Takedown by Heather Atkinson (latest books to read txt) 📕

isn’t and someone checks his work and finds there aren’t any problems with the club then questions will be asked.”

“Who’s going to question a hero firefighter?” said Faith. “So, where shall we start?”

“Well, we don’t have a home address. We could start with the fire station but we don’t know what shifts he works, so…”

“Found him,” said Abi, who had been idly swiping at her phone. “He’s on every social media platform. It seems the hero likes attention.”

Vance took the phone from her. There was a photo of Ben in full hiking gear up Snowdonia, undoubtedly the same man they’d watched breaking into the desk in the office at Pulse. There were also photos of him holding a cat at an animal sanctuary’s open day, taking part in a charity fun run, delivering food to a food bank and baking cupcakes for a charity coffee morning.

“This makes even less sense,” said Abi. “Why nick a load of drugs?”

“Maybe he’s got an evil twin?” said Kevin.

“Or maybe he puts on a front to the world,” said Caleb. “And the real Ben Cooper is the one who twatted Greg and the others.”

“We need to find out who the real Ben Cooper is from the people who know him best,” said Faith. “Anyone can post photos of themselves doing good deeds to project a front.”

“You’re right,” Vance told her. “It reminds me of a case I worked not long after I joined CID. I nicked a vicar for being a peeping tom. Everyone was stunned it was him because he seemed so kind and gentle, doing good deeds for his parishioners. It turned out he had a dark side that liked to wank off while watching women through the windows of their own homes. I caught him red-handed, literally. He pleaded guilty so the footage wouldn’t be played in court. The humiliation would have been too much for him.”

“Being a copper sounds such fun,” said Kevin sarcastically.

“What put you on to the vicar in the first place?” Faith asked him.

“All the victims were his parishioners. It was the only link between them. My colleagues said I was daft for thinking it was him but when I attended one of his services, I noticed him look at one of the female parishioners a few times in a weird way, so I waited outside her house and sure enough that night he came along and whipped it out.”

“Don’t tell Mum that story or she’ll keel over,” said Abi.

“Ben’s posted photos of himself with his car,” said Vance, continuing to study his social media accounts. “He’s blocked out the registration plate but he hasn’t done anything to disguise the street.”

“Great,” said Kevin. “Which street is it then?”

“I don’t know, there isn’t a sign but the houses are quite distinctive. They’ve got a mock-tudor front. I wish everyone would realise how dangerous social media can be. So many people post every little thing they do. It makes it very easy for a predator to find out every detail of their lives.”

“We can’t just drive around the town looking for these houses,” said Abi. “There’s hundreds of streets in Blackpool.”

“It looks like a pretty well-monied street, so that rules out some areas.”

“Yeah, like the one we’re in right now,” said Kevin.

“How do we know Ben actually lives on that street?” said Faith. “He might have been visiting friends or family.”

“Because on the next photo the caption says, At home with the family.”

“Great,” she sighed. “He’s got a wife and kids?”

“Yep.”

“That makes the situation even more complicated.”

“Jason, you can look at house prices in Blackpool,” Vance told him. “It’ll list every house that’s sold in the area for the last few years, with photos. If you find a house that looks like the one on this photo, then we’ll know where to look.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea,” he replied. “Or we could just look at street view online.”

“The problem with that is it’s often years old. Those houses look pretty new.”

“Oh, yeah. It was still a good idea though,” he sniffed.

“Yes it was,” smiled Vance. “And bring up a map of Blackpool on your laptop. We can divvy up the streets between us.”

“Can’t we just ask Young to get us the address now we know who he is?” said Abi.

“He won’t give us the address,” replied Faith. “He’s worried about what we’ll do to Ben.”

“We won’t do anything to him,” said Kevin. “Except rip his fucking face off.”

“Case in point,” said Caleb wryly.

Jason brought up the map and placed the laptop on the floor for them all to gather round.

“This is a needle in a haystack,” said Abi. “And how far do we check? Just the town itself or do we need to go wider into Poulton-le-Fylde and Bispham?”

“No,” said Vance. “He’ll live near the station so he can get there quickly when he’s on-call during standby hours.”

“Brilliant,” said Caleb. “That means we can really round it down.”

“We’ll split into three groups and use the fire station as the epicentre of the search. Me and Faith will take the north and west, Caleb and Abi east and Jason and Kev the south.”

“I thought I was supposed to be searching on my laptop?” said Jason.

“The beauty of a laptop is that it’s portable. Kev can drive while you look.”

“Oh yeah, good idea.”

“Why don’t we just wait at the fire station and follow him home?” said Faith. “It’ll save a lot of time.”

“Because we don’t know how long we’ll be hanging around,” replied Vance. “And he might notice he’s being followed, losing us our advantage.”

“I suppose but driving around the streets seems the difficult way to do things.”

“Sometimes the difficult way is the quickest one. Too many people waste time trying to find a shortcut when