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And everyone else mentioned in Dunhill’s articles was now dead.
‘When is the article being published?’ she asked, dreading the answer.
‘It went online this morning which is why your timing in hauling—’
Kim was no longer listening.
‘Damn it,’ she growled as she headed for the door.
SEVENTY-THREE
Penn received the CCTV footage from the gym just a minute after he saw the boss and Bryant run out of the building.
He’d thought he was just tidying up, crossing his Ts, and that their murderer was sitting in interview room one, but now he wasn’t so sure.
From the size of the file he’d been sent, he was guessing the footage was around twenty minutes long.
He loaded it and saw that the time stamp began at 11.01. The camera faced the café and managed to pick up one and a half of the tables outside. The seating area was facing south-east and bathed in sunshine.
The prayer he was silently formulating was answered as he saw Sandy exit with a tall latte glass. She took a seat at the half table so that she was in view.
She set her drink down and took out her phone, indicating she was alone.
He was just starting to think his gut had failed him and that it was a simple cuppa on her own, when she thrust the phone back into her bag and stood.
She pointed inside but then sat back down.
So, she had met someone and that person was out of view. It appeared that Sandy had offered her companion a drink and it had been refused.
He watched for any clue as to who was sitting at the table just out of shot, but all he could see was Sandy, who held her glass, sipped and listened, offering only the occasional nod.
After a few minutes, she put the cup down and started to speak. Her hands were carrying out explanatory gestures. Penn noted the difference in Sandy’s body language to when she’d been talking to Monty. Here, she wasn’t tense or stiff or uncomfortable. She would take breaks from talking to sip her drink and listen.
Penn knew that this could be a perfectly innocent meeting with one of her friends except for two things: this took place the day before she was murdered, and normally if you met a friend for coffee, you both had a drink, a chat and then you went your separate ways. The person sitting across the table wasn’t here for coffee, so they were here for something else.
Sandy was now opening her hands and shaking her head with an occasional shrug. Something in her demeanour said she was sad, regretful, even apologetic.
Her hand moved across the table towards the other person but then shot back, as though she had tried to offer a comforting touch and it had been thrown off.
Sandy shook her head again and looked up. The person must be standing.
After a minute, Sandy continued to sip from her cup without speaking. Her companion had gone.
It occurred to Penn that the other person had left the meeting unhappy with the result.
SEVENTY-FOUR
‘So now you think he’s not our guy?’ Bryant asked, pulling off the car park.
‘I’m not saying that. I just want to make sure she’s safe.’
The fact that Eloise hadn’t answered her calls was just one of the things not helping the tension in Kim’s stomach.
The minute Monty had mentioned the woman’s name, she’d felt a surge of danger course through her. She knew that if she had been totally convinced that Monty was their killer, the alarm bells in her body would have remained silent.
Everything they had pointed his way: he hated all the victims enough to want them gone. He was a despicable human being, but did that make him a murderer? Right now, the jury in her nerves was out on that one. It wasn’t often that she had to persuade herself that they had the right person. Normally she just knew. Usually when they arrested and questioned a suspect, her gutometer was at a full one hundred, but when she pictured Monty Dunhill murdering Sandy, Azim and Victoria, the needle was sticking somewhere around eighty-five.
She took out her phone and tried Eloise again.
