It’s a short drive to Graham Garfield’s college rooms in Corpus, and while Manon runs in to pick up his laptop (just her, nice and quiet, like she promised), Davy sits in his driver seat, checking his BlackBerry. His original request for information from EE about unknown-515 had yielded nothing, but that was before Christmas, so as soon as he was back from his festive break he requested an update, and this has just dropped into his inbox.
Manon is heaving down into the passenger seat, having put Garfield’s laptop onto the back seat.
‘He wasn’t happy,’ she says, breathless and rustling in her coat.
Davy is shifting in his seat, making himself more upright. ‘Unknown-515,’ he says, reading.
‘What about it?’
‘It’s been topped up. Biggleswade, the BP service station. Two weeks ago.’
‘That’ll have CCTV,’ she says. ‘Let’s head out there.’
‘Shouldn’t we, y’know, head back to the office, drop off the laptop, give Harriet the heads up on Helena Reed?’ asks Davy.
‘Nah,’ says Manon. She’s excitable, he’s seen that look before. When she gets the bit between her teeth, she doesn’t want to stop. ‘Come on, Davy, this could be it – this could be the thing that solves it. You and me, and a collar.’ She lifts and lowers her eyebrows at him, a bit comedy. ‘To Biggleswade!’ she says, raising aloft an imaginary sword.
Davy shakes his head and drives.
As they pull into the BP forecourt, Manon is already peering about its low slab of a roof for cameras.
‘CCTV for December twenty-third,’ she says at the counter, showing her badge to the cashier. ‘Have you got it stored somewhere?’
The cashier, a spotty young man of about twenty, is shaking his head. ‘Wiped at the start of the year,’ he says. ‘I only know ’cos I was in that day.’
‘Were you on duty on December twenty-third?’ asks Davy.
‘Nope, don’t know who was. I’d have to get my manager but he’s not about right now.’
Davy turns round at the squeak of the shop door and sees Manon already leaving. He jogs after her as she strides about the forecourt, scanning the London Road and its wide-spaced bungalows left and right.
‘We can speak to the duty manager, get the rota off of him,’ Davy suggests to her back.
She is squinting and peering, turning this way and that. ‘There!’ she says to him, pointing.
‘What?’ says Davy.
‘There, can’t you see it? Poking out of the ivy.’
On a brick wall opposite the BP garage, camouflaged by glossy foliage, is a camera – trained on the forecourt. ‘Let’s see what’s in that one.’