A different voice screamed, and the woman with the phone jumped a little before laughing loudly.
‘Fuck off, Lizzie, you scared the shit out of me. Sorry, folks, she has the worst sense of humour. As I was saying, people around these parts believe in this mysterious watcher, but nobody has ever seen him and lived to tell the tale, or so they say.’
A loud crack somewhere behind them echoed, and both the woman who was filming and her friend Lizzie jumped. Lizzie looked a little panicked and whispered,‘What was that?’
Janey turned the phone to selfie mode and held it close to her face.
‘That might be the watcher, he’s coming for us because we’re out trespassing on his land. Woo-hoo.’
‘Shut up, Janey, did you hear footsteps?’
Janey, who was no longer grinning at the camera, let her hand fall to her side and the picture went all blurry.
‘Relax, it’s just an animal.’
‘Bloody big animal to make a sound that loud, don’t you think? I don’t like it. Can we please get out of here?’
‘Yeah, yeah, in a minute. As you can see, you need a strong constitution to deal with this kind of shit day in, day out, but that’s what we do. This is the whole point of the podcast, folks, so stay tuned and if we don’t get murdered by some weirdo out here, let’s connect when we’re back home safely. You know the drill, you can find us on whatever platform you listen to.’
A terrified scream filled the air.
‘Run, Lizzie.’
The phone was still filming, only now it was fast and blurry as Janey was running away from something or someone. She liftedthe phone up to try and film whoever was chasing them, and Morgan’s heart was beating as if it was a caged animal trying to escape its cage. There, a short distance away from Janey Moore, was a tall, dark figure, far too tall to be Amos, and it was chasing the women. They were fast, too fast for Amos who had a limp. All dressed in black, it was catching up to them. A loud shout and the sound of someone falling as Lizzie fell over something and hit the ground. Janey’s phone captured her on all fours. Before Janey could run to help her friend, the figure was there, standing above Lizzie and swinging a bat. The crunch as it connected with her skull was sickening, and all three of them cupped their hands over their mouths. Janey began to whimper, but she took off running, then she either fell over or was brought down by whoever was chasing her. Her phone on the floor was filming the night sky until a shadowy figure stood over it, leaning down to pick it up. The filming stopped.
‘Oh my God,’ Wendy’s voice trembled.
Morgan couldn’t believe what she had just watched. Cain was shaking his head. ‘That’s sick, the sick fuck.’
‘Someone needs to go tell Ben to come up here and watch this. There is no way it’s Amos. Did you see how fast they moved. Amos has a significant limp; he struggles walking at a normal pace.’ Morgan was whispering and she didn’t know why.
Cain stood up. ‘I’ll go.’
As he reached the door, he turned the lights on and both Wendy and Morgan had to shield their eyes from the fluorescent glow that was blinding. Wendy was shaking her head.
‘That was awful, the sound of—’ She didn’t finish her sentence; she didn’t need to.
The sound of the bat connecting with Lizzie’s skull would never leave Morgan’s brain. It would be stored there along with all the other horrific memories she had collected over the years.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Marc had arrived back in the office moments ago, and Ben rushed into the CSI office where a subdued Wendy was still staring at the phone inside of the evidence bag as if it was the creep who had attacked the girls. Morgan sucked in a deep breath ready to defend her actions and take the consequences of what she’d done. Ben didn’t look as angry as she’d thought he might; in fact he looked more relieved.
Marc was staring at the evidence bag, arms crossed. He stared Morgan straight in the eye and asked, ‘So, technically, we did this to what?’
Morgan didn’t get time to answer, Cain did. ‘Well, it’s pretty clear once you watch the video that this is about trying to save Janey Moore’s life. She is in mortal danger and so is Scarlett Peters. This is about an immediate, real and substantial risk to life and limb and that’s probable cause for viewing the footage.’
Ben nodded. ‘Good enough for me. Can you send the video to one of us so we can enlarge it and view it on the computer?’
Wendy nodded and pressed the share icon to send it to her work email address. ‘I think it would be better if I send it to myself then I can share it with you.’
‘Whatever you think.’ Ben smiled at her, and Morgan saw Wendy’s shoulders relax a little. Poor Wendy. She had put her in a difficult position, but she was glad she had. Now they knew what they were up against.
Finally, Wendy’s email pinged with the file notification. Her finger hovered above the mouse. ‘This is awful, I just thought you should know that.’
Morgan nodded. ‘We didn’t expect this at all, but you need to watch it yourselves.’
Wendy pressed PLAY then stood up and walked out of the room, unable to watch it a second time. Morgan didn’t blame her. It was the most harrowing thing she had ever watched in her life, but at the same time, it gave her hope that somehow the tech unit might be able to clean this up enough to give them some facial recognition or at least help to identify the creep.
