“Er, Elise, isn’t it?” The nymph came over quietly. “Would you like to do the Savasana now?”
She faked the relaxation and left as soon as was decently possible, changed, and headed for her office.
The flicker of the grainy CCTV images in the darkened room was making Elise’s eyelids heavy. She steadied herself with one hand on the back of the officer’s chair as he watched for vehicles visiting the Perry property.
“How are you doing?” she asked a world-weary sergeant apparently infamous in the station for his tea intake and cast-iron bladder.
“Slowly,” he sighed, and pushed away his tannin-stained mug. “There were hundreds of cars on the road that weekend. It was a bank holiday and the sun was shining. People were pouring down to the coast and the music festival.”
“Nightmare. Where are the cameras on that stretch?”
“There are three: at the Shell garage as you leave Ebbing; at the entrance to a parking area down the road from the property—the farmer who owns the land put it up after someone damaged his fence; and at the pick-your-own farm a mile beyond Tall Trees. I’m tracking vehicles that don’t reach the pick your own.”
“Anything yet?”
“Apart from Mr. O’Dowd’s truck?” The officer switched screens to the images of the gardener’s truck he’d flagged up. “I’m working backward from Sunday.”
“What about the parking area? Someone could have walked to the property from there.”
“Yep.” He pulled it up on the screen. A dusty corner of a field with a hedge down one side and a fence on the other.
“It’s smaller than I remembered,” Elise said. “What does it take? Twenty cars?”
“About right. But one hundred and sixty-three vehicles went in and out of it on Sunday. It was a hot day, lots of families and dog walkers. The camera’s up high to catch the whole area—it’s not a number-plate recognition setup like in a council-car-park one—but we’re going through the registration numbers we can get.”
“Okay, can I see the cars that arrived after eight p.m.? When it was getting dark. They won’t be walkers, will they?”
“The snoggers and doggers.” He grinned. “I’ve just been going through them.”
Elise pulled up a chair. “Show me.”
“This one,” the sergeant said, clicking on a still of a black SUV, “arrived at eleven forty-nine that night. Left thirty-six minutes later. We can’t read the number plate because of the angle of the camera.”
“Do we have the occupants?”
“Have a look,” he said and flicked back to the live screen.
Elise leaned over his shoulder to watch. There was no lighting in the car park. The only illumination came from the headlights sweeping round as the SUV parked, causing the camera to flare and images to disappear. Then the interior light came on as the door opened.
“What do you think? Looks like just the driver inside.” Elise squinted at the shadows inside the vehicle and watched as a figure got out and closed the door. “Male or female?” she said. “I’d say a man. Would a woman stop in a dark car park at midnight on her own?”
“Yeah, most likely a bloke. Might have stopped for an emergency pee? But it would have been one hell of a pee. And in the meantime, another car arrives.”
The second car, a light-colored estate, swung into the area five minutes after the SUV.
“It looks like a Volvo to me but we’re checking. And they park in the same corner as far from the road as they can and you can see the second driver gets out. Looks like date night to me.”
“Have we got them returning to the vehicles?” Elise asked.
The grainy footage ran on in silence.
“That’s the SUV driver,” the sergeant said, stopping the film. “He gets in quickly and doesn’t turn his lights on until he reaches the entrance.”
The car swept out onto the road, turning back toward Ebbing, followed seconds later by the estate.
“Where do we see the cars before the car park? Did they come from Ebbing or outside the area?”
“Thing is, there are loads of these SUVs—it’s the sort of Chelsea tractor weekenders use,” the sergeant said as he pulled up the other cameras.
“I know. My neighbors have got one.” She’d meant to have a word about it blocking the light when they parked outside her window.
“But we’ve got a vehicle the same color driving past the Shell garage three minutes before our one turns into the car park. See?”