‘It seems that Douglas Hannigan has been stalking his former fiancée,’ James told those members of the team who were still in the office when he returned.
James put latex gloves on before removing the contents of the envelope and spreading it out on the table around which they all stood.
‘There are seven sheets of A4 paper here and on five of them are various photographs of Rachel Elliott that were obviously taken without her knowledge,’ he said. ‘In three of them, she’s pictured with Carlo Salvi. One shows them entering the flat where he’s been staying, and the other two show them walking together through Ambleside. In the other two images Rachel is pictured leaving the café where she worked and entering her home in Bowness. There is also a photo of Salvi walking into the university.’
James picked up a sheet containing a single head and shoulders shot of Salvi. Below it was a list of his qualifications and academic interests, and a note describing him as ‘a visiting research fellow at the University of Cumbria’.
‘This sheet was clearly downloaded from the university’s website,’ James said.
‘But why was he so interested in him?’ asked one of the support staff.
‘It must be because he discovered that Salvi was the new man in Rachel’s life and he wanted to know more about him,’ James said. ‘All this suggests to me that Hannigan began stalking Rachel so that he could collect information on her and work out how best to cause her harm, either physically or through threats and intimidation.’
DC Abbott leaned over the table for a closer look.
‘So, despite his denials, he appears to have been dead set on getting revenge on her for sending those photos to the Gazette,’ she observed. ‘And if he did go through with his threat to pay someone to hurt her, this stuff could have been passed on to whoever the perpetrator was.’
James nodded. ‘It’s possible. But it’s also possible that he didn’t get to make use of these because someone else beat him to it by killing her, and that’s why he binned them. The discovery of the envelope is significant, but it isn’t enough to pin Rachel’s murder on Hannigan. We still have other suspects who are very much in the mix, and the truth is it could be any or none of them,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever worked on a case that’s taken us in so many different directions.’
He went on to inform the team that the patrol officers who turned up at Hannigan’s house would remain there overnight and arrangements were being made to repair the broken kitchen window.
It was coming up to 7.30 p.m. when Stevens called from the hospital to tell him that Hannigan had regained consciousness but was now confused and in pain.
‘He did manage to respond to some questions from the team who treated him in A&E by moving his head,’ Stevens said. ‘He confirmed he fell down the stairs and that he’d been drinking and snorting cocaine. I’ve spoken to a doctor who says he doesn’t appear to have any serious internal injuries, but we won’t be allowed to interview him until tomorrow at the earliest.’
‘That’s what I expected. Are his parents there?’
‘They just arrived. And so did Erika Chan. Turns out Hannigan hadn’t told them that she’d walked out on him this morning. I was with her when she broke the news and it didn’t seem to come as any great surprise to them. In fact, I got the impression they had every sympathy for her.’
James told Stevens about the envelope they’d found.
‘Mention it to Miss Chan and the parents,’ James said. ‘I’d like to know if they were aware that their boy had been stalking Rachel.’
Stevens sent James a text ten minutes later just as he was about to leave the office to go home.
The case continued to play inside James’s head as he drove home. It hadn’t snowed for a while, and the roads were in much better shape, but tiredness infused his bones, which made it hard for him to concentrate.
Before leaving the office, he’d sent Annie a text to say he was on his way. She messaged back that she would put a ready meal in the oven and keep Bella awake until he got there.
His thoughts continued to spin in all directions and he felt uncertainty beat in his heart. He was annoyed with himself because he still couldn’t be sure who had murdered Rachel Elliott and why.
There were so many thoughts tumbling through James’s mind that it was making the muscles knot in his stomach.
He tried to drown them out by turning on the radio, but it was bad timing as he caught the tail-end of a news story in which the reporter told listeners that Cumbria police were making slow progress in their hunt for the person who’d been dubbed ‘The Winter Killer’.