law against what he was doing, but it did give her an idea.
She logged back into the system and searched.
Peter Joseph Butler – nothing.
Paul Joseph Butler – drug offences but wrong man.
Philip Joseph Butler – bingo. There he was. As her gut had suspected, he was known to them.
Her eyes ran through his record, but it wasn’t until she got to the end that she sat back in her chair and reached for her phone.
The boss would definitely want to know about this.
Twenty-Seven
‘Domestic violence,’ Kim repeated. ‘Against who?’
‘His then wife,’ Stacey answered.
‘And he still got custody of the boys? Okay, thanks, Stace. Send the address to Bryant. Have you got anything else for me?’
‘Not yet,’ Stacey said before ending the call.
