The next morning, Kay pulled her car into a free parking space outside the Kent Police headquarters at Northfleet and hurried towards the forecourt outside the four-storey modern office building.
A concrete framework surrounded darkened privacy glass that overlooked a busy main road sweeping along the north Kent coastline beside Gravesend.
The modern structure was a stark contrast to the red-brick late-1930s building that had housed the police headquarters until the previous year, and there were some detractors within West Division about the decision to move east.
Despite this, most of her colleagues from Sutton Road were enthusiastic about the move.
As Adam had pointed out, visiting here brought with it a different kind of risk for Kay though.
Ever since she and her team had uncovered a corrupt pair of officers working alongside one of the country’s worst people traffickers, she had avoided the place, unwilling to face the unspoken rancour from some who resented her eventual promotion to detective inspector at the expense of once-respected former colleagues.
And so she found herself here on a Sunday morning, hoping to avoid anyone who might take offence at her presence.
She carried a cardboard tray with two large takeout cups of coffee in one hand and swung her bag over her shoulder with the other, depositing her car keys inside as she crossed the concrete path and reached the front doors.
Kay swiped her security pass across a panel set into the wall and hurried up a flight of stairs, following signs for the digital forensics team. Reaching the landing, she made her way along a quiet corridor to the far end and rapped her knuckles against a beech-coloured door with a vision panel set into the wood above the handle.
Moments later, a figure moved into view and she heard a beep before the locking mechanism released.
‘Morning, Hunter.’
‘Thanks for doing this, Andy.’
‘I have no social life. You’re lucky.’ Grey’s mouth twitched as he closed the door behind her and led the way over to a set of six screens.
‘How’re you settling in over here?’ she said, handing him one of the coffees and gazing out of the window. ‘The view’s not much better, is it?’
‘As if I have time to stare out there and daydream,’ he muttered, running a hand through unruly hair. ‘We still haven’t located a box of camera lenses that went walkabout during the move from Maidstone.’
‘Oops.’ Kay took a sip from her takeout cup and pointed at the screens. ‘How did you get on with our CCTV footage – anything useful?’
‘Actually, that’s been one bright beacon of light in an otherwise crappy week, Hunter.’ He waved her to one of two pedestal chairs next to the desk and sank into the other. ‘I’ll start with the bad news first, though. This recording here, the one the antiques shop owner provided, is about as good as we’re going to get – and I’m afraid it’s of no use to you at all.’
Kay squinted at the pixelated image on the first screen and sighed. ‘If this is your idea of progress, Andy…’
‘Hang on – remember I said this week wasn’t all shit. Look at this one.’ He tapped the middle screen and then moused over the controls to zoom in. ‘This is a CCTV camera outside a newsagent in Sittingbourne. This man here walks out of this alleyway and gets onto a moped parked outside the shop. And this is a different angle showing him entering the alleyway at the other end, close to a firm of solicitors. So, he’s probably—’
‘—the bloke who was watching Helen Taylor.’ Kay’s voice held a note of wonder as the digital forensics expert clicked on a sequence of buttons and a new photograph appeared on screen with greater clarity. ‘That’s perfect.’
A fresh excitement surged through her as she looked from one image to the other, and then her gaze fell on the sequence of numbers displayed at the bottom of each screen.
‘Shit. Hang on – this can’t be our bloke. Look at the time stamp on here – he couldn’t have been watching Helen’s office then. This is the same timeframe we know Carl’s truck tyres got slashed.’
‘He was watching her,’ said Andy, holding up two enlarged images. ‘They’re two different people.’
Kay took the photographs from him and immediately saw what he meant.
The first figure, the moped rider, was slight in build and appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties.
The second man was older, bulkier, and moved with the gait of someone with a knee injury or similar, his weight taken by his left leg as he paused to cross the busy intersection.
‘Please tell me you know who they are,’ she said, handing the photographs back to Andy.
He smiled, and tapped the image of the younger man. ‘I’ve only managed to get the name of one of them through DVLA records – Adrian Whitely, seventeen. The records show that he lives with his dad in Boxley.’
‘Well, one out of two isn’t bad, I’ll give you that,’ she said, already pushing her chair back.
‘I reckon if you have a quiet word with him within earshot of his dad, you might find out who this other bloke is, too.’
Kay winked, and patted his shoulder. ‘Best I go and ruin their weekend then, don’t you think?’