Ginny Horton stood on the doorstep and took a breath. There wasn’t much more she could do here. She’d ensured that the scene was secured and then waited until the designated crime scene manager had arrived. She was relieved that Willy Ingram tended to be the preferred manager for this type of complex scene. This was partly because she knew he was effective at the job, but it was mainly because he was likely to complain less than most at being dragged from his bed at this time in the morning. As far as she knew, he lived alone and he seemed happier at work than anywhere else. Which, she acknowledged, wasn’t saying much.
Once they’d secured the scene, she’d told all but a couple of the uniforms to return to the station. There wasn’t a lot they could do here until the scene examination had been completed, and there was no point in tying up resources unnecessarily. Any search of the rest of the house, in line with their original objectives, would have to wait.
There’d been one exception. She’d spotted, in Elliott’s living room, the wireless control and recording unit which linked to the CCTV cameras at the front and rear of the house. If the killer had been careless, there was a possibility that their arrival might have been caught by the cameras.
Given that the killer was still on the loose, she’d made an executive decision to remove the CCTV unit and get the footage checked out. She’d sent one of the uniforms on ahead with it, asking him to check in with Helena Grant when he arrived.
It was still not yet five-thirty when Ingram turned up. The snow had lessened for the moment, leaving only a thin coating of white on the drive and surrounding undergrowth. Ingram nodded to her as she approached. ‘Sounds like a nasty one,’ he said.
‘Very.’ She briefly filled him in on the background, preparing him for what he would find in the house. He seemed unfazed. ‘I’ll take it from here, then. Examiners are on their way. Presumably you’ll kick things off back at the office.’ He seemed to speak only in these staccato, factual sentences.
She nodded. ‘I’ll speak to Helena and get the wheels in motion.’ She gestured up at the CCTV camera. ‘I took the liberty of seizing the footage and getting it sent back to the office.’
‘Long as I know. Okay, I’ll take it from here.’
When Horton finally arrived back at the office, it took her a while to track down Helena Grant. She eventually found her in one of the meeting rooms, sitting with Tess Adams in front of a laptop.
Adams looked up as she knocked and entered. ‘You did well,’ she said.
There was a patronising edge to the comment, but it was the first time Horton had heard Adams say anything complimentary, so she decided to accept it in good grace. ‘Did I?’
‘Shockingly so,’ Grant said. ‘With the emphasis on the word shock.’
Horton pulled up a chair and sat herself down next to Helena Grant. She could see now that they were looking at the footage from Elliott’s CCTV.
‘Watch,’ Grant said.
The split screen showed the footage from two cameras: one pointed at Elliott’s front doorstep, the other at the driveway. The camera had been triggered by the movement of a car pulling onto the drive, the beam of its headlights visible on both screens. The car pulled to a halt and, after a second, Horton saw Elliott emerge from the driver’s side.
‘This is from last night?’ Horton asked.
Grant nodded. ‘Fairly early in the evening according to the timer. About eight.’
Elliott made his way round the car and opened the passenger door. They watched as a young woman, dressed in a heavy-looking coat, stumbled out, steadying herself against the side of the car.
‘Pretty drunk,’ Horton commented.
‘You’d think,’ Adams said.
The woman staggered again and Elliott slipped his arm under hers to support her as they made their way towards the house. They reached the doorway, and Elliott fumbled with his key in the lock, the young woman still hanging unsteadily onto his arm.
Up to this point, Horton had been unable to see the woman’s face. As she and Elliott had approached the door, the woman had kept her head bowed down, apparently sheltering herself from the falling snow.
Now, suddenly, the woman looked up above the door, staring directly into the camera. She was smiling and then, unexpectedly, she winked. A moment later, Elliott had the door open and he and the woman disappeared into the house.
‘I’d say she knew exactly what she was doing,’ Adams said. ‘She spotted the camera and played to it.’
‘And we think this is our killer?’ Horton said.
‘Looks likely,’ Grant said. ‘The cameras are motion activated. This footage was triggered by the arrival of Elliott’s car. They get triggered again about twenty minutes later by the woman leaving. She drives off in Elliott’s car, presumably having helped herself to his keys. After that, the cameras are undisturbed for the rest of the night.’
‘If she was in and out in twenty minutes and then stole his car, that smacks of something pretty premeditated,’ Horton said. ‘If that’s the case, then why reveal her face to the camera? As you say, that didn’t look accidental.’
‘I don’t think it was,’ Grant said. ‘I think she wanted to be recognised.’
‘Why would she want that?’
‘Because she doesn’t care what happens to her once she’s done what she wants to, maybe. Or because she wants us to discover who’s responsible for this.’
‘So why not just hand herself in? By the time we discover who she is from that footage, we’re likely to have caught up with her by other means, especially as we know she’s taken Elliott’s car.’
‘My guess,’ Grant said, ‘is that she’s not handed herself in yet because the job’s not yet finished. This isn’t just about Elliott. We’ve also got the bodies found at Fort George and up in Dingwall. Like Elliott, all employees of the Muir Group.’
‘You think she might have been responsible for all of them?’
‘The way she dealt with Elliott suggests a pretty ruthless, not to say psychopathic, operation,’ Adams commented. ‘So it seems probable.’
‘This doesn’t sound like it’s just some inter-gang face off,’ Horton said.
‘I wouldn’t have said so,’ Adams replied. ‘Not the way Elliott was murdered. This feels like something more personal.’
Horton frowned. ‘So when you say the job’s not yet finished…?’
‘Now she’s killed Elliott, there’s only one person left.’
‘Donaldson. But we’re likely to catch up with him before she does.’
‘Maybe. Except that we’ve just had a bit of news from Alec. They’ve been finishing up at Donaldson’s house and Alec sent one of the uniforms out to check the spot at the rear of the house where Donaldson had concealed his car. They found a second car left there, almost hidden further into the trees. We’ve just checked out the registration.’
Horton was ahead of her. ‘Elliott’s?’
‘So our friend may already have caught up with him.’
‘So why not kill him then and there?’
‘That was our first thought. That maybe she’d killed him there, and then taken his car to buy herself a bit of extra time. But Alec had the team out there search the area around the car and there’s no sign of Donaldson’s body. Alec reckons she’d only have had a few minutes so she wouldn’t have had the chance to conceal the body except in some very limited way. It’s difficult to be absolutely certain in the dark, but I think we have to assume that either she’s killed Donaldson and taken the body with her, or that he’s still alive and they’re together.’
‘Maybe they’re working together,’ Horton suggested. ‘Maybe this was a way for Donaldson to burn his bridges before we caught up with him?’
‘Anything’s possible,’ Adams said. ‘But then why would the woman deliberately allow herself to be recognised? If they were planning to disappear, even if they had some motive for the killings, wouldn’t they want to keep as anonymous as possible? And why go to the lengths of stealing Elliott’s car? If they’d got this set up, why wouldn’t Donaldson just be waiting for her? They could have just headed off last night, and they’d be hours ahead of us.’
Horton shrugged. ‘I suppose. But we’ve still got the problem of actually identifying her. All we’ve got is a few seconds’ footage of her face on CCTV.’
Grant leaned forward and wound back the footage to the shot in question. ‘That’s the final bit of the jigsaw we haven’t shared with you yet. We don’t need to identify her. I know who she is.’