Page 56 of Gone in the Night
‘Hey, can I take a look at the trail cam footage? Have you had time to review it?’
She hoped he said yes because if he said no, she would be furious with him. His head bobbed up and down.
‘Yeah, I told my boss to ring you but he’s mid-argument with his wife, so, you know, priorities.’
This made her smile despite the graveness of the situation. ‘Can you show it to me? Did you see anything?’
‘A couple of deer, a fox, gazillion rabbits and a dog sniffing around the trail where the rabbits had been running around.’
‘Lydia’s dog?’
He shrugged. ‘Has to be, it was happy enough mooching around so it was definitely alive. It headed some way down the fell, out of sight of the camera, but the weird thing is its tail was wagging as if it was excited.’
‘That is weird. Why would its tail be wagging when its owner had just been killed? Unless it knew the killer?’
Sammy’s head snapped up to stare at her. ‘You think it was someone she knew? Wouldn’t they have taken the dog? That’s sick, man, I mean I don’t get it anyway but to leave her dog on its own out here.’ He was shaking his head. ‘I sent the footage to the email address you gave me. Is that okay?’
‘Perfect, thank you, Sammy.’
Raised voices came from inside the caravan.
‘I’ll leave you to it unless you think I need to intervene.’
He shook his head. ‘They both have big mouths, but they never get violent and they’re both as bad as each other so don’t worry about it. I hope you catch the sick bastard who did this. I don’t think I’ll ever close my eyes again without seeing the inside of that tent screaming at me.’
Morgan gave him a sad smile of commiseration and thoughtme too, Sammy, me too.
Morgan went straight into Ben’s office, barely acknowledging Stan or Amber as she strode past the desks they were sitting behind. It didn’t feel the same that was for sure. She was hoping that Stan would end up with Amber, and she and Cain could team up. So fired up with her theory about Leah, she didn’t knock on the door and walked straight in.
Ben looked up from his computer. ‘Well, hello you.’
‘The dog was alive and well, it’s on the trail cam footage heading away from the campsite, tail wagging and everything.Unfortunately, there was nothing to show the killer though. I have a theory.’
‘Let’s hear it because I’ll take anything.’
She smiled at him; he was grinning at her with that cheeky smile that never failed to make her heart do a little double jump. The rough stubble on his jaw only added to his charm.
‘What if Leah King killed Sharon, realised that Jack figured it out so killed him too, then killed Lydia Williams to make it look like a serial killer.’
‘That’s a lot of what ifs, even more than mine earlier.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s the best I have.’
‘What’s her motive?’
‘Revenge, greed, anger that Sharon caught her sleeping with her stepdad and cut her off out of her life, therefore cutting off the free ride that she’d enjoyed all these years. I spoke to the maid, and she said that Leah was a thief, always taking things without asking.’
‘Being a thief and lacking in morals doesn’t necessarily make her a killer though.’
Morgan sat down on the chair opposite him and sighed. ‘No, but she’s a good suspect. We need to work on the assumption that she could have killed Sharon and Lydia.’
‘How did she kill Jack? I mean he would have been a dead weight, how on earth did she get him up to the tree branch to hang him?’
‘I didn’t say it was a hundred per cent fool proof, did I?’
Ben laughed. ‘It’s an interesting concept and yes, you’re right, we need to consider her involvement with Sharon’s murder. I just don’t know about Lydia and Jack.’
‘If we consider her for Sharon’s murder then she has to be responsible for Lydia’s, they’re identical MOs. Maybe Jack really did take his own life out of guilt or grief, stress about Amy havinga baby he never wanted, problems at work. It could all have got on top of him, and Sharon’s murder was the last straw.’
