AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
All resources are moved to CCTV, everyone scouring the film from different cameras across the city. Adam watches the footage, his hand over his mouth. It’s a figure, dressed all in black. Head down, a hood over his face. He walks fast along the path, small footsteps, quick and decisive.
“Look up, look up,” Adam whispers, wishing for one glimpse of his face. An identifying mark. A logo. Something to use to find this guy.
But his face stays downward as he disappears out of shot.
Quinn anticipates Adam’s next question and swaps screens to a camera farther along. The time stamp skips ten minutes, but there he is again. Streetlights this time. Shop windows. Even though Adam knows he must be covered in blood, it’s not obvious on the footage, absorbed into the black material of his hoodie.
“Check reflections in shop windows, anything that might give us a moment of this guy’s face. There, there, those two.” Adam points to a couple walking past the offender. Their gaze locks on the man, clearly distracted by something about him, then they walk away fast. “They saw him. Find them. I want a description, and I want it now.” He shouts to the rest of the team. “Follow this guy. If he gets in a car, follow it. I want him.”
The room is a mass of energy. Nothing gets murder detectives moving faster than the thought that their suspect is in their sights.
His phone rings. It’s Jamie. He steels himself, then takes the call.
“Adam, please … They said you were at the house.”
The bloody reporters again. “Yes. Yes, we were. But she wasn’t there, Jamie, I’m sorry.”
“Was she before?”
“Yes.”
“You were too late.” Matter of fact, his voice dull.
“Yes. But we have some good leads, Jamie. We’re on his trail.”
There’s a long pause at the end of the phone. Adam can hear quiet sobbing. A noise that wrenches at his heart. He stands, listening, as detectives buzz around him. Then he hears a loud sniff, a rustle of tissues, and Jamie comes back on the line.
“I’m going to go home,” he says quietly.
“You don’t have to do that. You can stay as long as you need.”
“No, no. I’ll go over now. I thought it would be awful, but actually I just want to be close to Pippa. And if I can’t have the real thing, then I want to be there. Waiting for her to walk back in the door. Because she will, won’t she, Adam?”
Adam takes a long breath, looking out into the incident room where the CCTV plays across multiple monitors, faces inches away from the screens.
“She will, Jamie.”
He ends the call and goes back out.
“Where are we?” he directs, and a detective points.
“We lost him as he walked into Regent’s Street car park, but then a VW Transporter exits soon after.”
“We’ve got a plate?”
“No. Completely obscured. But we’re still tracking it.”
Adam takes a seat next to him and watches as they follow the footage. The Transporter goes out of shot frustratingly frequently, but a DC consults a map, CCTV camera numbers are shouted out, and they pick it up again.
It’s moving fast, not sticking to the speed limits. They watch it drive through the center of town, then leave, heading toward one of the suburbs. Adam knows the area: countryside, fields. It goes too far and they’ll lose it.
Sure enough, the VW heads through an area out of range, and it’s gone. They scrabble desperately, swapping cameras and views, but nothing.
“Stick to this angle,” Adam says. “People are creatures of habit, if he came in this way, chances are he’ll drive back out by the same route.” He points to a second team. “Have you found anything near the old Cole house?”
“There’s no cameras around there, Boss.”
